Rajasthan: 13,500 Villages Run Out Of Drinking Water

Ajmer: 13,500 villages do not have access to safe drinking water, surviving solely at the mercy of water tankers sent by the government.

Rajasthan has the country’s ten percent land mass but only 1.1 percent surface water making it almost completely dependent on ground water which is fast depleting. What’s worse is that only ten per cent of wells have water that is safe for drinking. 88 percent of Rajasthan’s water is saline, 55 percent has very high fluoride.

Every day, women in Ajmer’s Baalpur make multiple trips of three kms each under scorching sun to the only well which has safe drinking water. They manage to bring back two pots of water in each trip — about five to seven litres — which is not enough for a family of five.

The Sarpanch of the village hasa said that of the 150 wells in and around the village only 10 have drinking water. The government has said that the state has been forced to over exploit ground water which can make the situation worse in the coming future. Ground water levels in 190 of the 236 blocks are either overused or critically short of water.

The state’s Public Health minister Kiran Maheshwari said: “We are over exploiting ground water. We withdraw 100 per cent water but recharge only 22 per cent. The government drills a tube well and it goes dry within three years. We install hand pumps that go dry within 8 months.”