Water Woes

Village that is voice of water-starved residents

Ravi Krishnan Khajuria
Tribune News Service
Meen Charakan, June 5

This village, situated 22 km from Jammu, has become the voice of water-starved residents.
On May 20, its residents, seeking an end to the acute water crisis, had held hostage a group of Public Health and Engineering (PHE) Department officials.
The PHE authorities claimed that they had pressed into service four water tankers to meet the contingency till normal supply was restored.
However, it was found that only one PHE tanker had ferried water twice on May 20, and since then no tanker was ever seen in the village.
“After the village, comprising over 100 families, did not get even a single drop of water continuously for 20 days in May, we held hostage an assistant executive engineer Manoj Bhardwaj and two JEs Sham Lal and Tariq Hussain,” said 64-year-old Puran Singh.
A lone handpump is the lifeline of the villagers here. “With two of the three handpumps out of order, the entire village relies upon one handpump for meeting its water demands. The supply through PHE pipe comes every third day,” said Vijay Singh, an employee of the State Road Transport Corporation.
With anger writ large on her face, Purni Devi, an elderly woman, cursed the day when her parents married her to a man of this village.
“Since my marriage 35 years ago, this problem continued to haunt us. Perhaps, it is a cursed village because despite being situated very close to the winter capital, drinking water remains a luxury here,” she said.
Another villager, Satpal (70) vent his anger on the political leadership.”The sitting MLA from the Vijaypur constituency, Surjeet Singh Salathia, who holds the portfolio of Industries and Commerce, Labour and Employment in the Omar Abdullah cabinet, has handed over a raw deal to this village”.
Before the Assembly elections, Salathia had come to the village and promised to install a tubewell, but after becoming a minister, he and his tubewell vanished into thin air, he added.
In the twilight of his life, 90-year-old Ravi Singh Charak attributed the nagging problem to government apathy, particularly of the PHE department.
“Why the PHE’s motor at the Barjani station develops a technical snag every day and why don’t they find a permanent solution to this problem,” he asked while hinting at malpractices within the PHE department.
“Though the PHE had laid an overground pipeline in the village, it lies broken for the past two years and none had bothered to repair it,” said another villager, Koushalaya Devi.
To a query, a village youth, Parveen Singh responded, “In a village where we don’t get sufficient drinking water, thinking of irrigational water would be like living in a fool’s paradise. Agriculture has taken a severe beating because we have no option than to rely upon rain”.