Parashuram, a villager, is eagerly waiting on the road for a tractor. Like him, many others wait daily for these vehicles laden with huge drums of water. These drums then fill up their water containers — whatever they have at home — to be used for a day.
Rajaram tanda has a population of about 1,500. There are over 100 houses here and each house has three to four plastic drums ready to store at least about 200 litres of water everyday. A tractor comes once daily to replenish their water drums. These villagers are forced to manage with this water, irrespective of the number of members in a family.
There are only two borewells in the village running on single phase power and that too, struggle to function for hardly half-an-hour. If it stops working, villagers have to wait for more then 12 hours for the next groundwater recharge.
More than 95 per cent people in Rajaram tanda are dependent on farming. And in such a situation, they are compelled to go for rain-fed farming due to dearth of water resources.
The village used to get water from Gudur pump house but that got disconnected after the start of Mission Bhagiratha works. It stopped once the water was diverted to Sri Ram Sagar Project from Singur reservoir. About 15 tmc ft Singur water was diverted to save standing crops under SRSP project in 2017. “We are managing like this since May. This will continue till Singur gets filled with rain water. There is no alternative. Even cattle is being taken to nearby areas, where water is available,” he said.
“This has become our daily plight, mainly because we stay far away from the district headquarters. Very rarely officials visit us to address our problems, mainly water shortage. We hope the situation will improve once Singur brims,” said Dhanaraj, another villager.
“We have given full freedom to the sarpanches at Kangti mandal and other areas to use borewells and tractors to get water. There are no restrictions on the number of trips of these tractors. They have to keep the records properly. We will make surprise checks,” said an officer working for Mission Bhagiratha.
