India

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Four year-old Ravi stands beside an anhydrous well in the East Panajj coalfield of India where his impoverished family lives. This photograph demonstrates Ravi’s undernourishment, which, combined with contaminated drinking water, has caused Ravi various abdominal problems.

When eight year-old Gantla Krishnaveni arrives at school in the village of Rapaka in the Visakapattinam District in Andhra Pradesh, she's never really sure which of her classmates will be present. "Some of my friends are suffering with a fever now, so they are not able to come to school. I had a fever, too, recently and had to stay in bed for four days." Gantla speaks nonchalantly, as if it would be ridiculous for her to expect to see all of her friends every day at school. For the children of Rapaka, disease is an every day occurrence, and it's not unusual for the children to fail to survive. Last year alone, six children under the age of three in Rapaka died from diarrhea.

Only once a year, can residents of the East Parej region of India, where Ravi lives afford to use bleaching powder to disinfect their drinking water. Due to water contamination, community members can only bathe once every five to ten days. Water in these areas is generally zinc deficient. In this region, women and children are often obligated to travel more than one kilometer to fetch safe drinking water. Villagers in the area do not express confidence that they can live long and healthy lives; rather, most feel that their situation is only going to deteriorate. However, one success story stands out: in the village of Thimmapuram in the Visakapattinam District in Andhra Pradesh where Gantla lives, good education about water contamination issues and personal hygiene, as well as new school facilities, have improved sanitation practices. The villagers have built a school latrine block with a large hygiene promotion mural painted on the side. In addition, Timmapurmam has begun running health awareness camps for adults. To finance these projects, the village incorporated a credit scheme in which every householder contributes funds to a savings account, which allows the villagers to access credit from external NGOs and from the government. Villagers repay their debts monthly in affordable amounts.

However, severe water contamination continues to plague the Agaria tribe and other tribes that inhabit the coalfields of North Karanpura and East Parej, India. In East Parej, more than 80% of the community lives in poverty. Hand pumps, dug wells, local streams, rivers, mine water, and river water, some of which pipes supply, serve as some of the community’s water sources. Most people, however, depend on other, contaminated sources of water.

In north Karanpura and East Parej, an average of 100 people share a single hand pump. Many of these hand pumps do not work because of lack of maintenance or depletion of ground water sources due to mining. During the summer and winter, dug wells are generally dried up, and the expansion of mining has obstructed and diverted natural draining. Villagers in much of rural India lack any concept of how to preserve and purify rainwater. Also, here, nickel, fluoride, and arsenic pollute the water; consumers suffer from skin problems, yellow staining of their teeth, and pains in their joints. In some water samples, manganese and sulfate reach toxic levels. Researchers have also found mercury in the Damodar and Safi rivers, which flow through coalfields. Most villagers are left with no choice but to drink contaminated water and face water scarcity for seven months out of the year.

In addition, due to water stagnancy, malaria rampages much of India. Diarrhea is also all too common; a health survey of 150 school children in the North Karanpura coalfield showed that 30 of these children were sluggish and debilitated. The most serious problem is that people are ignorant of the quality of drinking water they are using and the impact of water contamination on their health.