Photos| A summer scare: 5,000 people, 1 hand pump in Maharashtra’s Dindori

Less than 25kms from Nashik city, in Ghanichamata, on the outskirts of Dindori village, which is grappling with drought, a single hand pump caters to nearly 5,000 residents. Braving the summer heat, residents face hours of queues daily to fill their pots with drinking water and when the sole pump dries out in the summer, have to go about requesting private well owners for water. And while authorities claim alternative water supply connections are possible, the local corporator denies this fact on grounds that most families lack requisite papers for such connections. ...read more

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Updated on Apr 25, 2019 11:45 AM IST

A woman carries pots of drinking water in Ghanichamata area in Dindori. Less than 25kms from Nashik city, Ghanichamata, on the outskirts of Dindori village, which is grappling with drought, a single hand pump caters to nearly 5,000 residents. Every day for the past 10 years, women here have braving heat and never-ending queues, sometimes for four to five hours for drinking water. (Pramod Thakur / HT Photo)

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The groundwater in this area dries up between mid-April and mid-June. “There is no arriving at the water queue first…there’s always a queue here,” said 45-year-old Durpada Dhamne, a resident of Ghanichamata, who is at the hand pump every day at 4am. (Pramod Thakur / HT Photo)

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Dindori, which had a gram panchayat until 2016, was converted to a municipality later and Ghanichamata falls within the purview of the newly-formed civic body. Baba Saheb Gadhve, the tehsildar of Dindori says, it is possible to provide drinking water to the area. “We have to get this checked. An alternate connection for water supply can be made,” he said. (Pramod Thakur / HT Photo)

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By midsummer, this hand pump too, dries up, leaving the residents, mostly landless labourers, with no option but to plead with their employers to allow them to draw water from privately-owned wells. They have to walk over a kilometre to nearby private wells. Some people let them draw water, other times they have to go around asking at several houses. (Pramod Thakur / HT Photo)

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On an average, a woman from Ghanichamata works close to 20 hours a day. Of this, she dedicates more than four hours to filling up 10 to 12 pots of drinking water at this hand pump. Gayatri Jondhale, 35, who works on a farm in the neighbouring village, says she is at the hand pump as early as 2am every day, managing on just 3 hours of sleep a day. (Pramod Thakur / HT Photo)

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The water availability and irrigation have become prime agendas for candidates contesting the Lok Sabha elections from this region and the residents of Ghanichamata, too, have approached authorities and politicians many times, but to no avail. (Pramod Thakur / HT Photo)

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While the tehsildar of Dindori has said that an alternate water connection can be procured for the settlement, a corporator from the area claims that the residents of the settlement, which came up 15 years ago don’t have valid papers for the same. (Pramod Thakur / HT Photo)

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Residents counter the claims made by Tushar Waghmare, the local corporator and general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party unit from the tehsil, saying that close to 4,000 of them have valid voter ID cards. “Under CSR funds, we recently proposed setting up an RO plant in this area. Work will be completed shortly,” Waghmare has said. (Pramod Thakur / HT Photo)