Bidar is facing its worst drought in 45 years, and this is most evident in Bhalki taluk, where women spend much of the day in collecting water from far-off sources.
Women of Kakanal village in Bhalki on the Karnataka-Maharashtra border, for example, have accepted water scarcity as a fact of life. The village of 3,000 people is dependent on one bore well. The pump set connected to the bore well on the Shivani-Lakhangaon road yields just two inches of water. Hundreds of pots and buckets are placed all around it, and women have to pass through a maze of these plastic pots to reach the pipe.
Women who live in the eastern side of the village have to walk for over 7 km to fetch one pot of water. While those who live near the borewell collect water in the day time, families living far away come here at night. The pump never stops pulling up water. "It's switch is in Karnataka Electricity Board," jokes Santosh Biradar, former Gram Panchayat member, indicating that the pump is switched off only during power outages. It has been running nonstop for a whole year now. The zilla panchayat drilled the borewell three years ago.
What would happen if the sole borewell dries up?. No one knows for sure. "We will all have to migrate, I think, to a city with enough water," says Sudhakar Suryavanshi, a resident. The village has six bore wells and 21 open wells, of which all but one have dried up. The drought has reduced us to labourers from farmers, says Rajkumar Karkale. He and his family members go to work as farm hands in the field of a land owner in a nearby village, as they have no water source in their village to take up sowing.
The situation in the neighbouring village of Lanjawad is even more depressing.
No bore well or open well dug by the government is yielding water here. The only source of water are three bore wells in the field of Sheetal Santosh Chauhan, a zilla panchayat member. Her husband, a businessman, fills an abandoned well with water every morning. Women queue up before the well and start lowering pots with ropes in the well. This goes till afternoon, when the well dries up. The village of around 2,000 people waits patiently for another tanker to come and fill the well. "The well’s walls are covered with basalt stones. Water does not seep away, says Basavaraj Biradar," a village elder. The Chouhans have been donating water for more than a year now, points out Naganath Rajput, a farmer.
The water is brackish and has a muddy flavour, but the villagers drink it. "What to do? We have no where else to get water from," says Mayavva Hanumanth,’ a home maker.
However, these are not the only villages hit by drought. Zilla panchayat officials say 359 of the 650 villages are suffering from acute water scarcity. "We are cleaning and dredging wells and tanks, and flushing old bore wells. If such measures fail, we will supply water through tankers. Digging fresh bore wells will be the last resort,’’ zilla panchayat officials say.
Steady decrease in rainfall
Bidar, the ninth rainiest district in the State, was supposed to get 871 mm of rain in 2015, but got only 585.4 mm. The last year of above average rain was 2010. Rainfall steadily decreased over the last five years. A scarcity of above 70 per cent has been witnessed first time since 1971. In taluks like Bhalki, the average ground water level has fallen below 110 feet.
