Vikas gets excited every time he watches cricket or Indian cricketer Suresh Raina.
The 14-year-old resident of Gangnauli village in western Uttar Pradesh suffers from deformity since birth. Yet, he unsuccessfully tries to speak whenever he sees TV reports on Raina’s marriage to a girl in the nearby village of Bamnauli.
The entire village, including the pradhan (village head) Dharmendra Rathi, is excited. Mr Rathi thinks Raina’s matrimonial connection to the area can break the jinx.
This sleepy village in Baghpat district is notorious in the region because more than 100 people have died of cancer and 42 others are battling the disease, caused by polluted drinking water. Disabled men, women and children are ubiquitous here, some bed-ridden for the past 3-5 years.
There is no apparent connection between Raina’s marriage and Bamnauli’s problems. But given the media’s wide coverage of the wedding, the villagers hope that the country will take note of the cancer deaths at last.
Rathi, who has been trying to get the State government to act on the alarming situation, says that in the normal course, the government should have sent its medical team to test water samples and ensured that the villagers got clean drinking water.
“Every house here has a patient suffering from either cancer or deformity. The situation has not received the attention it deserves. Bamnauli, the place of Raina’s in-laws, is just two km away. Raina’s marriage has put this area in the spotlight,” says Rathi, who has lost three members of his family to cancer.
“Now, we expect that our problems will also receive attention. We need clean drinking water and medical facilities” he says, showing a list of villagers who died of cancer and who are afflicted with several other ailments because of the “poisonous” river water.
The story is repeated in Thal, Himmatpur Sujti and other villages located on the banks of the Krishna River. The residents blames the river’s contaminated water for the widespread cancer, bone deformities, paralysis, and birth defects among children. Independent studies of river water samples have shown an extremely high content of heavy metals and other harmful compounds; water from the river has contaminated the groundwater.
After The Hindu reported the problem in November last year, the National Green Tribunal issued notice to the Union Ministry of Water and Forests and the Pollution Control Board and the authorities concerned in Uttar Pradesh. But nothing has changed.
Chandraveer Singh, a former scientist of the Haryana Pollution Control Board, got the samples tested in laboratories recognised by the State government. “The tragedy of this country is that the death of normal villagers doesn’t claim the attention of the authorities. Now that this area has got a celebrity connection, the helpless people here hope their deaths will be noticed by the government finally,” says Dr. Singh, who hails from the region.
