“Does it take much to prevent such incidents?” the Supreme Court asked in November 2009 while considering the lethal risks posed by abandoned open borewells that had already taken several young lives. Doing some plain-speaking, it directed State governments to ensure that all abandoned borewells and tubewells were capped. Providing practical tips to cover them with wire mesh or lids, the court also wanted functioning wells fenced off. On the basis of this order, the Union government in February 2010 issued guidelines for the maintenance of borewells. All that was evidently in vain, judging from the number of accidents since then, including many in which children died after remaining traumatically trapped in the innards of the earth for days. The latest such heart-rending tragedy occurred in a Haryana village: the body of little Mahi, who fell into a 70-foot-deep borewell on June 20 while playing with her friends on her fourth birthday, was pulled out after some 80 hours of rescue efforts.
Borewells and tubewells are widely used for irrigation in Punjab and Haryana, mostly in rural areas, because of the falling water table. Where these were once narrow holes, they are now typically 18 to 24 inches in diameter. Rural India has become growingly dependent on groundwater. Almost all the government programmes seek to supply water to villages through tubewells. Poor recharge due to geological reasons and environmental degradation (where creeping urbanisation is a key cause) make many of them defunct. The typical short-cut solution is to dig more borewells. Most of them, illegal and unlicensed, are left uncapped once they fall into disuse. On a larger plane, excessive reliance on groundwater for drinking, irrigation and industrial uses in India represents a massive failure of state policy. A review sponsored by the Central Ministry of Water Resources four years ago estimated that 85 per cent of rural, 50 per cent of urban drinking and industrial needs, and 55 per cent of irrigation needs, were met out of groundwater. This points to a virtual withdrawal of the state from the water sector, despite the formation of the Central Ground Water Authority with a mandate to, among other things, interact with State governments and regulate extraction of sub-soil water. Incidents of borewell deaths will stop only when the government takes its goals seriously — of safety as well as better groundwater management — and starts taking measures in mission mode to ensure consistent water supply wherever needed. The best way to start is to team up with local bodies, starting with village panchayats.
Keywords: open borewells, abandoned borewells, tubewells, groundwater, Central Ground Water Authority
Abandoned bore-wells are just death traps due to our negligence.When a child slips into a bore-well hole,officials and members of the general public make efforts on war-foot to save the child.If they can put up half of such collective effort in capping the unused bore-well holes,they would save many lives.Prior permission from the local body authorities and from the people in the vicinity of The bore-well to be dug must be made mandatory.The threat of seizing the rig and of huge amount of money as compensation to be borne by the owners of the rig and the land will be an effective deterrent.
It is so heart breaking to read about the little girl. Incidents such as these which can be prevented with very little effort, should not be let happen again.
Time and again you have discussed in your 'The Hindu' importance of a national water policy. But government officials, politicians and citizens, with short term vision, have simply ignored implementation of any measures in this regard. It is time we wake up to the dangers of drilling more wells. It is just too much for to expect the so-called government to do every thing from policing the abandoned bore wells to supervising wells under construction, leaving the people who are supposed to use them for their own benefit without any obligation. This is not to absolve the government of its duties but bore well users owe it to the society to cap the abandoned wells.
Bore well is dangerous for the innocent children for, they are the easy prey but it is the need of today, as the data above show. Furthermore the size of the well must be increased for the upcoming projects, so that at the time of any incident rescue plan could be started successfully. To educate the people nearby, attached with the project, local authority should take interest. Dependency over bore well method must be reduced in order to relive local people from uncertainty of any misfortune and bad effect it pull over the existing water table. Substitutes like water harvesting , river,canal linking projects should be implemented. Our govt. institutions show meager interest in solving these problems so such types of misfortune are regularly caught.
The article hits the nail on its head. It exposes the state's failure in performing its roles. The authorities responsible have failed on various counts. From following the advisory of the apex court of the nation to monitoring the digging of unauthorized bore-wells, from covering of the holes to issuing a caveat to the natives and from taking note of various stakeholders' needs to planning the rescue operations. In a nutshell, this is a case of mismanagement at the highest level.
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