Water scarcity compel Chattisgarh natives to drink polluted water

DRINKING water in rural parts of Chhattisgarh is fast becoming a scarcity. The water sources such as well, rivulets, ponds and springs are fast getting dried up and pollution level in many water sources are on the rise. He said that the situation in rural Chhattisgarh is getting worse day by day as wells are getting dried up and river waters are contaminated due to rise in pollution level. The only dependency of the people is now hand pump and even the ground water level is depleting. 1300 residents of Bhuvneshwarpur village compelled to use & drink water from nearby water bodies in absence of water supply.

‘We have no facility of clean drinking water, have to go to the water bodies for it, many fall sick after consuming it’, says the local native of Chattisgarh.

An alternative to drawing drinking water directly from irrigation canals or village water reservoirs is to use the water that has seeped from the irrigation canals and irrigated fields and that has formed a small layer of fresh water on top of the brackish groundwater.

The use of irrigation seepage water for drinking results in less diarrhoea than direct use of irrigation water and this is what the people of Chattisgarh are facing these days.

Seepage water was of much better quality than surface water, but this did not translate into less diarrhoea. This could only be partially explained by the generally poor quality of water in the in-house storage vessels, reflecting considerable in-house contamination of drinking water. Risk factors for diarrhoea were absence of a water connection and water storage facility, lack of a toilet, low standard of hygiene, and low socio-economic status.