EVERY morning is a nightmare for M. Mohan, president of Thottipalayam panchayat, which includes about 30 villages on the outskirts of Tirupur. He gets up every morning trying to figure out how to juggle the limited quantity of water that he gets from New Tirupur Area Development Corporation Limited (NTADCL) project among the various localities in the panchayat. He knows that however hard he tries he is at best going to supply water once in 15 days to each locality. There are demands from everywhere. There are complaints of inadequate and delayed supply. And when the water does reach users, there are widespread complaints of poor quality.
In the "lines", where migrant workers seeking work in Tirupur live in cramped rows of 100-square-foot quarters, the shortage of water is palpable. Poonkodi, a migrant from Dindigul who works in a garment factory, collects six kodams (about 20 litres each) of NTADCL water once in 15 days from a pipe at the end of the street where she lives. When even this does not suffice she buys water carried in tankers, paying Rs.1.25 for a kodam. How does she manage the severe scarcity of one of the most essential of human needs? "I cope, I really do not how," she says.
A few minutes in the panchayat makes it obvious that water from NTADCL meets only a fraction of the needs of the people. People like Poongodi supplement their requirements from other sources. There is the "borewell water", which Mohan explains is "polluted groundwater which poses a grave risk to public health". The effluents discharged from the dyeing units in the last two decades have contaminated the water. Mohan says: "Only the desperate would drink this water. I have no other option."
Only a few houses in Thottipalayam have water connections. But even those who enjoy this "luxury" get water only once in 15 days. NTADCL promised to supply 5.14 lakh litres a day to Thottipalayam, and the panchayat gets about 4.9 lakh litres a day. Mohan, however, has a problem on hand. The promised quantity was based on the population figures according to the Census. Although the "official" population of the panchayat was about 26,000 according to the 2001 Census, Mohan says that the panchayat actually has close to 50,000 inhabitants. Tirupur attracted jobseekers from near and far. The population of the town itself has exploded in the last few years, and the pressure is now increasingly being felt in its hinterland.
Before NTADCL commenced operations in February 2006, water was supplied by the "second water scheme", which commenced in 1993. Thottipalayam panchayat was supplied 0.29 million litres per day (mld) under this scheme. NTADCL supplied an average of 0.49 mld to the panchayat in the last week of March. The generally accepted norm for the absolutely minimal level of consumption for human beings is 55 litres a day per person. Weighed against this norm and assuming a conservative population estimate of 36,000 (which even NTADCL has apparently accepted), the supply from both schemes would be enough to meet the needs of only about 15,000 inhabitants. To put it more provocatively, if the norm of 55 litres a person was somehow enforced stringently, more than 21,000 people in the panchayat - roughly 60 per cent of its people - would have no water at all. The story is much the same in the other panchayats near Tirupur. There have been sporadic protests by desperate rural folk.
Nothing in the horizon gives hope. There are no new schemes planned by a State government, which had touted that deliverance from water shortage lay in this unique partnership. Mohan says that an official told him "not to expect anything from a scheme that is purely a business proposition".
V. SridharCOMMents
COMMents
SHARE