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The dark zone
When
Down To Earth correspondents
nidhi jamwal and d b manisha
started filing their reports on the problem of fluoride and arsenic in
groundwater, we were shocked by the extent of the problem and enormity of
the human tragedy. This is a story about paataal, we noted in
disgust. The dark zone
It is a story about
underground water: when the nectar turns into poison. When a daily task of
drinking water from the handpump becomes the source of crippling disease and
death. This is not a “natural” disaster — where natural arsenic or fluoride,
present deep down, just happened to make their way into drinking water. It
is about a deliberate poisoning. Created by successive governments and
multilateral agencies: all well intentioned in their quest for safer,
cleaner water supply; all investing in boring into the ground, till they
brought the dark zone into the light of daily life.
Whatever the uncertainties
in the exact causes of these diseases, the link with groundwater is
undisputable. Studies done in the arsenic-affected belt show that
concentration increases with depth in the aquifer — peaks around 100-125
feet down — and gets reduced as it reaches 400 feet down. The
fluoride-groundwater link is clear but its geographical extent is not known.
No one region can be identified as chronically or endemically
fluoride-prone. A recent report of the Geological Survey of India lists
regions that are on the fluoride-red alert stretching from Punjab in the
north to Tamil Nadu in the south.
The story begins many years ago, sometimes in the 1960s and 1970s, when
national governments and international agencies drew up detailed plans to
provide safe water to all. They understood, rightly, that bacteria in water
kills more babies than any other substance in the world. They believed the
water on the surface — in millions of ponds and tanks and other water
harvesting structures — was contaminated and so invested quickly in new
technologies to dig deeper and deeper into the ground. Drills, borepipes,
tubewells and handpumps quickly became the triumphalistic instruments of
public health missions. Then the water table started to fall. Investment
were made to dig deeper. And here is where the story turns.
While government was well-intentioned in its quest for clean water, it was
equally callous, indeed criminal, when it came to responding to the news
that was filtering in that maybe, just maybe, the ‘strange’ diseases are
linked to the water that people are drinking. It responded with denial. It
responded with misinformation, confusion and ineptitude. Science and its
uncertainty became the servile tool for inaction. This subplot is marked by
sheer and gross incompetence in efforts to identify the problem, its cause
and to find alternatives. This subplot leads to deadly and terrible disease.
The story is therefore, most of all about victims — living in scattered
villages across this region. These are “official” victims, whose tubewells
are marked in shades of red, to identify its levels of contamination. But
then there are the “unofficial” and unidentified victims. Maybe thousands.
Maybe millions. Nobody knows because nobody has cared to find out. Even
these “victims” do not know. They only know that they are ill. But is the
cause of their mysterious illness their water? Where do they go to find out?
This story is also a story about unrecognised warriors, who have struggled
and fought to make the world recognise the problem in the first place. To
name only a few: in West Bengal, Dipankar Chakraborti; in Bangladesh, Quazi
Quamruzzaman for making us listen to the suffering of arsenic affected
people; and A K Susheela in New Delhi for persisting with information about
fluorosis.
Even now, the mindset is to find a technical-fix for poor people. Who will
make the technologies that work? Who will work these technologies? Even now,
public policy refuses to accept that the problem is not arsenic or fluorosis
per se. The problem is groundwater usage.
The answer to the problem, therefore, is not the management of the disease.
The answer is in the management of water. We are threateningly dependent on
aquifers for our drinking needs. There is no regulation worth its name to
manage this resource. Every attempt to legislate against overuse remains in
a draft form. At the same time, technological advancement is helping us
reach lower and lower into the earth to search for water. What we
desperately need is strategies to ensure that the extraction of water does
not exceed the recharge of the aquifers. We need to effect programmes to
invest in harvesting the rainwater to rebuild the groundwater reserves.
But this is not the only solution. We will also have to invest in surface
water systems — to help recharge groundwater and augment available water
sources. And here is where public health proponents must work with water
management communities. Governments cannot assure water supply. We know
this. The problem of arsenicosis and fluorosis has emerged because public
policy discounted the community water systems and believed in a technical
fix. The task is now to rebuild the community water systems — the ponds,
tanks, stepwells — and to keep them clean and unpolluted. This task can only
be done through the willing and active involvement of local people.
Otherwise, water will remain a pipedream. Pilfered, or shattered and broken.
Remember, the price of inaction will be the crippling of this country.
Deliberate crippling. Our earth will become the dark zone.
http://www.downtoearth.org.in
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