BARAMULLA, KASHMIR, INDIA – Shamshada Bano, a young woman from Sopore, a town in Kashmir’s Baramulla district, says the day starts early for women here as they set out to fetch water for their families. Because of the scarcity of water in her village, Tujjar, she says it’s never an easy task.
“We set out to collect water at 6 in the morning,” she says. “Sometimes we move out while still rubbing our eyes and without even washing our face.”
Women wait in long queues for hours for their turn at the village’s few public posts, or common water taps.
“It takes us almost two hours to fetch water from a nearby public post,” she says.
The community water taps in the village sit hardly a few centimeters above the ground, so the women first collect water in a small container and then pour it into a bigger vessel.
“This is too tiresome, and one family can collect one pot of water at a time,” Bano says. “Besides, the water pipes have been laid 50 years back, and the water pressure in these pipes is too low.”
Water here is available for just an hour a day early in the morning, so it’s first come, first serve. Those who arrive early succeed in collecting water, while others have to return home empty-handed.
“After waiting for hours and if luck favors [us], we are able to collect one pot of water,” she says. “Otherwise have to return empty.”
After fetching water, she returns home, eats her breakfast and leaves for college.
Women in one Kashmiri village say water scarcity – thanks to a poor water system, pollution of local streams and irregular rainfall – hurts their education, health and relationships. Villagers say local wells and irrigation systems are also nonfunctional. Residents from nearby villages say they face the same water problems. Government officials admit there are problems, but they say the current situation isn’t the norm and that they have directed engineers to address the water shortage immediately.
According to UNICEF’s latest statistics from 2008, 88 percent of people in India have an improved drinking-water source. But residents in Kashmiri villages say they have had water problems for decades now. Moreover, they say the situation has gone from bad to worse because the streams they used to rely on are now polluted.
Bano’s friend, Shareefa Bano, a common last name here, says that if they don’t get water before school, they have to search for it afterward. Many times, this requires traveling to other villages.
“In case we fail to get water in [the] morning, we’ve to look after it during evening,” she says. “At times, those who fail to collect water from nearby taps during wee hours move outside a village in search of water. Usually, every family here has a handcart required to fetch water from a distance.”
She says that fetching water usually consumes a lot of time and often interferes with their education.
“We often reach school late and miss couple of classes,” she says. “Similarly, after returning from schools, we again move out in search of water.”
She says that female students sometimes have to retake exams because they don’t have time to adequately prepare.
She says the local “paand” – or stream – used to produce clean water, but now it is polluted. She says they sometimes settle for the contaminated stream water for cattle rearing, cleaning and other chores.
“Sometimes we collect contaminated water from nearby Budshah Paand that was once clean and safe and was used for drinking purpose,” she says. “The water body that has now turned polluted often stinks during summers.”
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