Arsenic-affected villages get new lease of life

Cheap and sustainable water purification system comes as boon

Areas near India’s Bangladesh border in West Bengal have witnessed a steep decline in arsenic-related diseases over a period of three years after setting up of a cheap and sustainable water purification plant.

“In course of periodic medical check-up of a group of patients suffering from arsenic-related diseases, it was revealed that this water purification system has become a boon for them,” said Bindeshwar Pathak, sociologist and founder of Sulabh International, the brain behind the project.

Many of the villagers living here were forced to migrate to nearby places before they tried, in vain, every attempt to rid the water of the poison. The cost was too high. Diseases related to consumption of arsenic-tainted water even claimed lives.

But life started changing three years ago when Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, in collaboration with a French company, 1001 Fontaines, installed a Rs2-million pondbased water treatment plant in Madhusudan Kanti village of North 24 Parganas district, some 100 km from Kolkata.

The cost of establishing the plant in Bangaon subdivision, that can produce 8,000 litres of potable water per day at a nominal cost, was shared between the French organisation, Sulabh and the villagers.

Sulabh and the French organisation have also established pilot projects in North 24 Parganas, Murshidabad and Nadia districts.

Pathak believes the entire problem of arsenic-contaminated water could be solved if the West Bengal government were to take interest and replicate the model.