India’s poor forced to endure heat, water, virus woes

NEW DELHI: Bollywood stars and political leaders have urged Indians to wash their hands to protect against coronavirus but that is a pipe dream for slum-dwellers like Bala Devi, now sweltering through a summer heatwave.

The 44-year-old widow and her family of eight are among tens of millions of people facing months of torrid weather while stuck at home, in lockdown, without regular access to clean water to keep cool and wash.

“It is so hot the children keep asking for water to drink. How can I give them water for washing their hands when we don’t have even enough water to drink?” Devi said at her cramped home in New Delhi.

“Every drop of water is a luxury for us. We can’t afford to spend it on bathing,“she told AFP.

Outside it is around 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) but her one-bedroom tenement house has just an improvised ceiling fan to keep its occupants cool.

There is a piped water connection but the supply is extremely erratic and a pump connected to the groundwater mostly spews air. Her family uses a common public toilet and their “bathroom” is a bucket behind a curtain.

“If we can’t wash and clean and there is filth everywhere, obviously the virus will attack us but what can we do?” said Devi’s neighbour Anita Bisht.

“Already our children are falling sick,“she added.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, water was in short supply for the 100 million people living in India’s urban slums.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has listed water infrastructure as a key priority, promising to reach 145 million rural households by 2024.

But currently, roughly a third of the country’s 1.3 billion people cut back on washing and bathing during summer as taps run dry. – AFP