WAVE OF SUFFERING

Heat adds to the despair of Indian women enduring daily treks for water. By Ritesh Shukla in Hinauti, India

India’s scorching summer heat has added new risks this year to the energy-sapping challenge that Munni Adhivasi has endured every day for two decades — trudging for miles to carry water to her home.

Munni, who said she feared dying in the heat, teared up as she railed against the government’s failure to provide drinking water to more than 200 tribal families in her hamlet of Hinauti in northern Uttar Pradesh state.

“All I can think is how many trips I will have to make to bring water needed for drinking and cooking for four children and three goats,” added Munni, who carries home on her head the 30 litres her family and livestock need each day.

But this year’s summer, torrid even by Indian standards, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius in many areas, has added risks of dehydration and heat stroke to her woes.

“This drill to collect water is the worst form of punishment inflicted on us,” said Munni, who does not know her exact age, but appears to be in her 30s.

She is among a group of women and children from four villages in the area who draw water from their usual source, a reservoir beside a quarry where many of their husbands find daily employment.

The heat wave in India has killed at least 25 people nationwide since late March. Temperatures in Uttar Pradesh finally fell below 40C last week but experts believe longer heat waves will become more frequent in the future.

In India and Pakistan, “more intense heat waves of longer durations and occurring at a higher frequency are projected”, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its most recent report.

Officials have drawn up action plans to deal with the impact, and are working to step up drinking water supplies to more than 50 litres a day for each person in the countryside by 2024.

To achieve this goal, authorities aim to build desalination plants in coastal areas, capitalise on existing resources and boost groundwater levels, which the government said in 2019 had fallen by 61% in the decade since 2007.

Munni sees no rapid end to her ordeal, however.

“There are some water taps installed, but not a drop of water has ever trickled from them,” she said.

“This drill to collect water is the worst form of punishment inflicted on us”

MUNNI ADHIVASI Uttar Pradesh villager

A woman walks on the bottom of a dried-up pond on a hot day in Mauharia village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, India.

People fetch water from a pit at an abandoned stone quarry in Badama.

A woman fills a container with water at a municipal water pump in Hinauti.

People carry water containers near an abandoned quarry on a hot day in Badama village in Uttar Pradesh.