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Lives without water: A case study on Khulna, Satkhira, Bagerhat

Shegufta Sharmin | November 23, 2017 12:00:00


Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink. No, I am not uttering the quote from the famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by S T Coleridge rather from my real-life experience. Though I am neither a melancholic sailor nor a regular ocean-goer, I have seen the pathetic scenario when people are unable to drink water while living on the ground surrounded by water bodies. Normally we know that water is life. But still, somewhere water is a name of misery. The place I am talking about is not very far from us. Even we everybody know these places, famous for Sunderbans, Sat Gombuj Mosque, honey, and shrimp. But how many people are informed about the sufferings of people living Khulna, Satkhira, and Bagerhat?

Undoubtedly, human beings are the miraculous creatures of nature who can survive in any difficult condition. But if the difficulties are associated with water, then life is certainly not livable. However, people live, they have to live, and in extreme cases, they leave the place. They do migrate to the neighbouring country or displace themselves internally from one place to another for the sake water.

All these three districts are very close to the Bay of Bengal, shared almost half of its land with the mighty Sunderbans which protected inhabitants of these three districts from super-cyclone Sidr and devastating Aila. Apparently, this area looks beautiful having greeneries, wide water bodies, numerous rivers and, of course, crystal-clear blue sky on the top. Comparatively, the areas of water bodies in south-western districts are more than in any other part of northern Bangladesh. But most of such water bodies carry saline water which is not drinkable. No deep tube-well or tube-well works there as the underground water is also saline. So, how do people live? Not only people, cattle are also the sufferers.

As we know women are the most vulnerable during any disaster, same in the water crisis. When they can't use tube-well or nearby sources of water, they have to travel a lot for collecting water from the limited sources. Those who are well-off can set plastic tanks at their household to harvest rainwater. A family of six members can survive for 4 months if they have a 3000-liter water tank and use this water only for drinking. Other than that they have to depend on the local sources. Unfortunately, most people are poor and can't afford water tank for rainwater harvesting. Women of the family have to walk a lot to collect water from some marked ponds where there is government Pond Sand Filtering (PSF) system. But, unfortunately, most of the PSFs were one-shot project without having any option for maintenance. Hence, only few PSFs are active now and the rest are unusable. These, however, need very little amount of allocation for repair and maintenance.

Reading up to this paragraph one may be curious to know the causes of this misery. It's partly for natural causes and partly for human's greed. Greed of shrimp cultivators are mainly to blame. This export item is known as 'white gold' in our national economy. Government prioritised shrimp cultivation as an industry in the early eighties without caring much about the negative impact of unplanned cultivation. Basically, shrimp cultivation is undertaken in areas with access to saline water. Initially, natural sources were being used as gher. Gradually it expanded over cultivable lands. Most of the plain arable lands transformed into artificial gher or enclosure.

That is why one can see vast silver water bodies everywhere grow shrimps but cause deadly miseries to human beings.

The entire disaster-management regulatory framework of Bangladesh solely focused on the massive disaster risks like cyclone and earthquake. These two are at the centre of any disaster-management plan. The government has also tremendous success in reducing death tolls during cyclones. People are well aware and protect themselves when a cyclone hits. However, on the contrary, a major portion of the population is silently suffering from the risks of slow onset of disaster every day. In the 21st century, people of some parts of Bangladesh struggle to drink water every day.

Now the question arises isn't it a disaster which needs a response by any means?

The writer is a development activist.

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