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Right to potable water, sanitation

Shihab Sarkar | March 28, 2023 00:00:00


The recent newspaper photograph of rural women in Bangladesh carrying water in pitchers placed on their heads across the middle of an arid land points to one fact. The rural areas of the country still suffer from the worst type of water crisis found in the poor and developing countries. In the case of Bangladesh, the able-bodied women have to fetch pure drinking water from far-away sources. This has been the norm for decades since the country was badly hit by water scarcity. Another visual is from a documentary footage telecast recently by a foreign TV. It shows how a city family in a Sub-Saharan African country performs its household chores with limited quantity of water. This year's World Water Day (March 22) theme was 'Accelerating change to solve the water and sanitation crisis'. When it comes to 'water' and 'sanitation', the two topics stand inter-related. Insufficient water leads to sanitation issues. They are encountered in both the rural expanses and urban pockets.

The success of Bangladesh in ensuring pure drinking water and sanitation has, apparently, been radical since the post-independence times. Only one per cent of people in the country in the early seventies had access to pure drinking water and sanitation. The condition reached a comfortable level in around 2010-11. By the year of 2015, 97 per cent of people of the country could claim to have attained their access to the right to water. However, after the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), with the clean water criteria becoming stringent, the percentage of people enjoying access to water dropped to 63pc from 93pc. The fall proved depressing to many watching the water access scenario.

The supply network of water, especially the pure drinking one, is less expensive in Dhaka and the other cities. Here the focus is on the availability of water to the broader middle class. It's because the relatively affluent class gets their water supplies through the central supply authorities' pipes. Notwithstanding this privilege, only a tiny per cent of people are enjoying the benefit of piped water. The rest of the people remain deprived. But small- or mid-level riverside projects on water treatment could solve the issue for the rural people in the districts near metropolitan cities. Payment of water tariff, however, is a different issue.

As could be found in Dhaka, the lower-class people and the slum dwellers are the worst victims of the scarcity of pure drinking water. Coming to sanitation, these urban classes come up as being the most underprivileged. In most cases, they are dependent on public taps at street corners or mobile tanks dispatched by the city's water supply authorities. What results is a frenzied melee for the supply water, during summer in particular. Collecting the limited quantity of water from the supply authorities' lorry is a typical spectacle in Dhaka. Both water and sanitation remain veritably an insurmountable problem in the capital's slum areas. The plight of the poor is almost similar in the rural areas.

The sufferings of the rural people caused by the crisis of drinking water know no bounds. In most cases, they have to bring water from far-away tube wells and exclusive drinking-water ponds. Most of the time, they cover the distance on foot, at times under the scorching sun. Thanks to the country being one crisscrossed by rivers and canals, many outsiders might consider the country as self-sufficient in clean water. But the low depth of water, seasonal floods, and pollution caused by river encroachment, dumping of waste etc continue to make the river waters unfit for use. The scenario was different in the past. Village women bringing earthen pitcher-filled river water as they returned home completing bathing or washing clothes were usual scenarios. Those have vanished for good. Today, even the unlettered or half-educated village women know what could be the consequences of drinking straight the river water. Except the larger and mighty ones, most of the rivers' water at one point or another stinks.

Against the backdrop of an insufficient number of tube wells, villagers turn to ponds. Due to scarce rains, the village ponds turn derelict making their water unfit for even domestic use. Some of them, however, are earmarked for exclusive use --- especially for potable water. Given the overuse of the pond water, they also run the risk of showing the signs of pollution. Keeping these facts in view, one cannot but conclude that the real condition of the Bangladesh villages, vis-à-vis water and sanitation is worse than that prevailing in the urban areas.

Of late, the omnipresence of brackish water in the coastal areas of Satkhira and Khulna has added to the scourge of fresh-water crisis. The near-saline water in the coastal belt has long been a bane for the country. The paucity of fresh drinking water continues to plague the life of the villagers in Satkhira district, a recent FE report says. Despite the efforts of the government and its development partners, the miseries of the village people have yet to be coped with. Women have to walk nearly a mile from their houses to collect drinking water from a filter set up by a local private entity, working for supplying water to the area. The organisation, run by a private company's CSR activity, is offering safe drinking water in the county's salinity-hit southern region.

Pure drinking water and sanitation are the two basic requirements for a country to be called one successfully marching towards the goal of LDC graduation. When it comes to ensuring drinking water, Bangladesh shows mixed performances. But it fails in sanitation, especially in the cities' low-income swathes. Both the areas warrant equal focus.

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