Fifty-year-old Mariyamma walks about half a kilometre every day carrying a 10-litre steel pot of water from a nearby well to her house. She makes 20 such trips a day, 10 in the morning and 10 in the evening, walking almost ten kilometres daily since she got married 25 years ago.
Despite the arduous task, Mariyamma, belonging to an SC community in Kanukollu village of Mandavalli mandal in Eluru district, does not complain. “There are others who walk for more than a kilometre to fetch drinking water,” she says.
From the time borewells started yielding saline water three decades ago, everyone in the village turned to wells for drinking water. “While water in four out of seven wells has become undrinkable, thanks to the rampant aquaculture activities, the remaining three also face the threat of salinisation,” she adds.
One of the wells, located in the SC colony, is the lifeline for this community and for people of four other villages— Puttalacheruvu, Chintalapudi, Gunnanapudi and Lellapudi.
While people of other castes have regular water supply at least for their everyday needs, the two SC colonies, home to 600 families, have not been given a tap connection since the colonies came up in the 1980s. This forces them to carry many more loads of water from the well than is carried by the people of other communities.
On top of this, ten days ago, efforts were made to dig an aqua pond on over nine acres of fertile land, adjacent to the colony; the site is hardly 300 metres from the well.
The villagers, fearing contamination of the only well in their colony, tried to get an FIR registered against the owner, P. Sathyanarayana, whose wife is a ruling party MPTC member. The police, however, reportedly refused to register the FIR and hurled casteist slurs at them and threatened to arrest them, the villagers alleged. Mandavalli sub inspector P. Rama Krishna, however, said they were only trying to bring the situation under control and that they did not verbally abuse anyone.
Mariyaraju, a day labourer who filed a case in the High Court against Mr. Sathyanarayana last week, said there were attempts to convert the land into an aqua farm in 2018 too. “But, these were brought to a halt after we raised our voices. The aqua farm does not have any permission, except for a provisional one given five years ago.”
When asked about it, mandal-level fisheries development officer (FDO) Srinivasa Rao admitted that Mr. Sathyanarayana has not obtained any fresh permission. “Since the case is in the High Court now, digging work will not be undertaken,” he added.
Y. Rajesh of Human Rights Forum said the farm does not follow many of the rules stipulated in G.O. no.7 that lays down guidelines for digging fresh water aqua farms. “Moreover, Section 3 (g) of the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, which pertains to polluting or interfering with the water resources of a Dalit community, comes into play here,” he said, adding that objections from the owners of nearby agricultural fields were also not sought.
Besides, on paper, they say it is a fresh water aqua farm, but what they cultivate in reality is shrimps, Mariyaraju said.
B.V. Seshagiri Rao, a lecturer of zoology at B.N.R. College in Rajamahendravaram, said shrimp cultivation requires partly fresh and partly salt water. “Over a period, salt seeps into the ground and pollutes the water. Only desalinisation can clean the water, but the process is so costly that no one goes for it.”
