Water wives?

We living in the cities, with uninterrupted power at the flick of a switch and abundant water on merely opening the tap will not know the pain of owhat those living in the villages are going through. Especially in drought-hit Maharashtra. In fact, lack of water is threatening to change the very fabric of the social system is the villages.

A new concept of ‘water wives’ has emerged. Men in some of the worst hit villages are marrying two and three times – so that his home can have that many more wives to fetch water. Yes, this is reality and not fiction. Hindu’s where polygamy is not allowed are actually the one’s having two-thee wives. The prime purpose of the marriage is to get one more pair of hands and legs which will walk miles, carrying back pots and pans of water. A short film on this very same subject – ‘The Wives” has been made by Jaydeep Sarkar. The foreign press has been giving a lot of coverage to this subject but strangely, our media, with focus only on politics and Indrani Mukerjea did not even cover this!

It’s sad that we live in this country today which boasts of one of the richest men in the world and yet, we have this state where people do not have something as basic as water. The Govt has money to arrange huge political rallies and parties but why can’t money be spent for these people? What development are we talking about? Aren’t the politicians cut away from reality on the ground? Maybe it is time for Govt to allow companies to takeover and run villages….