Maharashtra's Drought Claims Its Second Child In Two Days, This Time By Falling Into A Well
How the drought in Maharashtra is taking a toll on people, especially children. Two children died recently while trying to fetch water from wells.
The drought in Maharashtra has started taking a toll on people, especially children. On Thursday, the second drought fatality struck when an 11-year-old boy fell and died while fetching water from a well in the Marathwada region.
outlook
Sachin Gopinath Kedar of Veeda village had gone half a kilometre away from his house to fetch water from a well when he slipped and fell to his death.
indianexpress
This is the second causality of a minor while trying to fetch water in the last two days. On Wednesday, Yogita Ashok Desai, a 12-year-old girl in Beed¡¯s Sabalkhed village died of dehydration after she made several attempts to fill water from a hand pump on a 44-degree-Celsius afternoon.
BCCL
The paucity of water in Marathwada seems to be taking a toll on people, especially children, as these young members of families are making multiple trips to water tanks, wells, and hand pumps in the scotching heat.
dna
A total of 27,723 villages, more than half of the approximately 43,000 villages in Maharashtra have been declared drought-hit by the state government. The majority of them fall in Vidharbha and Marathwada regions. According to government records, out of 75 medium dams in Marathwada, 54 have dried up and the region is left with a paltry 380 million cubic metres of usable water. In fact, the Marathwada region of the state is the worst hit, and thousands of farmers have committed suicide in the last one year.
deccanchronicle
Recently, Umakant Dangat, the divisional commissioner of Aurangabad revealed that only three percent water was left in dams in the Marathwada region. He also revealed that 8 out of 11 dams in Marathwada are at dead storage level - this means that water from these dams doesn¡¯t flow out and has to be lifted.
Last year, this level in dams was 11 percent.