As the afternoon sun beats down on their heads in Chhattisgarh’s Riwa village, on the outskirts of state capital Raipur, Sunita Sinha stands with her mother-in-law and 9-year-old daughter, waiting to fetch water from a solar-powered pump. It’s the middle of a heatwave, but even in the bone-searing 43-degree heat, there is a long queue of women ahead of her with pallus over their heads — their only flimsy protection against the relentless sun.
For five months every year, Sunita, her mother-in-law Kunti and daughter Kumkum must fill and carry several plastic cans of water back home — their quota for the day. They methodically fill the cans and tie them to a waiting bicycle, which they then take turns dragging home some 500 metres away. “On days when there’s no sun, the pump stops working and then there’s no water. It’s the same every year and nobody does anything to change it,” the 36-year-old says.
This is the way of life for several women in Riwa, a village of 5,000 some 30 km from Raipur, every summer. As temperatures reach a blistering 43 to 47 degrees Celsius in the state, villages like Riwa are reeling under another crisis — an acute drinking water shortage triggered by depleting groundwater levels.
This comes despite the extensive reach of the Jal Jeevan Mission in these areas, at least on paper: data from the JJM dashboard shows that 97.89 percent of Raipur’s 1.89 lakh households have tap connections, although only 64.15 percent of villages are certified.
But residents claim that in reality, most taps run dry.
“Groundwater levels have been low here for 40 years,” Riwa’s 73-year-old sarpanch Ghasiya Ram Sahu tells The Indian Express. “As a result, water becomes an issue here from February until the onset of the monsoon in June. The work under Jal Jeevan Mission is going on but where will the water come from? They installed taps in our homes two years ago but there is no supply of water?”
For their part, the state government and public representatives say there is a proposed irrigation project for Riwa expected to be implemented before next summer.
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Minister for Skill Development, Technical Education and Employment, and Scheduled Caste Development Guru Khushwant Sahib, the MLA from Arang, says the area gets tanker supply as a “stopgap arrangement”. “There is a proposal to provide water to Riwa village from a dam. The project will cost Rs 5 crore and is part of the JJM. This water will be kept in an overhead tank that has been built for the village and supplied through taps. The project has reached the secretary level now and will be sanctioned very soon,” he says.
The search for water
Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai’s government has given a significant push to the Jal Jeevan Mission, aimed at providing safe and adequate piped drinking water to every rural household. Soon after coming to power, Sai directed officials to speed up JJM implementation, with data from the dashboard showing that, as of May 22, 83.3 percent of the state’s 49.95 lakh households had received tap water connections, though not all were necessarily functional. But a closer look at the dashboard shows that only 6,038 of the total 19,658 villages — that is 30 percent — have been certified as having 100 percent Functional Household Tap Connection.
Raipur, according to the dashboard, has 97.88 percent coverage under JJM — the second highest in the state after Dhamtari. But by the state government’s own admission, these figures could be misleading: responding to Opposition questions on the progress of the JJM, Deputy Chief Minister Arun Sao claimed that while the previous Congress government had recorded 36 lakh tap connections on its e-mission portal by December 2023, a verification in June 2024 revealed that only 21 lakh households were receiving water.
For residents of Riwa, this means acute water shortages in the peak summer months. With the village’s 100-odd borewells and 20-odd hand pumps running dry, residents are forced to rely on four solar-powered hand pumps and water tankers. For dishes and washing clothes, the village depends on the local 75-acre pond.
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“We have dug borewells up to 500 feet but there’s no water left in the ground,” sarpanch Ghasiya Ram Sahu says. “Some villagers have rooftop rainwater harvesting systems, but even that has proved insufficient.”
The result is long queues at the pumping stations. As she fills up her many pots at the hand pump, Usha Dhiwar’s four-year-old son Hemlal asks for water. She hands him a gulp in a plastic lid, then runs over to her waiting cycle with a filled pot and returns for another round.
“Despite the heat, we cannot use coolers at night because they run out of water. Women who get married and leave this place are happier, but we have no such relief,” she tells The Indian Express.
Since it’s a fight for scarce resources, it’s sometimes a matter of luck.
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“One of the solar pumps is just outside my house, but it works only for two to three hours a day. So, we wake up early, but find people have already queued up. If we get nothing, we have to walk to another corner of the village,” says 33-year-old Gautam Dhiwar.
Some traipse to nearby villages in search of water. Among them is 35-year-old Shakila Banjare.
“We don’t have a borewell at home, so we’re entirely dependent on neighbouring Kukra village for drinking water. Nobody listens to — or cares about — us small people,” she says.
To resolve the crisis, villagers have offered solutions, but say they are yet to hear back. “We gave them two solutions. Either they deepen the 75-acre pond and treat the water to make it usable, or draw water from the Mahanadi River through a pipeline system,” says Sahu.
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Officials say that apart from the proposed irrigation project, the district administration also has awareness campaigns to conserve rainwater. “We have made some recharge points and villagers are also actively making more,” says Ranu Dinkar, a sub engineer from the Public Health Engineering (PHE) department under the district administration.
Meanwhile, experts believe that low groundwater levels are due to rampant and unscientific extraction and have called for better water management measures and changes in crop patterns.
“At present, there is no proper monitoring of how much groundwater is being extracted by individuals and corporations through borewells,” Gautam Bandyopadhyay of the National Alliance of People’s Movements says. “Shrinking paddy cultivation fields are also a serious concern, as they have traditionally played a major role in groundwater recharge.”
Back in the village, as the queue inches forward, Sunita waits for her turn, hoping the water doesn’t run out.
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“I have been seeing this problem ever since I got married and came here 15 years ago. Politicians make promises for votes but nothing changes,” she says, her eyes on the queue ahead.
