Kids play with death to get a pitcher of water

Damoh (Madhya Pradesh): Sight of boys and girls as young as 11 years old literally practicing “death defying stunts” to get a pitcher of water from a drying well in summers has become common in the village of Hardua under Damoh district, falling under the parched Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh.

The children seem to have honed the skill to climb down a nearly 70-ft-deep open well in the village by clutching the small gaps between the bricks inside the walls of the well, liked a seasoned mountaineer, to fetch water which usually touches the ground in the well in summers.

They also climb up the walls adopting the similar tactic after tying the water-filled pitcher with a rope to be drawn by people standing above the walls of the well.

“We have become skilled enough to climb down and then scale the walls of the well to avoid any kind of mishaps. It takes no less than 30 minutes to climb down and then scale the walls of the well,” 10-year-old Naresh Singh of the village told this newspaper on Friday.

The well, which turns out to be the only source of water in the summers when the hand pumps in the village become dysfunctional, also starts drying up in the month of April itself.

The water level shrinks to the base of the well, forcing the villagers to deploy their children to go down it to fetch water.

“Two children fell down while scaling the walls of the well recently. While one of them suffered a fracture in his right leg, the other got his left hand fractured following the fall,” Jamuna Devi, a housewife in the village said. “We have no other option but to employ our children to fetch water,” she added.

“We have taken measures to make them functional and dug up a bore well to solve the water crisis in the village”, Jabera MLA Pratap Singh, under whose constituency the village falls, said.