BHOPAL: With mercury crossing 40 degree-mark and peak summer fast approaching, many parts of Madhya Pradesh are reeling under water crisis. As of now, officially, only 132 tehsils in 18 districts are declared drought-hit. Districts in Chambal and Gwalior and Bunelkhand region are the worst-affected areas.Many rivers have gone dry, many shrunk to a dangerous level and there is a drastic fall in water table, due to which people in more than half of the state are not getting daily water supply. The situation is such in some parts that there is no water supply and the precious commodity is being transported by tankers.Water supply sources in 10 out of 16 municipal corporations have almost dried up. The situation is so grim that in 117 municipal bodies of the state, water is supplied once in two days and in 11 municipal bodies water is barely supplied twice a week, officials said.“People spend Rs 1,600 a week to purchase water from tankers as the municipal body is unable to supply water,” said Virendra Sharma of the Swaraj Sansthan , an organisation creating awareness for optimum use of water in rural Shivpuri. A 29-km-long supply pipeline from Manikheda dam is yet to be completed. Till then, the town has no option but to bear and grin water crisis.In rural Shivpuri, people travel 2 km to 5 kms to fetch water. Water is transported by tankers in most parts of the district because of scanty rainfall in the district, district administration sources said. In neighbouring Sheopur district in the Chambal region, largescale migration has taken place in search of jobs and water. Tribals from Vijaypur and Karhal have moved out in large numbers. “As the crisis deepens, people migrate in large numbers with their cattle to save their lives,” says Ranglal Gurjar of Kalmi village.Karhal tehsil, with a large population of Saharia tribe, is one of the worst-affected areas. On December 25 last year, the chief minister had announced that 3,000 single phase water pumps will be made available to lift water. They are yet to be supplied.Mahesh Bharadwaj, the representative of BJP MP in Karhal, said local administration did not follow the issue even after CM’s announcement. The chief minister had said that the single-phase water pumps can be used to dig more tubewells, or deepen existing ones.Public health engineering department minister Kusum Mehdele said that the govt had provided the pumps. “These pumps were supplied. There is no scarcity of funds,” she said.The situation is even worse in the Bundelkhand and Chambal region. Reeling from severe water crisis, people have to walk 1 km to 5km in search of water. Many risk their lives to fetch water from old dug wells.“This is yet another drought in Bundelkhand and almost all rivers have shrunk. Some of the rivers in Damoh have dried up leading to an unprecedented crisis,” said Ramkrishna Kusumaria, former chairman, Bundelkhand Development Authority (BDA).Unless we take care of rivers, problem will not be solved. In Damoh, ground water has gone down as there was no water in Vyarma, Gouraya and Sonar rivers, Kusumaria said. Besides Damoh, Sagar, Chhatarpur, Tikamgarh and Panna districts are also facing water crisis, sources in government said.District collector Damoh said, “All resources are being utilised to ensure that scarcity is minimised.”

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