Covering her face with the ends of her blue saree, 65-year-old Chilaka Bhukya Bhai steps out of her home on a sweltering Monday morning, a walking stick in one hand and a large steel pot in another. Ambling through the narrow lanes of Remidicherla village in Palnadu district of Andhra Pradesh, she makes her way to a tractor-tanker stationed about 200 metres away. She fills the pot with around 20 litres of water, places it on her head and walks back home, struggling with each step. Her daily journey is imbued with purpose; it is a ritual of survival, she says.
“This is our fate. What else can we do when there is a scarcity of water and proper facilities are not in place? I can’t walk properly due to knee problems, but I have to fetch water for myself,” she rues, about the physical and symbolic burden that she carries every day.
Six tractor-driven water tankers supply water to the village daily. Among them, one belongs to the State government’s Rural Water Supply & Sanitation (RWS&S) Department, while the rest are provided by the Telugu Desam Party and the YSR Congress Party. Tractor drivers transport water five to six times daily from nearby agricultural fields, covering a distance of 2-3 kilometres per trip.
