Damoh (Madhya Pradesh): The 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 has become common in village Hardua in Damoh district in the parched Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh.
The children seem to have honed the skill, like seasoned mountaineers, to climb down a nearly 70 ft deep open well in the village by clutching on to the small gaps between the bricks inside the walls of the well to fetch water which usually touches the ground in the well in summer.
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 mishaps. It takes no less than 30 minutes to do so,” Naresh Singh, 10, of the village told DC on Friday.
The well that turns the only source of water in the summer when the hand pumps in the village become dysfunctional also starts drying up in 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. One of them suffered fracture in his right leg, the other had it on his left hand,” Jamuna Devi, a homemaker, said. “But we have no option but to send them.”
The village has three hand pumps which have gone dysfunctional. “We have taken measures to make them functional and dug up a bore well to solve the crisis,” Jabera MLA Pratap Singh, under whose constituency the village falls, said.
