A month and a half ago, I was traveling through parts of southwestern Chhattisgarh and meandering into the neighbouring Warrangal district of Telengana as well.
The thermometer was touching 50 degrees centigrade (I later learnt). After about 9AM in the morning, most roads and shops would be empty and people would already be in office or inside their homes. The hot 'loo' wind burned the skin while the fierce sun pierced through the charred hide to boil your blood.
Hydration is one of the few tools that help you survive this extreme weather. At the small towns, I relied on the small grocery stores for juice boxes and bottles of 'RO' water that is sold as 'mineral water'. It is there that I noticed that almost everyone who was at the local market would stop at these shops for bottles of both cold beverages and water. To beat the heat I thought.
I would stock up on bottles of 'mineral' water but there is just so much that you can carry. Based on past experience, when that water ran out at a village in Bijapur district, I asked for a glass of water, wondering if there was any chilled water.
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A man pointed me to a grocery store and I approached it expecting a drink from an earthen pot, since those are really effective.
Imagine my surprise when the shopkeeper opened his refrigerator (being run on a diesel generator) door, revealing rows of sealed bottles of the same RO water that you can buy in Raipur, Mumbai and New Delhi.
"This is from a two-week-old delivery," he said. "The cold drinks (indicating the cola and orange beverages) are from day before yesterday."
The grocer went on to say that the cold beverages fly off the shelves with amazing speed, but the water bottles are also in great demand — not just in summer but also throughout the year.
It is indeed astonishing for someone who has been traveling these parts for a while. Development schemes, proper education and healthcare facilities and roads find it difficult to reach these villages; but, privately-made bottles of RO water and cold beverages seem to make it here.
This is probably what the United Nations means when it says that 94% of the country's more-than-a-billion population now has access to safe and clean drinking water.
I kept to the bottles for most of my trip because of fear of infection after a bout with Giardi?asis last year. Sure enough, a day after I drank piped-supply water at a small eatery at the bus stand in Bijapur town, my old friend, ??Giard?i?asis, paid me a visit.
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So, what then does the UN mean when it says that 94% Indians now have access to safe, clean drinking water? That too it shows that this is a contrast to the 71% in 1990 as per a report the UN recently released titled: "Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water: 2015 Update and MDG Assessment."
Such claims lay the base for justifying the UN's ongoing work in securing the Millennium Development Goals.
In 2011, I had worked on a story from Jharkhand, where villagers were dying due to fluorosis in the impoverished Garhwa district. The district administration had decided to leave that detail out of their briefings to the health department.
After a few critical cases and the news report, the administration suggested that the villagers should eat "chakor ka saag" — a local protein-rich, leafy vegetable.
So, while most of India is still searching for "clean" and "safe" in its drinking water, the UN believes that we have already arrived.
In the 1980s and part of the 90s, along with vacuum cleaners, Eureka Forbes' salesmen would come knocking on the door with water purifiers. Others bought candle filters.
Now, the market is flooded with dozens of brands selling scores of brands of RO plants for the home, office and restaurants. Maybe, the UN is referring to the high use of RO and filtration units we install, when it says that 97% of urban India now has access to safe and clean drinking water. In Bijapur town, I noticed that RO units were quite popular in most homes and this is a town with no hotels. The best restaurant is a man with a cart selling Chikan Beeryani (no relation to the loud sportsbar that sells beer and biryani combo).
The UN report on access to safe, clean drinking water is doing the rounds on social media and through newsreports. And, it's flaunting data that 94% of Indians now allegedly have access to safe and clean drinking water.
Both India and Pakistan seem to have finally beaten Bangladesh at something. As per this same report, while 94% Indians and 91% Pakistanis have access to clean drinking water, only 87% Bangladeshis have access to the same.
On the same trip to Chhattisgarh, I met with a researcher who is now working as a consultant with the Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh government in this same field.
This researcher has seen the United Nations report too and says that it must be based on government data, which cannot be called reliable.
According to this researcher, as per 2014 data, rural Chhattisgarh is heavily affected by fluorosis (The rest of India has other problems too, such as protozoa, virus and arsenic in its water). In Korba district, the state government data shows that 22 gram panchayats (average 5 villages per panchayat) is affected by fluorosis while the central government data shows that 56 gram panchayats are affected with fluorosis.
The UN report that accompanies these statistics of "access to improved sources of drinking water" should perhaps keep their goals and statistics more real and their jargon more accurate.
