(Jodhpur) Every day, Afroz misses several hours of school to wait, with a trolley loaded with cans, for a special train bringing precious water to the inhabitants of the desert state of Rajasthan in India, in the midst of a heat wave.
Posted at 11:11 a.m.
Here, the mercury often rises above 45°C, but this year’s heat wave arrived earlier in the year, further proof, according to many experts, that climate change is making life unbearable for some 1.4 billion of Indians.
“It has always been very hot here and we have always struggled to find water,” Afroz, 13, told AFP, waiting for the special train for the second time that day in Pali district.
“But I don’t remember filling cans in April,” the boy continues. There have been times when Pali has had to be supplied with water by train but the shortage is such this year that it had to start early, according to local railway officials.
For more than three weeks, the 40 wagons of the train have been the only source of water for the thousands of inhabitants of the district.
The wagons carry about two million liters from Jodhpur, 65 km away. The water is then stored in cement tanks and then sent to a treatment plant to be filtered and distributed.
But every day, dozens of people, mainly women and children, come directly to get their supplies from the pipes discharging water from the train into underground reservoirs.
They jostle each other with blue plastic jerry cans and metal pots. For Afroz’s family, as for many others, it is easier to collect water directly, even if it is not treated.
“Cascading Consequences”
Families suffer from school absences imposed on children.
“I can’t ask whoever feeds the family to help me. Otherwise, we would have a hard time finding both water and food,” Afroz’s mother, Noor Jahan, told AFP while filling an aluminum pot.
“It is weighing on my child’s education, but what can I do? I can’t carry all these containers alone,” she sighs.
An early heat wave has affected hundreds of millions of people in South Asia in recent weeks. India experienced its hottest March on record.
In India and Pakistan, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts “more intense, longer, more frequent heat waves”.
The “cascading impacts” of heat waves are already visible on agriculture, water, energy supply and other sectors, the head of the World Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas, said earlier this month.
On Friday, India banned wheat exports, to contain soaring prices caused by the war in Ukraine and the withering of crops.
The heat combined with high humidity can cause a life-threatening phenomenon for a healthy adult within hours when sweating no longer cools the body.
dead turtles
“I have already made three trips in one hour from my house. And I’m the only one who can do it,” says Laxmi, another woman at the foot of the train, showing off the cracks on her feet.
“We don’t have running water at home and it’s so hot. What are we supposed to do if something happens to us while we’re going back and forth to fetch water? »
In 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched an ambitious Mission Jal Jeevan aimed at stemming this rural water crisis and promising a functioning tap connection by 2024.
Less than 50% of the population has access to safely managed drinking water, according to UNICEF, and two-thirds of India’s 718 districts are affected by “extreme water depletion”.
A little further from Pali, Shivaram, 68, walks on the cracked mud of a dry pond in the village of Bandai, a bright pink turban protecting his head from the scorching sun.
Once the main source of water for residents and their pets, the pond has been dry for nearly two years due to low rainfall. The ground is littered with the shells of dead turtles.
“Farmers have been severely impacted. Some of our animals also died,” laments Shivaram.