Piped water crisis at Bhitarkanika ‘pushing’ villagers to their deaths

Kendrapada: On Wednesday, a saltwater crocodile killed a woman in the Birupa river in Jajpur district. The victim, Joshna Jena (35), had gone to the river to wash utensils.Jena is not the first such victim in the riverine hamlets of Odisha. Around 100km away, in the villages surrounding Bhitarkanika National Park, crocodile-human conflict defines daily life. In the absence of working tubewells and piped water supply, villagers are forced to go to the crocodile-infested Brahmani river for their daily chores.On June 14, Ashutosh Acharya (10) was bathing in the river with his mother when a crocodile killed him. Within two weeks, two more people, Sitarani Das of Hatigadi, and Gangadher Tarei of Gagharadia village, lost their lives to crocodile attacks near the national park. All three victims had gone to the river for water.Sunil Tarei, Gangadher’s son, said with no functioning tubewells in their village, most go to the river to bathe. “My father had gone to the river as the two tubewells here were not working for four months,” he said.In villages near the park, where instances of human-crocodile conflict have been on the rise, and the presence or absence of a tubewell or piped water is a matter of life and death, a Rs 298 crore drinking water project has made little progress.In 2020, Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik laid the foundation stone of the project that promised to provide water to 220 villages of Rajnagar and Pattamundai blocks in Kendrapada district. “But work is yet to start. At present, large numbers of villagers are compelled to depend on the crocodile-infested rivers. Death has become common,” said Alekha Jena, former MLA of Rajnagar.Jagannath Acharya, Ashutosh’s uncle, said the firm working on the project has engaged skeletal staff. “The work is in a limbo. The project must be completed quickly as it can save our lives,” he said.To prevent crocodiles from attacking villagers using the river, the forest department has erected barricades at many ghats. “But that is of little use as the crocodiles make their way through the barricades during high tide,” said Pramila Sethi of Srirampur village.