Water That Heals

It was once a land where ground water was so contaminated by arsenic that many who drank it turned dark with its poison. Today, the same villagers are making a living selling purified drinking water, a transformation brought about by the introduction of a cheap and effective surface water filtration technology introduced by Delhi-based NGO Sulabh International.

It has been a long journey indeed for the people of Madhusudan Kati, a village in what has come to be known as West Bengal's "arsenic belt". "Since I was a child, I have seen how people around me suffered because of drinking local groundwater," says Haldhar Sarkar, a retired engineer from Madhusudan Kati. Since the 1990s, ground water in parts of eastern India and Bangladesh have been found to be contaminated with naturally occurring arsenic, making it unfit for drinking. Drinking water laced with arsenic has catastrophic long-term consequences such as arsenicosis (arsenic poisoning) and cancer. "Over the years, I've seen villagers develop tumours, skin problems and worse," says Sarkar. While the West Bengal government set up a number of plants to purify groundwater in these areas, the projects were largely unsuccessful.

A paradigm shift occurred when Sulabh International's experts met the French NGO 1001 Fontaines, an organisation committed to bringing safe drinking water to poor rural communities across the world. "We realised that the solution lay inpurifying surface rather than ground water for drinking purposes," says Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh International. That is how the Sulabh Safe Drinking Water Project (SSDWP) came into being in 2014. It's first project was in Madhusudan Kati, and has been an unmitigated success.

Villagers are now able to obtain pure drinking water at the affordable rate of 50 paise per litre, even while other bottled water sells for upwards of Rs 10. Having consumed pure drinking water for over a year now, the villagers are reporting better health. A recent survey conducted there found that even the victims of arsenicosis who switched to drinking Sulabh water last year have seen rapid improvement in their health. "A doctor visits our village every month. He has noticed that there has been a significant reduction in skin problems, even lesions, amongst villagers ever since they have started drinking arsenic-free water," says Sarkar.

The purification process is simple and low-tech. Pond or river water is first treated with alum and bleaching powder and decanted. Then it is passed through a slow-sand filter. The filtered water is then passed through membranes of varying sizes to remove even the smallest contaminants. Finally, it is irradiated with ultraviolet rays to make it bacteria-free. The pure drinking water is then sealed in 20-litre bottles and home delivered. "We routinely send the filtered water for testing to Kolkata. In fact it was recently even sent to a lab in the US. Every test has shown that it is free of all contaminants and safe to drink," says Sarkar. Local villagers, he says, have also been very cooperative in ensuring that the pond used is kept as clean as possible - which is very important to maintain the quality of the drinking water. "We have erected a wall around it, but all the villagers know not to bathe or swim in the pond to keep it clean," he says.

Other than in Madhusudan Kati, SSDWP has set up such water filtration plants in Murshidabad and Mayapur (Nadia district) of West Bengal. "We work with local field partners in each of our sites," says Pathak. "They support the programme by providing land and ensuring source of water." Setting up each site costs about Rs 20 lakh. So far, 1001 Fontaines has borne 60 per cent of the capital cost, while the rest is shared between Sulabh International and the local field partners.

The beauty of this technology is that it can be implemented across India's so-called arsenic belt - spread across West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, or indeed wherever villagers rely on ground water and rain-fed ponds and reservoirs for drinking water. Further, in accordance with 1001 Fontaines' mission, Pathak and co have also worked out a unique entrepreneurship model to ensure the sustainable spread of this cheap and sustainable cheap water filtration method. "Selling cheap drinking water can be a viable rural enterprise as well as a social service," says Pathak. "In future, we hope to tie up with banks, rural financial institutions as well as corporates donors to finance more and more such projects."

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Taxonomy

• Arsenic
• Purification