Mirzapur:

On a sunny day in August last year, six-year-old Shivansh played in the water for the first time and experienced the joy of falling endlessly.

Nearly 76 years after independence, the people of Lahuria Dah village in the scenic Mirzapur hills of Uttar Pradesh have received piped water supply for the first time.

The then district magistrate Divya Mittal opened the tap installed at the end of the maze of pipes laid by the state government.

Until now, the village’s 1,200 people have relied solely on water from a nearby spring, which used to dry up in the summer. Paid water tankers are the only means of meeting the village’s water needs.

Kaushalendra Gupta, a resident, said: “Our entire annual budget is spent on water. How daunting the task of the Lahuriya Dakh water pipeline is, can be gauged from the fact that due to Lack of proper planning, the work was stopped in the village about ten years ago.”

“Before independence, few families would live in villages with their livestock and their needs would be met by spring, but now with the increase in population, spring is proving insufficient to meet our needs,” he said.

Jivanlal Yadav, another resident, recalled that they used to go to the plains to sell milk and come back with water in the containers.

“In the last 25 to 30 years, water started arriving via tankers, and the entire budget of the village was spent on that,” he said.

Distribution of water from tankers often leads to fights between people and creates tension.

“A previous project costing over Rs 487 crore failed to bear fruit and there was no water supply in the village. We met the district magistrate and she took notice of the issue. She started new efforts and new projects worth over Rs 10 crore were sanctioned, “Gupta said.

Lahuria Dah falls under the jurisdiction of Devhar village panchayat. The local administration then sought help from geophysicists and other technical experts from Banaras Hindu University and formed a joint team of Jal Jeevan Mission, UP Jal Nigam, Namami Gange officials and chief development officer to find suitable technology Come and build water pipes to villages located on hard rock surfaces.

Thereafter, the village’s separate proposal was submitted to the government and approved.

Finally, the village began to have running water on August 31, 2023.

The only well in the village was used to collect rainwater, while an artificial dam-cum-pond was also built to collect water for the animals as they could not always drink tap water.

The project’s lift pumps supplying water to the hilltop villages are managed by Jal Jeevan Mission.

Lahuria Dah is 49 km away from the Mirzapur district headquarters on the Madhya Pradesh border and its population consists of Kol, Dharkar, Yadav, Pal and Kesharwani communities.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)