Every day, Jahema Bewa has to trudge miles through muddy fields in the village of Khairamari, in Bengal’s Murshidabad district, to get drinking water. There are deep tubewells in Khairamari, but Jahema and others in her village repeatedly fall sick when they drink the water from them. First, they develop rashes. Then come the stomach pains and for those who continue to drink water, the last stage is a diagnosis of cancer. This is because the groundwater in Khairamari has toxic levels of arsenic.

Eighty percent of India’s surface water is contaminated by sewage. As a result, ground water harvested through deep tubewells is deemed safer. Unfortunately, in areas where groundwater naturally has high levels of arsenic — like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Assam — the water isn’t safe. It leads to arsenic poisoning.

The World Health Organisation has set down regulations that stipulate the amount of arsenic in water should not exceed10 μg/litre. Yet in 14 out of 19 districts in West Bengal, the proportion of arsenic exceeds this measurement. More that half of the 90 million population of the state are at potential risk of arsenicosis, or arsenic poisoning.

The West Bengal government has been aware of the problem since the early 1980s. The first arsenic survey in the state was done in 1988. And in the past, the state has been lauded as the only state in India to have a task-force to combat arsenicosis. The government had even promised to provide one source of arsenic free safe water in every locality by 2013.

Yet residents of Sariadpur village in Malda and Khairamari are still suffering from widespread arsenic poisoning. The Malda Surface based water Supply Scheme for Arsenic affected Water was commissioned in 2000. Expected to be completed in 2021, it is supposed to serve over 11 lakh people. Further, a plant to serve piped water to villages in this block was commissioned in 2009. In total, there are four purification plants to supply water to arsenic-affected areas in Malda, according to West Bengal Public Health Engineering Department website. In Murshidabad, there are three piped water projects for supplying water to arsenic-affected areas. The three projects listed in the Public Health Engineering website does not, it seems, supply piped water to Jalangi block where Khairamari is located. However, this is strictly information based on what is made available by the government through their website.

Video Volunteers’s community correspondents in both villages have spoken to the authorities multiple times who have promised piped water, but so far, after a year of petitioning, nothing has materialised. While the villages wait for water, people are dying. In 2015 six people died of arsenic poisoning in Khairamari. Four people died in 2016. In Sariadpur, one person has died in 2016.

It doesn’t help that the area doesn’t have good medical services. For people in Sariadpur, the nearest hospital is about three kilometres away. This block hospital organised a medical camp in the area, in September 2015, after Video Volunteers’s Soria Bano brought the problem to the attention of the authorities. For Khairamari, the local medical centre doesn’t inspire much confidence in residents, who go to the government hospital in the district capital, Behrampore. The next port of call, for those who can afford it, is Kolkata.

Local administration claims they haven’t been notified of the problem. Locals, however, say that their complaints have fallen on deaf ears. While this standoff continues, people — particularly those who cannot afford treatment — are dying, simply from drinking the water that the government is providing them.

Video by Soriya Bano and Nesatun Bibi. Article by Madhura Chakraborty. Visit the Video Volunteers website here