"No one in our village has that kind of money. I'll end up in debt & like my plants I too won’t survive,”rues Prahalad Dhoke of #Marathwada who had to give up his orchards to buy water for his cows & blames the govt's insufficient #drought relief measures. bit.ly/35MTh3p
"We haven't once been supplied with water tankers & we don't have enough money to buy them,”says Manali Padwale who,like all the women in Galtare,walked 25 kms daily in the scorching heat to collect drinking water after the village's water sources dried up.bit.ly/32qNYVz
"When you are desperate for water, you have to consume what you get,”says Madhukar Jadhav from Sawarkhed where recurring droughts have forced ppl to drink fluoride-contaminated #groundwater from borewells,which has inflicted debilitating fluorosis on many. bit.ly/2oVP1xY
Villagers like Karbhari Jadhav of Ganori village who tried to sink their own #wells to combat #Marathwada's frequent #drought are instead sinking in debt as the pay-offs and visits to government offices for years did not bring any of the alloted funds. bit.ly/2MoMRjx
"We don’t get water, you do"
Women & girls of the #fishing community in Killabandar village spend hours scraping the bottom of a well for drinking water, and resent that their region’s #water is diverted to #Mumbai city. bit.ly/2MnSCxM
Shalubai Chavan of #Latur spends 8 hrs every day filling water for her family & even in the heat, feels guilty if she drinks any of it. Meanwhile, others in the region spend 3X the rate for water than #beer factories in #Aurangabad. bit.ly/32oSvb2
Meanwhile, the state govt turns a blind eye to an unregulated borewell economy that thrives through the dry summers in #Osmanabad district with agents & rig owners cashing in on the desperation of #farmers to find water at any depth,any cost. bit.ly/2rK2Bki
"For the rig-makers, rig-owners and drillers, this is boom-time. The farmer pays up, whether the wells yield water or not.” Not only does the billion dollar borewell industry sink desperate farmers in #debt, ‘paleo-historic storages’ are being breached. ruralindiaonline.org/articles/drill…
Thirst has been Marathwada’s greatest crop during this great #warer#crisis where the water #markets are booming, and in the town of Jalna alone, tanker owners can reach sales of close to Rs. 1 crore each day. bit.ly/2oJfMG6
Water-guzzling crops,water parks, luxury pools, deforestation-all contributed to #Maharashtra's #MegaWaterCrisis. For the rich,there is never a scarcity. For the rest, hope evaporates by the day. Something to remember during the #MaharashtraAssemblyPollsbit.ly/2W2lwqJ
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
MP govt is punishing "rioters" who had engaged in stone-pelting by destroying private property.
But the idea of Wasim pelting stores is difficult to digest. He had lost both his arms in 2005.
Then why was his house shop razed down too?
[read ahead]
In Wasim’s shop, customers would tell him whatever they needed and help themselves. “They would place the money in my pocket or the drawer in the shop and leave,” he says. “I had put whatever money I had raised into my shop. It was my livelihood for 15 years.”
But on a warm April day in Khargone, Wasim Ahmed watched in horror as a bulldozer ordered by the state govt crushed and destroyed his shop and the valuable material inside. That day, bulldozers flattened 50 other shops and homes in this Muslim-dominated locality.
A student once asked us:
"Why is inequality bad? The kirana owner has a small store & Ambani has a big business because of how hard they work. People who work hard, succeed."
PARI is hoping to address these misconceptions by showing the lives of hardworking Indians [a 🧵]
Unpacking the idea of ‘success’ is possible with a PARI story on unequal access to education, healthcare and justice.
We draw on them in classrooms to share the lives of hardworking people – on farms, in forests and the underbelly of cities, and more.
Students like Chennai high schooler, Arnav admit, “we view them [people below their socio-economic group] as statistics rather than an actual person who goes through things we often go through.”
Every day is Rural Women's Day here at PARI. Don't take our word for it. Browse our website to find stories of some of the most incredible women from rural India!
A thread to get you started 👇
#InternationalDayOfRuralWomen
1/ Seaweed is an essential algae to a wide array of industries, including the pharma industry. But who goes down into the sea to get it? @MPalani17304893 introduces you to the fisherwomen who spend 7-10 hours in the sea every day to harvest it.
2/ Shanti Devi is possibly India's first woman mechanic who has been working at a depot just outside Delhi for over two decades. She changes tyres, fixes punctures, repairs engines and breaks stereotypes. ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/a-…
In the 160 years since the British established tea production, Assam has become the largest tea-producing state in India, the largest tea-producing region in the world and the world’s fourth largest tea exporter.
Still, for every kilogram of packaged Assam tea sold, less than 5% of the cut goes to the workers.
850 million Indians consume tea daily. But who produces it?
Bhagat Singh’s ideology is not meant to be hijacked. He has written with remarkable intellectual clarity. Read what he stood for in his essay — Why I Am an Atheist.
Do not let anyone cloud your mind and reasoning. Snippets in the 🧶 below, link at the very end
This 5,790-word essay was first published in People, a periodical brought out from Lahore, in September 1931.
In it, Bhagat Singh, a revolutionary freedom fighter, a socialist in his beliefs, a powerful writer, and a prolific journalist, begins by asserting that his atheism is the result of rational inquiry as opposed to vanity or pride.