In the video, a woman is seen making her way down a well.
During summer, when many parts of India reel under drought and heatwave conditions, many women in rural areas have to risk their lives to fetch water for their families. One such video shows how sheer desperation for clean drinking water has driven a few women in Maharashtra to make a perilous descent into a deep well as water sources dry up.
In the video shared on Twitter, we see a woman making her way down a well, clinging to the tiny and near-invisible steps. The footage is from a village in Nashik district.
The caption reads, “This picture is of Metghar village near Trimbakeshwar in Maharashtra. There is no water to drink, women are risking their lives to fill water. All this is happening in 2022.”
Maharashtra is battling an intense heatwave. According to a forecast by the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the heatwave conditions are likely to prevail in isolated pockets in Vidharbha till April 10.
In a tweet on April 6, KS Hosalikar, head of Climate Research and Services, IMD, Pune, said, “In the next 48 hours, heatwave is expected in North Central Maharashtra and some parts of Vidarbha.”
The IMD classifies a heatwave as a situation when the “maximum temperature of a station reaches at least 40 degrees Celsius or more for plains and at least 30 degrees Celsius or more for hilly regions”. The maximum temperature difference from normal should be in the range of 4.5 degrees Celsius to 6.4 degrees Celsius. A severe heatwave is declared when the recorded maximum temperature is over 6.4 degrees Celsius above normal.
The weather report by Skymet on April 5 states that Akola in Vidarbha has been witnessing maximum temperatures above the 40-degrees Celsius mark, with the mercury level even touching 44 degrees Celsius. “Akola happens to be the only station in Vidarbha to have clocked 44 degrees so far,” adds the Skymet report.