NO MORE A PIPE DREAM

Millions of Indian women no longer have to trudge miles to fetch water, as now they can get water through taps in their own homes

- By AMARNATH K. MENON

Getting up at the crack of dawn. Collecting all the pots in the house and making your way to the nearest well or hand pump, joining an endless queue. An interminable wait for the trickle to fill your vessels. And the long march back home, a tower of pots perched precariously on your head. That was long the fate of women in India, losing 150 million work days every year collecting water, according to the NGO International Development Organisation. Summer brought with it dread, and the prospect of no water. Many bored deep into the ground to strike the elixir of life, but the surfeit of borewells sucked the ground dry. Tap connection was a luxury 82 per cent of India's rural households had never encountered till six years back.

THE EASE OF LIVING