Kerala women fight odds

Palakkad district of Kerala has been plagued with the problem of water scarcity for quite some time now and the women are up in arms to tackle this problem. With shovels in hands, around 300 women have dug up around 190 wells as a solution to acute water scarcity. These homemakers are also earning a living out of it as they are digging wells under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme (MGNREGS). As ponds and wells are the only sources of water for the village, these determined women, aged between 35 and 70 years, have dug up over 190 wells across the drought-hit village since last August. They are not strangers to hardships as even elderly women climb down the pits with the help of makeshift bamboo ladders and dig laboriously for long hours with pickaxe and shovel, digging and clearing away mud and clay in search of water resources. Digging wells was considered the work of men, but with the problem of water scarcity looming large, womenfolk also began to take up this job. Physical limitations and lack of training are not a deterrent for these strong-willed women who create 10-12metre-deep wells single-handedly gradually chipping and shoveling off the rocky terrain of their village.