Click to play videoPravaranagar (Maharashtra): The life and livelihood of villagers in Maharashtra's Pravaranagar is being destroyed by ground water contamination.
Effluents from the sugar factories in the region are the culprits and the authorities seem to be turning a blind eye.
“We had plenty (of trees) before. We had mango trees, they got spoilt, my sweet-lime orchard got spoilt, the animals started falling ill and dying and now I'm working as a labourer. What can we do? Only option is suicide,” says a farmer Ganpath Rao Ghorpade.
Other farmers in the Pravaranagar area are less articulate but equally unfortunate.
Contaminated ground water is slowly destroying their lands and rendering their cattle barren.
Villagers say the cause of this contamination are the local sugar factories.
They dump their effluents into the canal, the local river and the large unlined pits around the village.
The chemicals seep into the ground and pollutes the water table. The farmers say they're neck deep in debt and are losing hope.
“I raised my voice when Uddhav Thackeray came and gave him a letter. I sent the CM several letters. Nothing happened,” says another farmer, Babban Dattu Ghorpade.
But the sugar factory owner, Balasaheb Vikhe Patil, who's also the sitting MP of the area says there's no problem with the water.
“The water is not harmful to any crop, ultimately the crop yield is increasing,” says Patil.
CNN-IBN sent a water sample to an independent lab for tests. The results were shocking. Toxic components present in the water were three times higher than what the Bureau of Indian Standards term highly hazardous.
Maharashtra Pollution Control Board officials came, filed a report and left threatening punitive action.
“It's decided that all the standards must be met by December 2005. It’s December 2006 and we have issued showcause notices to them and have asked them,” says Dr Boralkar of the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board.
The factories are still running.
There are 13 such sugar factories in the area and all belong to political bigwigs or their relatives - a fact that's probably making it difficult for the government to put an end to this mess.
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