Well done: Family in drought-prone Beed uses lockdown to dig itself out of water crisis

Mohammed Akhef | TNN | Updated: Aug 4, 2020, 10:53 IST

Nagnath Tat with his wife Manisha and younger son Kartik.

AURANGABAD: A couple and their two sons in Marathwada’s drought-prone Beed have utilized the lockdown period to manually dig up a well on their compound to address the water crisis. The water from the well is now also being made available to other people in the neighbourhood.
Nagnath Tat, a 48-year-old resident of the Dutt temple lane area of Beed city, is a caterer, while his wife Manisha (45) is a homemaker. Their sons Shubham (22) and Kartik (19) are goldsmiths. During the lockdown, all the men in the family were left without jobs. Therefore, they utilised the time to improve the water situation in the locality.
“We do not have a civic water connection. For the past 22 years, we had been dependent on a public tap,” Nagnath told TOI.
Manish added that often, during the summers months, the area receives water once in 20 days, forcing the family to purchase water from private suppliers.
“We had been told to dig a 5,000litre capacity water tank. But the biggest question was: ‘From where to source the water to fill up the tank?’” Nagnath added.
Shubham and Kartik first came up with the idea of digging a well on 600 sft of their property. They started digging using basic tools in May and completed the work only recently. They stopped digging only after water started percolating in the well from underground channels. The mini-well — 32 feet deep and three feet wide — currently has 8 feet of water.
“We did this as we wanted to keep ourselves busy. Now, on completion of the project, we feel a sense of achievement,” said Shubham. “We are happy that we will not have to purchase water from outside or stand in a line at the public tap anymore.”
The family gives most of the credit to Kartik, who carried out most of the laborious digging work by entering the pit. “Now we are giving water to everyone in the locality,” said Kartik. He said the family considers the water a blessing from the Almighty and has, therefore, decided to share it with others.