Water minus Jobs
Fluorosis Burden and Growing Rehab need across India
“I was a normal 20 year old working on my farm ….Now I cant bend my hips and work in the field without painkillers”, said a farmer in north Gujarat, when we visited him in 2002.
He and many other people made us realize how closely linked is Safe water to people’s livelihoods. Fluorosis is a disease that can make people crippled for life and deformity as we all know has a high health burden that affects people’s livelihood and also of those around them. Similarly, the plight of a bed ridden person we met recently in Balasore district of Odisha, or the sad story of a lady in Jhabua who got crippled for life in just 3 years during her two pregnancies.
All these stories give us hints of a larger picture, and ask us as to how big is this hidden problem of India. 66 Million people affected is a figure we hear of quite frequently, but what do recent Government records tell us about the scale of the Fluoride problem.
Data from NWRDP — National Water Resources Development Project — in India shows that 284 Districts of the country are affected with around 30,000 habitations having high Fluoride in drinking water wells. Taking an average of 500 persons per habitation, it comes to around 15 Million people exposed to high Fluoride, as per this official Government database records. This should be taken as a lower limit, the reason being that many places go unreported, either due to poor Data testing systems and also because of collected data not yet been entered into digital records.
Our Studies from 2002–03 in Mehsana, Gujarat, and later in other places such as Dausa in Rajasthan and Gadag in Karnataka showed that people have a very high health burden in terms of loss of livelihoods and medicine cost, especially of painkillers, which in 2005–06 prices were around Rs 5000 per affected person per year. Healthy men and women, start developing joint pains, and stiffness of the body leading them to slowly abandon farming and live a life with pain and painkillers. What these numbers hide are the long term impact of heavy painkillers, often on the kidney and liver.
Recently, State governments have begun to recognize this health burden by awarding compensations to affected people. Whereas the National Human Right Commission of India has been awarding a Rs 10,000 one-time compensation payment, the Telangana government, as part of its Aasara social security pension scheme awards around 58,683 people in Nalgonda a pension of Rs 1500 per month for high Disability.
Most of these are Skeletal fluorosis affected people and that too, not all affected people have been given pensions as of yet. This comes to a staggering annual social cost of Rs 105 crores to the government for just one Fluorosis affected district out of 284! Under this same trend, the official social cost burden to the exchequer would run to thousands of crores very soon.
We are facing an uncertain future. An able population is being wasted just because of being denied Safe water. Rehabilitation is one response to helping these people, but in the long term, just basic Safe water to all, is the only response which will help prevent a massive loss to society.
Photo credit: Mr Nilutpal Das
