{"id":64827,"date":"2024-06-03T12:54:05","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T12:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/03\/in-delhis-parched-slums-life-hangs-on-a-hose-and-a-prayer\/"},"modified":"2024-06-03T12:54:05","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T12:54:05","slug":"in-delhis-parched-slums-life-hangs-on-a-hose-and-a-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/03\/in-delhis-parched-slums-life-hangs-on-a-hose-and-a-prayer\/","title":{"rendered":"In Delhi\u2019s Parched Slums, Life Hangs on a Hose and a Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/06\/03\/multimedia\/00india-heat-lfpm\/00india-heat-lfpm-facebookJumbo.jpg?fit=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"In Delhi\u2019s Parched Slums, Life Hangs on a Hose and a Prayer\" title=\"In Delhi\u2019s Parched Slums, Life Hangs on a Hose and a Prayer\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Before the water tanker rolled into one of New Delhi\u2019s largest slums, Arvind Kumar was pacing between the gate of a public school and a tea seller\u2019s stall hundreds of yards from his home, where he lives with nine members of his family.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThere, it is coming,\u201d Mr. Kumar shouted to a woman waiting on the slum\u2019s edge. With their last stored drops now spent, and <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/05\/29\/world\/asia\/india-delhi-hottest-day-ever.html\" title=\"\">a heat wave<\/a> searing the city, the two neighbors had decided to make sure the truck reached its destination.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The woman boarded the 5,000-gallon tanker and guided its driver through a tight lane, past houses lined with thousands of jerrycans, many chained in place, and onto a stony plateau.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cSometimes, you need to kidnap the driver,\u201d Mr. Kumar, a salesman, said with a smile, \u201cor you will see your children dying of thirst in this killing heat.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Over the past few days, temperatures in parts of northern India have hovered well above 110 degrees Fahrenheit, or more than 43 degrees Celsius. More than <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/news\/national\/heatwave-claims-61-lives-across-india-in-a-day\/article68237169.ece\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">60 people<\/a>, including several working or participating in the <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/03\/16\/world\/asia\/india-2024-election.html\" title=\"\">country\u2019s general election<\/a>, whose results will be announced on Tuesday, have died, according to news media reports.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In Delhi, the streets feel like an oven. Work output and mobility have been reduced. Parks usually filled with joggers are thinly populated. Outside the gardens of Humayun\u2019s Tomb, lemonade sellers complained of a drop in business.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI have been drinking more glasses of water myself than selling them,\u201d said one vendor, Sham Yadav.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">With the intense heat, water \u2014 piped or trucked to residents \u2014 is now in short supply for some 25 million people in the Delhi national capital region.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Every summer, the water table in Delhi is reduced because of the huge demand. But this year\u2019s crisis has also exposed the increasing dysfunction of India\u2019s national governance, with states often stuck in political battles with one another or with the central government. The Delhi regional government has appealed to the country\u2019s top court to force a neighboring state to release surplus water that a second state had provided for Delhi.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As officials have been forced to ration water across the capital region, the crisis has hit nearly everyone, regardless of status. But the challenges are particularly severe for the poor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The slum where Mr. Kumar lives, Kusumpur Pahari, has no piped water connections. The government defines the slum as an illegal settlement of migrant workers, though people have lived there for three generations. It is a maze of narrow streets and shanties surrounded on one side by glittering shopping malls and on the other by upscale residential enclaves.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Inside its walls are more than 50,000 people. Many work as cleaning staff for nearby embassies, drivers for diplomats, maids for the rich. Their lives are punctuated by the horn of the water tanker.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">All day long, the slum\u2019s residents struggle to fill their jerrycans with water for drinking, washing clothes and bathing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt is worse this summer,\u201d said Monika Singh, 23, a political science graduate, who was born in Kusumpur Pahari and said she would perhaps \u201cdie here.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Throughout her life, before breakfast, before preparing for class, before choosing what to wear, she has worried about how and where to store water. \u201cSlowly, as the population increases, the war over water has become worse,\u201d she said. \u201cThis year, it is really, <em class=\"css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0\">really<\/em> bad.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">For decades, people in Kusumpur Pahari and other slums have fought over drops of water pouring from the water tankers. This summer is no different; a <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/t_d_h_nair\/status\/1796375555094544655\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">video<\/a> of residents running after, jumping onto and crowding around a water tanker in a slum near the U.S. Embassy spread widely on Indian social media.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cPeople can kill you for water here, if you don\u2019t listen to them,\u201d said Surinder Singh, the driver of the water tanker that Mr. Kumar and his neighbor waited for over the weekend in Kusumpur Pahari.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When another truck approached to make the second of the two water deliveries that one portion of the slum receives each day, men and women crowded around it, forcing the driver to stop.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIf you come close, I will slit your throat,\u201d a broad-shouldered woman named Neetu shouted toward three women trying to snatch a water hose from her hand.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cGive me first,\u201d cried a housewife, Geeta, who pushed Neetu to the ground.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cYou have a grown-up family; my two children haven\u2019t had a bath for days,\u201d another woman, Sarita, said while snatching the hose from Geeta.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIf you don\u2019t give it to me,\u201d she continued, \u201cI will break this bucket on your head, then you won\u2019t be able to fill your bucket.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/03\/world\/asia\/india-delhi-heat-water.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before the water tanker rolled into one of New Delhi\u2019s largest slums, Arvind Kumar was pacing between the gate of a public school and a tea seller\u2019s stall hundreds of yards from his home, where he lives with nine members of his family. \u201cThere, it is coming,\u201d Mr. Kumar shouted to a woman waiting on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/06\/03\/multimedia\/00india-heat-lfpm\/00india-heat-lfpm-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22430,18210,61884,76,16871,19786,49941],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64827"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64829,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64827\/revisions\/64829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}