Dang (Gujarat): Saritaben Gayakwad, who won 2018 Asian Games gold medal in women's 4 × 400 metres relay team event, is facing an acute problem as she is stuck at her village in Dang district of Gujarat due to COVID-19 forced nationwide lockdown.
The relay athlete has to walk one kilometre to procure sweet drinking water. Water crisis at Saritaben's Kharadi Amba village is predominant. People, every year, struggle to negotiate this nagging problem. But their plight has now come to limelight because of sprinter Saritaben, who is also the brand ambassador of Gujarat State Poshan Abhiyan. .
In 2018 Pesta Olahraga Asian Games, Saritaben won the women's relay gold partnering with Hima Das, M R Poovamma and Vismaya Velluva Koroth. The Indian quartet completed the race in 3 minutes and 28.72 seconds to claim the yellow metal.
When she achieved the feat the country basked in the glory and heaped praise on her. But the quarter-miler soon faded away from the limelight like any other Indian athlete. Forgetting our heroes of athletics is an age-old shabby culture in Indian sports.
Saritaben, who lives at a shack, talking about the water crisis in her village, said, "12 years ago when I used to stay here I had to walk five kilometres to get drinking water from Chinchli village. For the last eight years, I have been staying at the hostel for my study. Since I am good at sports I had to go outside India for training; so I didn't have any knowledge about my family and villagers."
"Now, because of lockdown, I have been forced to stay at home since April. So I got to know that the water problem is still there. Now, I walk one kilometre along with my villagers to get sweet drinking water," she added.
However, every year Kharadi Amba and its nearby villages receive good rainfall, but as Dang is a mountainous area there is no way to store the rainwater. In the meantime, there is seemingly no water harvesting system in place in the district.
According to Saritaben water level in Dang in summer gets as low as 150 feet. "Household water connection has been installed in the village but no water comes from it," Saritaben alleged.
Dang receives heavy rainfall in monsoon season, but outside the monsoon, there is hardly any shower. On an average, there are 77 rainy days (2.5 mm rainfall in a day) in a year in the district.
