Take the case of village Gordhia in Chatra district of Jharkhand, where people mostly work as labourers and peasants.
Most of the people living in the village are below poverty line and government schemes on water barely reach these far off villages.
Across the border of Jharkhand state in Bihar, Akhilesh Prajapt, 55 from Village Siba in Gaya district has a similar story to share.
He also works as a labourer and the village has been witnessing water scarcity since last three years.
According to Najeeb Ahmed, a volunteer of Hyderabad-based Sahayata Trust in Bihar and Jharkhand, which helps people in these villages by installing hands pumps and bore wells, “Most of the villagers work as labourers and installing a hand pump requires digging deep in the ground up to 275 to 300 feet.
The poor population is forced to buy water at inflated prices from ‘water mafia’.
Similarly, in Kammimpet village of Vellore district in Tamil Nadu, Beedi workers earning barely Rs 100 a day have a very hard time to fetch drinking water.
Every day they have to undergo on a journey for miles in agricultural lands fitted with bore wells to fill their water pots.
The bore wells on agricultural lands are few and people who need water are more.
These ponds used to serve as a source of drinkable water for more than 1000 villages.