Acute water crisis has forced the authorities in India’s Andaman Islands to fall back on the wells dug by the Japanese forces during the world War II.
After the 2004 tsunami, tourism is back with a bang in the islands. But while the demand got higher for drinking water, Andaman has had little rain and that led to a water crisis in the archipelago which is some 1200 km east of mainland India.
It went to such extent that the authorities are rationing drinking water and cleaning the wells dug by the Japanese forces in the mid-1940s.
Krishna Sharan Singh, chief of the islands’ disaster management unit, said,
Increasing tourists are definitely causing more shortages and we have asked all agencies to look for alternative sources of water, including wells.
Even this step, at best, is only a temporary solution, argue some local environmental groups.
Samir Acharya, secretary of the Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology, said,
Every year we face the same problem but no one seems to be learning,” said Samir Acharya, secretary of the Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology, a local environmental group. There is an urgent need to build water reservoirs and plan water harvesting as tourism is back in Andamans.
Photo Credit: Reuters
