SOUTH
Palakkad district in Kerala, also known as the rice bowl of the state, is staring at an unprecedented drought and people are already facing an acute water shortage as aquifers going dry and ground water level going down like never before. The Kerala Water Authority (KWA) has limited its drinking water supply to the citizens to one hour a day, citing water scarcity.
As people wait late into the night for the KWA to release water for their daily needs, two private alcohol distilleries, MP Distilleries and Vijay Mallya's United Beverages, in Puthussery Panchayat in the district are unaffected. The state-run water authority dutifully provides 5.33 lakh liters of purified drinking water to these companies everyday without fail! At a time when the authority has imposed undeclared water rationing by reducing the supply, these water-guzzling companies get uninterrupted supply, directly from the purification plant.
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"Sometimes, they release water after midnight," Sudha, a homemaker of Puthussery told Asianet News. She was standing in the long queue late last night before a public water tap installed by the KWA. "This is our routine. If we stand here for hours, we may get one or two pots of water for cooking," she added.
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Ironically, the KWA had practically stopped releasing water from Malampuzha Dam for irrigation purposes, leaving the sprawling paddy fields in the district parched. However, the authority sees to it that the water drawn from the dam flows to the distilleries without fail. This happens when the KWA has no binding agreement with the distilleries to provide seamless supply.
"The KWA is supplying over 1.5 crore litres of water to these distilleries every month when people are scrambling for drinking water," said P Rajeev, district secretary of BJP. "It shows liquor is more important for the government than drinking water."