Fluoride has made them walk on four

Sanket Upadhyay in Gundidhada, Jaipur

Imagine if you are 20, look 40 and may even have to walk using your two hands apart from the feet. Thanks to high fluoride content in the water of Gundidadha, a remote village in Jaipur district, people, even children, have developed serious deformities of similar nature.

Almost all members in the 40 families, constituting a population of around 300, suffer from serious disorders caused by this water consumption. Twenty four year old Prahlad, who has a hump in his back, stoops down so much that he walks with his hands touching the ground.

“I used to graze the cattle till the past two years. Now, all our cattle have died. I have also developed terrible pain in walking. I usually stay home now as I cannot do anything for a living,” Prahlad tells HT.

The physical appearance of his friend and fellow resident of the village Sultan narrates the same story. Lying on his bed, 32-year-old Sultan needs the assistance of his wife Lali Begum for even eating. As his wife adjusts his pillow so that he can sit straight and speak, Sultan says: “I was a farmer and also worked as labourer. My hands and legs are completely dysfunctional for the past five years now.”

He said that his family, which comprises of his wife and two children, have already spent all their savings in his treatment at the SMS Hospital. “After so much medication and treatment, I am still unwell,” he informs with much pain.

The situation has not even spared children. Five-year-old Kalyan has already started limping as he complaints of pain in his bones. When this scribe personally drank ground water from a pit in the area, it was so saline that it had to be spitted out.

Though the people of the village these days are heaving a sigh of relief due to the tractor tanker that ferries “sweet” water brought in tot eh region by a water train, but they say that once the train stops coming in the region, they would again be victims to the same problem. The area, according to local estimates has about 14 ppm content of fluoride in water while the permissible limit is 3 ppm.

Resident of the village complain that bringing the matter to the notice of the authorities has been, so far, like feeding oats to a dead horse. “We have written so many tomes bit no action has been taken. God knows who’ll save us,” says a resident with dismal belief that things would, someday, improve.