VILLAGE NEWS
People in Pandori, Jammu & Kashmir will soon have safe water to drink that is no more than a 50-60 metre walk from their homes for each household.
Water supply has been a longtime concern there, as people would often get ill after drinking it—especially children. The water often had a brownish colour.
But now bore well digging is underway—about 160 feet deep so far. The water is coming from under the rocks, so it is expected to be of a healthy quality. The villagers are awaiting the water testing report from the local government authority.
The new system means clean drinking water will be available 24 hours a day. There will be 12 taps throughout the village to distribute supply.
Irrespective of age or gender, the whole village has come together to get this work done. That even means children are helping to dig trenches for the pipeline.
Ghanshyam, Amrita SeRVe’s zonal coordinator for the area, is leading efforts. The team is comprised of Ramesh and Ram with Amrita Centre for Wireless Networks & Applications, Abhilash and Harish with AMMACHI Labs, and Shampy who is our village coordinator.
The same will continue to happen in all our villages, as this is part of the Mata Amritanandamayi Math‘s initiative to provide clean drinking water to one crore villagers throughout India. The project was launched by the Honourable President of India Shri Ram Nath Kovind as part of Amma’s birthday celebrations that have taken place in Amritapuri these past couple of days.
The initial phase of the project—which aims to install “Jivamritam” filtration systems for clean drinking water in 5,000 villages throughout the nation—is being completely funded by the Mata Amritanandamayi Math (MAM), at a projected cost of Rs. 100 crore [$15.27 Million U.S.]. Each Jivamritam System is capable of filtering the daily drinking-water needs of up to 400 five-member families.
The Jivamritam Filtration System was conceptualised and designed by faculty and students of with Amrita Centre for Wirless Networks and Applications (WNA) at Amrita University. The Math intends to deploy all 5,000 Jivamritam Systems within one year, provided timely permissions from local administrations are provided.