In India's 'Vibrant Village', Tribal Women Walk Miles for Water as Climate Change Dries Up Pooh's Lifelines
POOH (KINNAUR): Every morning, tribal women in Himachal Pradesh's remote Pooh subdivision set out with empty containers, walking from one mountain stream to another.
They climb rocky slopes and descend into dry nullahs, only to find streambeds littered with boulders, gravel and scattered patches of hardy sea buckthorn shrubs.
Far below, the mighty Satluj cuts through the deep Himalayan gorge. Its waters thunder past, but remain far beyond the reach of the thirsty villages perched high above.
This is the new reality in the cold desert of Kinnaur.
Declared a Vibrant Village under the Central Government's border development programme, Pooh today is battling what residents describe as the worst water crisis in more than a century. Elders say they have never witnessed springs and streams disappearing on such a scale.
The mountains have fallen silent.
The natural springs that once gurgled with glacier meltwater throughout the year have dried up. Seasonal streams that served as the lifelines of these villages now lie dead. The glaciers clinging to the towering cliffs have shrunk, and with them the arteries that sustained life in this fragile Himalayan ecosystem.
The drought has directly and indirectly affected nearly 385 local households. Besides local residents, the shrinking water sources also support Army establishments, GREF personnel, government employees and migrant workers.
Altogether, around 4,000 to 5,000 people depend on these limited water resources, but it is the local villagers who are bearing the brunt of the crisis.
Water is no longer the only concern.R
Apple cultivation, the sole economic backbone of the region, is under grave threat. A mature apple tree takes 10 to 15 years to reach full bearing capacity. Farmers say the immediate loss of this year's crop is painful, but losing the trees themselves would devastate livelihoods for more than a decade.
The crisis has been compounded by damage to the village's only Lift Irrigation Scheme, constructed under the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY). Ongoing road construction has damaged the system, disrupting irrigation and leaving orchards without their principal source of water during the peak growing season.
Desperate to save their orchards, villagers are hiring water tankers individually and collectively to irrigate apple trees. The emergency measure has sharply increased production costs and is proving financially unsustainable. Even then, the water being transported is far from enough to keep the orchards alive.
"The situation is unlike anything we have seen before. Springs that flowed throughout the year have vanished, and people are moving from one water source to another in search of a few buckets. The survival of our orchards is now at stake," said Gamba P. Dorje, a local resident who works with the Central Water Commission (CWC).
The Gram Panchayat has urged the district administration to declare Pooh a drought-affected area and sought immediate relief, including emergency drinking water supply, restoration of irrigation facilities, compensation for crop losses and long-term measures to revive the region's drying springs.
For the people of Pooh, climate change is no longer an abstract warning.
It is written across barren streambeds, shrinking glaciers, dying apple orchards and the long daily walk of tribal women searching for water in a village officially celebrated as "vibrant" but now fighting simply to survive.
