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As another borewell in a Karnal village of Haryana on Monday tragically became the grave for a five-year-old girl, what has emerged more tragic is our complete apathy and negligence towards ensuring a safe environment for children. It is grossly criminal to use a well to draw water and then leave it uncovered when it dries up. Unsuspecting kids have been fatally falling into open borewells with a numbing regularity. If last week it was three-year-old Sujith Wilson in Tamil Nadu who met such a traumatic end, in June, Fatehveer of Sangrur in Punjab suffered a similar fate. Successful rescue operations by the NDRF and Army, such as that of one-year-old Nadeem Khan from a Hisar village in March, are few because of their precarious nature: the shaft is too narrow, children too young to follow instructions and the soil in danger of collapsing if dug too close or too hard to pry apart.
We seem to have become a nation of numb people. We watch with bated breath every time as the by now familiar set of men operate machines with all earnest, either digging a parallel shaft and reaching the trapped child through a horizontal pathway or inserting a hook to pull him out even as food and oxygen is lowered in. But we do little beyond lamenting/criticising an aborted/failed operation or rejoicing the occasional victorious one. Unless we — as responsible individuals, groups, society and governments — make that little extra effort to transform our immediate neighbourhoods and jurisdictions into safe zones, they will remain potential death traps and accident spots.
Clearly, rules and directions alone are not enough. They must be complied with. Those who flout them must be seen to be punished by the authorities concerned. To prevent such incidents, the Supreme Court had in 2010 framed guidelines on drilling of borewells, installing signs and covering unused ones. Shaken by Fatehveer’s death, the Punjab Government had given 24 hours for sealing all abandoned borewells. Today, five months later, can the state claim to be free of open borewells? Has Haryana too capped all its hazardous wells? Unfortunately, there is no definitive answer. Of the nearly 27 million borewells in India, several are still lying with gaping mouths… to swallow more victims.