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When Cherrapunji runs dry

Nitin Gogoi in Cherrapunji

It is perhaps the ultimate irony. Come September every year and tribesmen in Cherrapunji, the world's second wettest spot with average rainfall of 450 inches a year, begin to worry about a drought.

The Khasis, who inhabit Cherrapunji in Meghalaya, have only one word -- slaup -- for rain. That is because there is only one kind of downpour: heaven-bursting, apocalyptic. But there are other expressions in the vocabulary like hynniew-miat, describing rain lasting nine days and nights without let-up, or the really fierce, 14-day khadsaw-miat. These days they have added a new word to their dictionary: drought.

For the residents of Cherrapunji, winter is when half their time is spent collecting and storing water for daily use. As Alfride Shabong, a school teacher, says: "Every morning, there is a mad scramble to collect whatever little water comes through the pipeline at community taps." These taps, installed by the public health engineering department at street corners in different localities, are the only source of drinking water for this town of nearly 70,000 people. Those who cannot make it in time during the 90 minutes when water trickles out of the pipes have to walk down miles to the natural springs that surround the town and carry the water from there.

The Shabong family, for instance, has been doing it for the past so many years. Says Carlos, youngest of the six brothers and sisters in the family of 14 members: "The piped water is barely enough to drink. For bathing and washing clothes, we have to go down to the rivulet or the spring behind our house." In winter, a jerry-can of water can cost as much as Rs 20.

Some others like Mary Pariat have adopted ingenious, if easier, methods to collect water. Every morning, she and a couple of other woman in her neighbourhood put their containers under a leak in the water pipeline conveniently located right opposite Pariat's house. There, by the roadside, Pariat and her companions sit chatting as the containers slowly fill up.

"For nearly eight months in a year, we have to resort to this method," one of Pariat's companions says matter-of-factly.

Until a few years ago, everyone in Cherrapunji, some 52 km away from the capital Shillong, scurried in the rain like beetles, hunched under body-length carapaces of woven bamboo. "Nowadays," says William Shabong, a village elder, his voice full of lament, "it rains so little that people are even using those folding umbrellas."

For the old man, Cherrapunji is no longer the place where it pours buckets although the met department continues to record a healthy 450 inches of rainfall annually, making the town the second wettest place on earth. The first spot is now usurped by Mawsynram, four miles up the road from Cherrapunji, with a deluge of 468 inches a year.

But during the monsoon, the downpour in Cherrapunji is still on top. "Between June and September," says Swami Suprabhananda, head of the Ramkrishna Mission in town, "the rains are heaviest, making it difficult to even to venture out. But the really difficult months are between October and March when we have to save up on every drop of water as if we were living in the Sahara."

Suprabhananda should know. The Ramakrishna Mission, established here way back in 1931, runs a hostel for 300 students. "Fortunately, the students are away for two months for their winter vacation which spares us lot of headaches."

Officials of the PHE department, understandably wary of being quoted, cite lack of any long-term scheme for Cherrapunji's present plight. "The existing water supply scheme was designed for a much smaller population and even a decade ago, there was no drinking water shortage," one of them says. The springs on which the water supply scheme depends has a very poor discharge. The production is to the order of 5,50,000 litres per day whereas the demand is estimated at two million litres a day, a staggering shortfall of 72 per cent, officials say. Others blame the rampant deforestation for the drying up of the area.

The precipice where Cherrapunji sits was once covered with oak forests, and under this canopy there lived 250 varieties of orchids, 500 species of butterflies and a tenacious variety of leech known as 'the buffalo'.

"Over the past 30 years," claims a Shillong-based environmentalist, "the forests were chopped down and the Cherrapunji town has swelled from a village of 5,000 to nearly 70,000 people." A cement factory nearby spews out grey filth although, admittedly, it has provided jobs to several thousand residents.

Deforestation has made it impossible to collect rainwater. "Without trees, the water just washes away. There are no rivers, only a few springs which are protected by the people in each locality," says a district official.

The washing away of the top soil year after year has led to a situation where not a blade of grass grows on several hillocks that dot Cherrapunji.

Several others, like I V Ingti, an extra assistant commissioner in the civil SDO's office, have another theory. Cherrapunji sits atop huge deposits of limestone that just sucks up all the water that comes pouring down, feel members of the local science society. Swami Suprabhananda of the Ramkrishna Mission agrees. "Go out and stand in the sun just now," he challenges, and "you will see what I mean." The sun is indeed shining brightly but the heat wafting up from the soil is scorching, giving credence to the theory that the limestone deposits may really be partly responsible for the quick absorption of tonnes of water that rains down on Cherrapunji.

Scientifically, several studies have been done to probe the paradox that exists in Cherrapunji. P K Guha Roy, at one time the director general of the Geological Survey of India, wrote in one of his reports: "The weathered mantle which generally holds rain water is very thin in Cherrapunji, in some areas less than one metre. Because of horizontal beds and poor fracturing most of the rainfall is discharged as sheet run off removing the top soil completely. Because of absence of top soil, no vegetation can strike root and grow. This explains the paradoxically barren look of Cherrapunji."

Guha Roy had suggested several methods through which rain water harvesting could be taken up. "Every house should be provided with roof-wash collector and storage facility. Moreover, a series of weirs and bunds with moderate storage capacity may be constructed at suitable places to intercept the surface run off," the scientist said. Unfortunately, none of these recommendations has been implemented so far.

Water shortage apart, none of the residents would settle for any place other than Cherrapunji. The heaviest rains are from June to September, when the monsoon sweeps in from the Bay of Bengal across flat Bangladesh and then collides with the Khasi hills. Cherrapunji is perched on the edge of vertical black cliff, with magnificent cascades bursting out, falling thousands of feet on to the jungle hill. Usually it rains because the monsoon clouds are forced up the cliffs, and the effect is like cupping water in your hands and squeezing it out in a fountain. June is the wettest month, with a record of 223 inches bucketing down in 1956.

"We do not care how many times we get wet. The rain is like medicine for us," says an elder. Indeed, there are very few cases of sniffling men or women in the town. The natural effects of rain are beneficial to the people but until artificial efforts to conserve and store water for the winter months are speeded up, there would be no respite for the residents of this quaint little township.

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