Athar Parvaiz in IPS: Naseema Akhtar, 38, worries that her daily treks to collect clean water from the mountain springs around her village of Bonpora, in Kashmir’s Kupwara district, are getting longer. She is already doing more than seven km every day."The higher up you go, the cleaner the water is likely to be, but there is a limit to how far one can climb to fetch a pitcher of water," she told IPS. "On days when I’m in a hurry I make do with water downstream, though I know it is badly contaminated."
Akhtar, and other women from Bonpora, 110 km north of Srinagar, carry pieces of cloth with them to strain the water - though this is poor defence against dangerous water-borne pathogens. "We know that the cloth only removes insoluble solids, but what can we do? There is no other source of safe water for our daily needs," said Akhtar. People in most of Kashmir’s hamlets rely on water from mountain springs or, if unable to walk distances, resort to the risky streams and ponds nearby.
Kashmir, a distinct region in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, has seen armed separatist militancy since 1989, complicated by territorial claims over the region by neighbouring Pakistan. "When the mountain springs get scanty or dry up, we are forced to use the stagnant water in small ponds around our village," says Shahzad Mir, a resident of Badibera village, also in Kupwara district....
A valley in Pahalgam, India, shot by Hermann Luyken, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
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