Water shortage compels locals to leave village

By Raj Kumar Bhattarai,Khotang Mar. 28: A village in Khotang district has been all but deserted because of acute shortage of drinking water. Purano Gaun of Rajapani in Tuwachung Halesi Municiplaity-11 has become empty.

Only four families are now left in the village, which previously housed 55 families. When 51 households emigrated, the entire village with only four households looks eerily calm, surrounded by tall grass.  

Most of the houses have already collapsed and others are nearing the same. The farm land, where the farmers used to grow maize, millet, wheat and vegetables and was full of life, is now invaded by weeds. 

The village is linked with the Everest Highway, but that offered no respite for the villagers to stay in the village.    

Nawaraj Regmi, the headmaster of Mahankala Basic School of the village who is currently living alone in one of the four houses, said that he is staying there only for the time being.   

He added that other members of his family had already migrated elsewhere. "I too would have migrated if there had not been a compulsion to stay back to work in the school."

He said the family of Harka Raj Karki was living in the village to rear goats. "Almost everyone has left the village, some of us are here because we have to," he added. 

Karki said he had already built a house in Regmitar and that the main reason for leaving his ancestral village was the problem of drinking water. 

“I am living here only to rear goats,” he added.

The villagers, until recently, used to fetch drinking water from the local Masane River.

They used to get two pitchers of water a day, but they had to walk for about 2-3 hours to reach the Sapsu River to bring in water for the cattle, to bathe and to wash clothes. Also, they had to give paddy to the owner of water source for taking the water every day.  

The dire shortage of water has forced the people out of their village. Some families have migrated to Gaighat, Udaipur and others to Biratnagar and other places. 

Most of the households built a house in Regmitar after the 2015 earthquake. 

As the village is nearby a road, transportation facwility is easily available. Vehicles reach the village after a track was opened. Electricity is ubiquitous, but with the steep fall in population, problem of drinking water has been solved to a significant extent. But for the village, regaining its lost population is a dream unlikely to come true.