Death toll mounts as poverty forces India's poor to work in blazing heat
ADVERTISEMENT
AFP Photo
Ramulamma hobbles out of her thatch hut to pay a final, tearful farewell to her rickshaw driver husband, yet another victim
of the heat wave that has already killed 1,065 people in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.
The 45-year-old widow wants to join her husband's funeral procession in Nalgonda, a town about 100 kilometers (63 miles)
southeast of Andhra Pradesh state capital Hyderabad, but every step is an ordeal.
Ramulamma has been fighting a 15-year-old losing battle with disease brought on by long-term fluoride poisoning.
Ramulamma's husband, Berha Venkullu Venkaiyah, ferried rice in his rickshaw from the local mill to the village shop for
a fee of 30 rupees (80 US cents) a day to support his disabled wife and their 15 year-old son.
Last week, with temperatures hovering close to 48 degrees Celsius, almost seven degrees above normal, the five-kilometer
(three-mile) journey proved fatal for 55-year old Venkaiyah.
"He came home and fell unconscious so we borrowed some money from the neighbours and rushed him to hospital. The doctors
said it was a sunstroke and tried to inject saline into him but it was no use," Ramulamma told AFP.
A majority of sunstroke victims such as Venkaiyah had been daily wage earners with no savings or assets. Despite the mercury
soaring to record temperatures this summer they've had no option but to continue doing strenuous menial jobs to support their
families.
"The government puts out warnings saying don't go out, but what choice do we have? If we don't go out and work we don't
eat," Biksham, a 24-year old barber in Nalgonda's Gundrepally village told AFP.
Biksham's 58-year-old father Idikudi Ramalingam, also a barber, couldn't find any work so last month he joined his wife
and daughters to labour on a stone quarry near their village, for a daily wage of 40 rupees.
"It's easier to find jobs on the stone quarries in summer because the hotter it gets the easier the stones break," says
Biksham.
However, stone quarrying in the oppressive heat proved too heavy a labour for Ramalingam who suffered a sunstroke and collapsed
and died on Friday.
"We have never seen a summer like this. Every summer has a period of excessive heat but nobody remembers it ever lasting
this long," T. Venkateshwarlu, a local administrative official told AFP.
This summer there have already been a dozen sunstroke deaths in Chandur -- a cluster of 17 villages administered by Venkateshwarlu.
The villages get power supply for 17 to 18 hours a day but most of the villagers are left to the mercy of nature as they
cannot afford any cooling.
"In most of our villages only about five percent of the houses have a simple electric fan," says Venkateshwarlu.
Chandur lies in the heart of Nalgonda district, which has accounted for almost 200 of the 1,065 sunstroke deaths reported
in Andhra Pradesh this summer.
State officials claim the casualties have been unprecedented this year because the extended heat wave has been made worse
by the fact that the state is facing its second successive drought.
"The drought means there has been little work in the fields this year so people are hungry and desperate for any work they
can find," says Ventakeshwarlu.
Andhra Pradesh has one of the highest concentrations of the country's poorest of the poor. Almost 12 million people, or
15 percent of the population, live below the government designated poverty line.
A majority of this year's heat wave victim's were people living below the poverty line and the government has promised
to pay their relatives a 10,000 rupee (215 dollar) grant.
"Even if the government does ever gives me that promised 10,000 rupees most of it will go in paying the debts I am incurring
for performing the last rites of my husband," says Rammulamma.
For the poor in Andhra Pradesh the long and difficult summer continues with officials warning of at least a 10-day delay
in the arrival in this year's monsoon rains which were earlier scheduled to start by the first week of June.
