Water Scarce in a Rain-Drenched Village: Saripalla Residents Wait Days for a Drop

Saripalla (Mangaluru Taluk): Despite being soaked by the monsoon, the village of Saripalla near Mangaluru lives in a state of paradox. Here, over 350 households wait for five to seven days at a stretch for piped drinking water—ironically, while it rains ceaselessly all around them.

The village, part of a grama panchayat in Dakshina Kannada district, has an open well filled to the brim. But the water never reaches most homes—not because of scarcity, but because of a failed system.

On a recent afternoon, pots and plastic containers lined the front yards of homes. Children darted out into the rain to fill them while women filtered and stored the collected water for cooking, bathing and drinking. In Saripalla, the monsoon is not an inconvenience—it is survival.

“We are left with no choice. It rains, so we manage. But what happens once the monsoon ends?” asks Violet Pereira, a long-time resident. “For years now, the village has suffered because water never reaches us when we need it.”

The well, residents say, is not the problem. It is functional, abundant and centrally located. The real issue lies with the electric pump installed to draw and distribute the water. It often lies idle, rendered useless by chronic power supply issues.

“The pump is in good condition. The water source is not the problem,” confirms Abobakar, the Panchayat Development Officer. “But the electricity connection is unstable. There are frequent outages and voltage drops. We’ve filed several complaints with MESCOM, but the problem persists.”

What follows each outage is a long wait—for officials to respond, for electricity to be restored, and for water to return to the taps. Meanwhile, the panchayat is left without options, and the community goes without water.

The impact of this recurring failure is visible. Residents store rainwater for days at a time, treating and using it as sparingly as they can. During the dry season, they resort to buying water or walking long distances to nearby borewells.

“This isn’t a remote hamlet in the hills,” says a local shopkeeper“We are a few kilometres from Mangaluru city. And still, our taps are dry for most of the week.”

Locals say the problem is neither new nor unfamiliar to the authorities. For over half a decade, villagers have flagged the issue in public meetings, made written appeals, and even invited officials to inspect the site. “A group of us visited the well with officials and pointed out the poor condition of the electrical infrastructure,” says Pereira. “But beyond assurances, little has changed.”

MESCOM officials say repairs are underway. “There have been repeated faults in the local transformer network. We have directed our teams to expedite the repairs and are working on a more stable long-term solution for power supply in the area,” a senior official told this correspondent.

But residents remain sceptical. For them, the problem goes beyond a broken transformer. It represents a larger neglect, where rural water supply remains vulnerable to the smallest administrative delay.

In addition to their already severe water woes, they are denied taking water from the huge 1.5 lakh litre overhead reservoir built by the Mangaluru City Corportion which stands at the entrance of the village. The local corporator is opposed to the prospect of sharing the water with the villagers. (eom)