Collecting water from wells is primarily a job for women and girls. In Nashik in Maharashtra, women have to climb inside a 60 foot well to collect water as can be seen left and in this video.
The onerous task can take hours and is mostly done at night. The women have to wait for groundwater to seep out of the well’s dry floor so they can collect it using small bowls. This seepage can take an hour to fill a pot of water and women may spend four to six hours filling water for a single day’s use. Exploitation of groundwater sources is the major factor here. Nashik has a lot of wells and borewells but it has ‘overexploited blocks’ (regions where groundwater has been over-extracted) probably due to grapes and onion farming. After this video went viral on social media in 2019, a new pipeline was sanctioned for Bardechi Wadi from a well near the dam to a storage tank in the village.