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sanctioned any money for it! I thought, the money shouldn't be a factor when you are fighting drought-like situation. I told my team to calculate the approximate cost of the motors and the pipeline. Meanwhile, there was a big wedding going on in the same village. When we gathered information about that wedding we came to know that it was a child marriage! But I kept silent just for the sake of the situation in that village. Also, I told the organisers of the wedding to keep the temporary hall that they had built for the wedding, my idea was to use the same hall for the community kitchen initiative. While estimating the cost of motors in Mangewadi, I also told my teammates to analyse the situation in other villages. As we collected the information, we understood that the problem was with the 'Watertank lobby'. Everyone was involved in this lobby, including the village officers, tanker regulators and government officials. There was widespread corruption. Bills were inflated to humongous amounts to fill the pockets of few people. If people bought 2 tankers, the bill was made for 7 tankers, the rest of the money was distributed amongst the lobby members. We thought that the state-wide survey was must in order to understand the real depth of the situation of drought and also how it was more of a created tragedy than a natural one. I shifted my priority from the community kitchen to making villages tanker-free. Meanwhile, Mangewadi's village head gave us an estimate of 1.5 lakh rupees for the pipeline project. I was suspicious of this estimate so I waited for my team's estimation. Kailash and another teammate Dhakne were involved in knowing the process of the entire project. Shaila and Thombre sisters went to the shops and took out the costs of all the material required. Finally, we got the total cost of the project. We called up the village head and showed him our estimation which was half of his estimation at around 75 thousand, 56 thousand for material and 14 thousand for labour, including the cost of the JCB. Through this entire process, we understood how some people -even in the time of
