Her mission: clean potable water

On inquiry,she came to know that they were victims of Arsenic poisoning,a menace that is still plaguing large areas of districts like North 24 Parganas,South 24 Parganas,Nadia,Murshidabad,to name a few.

And it was then that,Anita Mukherjee,now a resident of Kalighat,also a next door neighbour of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee,resolved to fight the monster that killed many people of her village.

“When I stayed at the house of my uncle,Dr Dhiren Mukherjee,I saw the villagers afflicted with painful diseases,many of them suffering from cancer,and when I came to know they contracted the maladies by drinking water laced with Arsenic,I began to wonder why can’t the water they drink be cleaned of that poison,’’ Mukherjee,a graduate from Murlidhar Girls’ College,Gariahat,told The Indian Express.

What Mukherjee did later was to form a team and visit villages of North 24 Parganas and Nadia,worst-affected by Arsenic. “My job was two-fold,to create awareness among the people about the danger of drinking water laced with Arsenic,and teach them the way how to treat such water which is usually drawn from tubewells,’’ Mukherjee said.

What she brought to the villages was a solution in the form of Feric alum and bleaching powder which could be used for the treatment of that water.

“We used to visit villages with filters and taught the villagers how to free water from that poison. There was a very good response and people realised the danger,’’ said Mukherjee,who made cleaning the drinking water a sort of a movement.

The social worker who made it a mission narrated how Arsenic had played havoc in the lives of scores of villagers. For example,at Nadia where she worked extensively,she came across villages where most of the women suffered from breast cancer. “These people are so helpless and I wonder even after 67 years of achieving freedom,the government could not provide for clean potable water to its people,’’ Mukherjee said.

However,occasionally Mukherjee had to face hurdles from people with vested interests while carrying on with her mission. For example,while working at Karimpur in Nadia district,she was physically assaulted by miscreants and had to be hospitalised.

But Mukherjee is indomitable. ”I don’t care about them. I will just go ahead,’’ she said.