每日英語跟讀 Ep.K298: Water-Stressed India Seeks a Tap for Every Home

The pipes are laid, the taps installed and the village tank is under construction — all promising signs that, come spring, Girja Ahriwar will get water at her doorstep and finally shed a lifelong burden.

管子鋪好，水龍頭裝好，村子的水槽正在建造。這些充滿希望的跡象顯示，春季來臨時，吉爾嘉．艾里瓦可以在家門口取到水，而且終於解除長期以來的負擔。

“I go out and put the jerrycans in the queue at around 5 a.m. and wait there with the children,” Ahriwar, a mother of three who lives in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, said about her routine of fetching from the village hand pump. “Sometimes it could take five or six hours. I have to stay there

because if I leave, someone else moves ahead.”

「我大約在清晨5時出門，把大水桶排進隊伍，然後和孩子們一起等待」，住在印度中部中央邦、三個孩子的媽艾里瓦說，她的例行公事就是從村子的手動泵浦取水，「有時候得花五或六個小時，我必須一直留在這裡，因為如果我離開了，其他人就會搶先往前」。

India, one of the world’s most water-stressed countries, is halfway through an ambitious drive to provide clean tap water by 2024 to all of the roughly 192 million households across its 600,000 villages. About 18,000 government engineers are overseeing the $50 billion undertaking, which includes hundreds of thousands of contractors and laborers who are laying more than 2.5 million miles of pipe.

印度是全世界用水最吃緊的國家之一，在2024年之前提供60萬個村落共約1億9200萬戶乾淨自來水，這項宏大的計畫已進行到一半。約1萬8000名政府工程師監督規模500億美元的工程，包括數十萬名包商和工人，鋪設超過250萬哩的水管。

The project has a powerful champion in Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has slashed through India’s notorious red tape and pushed aside thorny political divisions to see it through. His success thus far helps explain his dominance over the country’s political landscape.

這項計畫有個有力的擁護者：總理莫迪，他打破印度惡名昭彰的官僚作風，把棘手的政治分歧暫放一邊，推動計畫。目前為止他的成功也顯示他在這個國家政治版圖的主導力。

Modi has remained popular despite a weak economy and a bungled initial response to the coronavirus that left hundreds of thousands dead. He has increasingly relied on communal politics, continuing to consolidate a Hindu nationalist base he has worked for decades to rally.

即使經濟疲弱，且一開始對新冠病毒的笨拙反應造成數十萬人死亡，莫迪仍舊廣得人心。他日漸依賴宗教團體式政治，持續鞏固印度教國族主義基本盤，他投注數十年整合這些勢力。

But the mission to deliver water to every household combines two of Modi’s political strengths: his grasp of the day-to-day problems of hundreds of millions of India’s poor and his penchant for ambitious solutions. Modi, who grew up in a poor village, has spoken emotionally about his own mother’s hardship in fetching water.

不過，將水送到所有家戶的任務，結合莫迪的兩個政治力量：他對印度數億貧窮人口日常問題的理解，以及喜好採取極具雄心的解決方案。在貧窮村莊長大的莫迪，曾充滿感情的談到母親以前取水的困難。

About one-sixth of India’s households had a clean water tap when the program, called Jal Jeevan Mission, began in 2019. Now, almost half have one.

當這個「水生活任務」2019年開始時，印度家戶有潔淨自來水者約六分之一。現在，幾乎一半。

“You rarely have this drive from the government, the head of state, and it is well funded. Behind the concept, there is budget,” said Nicolas Osbert, who leads the UNICEF water and sanitation unit in India. “All social sectors were impacted by COVID. Not this one. This one was preserved.”

「你很少能從政府或國家領袖獲得這種推動力，而且資金充裕。在這個概念後面，重點是預算」，聯合國兒童基金會印度分部水資源和衛生主管歐斯柏特說，「所有社福單位都遭遇新冠病毒衝擊，但這個沒有，這個計畫保留下來」。

The country’s water problem speaks to the mismatch between its global economic ambitions and the dire conditions of much of its 1.4 billion population, two-thirds of whom still live in rural areas.

這個國家的用水問題顯示，其全球經濟野心和14億人口中許多人的悲慘情況，頗不相配。印度人口三分之二住在鄉村地區。Source article: https://udn.com/news/story/6904/6034821