Where Children are Lowered into Wells to Fetch Water

As per a report:

 In Beed MAHARASHTRA, villagers tie children with ropes and lower them into the wells. It is the child's task to fill the pitchers with mugs of water. The wells are mostly over 60 feet deep. The ropes are thin nylon, barely meant to carry more load than a full pitcher.

It is only providence that has so far averted a tragedy. And for this exercise every day, young children are made to miss schools. For 12-year-old Priyanka Murkute of Marathwada's Murkutwadi village, water has priority over education. Every day she is lowered into a 60-feet-deep well, tied precariously with a rope. Every time she descends into the well, she fills 10 pitchers of water and sends them up. For an onlooker, the process is unnerving. At this well, the exercise is especially dangerous, since it is rocky and deep.

But for Priyanka, this is routine. Need takes precedence over fear and practice has made her an expert. "This has been happening for three years now. This is our only source of water, and I have to skip school at times," she said. Groundwater levels have plummeted to 300 feet in several places across Marathwada owing to wanton boring for agricultural use or consumption. And it is the children who bear the burden. Priyanka's village is part of the constituency of Maharashtra's Rural Welfare Minister, Pankaja Munde. And the administration and the local politicians have little to offer than age-old promises of tankers. There, however, is no contingency plan in case a similar drought grips Ahmednagar, from where the water is sourced.

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Boiling Water to Frozen water trick Backfires in US

As per a report:

A trick where boiling water is thrown in the air to instantly turn into snow in the bitingly cold US weather became a viral hit this week, as metereologists and TV reporters illustrated just how freezing it is in the polar vortex. But now it seems Americans are feeling the backlash of the stunt after trying it themselves in the -30 degree weather. 

The LA Times found that at least 50 people on social media complained that they or their friends were scalded by hot water on Monday and Tuesday. Videos have emerged online of people trying the trick out before getting hurt when the water touches them. Others have posted photos of their injuries on Instagram, and some have even mentioned visits to Accident and Emergency to receive treatment for their burns. St Louis Children's Hospital in Missouri said on Tuesday it had treated two children for burns after trying the trick.

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