India, Jan. 12 -- Residents of Satyaram Chowdhury Para in Dhalai district of Tripura have a strange predicament. The village, with 150 households of the predominantly Reang indigenous tribe, is covered under the tap water supply scheme.

But not even a drop of water supplied by the government is used for drinking or cooking purposes. Instead, villagers claim they use tap water for toilet purposes only. For all their other water needs, women walk a long distance in sloppy terrain to fetch water from a spring. Each trip takes an hour, and women undertake such trips two to three times a day.

"The government tap water supply is dirty, foul smelling, and high in iron. Forget about drinking it, if we try washing clothes with it, our clothes tu...