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Kakoli Das with a photographer of her six-year-old son Ishan, who drowned three months ago
Mangala Pradhan will never forget the morning she lost her one-year-old son.
16 years ago, in the unforgiving Sundarbans – a vast, harsh delta of 100 islands in the Indian state of West Bengal. His son Ajit, just starting to walk, was full of life: frisky, restless and curious about the world.
That morning, like so many others, the family was busy with their daily chores. Mangala had fed Ajit breakfast and taken him to the kitchen while she cooked. Her husband was buying vegetables and her sick mother-in-law was resting in another room.
But little Ajit, always eager to explore, wandered away unnoticed. Mangala shouted for his mother-in-law to look at him, but there was no response. A few minutes later, when she realized how quiet she had become, panic set in.
“Where is my boy? Has anyone seen my boy?” She screamed. Neighbors rushed to help.
Despair quickly turned to grief when his brother-in-law found Ajit’s small body floating in the pond in the courtyard outside their dilapidated house. The little boy had wandered away and slipped into the water – a moment of innocence turned into unthinkable tragedy.
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Every house has a pond used for bathing, washing and even drinking water designs
Today, Mangala is one of 16 mothers in the area who walk or roll to two makeshift daycare centers set up by a nonprofit where they care for, feed and educate around 40 children, who are dropped off by their parents on the way to work. “These mothers are the saviors of children who are not theirs,” says Sujoy Roy of Child in Need Institute (CINI), which set up the crèches.
The need for such care is urgent: countless children continue to drown in this riverine region, which is dotted with ponds and rivers. Every house has a pond used for bathing, washing and even drinking water designs.
A 2020 survey by medical research organization, the George Institute and CINI, found that nearly three children aged between one and nine years drowned per day in the Sundarbans region. Drownings peaked in July, when the monsoon rains began and between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon. Most of the children were unsupervised at the time because caregivers were busy with chores. About 65% drowned within 50 meters of home and only 6% received treatment from registered doctors. Health care was in shambles: hospitals were scarce and many public health clinics had disappeared.
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Mangala Pradhan, whose son drowned in his home pond 16 years ago, now looks after children in a daycare center
In response, the villagers cling to ancient superstitions to save rescued children. They turned the child’s body over an adult’s head, chanting invocations. They beat the water with sticks to ward off the spirits.
“As a mother, I know the pain of losing a child,” Mangala told me. “I don’t want any other mother to put up with what I did. I want to protect these children from drowning. We live in the middle of so much danger anyway.”
Life in Sundarbans, home to four million people, is a daily struggle.
Tigers, known for attacking humans, move dangerously and enter crowded villages where poor people live, often crouching on the ground.
People fish, collect honey and herd crabs under constant threat from tigers and venomous snakes. From July to October, rivers and ponds swell due to heavy rains, cyclones cap the region and raging waters swallow the villages. Climate change compounds this uncertainty. Nearly 16% of the population here is aged nine to nine.
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More than a dozen mothers care for 40 children in makeshift nurseries called kavach or armor
“We have always coexisted with water, ignoring the dangers, until tragedy struck,” says Sujata Das.
Sujata’s life was cut short three months ago when her 18-month-old daughter Ambika, drowned in the pond at their joint family home in Kultali.
Her sons were in their coaching classes, some family members had gone to the market and an elderly aunt was busy working at home. Her husband, who usually works in the southern state of Kerala, was at home that day, repairing a fishing net at the nearby trawler. Sujata had gone to fetch water from a local hand pump because a promised water connection to her residence had still not materialized.
“Then we found her floating in the pond. It had rained, the water had increased. We took her to a local quack, who pronounced her dead. This tragedy has awakened us to what we should do to prevent such tragedies in the future,” Sujata said.
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Kakoli Das and her daughter Isha, who tragically lost their son and brother when he drowned on their way to a neighbor’s house
Sujata, like others in the village, plans to fence her pond with bamboo and nets to prevent children from wandering into the water. She hopes that children who cannot swim are taught in the village ponds. She wants to encourage neighbors to learn CPR to provide life-saving assistance to rescued core children.
“Children don’t vote, so the political will to resolve these issues is often lacking,” says Mr. Roy. “That’s why we focus on building local resilience and spreading knowledge.”
Over the past two years, around 2,000 villagers have received CPR training. Last July, a villager saved a drowning child by reviving him before he was sent to hospital. “The real challenge lies in setting up crèches and raising awareness in the community,” he adds.
Implementing even simple solutions is difficult due to costs and local beliefs.
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Swimming lessons in a newly fenced pond in Sundarbans
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Sujala Sasmal, whose son drowned during the pandemic, stands at the edge of her fenced pond
In the Sundarbans, superstition regarding angry water deities has made it difficult to get people to fence off. In neighboring Bangladesh, where drowning is the leading cause of death for children aged one four, wooden playpens have been introduced into playgrounds to keep children safe. However, compliance was low – children loved them and villagers often used them for goats and ducks. “This created a false sense of security, and drowning rates increased slightly over three years,” says Jagnoor Jagnoor, an injury epidemiologist at the George Institute.
Eventually, nonprofits set up 2,500 daycare centers in Bangladesh, reducing drowning by 88%. In 2024, the government expanded this to 8,000 centers, benefiting 200,000 children per year. Water-rich Vietnam has focused on children aged six to 10, using decades of mortality data to develop policies and teach survival skills. This has reduced drowning rates, particularly among schoolchildren traveling on waterways.
Comrade of the Cross
Sujata Das decided to fence her pond…
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…After her 18-month-old daughter, Ambika drowned last year
Drowning remains a major global problem. In 2021, around 300,000 people drowned – more than 30 lives lost every hour, according to the WHO. Nearly half were under 29 and a quarter were under five. Data from India is scarce, officially recording around 38,000 drowning deaths in 2022, although the true number is likely much higher.
In the Sundarbans, the harsh reality is still present. For years, children were allowed to roam freely or tied up in ropes and cloth to prevent wandering. Anklets have been used to alert parents to their children’s movements, but in this unforgiving, water-assisted landscape, nothing really feels safe.
Kakoli Das’ six-year-old son walked into an overflowing pond last summer while delivering a piece of paper to a neighbor. Unable to distinguish between road and water, Ishan drowned. He had suffered seizures as a child and was unable to learn to swim due to the risk of fever.
“Please, I beg every mother: fence your ponds, learn to revive children and teach them to swim. This is about saving lives. We cannot afford to wait,” says Kakoli .
For now, nurseries serve as a beacon of hope, offering a way to protect children from the dangers of water. On a recent afternoon, four-year-old Manik Pal sang a singalong to remind his friends: I won’t go to the pond alone / Unless my parents are with me / I will learn to swim and to stay afloat / and live my life without fear.
