Mangala Pradhan will never forget the morning she lost her one-year-old son.

It was 16 years ago, in the unforgiving Sundarbans – a vast and demanding delta of 100 islands in the Indian state of West Bengal. Her son Ajit, just starting to walk, is full of life: feverish, restless and curious about the world.

That morning, like many others, the family went about their daily chores. Mangala fed Ajit breakfast and took him to the kitchen while she cooked. Her husband was buying vegetables and her mother-in-law was lying in another room.

But Ajit, with little desire to explore, did not go unnoticed. Mangala shouted to her mother-in-law to look at him but there was no reply. After a few minutes, she panicked when she realized how quiet it had become.

“Where is my boy? Has anyone seen my boy?” she screamed. Neighbors rushed to help.

When her brother-in-law discovers Ajit’s tiny body floating in a pond The courtyard outside their ramshackle home. The young boy wanders and slips into the water – a moment of innocence turns into incredible tragedy.

Today, Mangala is one of 16 mothers in the area who walk or bike to two temporary creches set up by the nonprofit, where they care for, feed and educate the approximately 40 children they Dropped off by parents on the way to work. “These mothers are not the saviors of their children,” says Sujoy Roy, who founded the Childhood Research Institute (CINI) in Kresis.

The need for this care is urgent: countless children continue to drown in this region of the river, which is dotted with ponds and rivers. Every house has a pond for bathing, washing and even pumping water.

A 2020 investigation by the Medical Research Organization George College and Cini found that nearly three children aged three drowned every day in the Sundarbans. The drowning reaches its peak in July, when the monsoon begins, from ten in the morning to two in the afternoon. At the time, most children were unsupervised because caregivers were occupied with chores. About 65% of homes were submerged within 50m, and only 6% received care from a licensed doctor. Healthcare is in disarray: hospitals are scarce and many public health clinics have ceased operations.

In response, villagers cling to ancient superstitions to save the rescued children. They twirled the child’s body over the adult’s head and shouted the call. They beat the water with sticks to keep out the spirits.

“As a mother, I know the pain of losing a child,” Mangala told me. “I don’t want any other mother to have to endure what I did. I want to protect these children from drowning. No matter what, we all encounter a lot of dangers.” ”

Life in Sundarban, home to 4 million people, is a daily struggle.

Tigers, known to attack humans, roam dangerously and into crowded villages, poor eke left Life, often squatting on land.

People fish, collect honey and gather crabs under the constant threat of tigers and venomous snakes. From July to October, rivers and ponds swell as heavy rains, cyclones whip the area and swallow villages across the water. Climate change is exacerbating this uncertainty. Nearly 16% of the population here is between the ages of 1 and 9.

Sujata Das said: “We have always been with the water, unaware of the danger, until tragedy struck.”

Sujata’s life was upended three months ago when her 18-month-old daughter Ambika drowned in a pond at their joint family home in Kultali.

Her son is in their coaching class, some family members have gone to the market and an elderly aunt is busy working from home. Her husband, who usually works in southern Kerala, was home that day and repaired nets on a nearby trawler. Sujata went to collect water from a local hand pump as the promised water connection to her residence remained unfulfilled.

“Then we found her floating in the pond. It had rained and the water had risen. We took her to the local quack who pronounced her dead. This tragedy awakened us to the measures we should take to prevent Tragedy in the future, Sujata said.

Sujata, like others in the village, plans to fence the pond with bamboo and netting to prevent children from wandering into the water. She hopes to teach non-swimming children in a village pond. She wants to encourage her neighbors to learn CPR and provide life-saving assistance to rescued children from drowning.

“Kids don’t vote, so the political will to address these issues is often lacking,” Roy said. “That’s why we focus on building local resilience and spreading knowledge.”

Over the past two years, approximately 2,000 villagers have received CPR training. Last July, a villager saved a child from drowning before being taken to hospital. He added: “The real challenge is to build Kresis and raise awareness among communities.”

Implementing even simple solutions can be challenging due to costs and local beliefs.

Among the Sandarbans, superstitions about irritating water spirits make it difficult to round up people. In neighboring Bangladesh, where drowning is the leading cause of death for children as young as four, wooden harpsichords have been introduced in courtyards to keep children safe. However, compliance is low – children do not like them and villagers often use them for goats and ducks. “This created a false sense of security and the drowning rate increased slightly over three years,” said Jagnoor Jagnoor, an injury epidemiologist at George College.

Ultimately, the nonprofit established 2,500 Kreshi vehicles in Bangladesh, reducing drowning deaths by 88 percent. In 2024, the government will expand it to 8,000 centers benefiting 200,000 children every year. Water-Rich Vietnam focuses on children ages 6-10, using decades of death data to inform policy and teach survival skills. This reduces drowning rates, especially among schoolchildren traveling on waterways.

Drowning remains a major global problem. According to WHO, in 2021, an estimated 300,000 people drowned, with a loss of 30 people every hour. Nearly half are under 29, and a quarter are under five. India, where data is sparse, officially recorded around 38,000 drowning deaths in 2022, although the actual number is likely higher.

Among the Sundarbans, harsh reality is ever present. For years, children were either allowed to roam freely or tied up with ropes and cloth to prevent wandering. Jingling anklets are used to alert parents to their children’s movements, but nothing is truly safe in this unforgiving, aquatic landscape.

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 suffered epileptic seizures as a child and was unable to learn to swim due to the dangers of fever.

“Please, please, mothers: fence your ponds, learn how to resuscitate your children and teach them how to swim. This is about saving lives. We can’t afford to wait,” Kakoli said.

For now, Creches serve as a beacon of hope, providing a way to protect children from the dangers of water. On a recent afternoon, four-year-old Manik Pal sang a cheerful song to remind his friends: I won’t go to the pond alone / Unless my parents are with me / I will learn Swim and stay alive/keep living my life without fear.