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, harsh delta of 100 islands in the Indian state of West Bengal. Her son Ajit, just starting to walk, was full of life: bubbly, restless and curious about the world.
That morning, like many others, the family was busy with their daily chores. Mangala fed Ajit breakfast and took 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, slipped by unnoticed. Mangala shouted to her mother-in-law to watch him, but there was no response. A few minutes later, when she realized how quiet she had become, panic set in.
“Where’s my boy? Has anyone seen my boy?” she screamed. Neighbors rushed to help.
Despair quickly turned in her heart when her son-in-law found Ajit’s tiny body floating in the pond yard outside their house. The boy pulled out and slid into the water – a moment of innocence turned into an unimaginable tragedy.
Today, Mangala is one of 16 mothers in the area who walk or bike to two makeshift creches that have set up a non-profit organization where they care for, feed and educate some 40 children, who are dropped off by their parents on their way to work. “These mothers are the saviors of children who are not their own,” says Sujoy Roy of the Child in Need Institute (CINI), which set up the Creches.
The need for such care is urgent: countless children continue to drown in this river region, which is covered with ponds and rivers. Every home has a pond that is used for bathing, washing, and even drawing drinking water.
A 2020 survey by medical research organization George Institute and CINI found that nearly three children between the ages of one and nine drowned every day in the Sundarbans region. Drownings peaked in July, when the monsoon rains began, between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon. Most of the children were not supervised at that time because the caregivers were busy with work. About 65% drowned within 50 m of home, and only 6% received care from licensed physicians. Health care was in shambles: hospitals were scarce and many public health clinics were broken.
In response, the locals clung to ancient superstitions to save the rescued children. They rolled the child’s body over the adult’s head, chanting invocations. They beat the water with sticks to keep the spirits away.
“As a mother, I know the pain of losing a child,” Mangala told me. “I don’t want any other mother to go through what I did. I want to protect those children from drowning. We live in the midst of so much danger anyway.”
Life in the Sundarbans, home to four million people, is a daily struggle.
Tigers, known to attack humans, roam dangerously close and enter crowded villages where the poor man used to go out Living, often squatting on land.
People fish, collect honey and collect crabs under constant threat from tigers and poisonous snakes. From July to October, rivers and ponds swell from heavy rains, cyclones roll through the region and raging waters engulf villages. Climate change exacerbates this uncertainty. Almost 16% of the population here is between the ages of one and nine.
“We have always existed with water, oblivious to the danger, until tragedy strikes,” says Sujata Das.
Sujata’s life was undone three months ago when her 18-month-old daughter, Ambika, drowned in the pond at their shared family home in Kultali.
Her sons were in their coaching classes, some family members had gone to the market and the elder aunt was busy working at home. Her husband, who usually works in the southern state of Kerala, was at home that day, mending a fishing net on a nearby paddock. Sujata went to fetch water at the local hand pump as the promised water at her residence has still not materialized.
“Then we found her floating in the pond. It was raining, the water rose. We took her to the local Quack, who pronounced her dead. This tragedy awakened us to what we should do to prevent such tragedies in the future,” says Sujata.
Sujata, like others in the village, plans to fence off his pond with bamboo and nets to prevent children from wandering into the water. He hopes that children who do not know how to swim are taught in village ponds. He wants to encourage neighbors to learn CPR to provide lifesaving assistance to rescued drowning children.
“Children don’t vote, so there is often a lack of political will to address these issues,” says Mr. Roy. “That’s why we focus on building local resilience and spreading knowledge.”
In the past two years, about 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 creches and raising awareness among the community,” he adds.
Implementation of even simple solutions is challenging due to cost and local beliefs.
In the Sundarbans, superstitions about angering water deities made it difficult for people to fence their ponds. In neighboring Bangladesh, where drowning is the leading cause of death for children under the age of four, wooden playgrounds have been introduced in backyards to keep children safe. However, compliance was low – children do not like them, and villagers often used them for goats and ducks. “It created a false sense of security, and drowning rates increased slightly over three years,” says Jagnoor Jagneor, an injury epidemiologist at the George Institute.
Eventually, non-profit organizations in Bangladesh installed 2,500 creches, reducing drowning deaths by 88%. In 2024, the government expanded this to 8,000 centers, benefiting 200,000 children annually. 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, especially among schoolchildren traveling on waterways.
Drowning remains a major global issue. In 2021, around 300,000 people drowned – over 30 lives lost every hour, according to the WHO. Almost half were under the age of 29, and a quarter under the age of five. India’s data is sparse, officially recording about 38,000 drowning deaths in 2022, although the actual number is likely much higher.
In the Sundarbans, harsh reality is always present. For years, children were allowed to roam free or tied with ropes and cloth to prevent wandering. Jingling anklets have been used to alert parents to their children’s movements, but nothing feels truly safe in this unforgiving waterscape.
Kakoli Das’ six-year-old son stepped into a crowded pond last summer while delivering a piece of paper to a neighbor. Unable to distinguish between the road and the water, Ishan drowned. As a child he suffered seizures and could not learn to swim due to the risk of fever.
“Please, I’m asking every mother: fence your ponds, learn how to revive children and teach them how to swim. This is about saving lives. We can’t afford to wait,” says Kakoli.
For now, the creches serve as a beacon of hope, offering a way to keep children safe from the dangers of water. On a recent afternoon, four-year-old Manik Pal sang a jaunty jingle to remind his friends: I won’t go to the pond alone/Unless my parents are with me/I’ll learn to swim and stay in the air/And live my life I fear.
