Sundarbans: How mothers are fighting to stop drowning deaths in Indian wetlands

Mangala Pradhan will never forget the morning she lost her one-year-old son. It was 16 years ago in the harsh Sundarbans region of West Bengal, India, a vast and unforgiving delta of 100 islands. Her son, Ajit, had just started walking, full of energy: lively, active, and curious about the world.

That morning, like any other, the whole family was busy with daily chores. Mangala fed Ajit breakfast and then took him to the kitchen while she started cooking. Her husband was out buying groceries, and her ailing mother-in-law was resting in another room. However, little Ajit, always eager to explore, slipped away unnoticed. Mangala called out to her mother-in-law to watch him, but there was no response. Panic set in minutes later when she realized how quiet it had become.

“Where is my child? Has anyone seen my child?” she screamed. Neighbors rushed in to help. Despair quickly turned to heartbreak when her brother-in-law found Ajit’s tiny body floating in the pond outside their dilapidated house. The little boy had wandered out and slipped into the water—an innocent moment turned into an unimaginable tragedy.

Today, Mangala is one of 16 mothers in the area who walk or cycle to two makeshift daycare centers set up by a non-profit, where they care for, feed, and educate about 40 children, dropped off by their parents on their way to work. “These mothers are saviors of children who are not even their own,” says Sujoy Roy of the Child in Need Institute (CINI), which established the daycares.

The need for such care is dire: in this riverine area riddled with ponds and waterways, countless children continue to drown. Every household has a pond used for bathing, washing clothes, and even fetching drinking water. A 2020 survey by the George Institute and CINI found that nearly three children between the ages of 1 and 9 drown every day in the Sundarbans. Drownings peak with the start of the July monsoon rains and occur between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Most children are unsupervised at that time as caregivers are busy with household chores. About 65% of drownings occur within 50 meters of the home, and only 6% receive care from a licensed doctor. The healthcare system is in shambles: hospitals are scarce, and many public health clinics are derelict.

In response, villagers superstitiously resort to age-old beliefs to save rescued children. They rotate the child’s body over an adult’s head while chanting mantras. They beat the water with sticks to drive away evil spirits. “As a mother, I know the pain of losing a child,” Mangala tells me. “I don’t want any other mother to suffer what I went through. I want to protect these children from drowning. We live with so much danger anyway.”

The Sundarbans, home to four million people, is a daily struggle. Tigers attack humans, dangerously approaching and entering crowded villages where the poor barely scrape by, often building homes haphazardly on the land. People fish, collect honey, and catch crabs under the constant threat of tigers and poisonous snakes. From July to October, rivers and ponds swell with torrential rains, cyclones batter the region, and surging waters swallow villages. Climate change is intensifying this uncertainty. Nearly 16% of the population here is between the ages of 1 and 9.

“We have always coexisted with water, not knowing the danger, until tragedy strikes,” says Sujata Das. Three months ago, Sujata’s life was turned upside down when her 18-month-old daughter, Ambika, drowned in a pond at their shared home in Kultali. Her sons were at tutoring classes, some family members were at the market, and an elderly aunt was busy with chores at home. Her husband, who usually works in southern Kerala, was home that day, repairing fishing nets on a nearby trawler. Sujata had gone to a local hand pump to fetch water because the promised water pipe at her home was still not a reality.

“Then we found her floating in the pond. It had rained, and the water level had risen. We took her to a local quack who declared her dead. The tragedy was a wake-up call that we should do something to prevent future tragedies,” Sujata says. Sujata, like others in her village, plans to fence her pond with bamboo and netting to keep children away from the water. She wants to teach children who don’t know how to swim to learn in the village ponds. She wants to encourage neighbors to learn CPR to provide life-saving aid to rescued drowning children.

“Children don’t have a vote, so the political will to address these issues is often lacking,” says Mr. Roy. “That’s why we focus on building local resilience and spreading knowledge.” The support provided by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), India’s top scientific body, in funding daycares and pond fencing is also crucial. In the past two years, about 2,000 villagers have been trained in CPR. Last July, a villager saved a life by reviving a drowning child before they could be taken to a hospital. “The real challenge is setting up daycares and raising awareness in the community,” he adds.

Even implementing simple solutions is challenging because of cost and local beliefs. In the Sundarbans, superstitions about angering water deities make it difficult to fence their ponds. In neighboring Bangladesh, where drowning is the leading cause of death for children between 1 and 4, they introduced wooden playpens in yards to keep children safe. However, compliance is low—children don’t like them, and villagers often use 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.

Ultimately, non-profits established 2,500 daycares in Bangladesh, reducing drowning deaths by 88%. In 2024, the government expanded that to 8,000 centers, reaching 200,000 children annually. Water-rich Vietnam focused on children ages 6 to 10, using decades of mortality data to create policies and teach survival skills. This reduced drowning rates, especially among schoolchildren who travel by water.

Drowning remains a major global problem. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 300,000 people drowned in 2021—more than 30 people every hour. Nearly half were under the age of 29, and a quarter were under the age of 5. Official data in India is scarce, with official records showing about 38,000 drownings in 2022, but the actual number is likely much higher.

In the Sundarbans, the brutal reality is everywhere. For years, children were either allowed to roam freely or were tied up with ropes and cloths to prevent them from wandering off. Tinkling anklets were used to alert parents to their children’s movements, but in this unforgiving, water-surrounded landscape, nothing feels truly safe. Kakoli Das’s six-year-old son wandered into an overflowing pond last summer while delivering a piece of paper to a neighbor. Ishan, unable to distinguish between the road and the water, drowned. He had suffered from epilepsy as a young child and was unable to learn to swim due to the risk of fever.

“Please, I implore every mother: fence your ponds, learn how to revive children, and teach them how to swim. This is about saving lives. We cannot wait any longer,” Kakoli says. For now, the daycares are beacons of hope, offering a way to keep children away from the dangers of the water. One recent afternoon, four-year-old Manik Pal sang a cheerful song, reminding his friends: I won’t go to the pond alone/Unless my parents are with me/I will learn to swim and stay afloat/And live without a worry.