BEHRAMPORE, 16 JUNE: The adage that necessity is the mother of invention is apt for Kajisha, a gram panchayat at Beldanga in Murshidabad. The gram panchayat, with a cluster of villagers, has turned out to be a rare bit of rural Bengal by setting a precedence: to rope in a band of rickshaw-van pullers for supplying pure drinking water on demand to households determined to drink arsenic-free water at any cost. The story goes back to an initiative taken by a farming cooperative, Kajisha Krishi Samabai Samiti, which could feel the demand of paid service for drinking water supply. Villagers first introduced a rickshaw-van puller who used to demand 50 paisa per litre of water collected from an anti-arsenic plant commissioned by former chief minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, in the Majhyampur area of Beldanga in 2008. Reports of benefit of drinking arsenic-free water spread like wildfire in the villages because arsenic contamination in drinking water kills a number of people every year here. People suffer from arsenic poisoning leading to cancer which is prevalent in almost every household. The farming cooperative felt that just one rickshaw-puller was not enough to meet the demand of around 18,000 people in Kajisha which, needless to say, has no running water facility. The cooperative initially provided a tank of 500-litre capacity to the van-puller but with time it proved to be too inadequate to meet the villagers