Toll 151: Survivors don’t want to abandon village

Malin landslide: Rescue ops almost complete in village; survivors say village will bounce back.

Three-month-old Rudra and mother Pramila Lembhe who survived the landslide likely to be discharged from hospital on Wednesday. (Source: Express photo by Rajesh Stephen)

Efforts to recover bodies from mud-and-rock debris in Malin village neared completion after the recovery of the 151st body since rescue operations began last week. Survivors of the landslide who are leaving the village were not in a mood to abandon home and hearth and believe that the village will bounce back. Even top local politicians do not believe the village will disappear from Pune’s map and they do not rule out rehabilitating the survivors at the same place.

“Where will we go? We have nowhere to go other than our village,” says Meena Lembhe (35), who lost her two children and mother.

Meena, recuperating at Manchar hospital after she was pulled out of the debris, said, “We have our farm nearby which is our only source of livelihood. We cannot live in our farm… we will have to live nearby, probably in the same village if the government allows us to live,” she says.

Two days back, the district administration asked the families living in 12 houses to evict. This was after an advisory by the Geological Survey of India (GSI), which warned of more landslides .

Ramchandra Zanjare, a farmer whose house remained intact when stones and slush from the hill crashed down, said, “Most of us are farmers who have farms in and around Malin village. We have been living in Malin for years. If the government evicts us, we will have nowhere to go…,” he said, tears in his eyes. Pramila Lembhe, who and her son were miraculously found alive in the debris nine hours after the landslide, said, “My son Rudra was born here…,” said Pramila likely to be discharged from Manchar hospital along with her baby on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the last of the family that survived the landslide bid goodbye to the village. This morning, the family of Rajiv Zanjare collected some belongings they had kept in the house the previous day while moving out. “We have been asked to move out…we don’t know where we will go; actually no one wants to leave this place…,” he said.

Like the villagers, top local politicians are keen on the village not becoming history. “It would be wrong to state that Malin will become history. It is true that eviction notices have been issued by the district administration. But these are temporary eviction notices taken as a precautionary measure. Since there have been warnings of more landslides, survivors have been asked to shift temporarily,” Assembly speaker Dilip Walse-Patil said on Tuesday. Walse-Patil said, “The question of shifting villages at the foothills has to be taken at the national level. This is because across the country thousands of villages are located at the foot of hills,” he said. Walse-Patil was reacting to comments by NCP chief Sharad Pawar, in Malin, that the state government should take expert advise on shifting villages from foothills.

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Walse-Patil said there were 800-850 villagers in Malin and nearby hamlets. “158 have apparently died. There are other survivors whose views need to be taken before deciding to rehabilitate them or not in the village,” he said. On the other hand, Shirur MP Shivajirao Adhalrao-Patil, in whose constituency Malin village falls, said, “I have not really thought what would happen. Actually, I am not even aware the district administration issued eviction notices since I am in Parliament,” he said. Adhalrao’s associates said they would talk to survivors before any decision is taken.

The NDRF recovered 151 bodies so far. While the district administration believes 158 were buried by the landslide, villagers claim there were 200-300 people. “As per our information, there were 44 houses. Each had at least four members when tragedy struck. So we guess between 150-170 people were present,” said Additional Collector Ganesh Patil.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

Parthasarathi Biswas

Partha Sarathi Biwas is an Assistant Editor with The Indian Express with 10+ years of experience in reporting on Agriculture, Commodities and Developmental issues. He has been with The Indian Express since 2011 and earlier worked with DNA. Partha's report about Farmers Producer Companies (FPC) as well long pieces on various agricultural issues have been cited by various academic publications including those published by the Government of India. He is often invited as a visiting faculty to various schools of journalism to talk about development journalism and rural reporting. In his spare time Partha trains for marathons and has participated in multiple marathons and half marathons. ... Read More

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