Dhanawali – the Pune village that time, and the state, forgot

It is what carries the sick down and, sometimes, the dead back up. It is what substitutes for ambulances, for roads, for the basic assurance that help can reach developed areas.

Dhanawali villagers trekking up the hill (Express photo by Pavan Khengre)

Dhanawali is home to around 600 people from the Mahadev Koli tribe. To reach the upper hamlet, the Indian Express team trekked for six hours. For the villagers, this is not a trek, but an inevitable part of their everyday routine.

A village divided by a promise

The story of Dhanawali’s isolation begins in 1990, when the government introduced a relocation plan, and some families moved to the foot of the hill, forming what is now called Khalchi (lower) Dhanawali.

As many as 25 families, over 300 people, stayed back uphill, in Varchi (upper) Dhanawali. Their farmland was there. Their lives were there. They could not simply walk away.

What followed was a quiet, decades-long abandonment.

Khalchi Dhanawali eventually got a road connecting it to Kankwadi, which has a State Transport bus stop linking further to Bhor. But even this road is mostly broken.

A makeshift stretcher, locally called ‘Dal’, is used to carry the sick down the hill. (Express photo by Shubham Kurale)

“About 85 per cent of the 3.5 km stretch is in bad condition. Only around 500 metres was rebuilt in April under the Thakkar Bappa Adivasi Vasti Sudharana Yojana,” said Mahesh Kalekar, the village’s Gramsevak.

For upper Dhanawali, there is no road at all.

“I have been following up on road, water, and electricity issues for over three decades,” said Dattatraya Dhanawale, Chairman of the Mahadev Koli Samaj, Bhor Taluka, adding, “with limited success.”

What a matchbox costs here

Bhiku Dhanawale has lived in upper Dhanawali for his entire life. So did his father, and his father’s father – seven generations on this hill. Today, to buy medicines or even a matchbox from the nearest shop in Kankwadi, he walks for over three hours.

For Maruti Dhanawale, 70, selling his agricultural produce – wheat, rice, honey, barnyard and finger millets – in larger markets in Bhor means a full-day journey for what is a 90-kilometre round trip.

“The bus frequency is very low, and it takes a whole day to sell the produce and return,” he said.

Electricity arrived in upper Dhanawali only in 2020.

Two generations, one village, the same uncertain future. (Express photo by Pavan Khengre)

Piped water from a nearby stream came only in 2023. Kausalya Dhanawale, whose home sits between the two hamlets, has neither.

She applied for an electricity connection last year and is still waiting. “We trek 25 minutes to our relatives’ home in lower Dhanawali just to charge our phones,” she said. The situation eventually forced her to shift to Bhor altogether.

When the rains come

Every year, before the monsoon, Gramsevak Kalekar conducts a survey, identifying pregnant women, the elderly, the critically ill, and urging them to move to a government hospital near Bhor before the roads turn deadly.

It is a pre-monsoon ritual born entirely out of the absence of infrastructure.

“Earlier, due to delays in reaching the hospital, there have been deaths,” said Dattatraya Dhanawale.

From July to September, the upper village is effectively sealed. “We cannot come down except in emergencies. We survive on wild greens and whatever we have stocked before the rains,” said Rohidas Danawale.

“In 2021, landslides swept away roads across seven villages including Dhanawali, cutting off over 3,000 people for three months. It triggered a relocation proposal from the district administration in 2022. That proposal is still pending approval,” said Kalekar.

Born here, invisible on paper

Shobha Dhanawale’s elder son now works as a waiter in Bhor. Her younger son is studying an ITI fabrication course there. She stayed. “Every election, politicians come, make promises about road connectivity, and disappear,” she said. Her suggestion is part practical, part plea: “Even if a road is too difficult to build here, think about a ropeway. Tourists come to Raireshwar nearby. It could bring us jobs too.”

But it is her younger son, Sunny, 19, whose situation cuts deepest. Sunny wants to be a police officer. But to access government reservations under the Scheduled Tribe category, he needs documents proving tribal identity across three generations, paperwork of the past 50 years. “Most people here are illiterate. They have either lost their documents or never had them,” he said.

Still waiting

Dilip Dhanawale, the Adivasi member of the Gram Panchayat, said the local MLA and Sub-Divisional Officer have assured that road repair work to Kankwadi will resume after the monsoon. “If our demands are not met, we will protest at the District Collector’s office,” he said.

Rohidas Danawale, open to relocation but on a condition: “Our ancestors were soldiers of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, so we have been living here for generations and love this place. I agree that relocation is sometimes the last option. But the government should provide us with agricultural land in nearby areas, as we depend entirely on farming and forest produce. Without that, what is the point of moving?”