Letters from Latitude 20°15: ‘I want my sons to become what I could not’

Sandhya Salve, known here as “Sister Salve”, is angry because “the government doesn’t care about her”. She is happy because she has just had a baby son, two months old.

She is angry again — she is on a 11-month contract renewable each year and the lack of job security is “killing her”. There, she is happy now, her elder son, three-year-old Aryan, has come into the room and is tugging at her white sari.

Fiercely outspoken, Salve is the only “staff nurse” at the health centre in this village almost 75 km from Jalna city in upper Maharashtra and has only one wish for 2015, one that is “burning me from inside”.

“Please, I want a permanent government job,” she says.

Salve completed her Class 10 from the government high school at Sipora in Jalna’s Jaffrabad Taluk, her B.Sc from Siddharth College and her diploma in General Nursing and Midwifery (GNM) from Mother Teresa School of Nursing, Buldana.

She is 25 years old and got this job in June 2010, just one month after her “arranged marriage” to Vijay Dattu Gawai, 26. “After completing my diploma in January that year, I sent an application to the district authorities for a job under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM),” she says.

The appointment letter was a happy coincidence then but one that has since trapped this family in an annual cycle of hope and despair.

“I have been waiting for more than four years for my post to be made a permanent one. I am tired of this endless wait,” she says, speaking in short, angry bursts.

Salve is happy though that she has been allowed to stay in this quarters as a “special case” because she is “on call, 24 hours”.

But then, looking quickly at her husband, she says, “He is a diploma-holder in Mechanical Engineering but now works as a part-time driver because he has to stay at home and look after the children. He has sacrificed everything for me. But do we get any benefit out of this? No. I get Rs 10,000 per month as salary. How will that be enough for us? Soon I will have to put Aryan in a school and the donation itself is Rs 20,000. Then Viren will grow up. What will I do?”

Salve says her nightmare is that “one day, five-six years later, they will just tell me that I don’t have a contract any more. What will I do? By then I will be 30-32, and nobody will give me a job even in the private sector.”

Forget the job, she says. “What will happen if tomorrow they say you have to vacate this quarters because that’s only for permanent staff? What will I do? You tell me. Jab bolenge khali karna padega (Whenever they ask me, I will have to vacate).”

While Salve pauses to take breath, her husband looks up at an image of B.R. Ambedkar on the scarred wall, and gently adds, “Meri umeed hai ki government hamara ungli pakadke hamein aage le jaayegi (My hope is that the government will hold our fingers and take us forward).”

Then, looking at his wife, Gawai adds, “Once she gets a permanent government job, everything will settle down here.”

“No, no, I have no confidence that it will happen,” Salve cuts in.

“My other wish for the new year is to build a house. But again, everything is tied to my job. How will I build a house with the money we get now? If my job is made permanent, I will get Rs 30,000 every month. That will change our lives,” she adds.

Salve and her husband can’t even ask their parents to come and help out. “I am the second child in my family in Sipora. My father is working as a headmaster in a school. My elder brother is mentally challenged, and the younger one is a teacher. My husband’s father is an active farmer. How can they come and stay with us? My poor husband is stuck at home,” she says.

Does the job of a nurse have no importance, asks Gawai, as his second son starts crying and his wife rushes inside to check on him. “There is a vacancy for three temporary staff nurses here, but there’s only my wife now, on duty all the time,” he adds.

The clean and well-maintained Khasgaon PHC is one of 40 in Jalna district, which has just begun to recover from a drought. And Salve touches the lives of at least 50-80 people every day —- “around 150 on Thursdays, the local bazaar day”.

Mukesh Mote, the doctor in-charge, is a taluk-level official and is just 20 minutes away, but he has to oversee three other PHCs too. The government, meanwhile, is still hunting for medical officers to fill the two vacant slots. “Besides the pharmacist and six health workers who are involved mainly in preventive measures such as vaccinations, it’s Sister Salve most of the time when it comes to basic treatment,” he says.

What are the chances of her getting that permanent job? “We are trying, hopefully something will happen this year,” Dr Mote adds.

“Sometimes, I come home, rest for five minutes and then a call comes from the guard that a patient has come,” says Salve.

However, it’s not only about anger and frustration, there is also a sense of pride at being able to actually save a human life.

“Last year, I got a call at 8.30 pm from the guard that a bike accident case had arrived. I rushed over and saw that the patient’s head had split open from the back, I could see a part of his brain. I quickly started basic bandaging when the man started having fits, and his eyes rolled up. I loosened the bandage, and called for an ambulance to rush him to the taluk hospital. I later got a call from a relative to say that he had survived.”

And then, there’s hope, so strong and so visible that a smile as big as the sun is back on Sister Salve’s face, that everything will turn out well in the end — hopefully, as soon as this new year.

“Whatever happens to us, I want to give my children the best education,” she says. “I want one of them to be a doctor. Either Aryan, who now wants to be a police officer, or Viren. I want one of them to become what I could not. I want them to look after people like us, in the villages of this country. Let’s see what the new year brings.”