Jhumak Lal of Pratap Pur village is a sarpanch with a difference. He is a Dalit sarpanch in an upper-caste village, and he begs for a living.He lives in a small, dilapidated mud house, donated by the villagers and that was previously used to keep pigs. Away from the main village, it has no power. Jhumak has no assured source of income or family support, so he begs in nearby villages to support his wife and two minor children. If he finds himself busy with sarpanch activities, Resham Bai substitutes him on the ‘‘job’’.As sarpanch, Jhumak is expected to attend official functions, and since he climbed to the post, he has learnt to sign his name in Hindi on official papers.But if that’s the extent of his literacy, it’s certainly not a reflection of his ability. On January 26 this year, Jhumak received a special award for his panchayat for ending untouchability. His panchayat has also fixed its targets for the family planning programme.Unlike other sarpanchs known to be more interested in amassing wealth, Jhumak has got development works worth several lakhs executed in the panchayat without obviously no benefit to himself or his family. Two houseless families have got accommodation under the Indira Awas Yojana even as he lives in a borrowed house. On Sunday, Durg Collector I.C.P. Kesari promised to get Jhumak too a house under the Yojana.Thankful for being selected as sarpanch by the village, Jhumak says he has lots of plans for it. ‘‘I want to see all village streets and lanes rebuilt with proper drainage system, get the all-purpose village pond cleaned, get a bathing place built there, take up widening of the main bazaar and get a health centre sanctioned,’’ he says.‘‘It’s purely for his loyalty and service to the village that we made him a sarpanch,’’ says Thakur Vishno Singh, the previous sarpanch who now functions as an up-sarpanch under Jhumak. The post passed on to Jhumak after it was reserved for the SC community, and the villagers thought he was the best man for it. Before that, Singh had held the post since 1984.Incidentally, Singh had also given Jhumak his only job — that of protecting village crops from monkeys — in 1984 when he was the sarpanch and the latter a landless Dalit. That got Jhumak Rs 1,500-Rs 1,600 as collections from the villagers for protecting their fields. ‘‘Now this income is gone and I live only on what I get from begging,’’ he confesses.
