Global Village

At the time of my first visit to two of the 11 padas on July 26, 1998, I remember the slippery trudge uphill to reach Bibewadi as the then hane district collector Shirkant Singh and Zilla Parishad CEO Manisha Verma led officials on a visit to these settlements which didn8217;t even exist on the revenue map. The joint sarpanch of the padas Latifwadi, Panjarwadi, Patilwadi, Chintamanwadi, Daand, Umbravane, Naralwadi, Parardwadi, Biblewadi and Ohlachiwadi 8212; Suman Baban Thakar, had gone with a group of women and met then Chief Minister Manohar Joshi and Education Minister Sudhir Joshi who were holidaying with their families at the Manas resort nearby with a request that their villages be given healthcare, roads and drinking water.

Joshi walked to the village along with the adivasi women to see things for himself, and soon as he returned to Mumbai, the district administration was yanked out of its inertia. Cogs in the government machinery began moving.Yet, except for the kuccha approach roads to three padas and four PDS outlets, little changed. Until death came visiting in May this year and claimed five children in Daand.

It all began with measles and a bout of diarrhoea in the children of the village, where the only sources of water are stagnating pools in Bhatsa nullah. With no access to medical facilites and cut off from the outside world due to monsoon, the Wares kept trying traditional medicines in hope of a miracle. Lakhu8217;s wife Yashoda then blankly said: 8220;There was nothing we could do. We just lay them down and waited for them to die.8221;

Of course, everyone blames the difficult terrain and the area8217;s inaccessibility, but very little came of the findings that no immunisation drive had been carried out after October 13, 1998 till the deaths. Even Dr S Yampalle, medical officer in-charge of Kasara, failed to notice that immunisation had not been done when he visited Daand-Umbravane on February 2, 1999. Maybe the children would have survived if they had been protected from measles.

True, the topography has ensured long periods of inaccessibility for these villages and the lack of adequate facilites for income-generation activities has contributed in a big way to conditions here. A pucca road built from the highway four kms away broke off at the deep gorge carrying the Bhatsa waters. The bridge over the gorge could not be built as the files kept doing the rounds of the forest department.

When rains swell the nullah, the villagers remain cut off from the outside world all through monsoon. The choppy waters do not allow health workers from the Kasara Public Health Centre to cross over. No wonder Daand-Umbravane has lost a child or two every monsoon.

During the assembly and parliamentary polls in the rainy season this year, the district administration finally got its act together to build the bridge, which even hunger and death couldn8217;t. In a situation where every vote counts, 350 votes were too much to be forgotten. The road came with Manohar Joshi, the bridge with the polls and the power supply is coming to keep its time with 2000 AD. It is almost as if by themselves the people in Daand-Umbravane were not important.

But will the laying of electricity cables really help? According to MSEB executive engineer M V Zope of the Kalyan circle rural, the board has laid cables till Daand and extended low tension wires till Umbravane on five occasions since 1998. 8220;If cables keep getting stolen, how can we ensure power supply?8221; he asks. Except for the occasional contractual work as gangmen, the villagers have little by way of income-generation activities. 8220;Anyway there are power failures and cuts for a better part of the time.

You can8217;t eat electricity, can you?8221; says sarpanch Thakar, rationalising the cable theft. 8220;Until the government provides proper sources for earning, things like power and phones won8217;t count for much,8221; she feels.

Now for the other facilities being spoken about so glowingly by the district administration. Look at the 60 villages where solar-powered lamp-poles and telephone towers have already been provided. None work. The Kalyan Telecom District general manager, C S Nithiyantham, says: 8220;We are trying to get these telephones connected through a chargeable battery drawing power from local supply.8221; While it is not uncommon for power supply to vanish for 8-10 days in these parts, nobody has answers to how the battery will get charged in these powerless periods. Instead of sitting pretty on its achievement,8217; the government and administration will have to now think of steps to bring in facilites for education, health and income generation to the village. And while its doing that, it can8217;t forget the other nine villages in the west or the remote tribal padas in the east toward Murbad. One only hopes the media will not be needed to lead the way in their case too. Or worse, another millennium.

Yogesh Pawar is a reporter with The Indian Express