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Journalism of Courage
Madhya Pradesh’s northernmost district, Morena shares boundaries with Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. With the Chambal river creating the natural boundary, the district also shares ravines, semi-arid land, lack of development, and a dark history – of legendary brigands – especially with Uttar Pradesh.
“Developing this area is difficult, but we need someone to plan something for us – we cannot live like this forever,” local resident Satnam Singh Choudhary said.
Development is a word heard often in the district, left out as it has been in the race for either industrial evolution, or even agricultural revolution that has swept most other areas of the state. “It is difficult to farm on the ravines; we do it on small clearings. The area is very poor, and there are no jobs. So all of us go to the shop,” said Sagar Singh Gujjar, 23, whose whole family — two brothers and both parents — work at the family’s tea stall in Devpuri, near the national highway that connects Agra and Gwalior. “This time I want the government to set up some kind of work for us youths – I want to step away from the life that is usual in Chambal,” Gujjar said.
Over the years, there has been much debate on what to do on the terrains of Chambal. The government has considered razing sections of the ravines into farmlands, but environmentalists contend that the area’s ecology is sensitive. For the people, however, it is not one or the other. “We do not want to lose our identity, which is connected to the bihad (ravines). But we also can’t always live in a barren land with no work. The government has to do something,” a villager said.
In a district where BJP won four of the six Assembly seats in 2013, with the other two going to BSP,and where there is much respect for PM Narendra Modi but a proximity to Gwalior also causes affinity to Congress’s Jyotiraditya Scindia, the writing is on the wall: development has to be delivered, and now.
