Bundelkhand: Nearly 275 families of the Kuchbandhiya community live in Khamora village in the Mahuwa block of Banda district in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh.
These families do not have any land and the basis of their livelihood is very precarious. Amidst such conditions, their source of livelihood from the previous two governments in the form of the Samajwadi and Mahamaya pensions has also been stopped.
More so, in recent times, no work has been undertaken in this area under the rural employment guarantee scheme.
The village is in dire need of toilets – people here have to travel almost kilometre and a half to defecate in the open. Raja, a panchayat member says that he has been trying to get government assistance to construct toilets for the last three years but such facilities have been repeatedly denied to the community. As a result, the prevalence of open defecation in the village is very high.
There is only one hand pump in the village and hence villagers undergo several problems to acquire water for their daily needs.
The construction of roads and pathways, as well as drainage, has been badly neglected and waterlogging becomes a huge problem in the area during the rainy season. While there has been a lot of activity in the name of housing for the poor, most of this work has been marred by corruption and several houses could not be completed.
Dafai village, located in the Karvi block of the Chitrakut district, is a village of Kol tribals and all the people here are landless. Hunger and extreme poverty are evident in nearly all 150 households in the village. Despite this, very little work has been undertaken under the rural employment guarantee scheme in recent times. Here too, villagers lament that the pensions earlier available to them are not available now.
Also read: Caste Discrimination in UP’s Bundelkhand is Worsening the Water Woes of Dalits
In Dafai as well, residents do not have access to toilets and have to use a place near the hills for open defecation. Sharing this space with the men in the village, is very uncomfortable for women. Additionally, heavy traffic of mining trucks makes open defecation for the villagers all the more risky, particularly for children. Despite this, no government relief has been made available for the construction of toilets and today 100% open defecation prevails in the village.
Dafai village, Bundelkhand. Photo: Author provided
The only two hand-pumps in the village are not in good condition and when these break down, women have to travel to another village and encounter additional difficulty while obtaining water from there.
There is no school in this village and only about one-fourth of the children manage to go to the school in a nearby village. The drop-out rate is also very high. In fact, in both these villages one could see the children wandering around aimlessly in just one piece of cloth despite the November chill.
Kolawalpur Raipur village, located in the Mahuwa block of Banda district, comprises of about one hundred Yadav households, mostly small and medium farmers. They say that their biggest problem these days are the hundreds of stray cattle from other villages that are roaming around and destroying their crops. Farmers spend the nights in their fields to protect their crops but the cattle still manage to sneak in and ruin the crop.
The farmers say that this problem has become extremely serious in recent times. Babulal, a former pradhan of this village and a widely respected elderly man, goes to the extent of saying that if the menace of stray cattle goes on increasing at this pace then the very future of agriculture in the village will be threatened.
Villagers also claim that very little help for the construction of toilets was received from the government. Hence open defecation still prevails to the extent of about 80% or so, they say.
Also read: In this Bundelkhand Village, a Cry for Food, not Development
In addition, visits to other villages revealed that when poor people face harassment or suffer atrocities, their chances of receiving justice are very low. Corruption and malpractices are taking strange forms. For example, in several places, NREGA work is done with heavy machines, defeating the very purpose of the scheme.
Then false claims of workers’ wages are sent using the names of persons who are close to or can be manipulated by the village pradhan. Once the wages are received in their bank account, they are asked to hand these over to the pradhan, while a small share is given to them for being a part of this nexus. Hence while the work under NREGA is recorded, needy workers do not get any wages or work.
Several farmers have also complained that they only got the first instalment of the sammaan scheme before the elections but did not get the subsequent instalments. Farmers, as well as others, complain of arbitrary deductions from their bank accounts. Influential big farmers get some benefits of farm insurance, but ordinary farmers are generally deprived of this. This year there has been heavy damage to the til and moong crops, and they are still waiting to be compensated for it.
Bharat Dogra is a freelance journalist who has been involved with several social movements and initiatives.
