" Hum ko kya milega aapko hamare bare mein bathake?" A question that we encountered in different forms at all the villages we visited. And the answer would always be the same " Hamari tho koshish hain usse jyada hum bhi kuch nahi kar sakthe hain"..
Covering deprivation trip has been one of the toughest trips that i would have ever been to in my life..reading about P.Sainath's articles on rural india and deprivation is different and having a first hand experience to that sort of deprivation was a revelation of sorts..it was depressing, frustrating and shocking..all at the same time..
"Log aathe hain, hamari kahani likthe hain..tv camera lathe hain...shoot karthe hain aur jathe hain, lekin hamare liye kuch nahi hotha hain"..these are people who are not new to cameras, to journalists walking up to them, intruding into their lives..asking them about that one day when his/her brother decided to drink pesticide and die...a day and incident they would want to forget...we go there and make them relive their pain...and its a pain that we can't decrease...
"Aap government ke officer ho kya? Survey kar rahe hoon kya?" These are questions asked with a hope...but these are villagers who haven't seen one government official or official from the agriculture department in spite of the mass suicides that have occured in this region... " PM aaya or gaya..hamare liye kuch nahi hua" - no these are not a bunch of people who are frustrated or who are "cribbing"..these are farmers who work harder than any other person in our country and are not given the price they truly deserve...
" Kya aap shahar ke log apne road banayenge?" This was a question that i thought was very valid...was asked in response to my question regarding the employment guarantee scheme...Why should we villagers lay our own roads and dig our own wells? Will the city dwellers do that?
Valid question..again no answer...
Vandana, Geeta, Babu Rao...some of the people i will never forget in my life...Geeta's eyes are eyes of a defeated human being...of a fight long lost.....Eyes i will never forget... Eyes that will probably haunt me...
Here we are cribbing when the power goes off for an hour...here are these people who are ecstatic if their village has power for an hour...biggest irony being that Vidarbha generates most of the electricity but has none for itself.... Here we are fighting to enroll our kids in "international schools", and here is the other India that is struggling to keep its kids in school... here we are cribbing about increased price of vegetables...and here is the other India..that is sustaining itself on bare minimum... Here we are talking about IT corridors, Hi-tech cities, spending crores on making the connectivity within our cities better...and here is the other India, where villages are unapproachable...where women still give birth on the road...where people die on the way to the Primary health care center...
"Will you city dwellers sacrifice the electricity for us villagers? No you wont...but we do..for you..."
Lot of questions were asked...i had no answer for any of them...
1 comment:
That really touched me da.. I wish i had answers to those questions.. i wish our sole purpose of democracy to treat every one equally without any regard to creed, sex or financial position is true.. I wish the electricity is distributed equally and every one had 2 hrs powercut if there was shortage and not no power to villagers.. I hope we never go to the extent that one day we dont have to order parcels of food from neighboring countries everyday.. China is doing wonders in food production where as india is not able to.. I donno what wonders the software industry is doing, which is taking off all the capable engineers of other depts and creating vacuum of research else where.. I know no one can answer or solve the problem alone but we can and should do something together
Post a Comment