A week in the Dangs and you lose complete faith; faith in things that mean the most to you; faith in the Government, faith in god, faith in humanity. And yet, at the end of it all, you take it just as you’ve taken every tragedy that has not happened to YOU- as a story.
The people of dang are the friendliest people you’ll ever get the chance to meet. They’ll greet every stranger with a smile on their face.
But what you don’t see is how the smile never reaches their eyes. What you don’t see is that these eyes have shed tears you will never understand. What you don’t see is the heart inside that skips a beat when anything or anyone new comes. What you don’t see is the endless stream of hope within them that is probably at the brink of being dried up. What you don’t see is the Faith.
Under the pretext of urbanization and development, the people here have been forced to give up everything they had to call their own. And still, after endless promises by the government, after countless welfare schemes, after numerous agitations and protests, things are just the same, if only worsened further.
Chaggan Bhai is a frail man of about 80 and behind his strong voice that echoes in anger, you can hear the pain. “What Government are you talking about? The one that doesn’t put food on our plates? Or the one that runs its hospitals like a shop?”
Kiran Singh Yashwantrao Pawar- the Ghadvi King, shrugs helplessly when you ask him if he’s happy here. A man of few words, Kiran Singh is a king only by name. He has no power, no money and no options. Yet, what he does have, are aspirations. “I want my children to go out of this place. There is no future for them here. I want them to study and prosper. I want to help my people come out of their sufferings. But what can I do? I’m just a commoner, tending to my fields like everyone else.”
Bharat Bhai and Laxman Bagol, both journalists here, have tried their best to use the media to bring to light some of the problems that the people of Dang are facing. But their complaints are the same. “Crime sells, not humanity stories”, confesses BharatBhai. “Nobody wants to know of the hardships in a tiny place like this. I, too, have to earn a living. So I can only give the media houses what they ask for.”
Affirming this, Bagol says, “Even if we write or cover the issues in Dang, the media houses don’t accept them. They either put a stop to the story or just ignore them.”
Through literacy programmes, the Government wants to bring about refinement in this society. But what good is an education when the people here have no jobs available? What’s the use of an education when after sitting literate but idle at home, the child is no good at farming because he was never trained for it? Education is a waste of time when life can teach you more than a book ever will. How are Newton and Shakespeare and Einstein supposed to fill the stomachs of hundreds of starving families?
The Government talks of equal rights for men and women, and to shut the questions of women’s rights activists, reserves 10% seats for them in the Panchayat. But where is the power?? While the women sit like flower pots at the Panchayati meet, the men make the decisions on their behalf.
People in the city grumble at the mention of reservation for SCs and STs in govt.jobs. But you now realize why they’re needed: 98% of the population in the Dangs is tribal, and yet not a single seat is reserved for them in the Forest Dept.
Talking about forests, the Government, on one hand, is cutting off the lifeline of the tribals by clearing out vast expanse of forest for its own needs, and on the other hand, pays peanuts as compensation. A mere sum of Rs 110/- is pad for 1 tonne of bamboo, when in the market, even a palm sized lampshade doesn’t cost below Rs 100/- . The tribals earn a living by selling things they themselves cannot afford to buy.
The Nirmal Gram Yojna was formulated to bring about cleanliness and sanitation in Gujarat. Under this scheme, the Government undertook the responsibility of ensuring personal hygiene, solid waste disposal, grey water renewal, construction of toilets and bathrooms, etc.
People, who, all their lives, have been attending to nature’s call out in the open fields are suddenly forced into a confined block of concrete.
But let’s be fair; the government atleast made an effort.
The question is: how much of an effort?
Kalpana Bhagre, a teacher in a school in Jamlapada, reveals, “The Government promised Rs 20,000/- to make toilets in each school that falls in the APL (Above Poverty Line) category. So far, we’ve only received Rs 14,000/-.”
The ‘toilets’ that are made are mere pits in the ground, with either just sheets of asbestos surrounding it (left at the mercy of the wind) or sometimes not even that. The pits are made at such a low level that they are easily flooded in the monsoons and people have no other option but to go out in the open.
Even the National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) payments have been delaying by a minimum of three years and this is the case in almost every Panchayat.
This is development for you; progress, refinement, urbanization and modernization. No doubt the Government of India has good intentions. But how can someone, sitting in an A.C. office in Delhi, sipping imported tea and dressed in an Armani suit, make decisions for someone living in a remote village without electricity, whose dreams also are not on the same wavelength as the Delhi-man’s reality??
And why design countless projects to bring about a change in these people’s lives when all that this change is bringing to them is starvation, disease and unemployment?
They were happy without your interference; without all those false promises. And today, they’re so accustomed to the govt.’s pledges of development that despite losing everything they had, they still have one thing left: HOPE. Hope that someday the govt. will give them what’s been promised. Hope that their children will see a better tomorrow. Hope that justice will be brought to those who’ve waited in vain for the change they’ve been forced to dream of. Hope that every new person they smile at tomorrow will someday deliver the good news that life is still worth living.
However, the words of Bipin Bhatt, the Director of the District Rural Development Authority of Dang, bring you back to reality: “any effort made to bring about a change in dang is like tossing a pebble into the river; the ripples it creates are only temporary. Today you are inspired to work for the upliftment of dang, but believe me, its only temporary.”
