Even though the Chief Minister has made the claim that education, health and other basic necessities will be made available to each and everyone, even in the village of Bhimkothi in his constituency Budni, 24 out of 25 children below the age of 5 have been found to be suffering from malnutrition. No one from the village is literate. There is no approach road to the village and nor there is provision for safe drinking water.
Of the children who are suffering from malnutrition 7 are the victims of severe malnutrition. Although these people belonging to the Bhilala tribe have been settled here for the last 19 years, they have not been able to get ‘pattas’ (Land ownership) as yet. What greater misfortune can they have than that in spite of receiving assurances from the present Chief Minister that their problems will be dealt with, no one has even tried to reach them. In first week of August the Chief Minister had visited the Khandavar Gram Panchayat to participate in a programme. He had announced many development programmes but he did not even remember the village Bhimkothi of the same panchayat.
Kairichauka is a village about 60 kilometers away from the Bhopal (capital of Madhya Pradesh). From there about 10-12 kilometers in the interior of the forest is the village of Bhimkothi. On paper the village has been classified as a uninhabited village but for the last 19 years it has been inhabited. There is no approach road to this village even now. Villagers live without any basic facilities. In the rains even the ‘kutcha’ road become impassable and the only way in which the villagers can communicate with other villages is by walking to them. In this village, with a population of about a hundred Bhilala people. There are about 25 children of up to 5 years and about 32 children between 6 and 14 years of age. Even though there are a sufficient number of children in the village, there is no ‘anganwadi’ in the village nor a school. Not even a single person of the village is literate. When children up to 5 years of age were weighed in front of the villagers it was found that 24 out of 25 children were suffering from malnutrition and 4 boys and 3 girls were found to be victims of serious malnutrition. A one-year-old girl-child, Kavita (daughter of Pappu) is in grade 4 of malnutrition. The absence of the arrangement of an ‘anganwadi’ results in the absence of the facilities that could be made available to women and young girls. Many of the women are fighting extreme anaemia.
40-year-old Sunita Bai says, “If there had been a school in the village the boys and girls could have studied something. A teacher used to come last year but he does not come now.” 35-year old Toofan Singh told us, “Ever since we have come here the forest department people have been harassing us. They don’t want us to stay here. We had appealed to Shivraj Singh Chauhan for help when he was the MLA, today he is the Chief Minister but he has not bothered to hear us.” 40-year old Juvan Singh told us,” We had given an application to Kantilal Bhuria (when he was the Chairperson of the Madhya Pradesh Parliamentary cell in 2002) and he had written to the collector to distribute ‘pattas’ to us. In spite of this there is no one who cares about us or looks at the village.” 40-year old Omkar Singh says, “This year too we have met the MP of Vidisha constituency Rampal Singh and have told him of our problems. He wrote to the forest department and asked them not to remove us but no one talks of giving us any facilities.” 35-year old Ritabai says, “If some arrangement could be made for a school, an ‘anganwadi’ and water, it would be very nice.” All the villagers say that the people of forest department trouble them and don’t want the tribal to get ‘pattas’. They told us that in the forest of Budani there is a lot of illegal felling of teak wood by the forest mafia and the presence of these people disturbs them. That is why through the forest department the mafia is putting pressure for their removal.
Rainda Bai is the ‘sarpanch’ of the Khandavar Panchayat, who live in Yaarnagar, which is situated ten kilometers further in the interior of the forest from Bhimkothi. She said, ” We want the people of Bhimkothi to get ‘pattas’ as soon as possible and that they should get the facility of a school and an ‘anganwadi’ but it is very sad that till now even Yaarnagar does not have an ‘anganwadi’ when the population of Yaarnagar is three times the population of Bhimkothi.”
Rakesh, a activist of the “Ekta Parishad’ working in this area said that in Raisen and Sehore district in almost all the villages along with Budni of the forest there is a shortage of basic necessities. The tribal have been falsely implicated in various cases. The cases have been dragging on for years and no decision has been taken. Ran Singh Parmar, the national convener of the ‘Ekta Parishad’ says that thousands of people have been given false ‘pattas’ but no one cares for the real claimants. Last month only, the Government acknowledged that more than seven thousand false ‘pattas’ have been given in Gwalior district alone. Even after the forest law of 2006, the State government has not made any effort to give ‘pattas’ and other rights to the people of schedule tribes and others who have traditionally lived in forest (people having recognized/accepted rights to the forest). Even today the tribal are being harassed.
According to Sandhya Shaily, the State secretary of the All India democratic Women association, “The government claims to have reduced malnutrition in the State, but when in the very constituency of the Chief Minister the situation is so frightening, the reality of the claims of the government is exposed. In the ‘Bal Sanjeevani Abhiyan’ the claim of reducing malnutrition is made only on the basis of taking the weight of the children, but as soon as one goes to the villages this claim is proved to be false.
Raju Kumar |
