Eight villages on the fringes fight to be heard

“I know we live in an independent country. But we don’t have a government and we have never cast our votes,” said 86-year-old Shivram of Bicchiya village. Shivram lost his family in a flood three years ago and his son has been missing for the last two years. “Some people took my son to Baghpat, promising him a job. I haven’t heard of him ever since,” said Shivram.

Villagers in eight forest villages—Bhawanipur, Bicchiyia, Bicchiya Bazaar, Nai Basti Tehria, Kailash Nagar Dhakia, Nishaad Nagar, Mehboob Nagar and Gokulpur—lack a basic prerogative: the right to live. These villagers, despite living below poverty line, are not part of any poverty alleviation programme or government schemes. They have no ration cards and none of them has ever become a beneficiary of schemes like the Grameen Swarozgar Yojna (GSY) or the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).

Ramkumar of Bhawanipur village has been trying hard to get an NREGS job card, but hasn’t got one because he has no residence proof. “We don’t have a governance system and hence, we don’t have a pradhan. We try to go to the neighbouring revenue villages for work but are kept out. They tell me the NREGS will give me employment, but when I want it, they don’t give it,” said Ramkumar.

The children here are the most affected. Almost every child in the eight tribal villages suffers from malnutrition. And incidentally, none of these villages has been covered under the three phases of the Integrated Child Development Scheme. No schools, no anganwadi centre, no registration of birth and death of these children and no immunisation.

Fareed, a villager from Bicchiya Bazaar, says he has seen children die of hunger. “Almost every year, the village loses a child. Last year, eight children died. When we take our kids to the doctor, he asks us to take them to the big hospital,” says Fareed. The “big hospital”—the district hospital—is at least 95 km away from Fareed’s village and the children rarely make it. These villages have no primary health centres and rely on quacks or private doctors who overcharge.

Ramjas, a villager of Bhawanipur, said that despite repeated talks with the local administration about setting up an ICDS centre and a PDS shop at these villages, nothing has happened so far. “We have no identity. No ration cards, no work and no PDS shop,” he said. For children growing up on little food, the supplementary food under the ICDS programme would have been a blessing, he said.

Similar stories can be heard from almost all the villages, which have a combined population of over 10,000. Almost all the men in these villages work as labourers in nearby farms and do not earn more than Rs 30 a day, Rs 70 less than the daily wage stipulated by the government of India. Yet, no family has a BPL card.

Incidentally, the district administration is aware that these villages are being denied their basic rights. The district magistrate of Behraich, Sudhir Kumar Srivastava, said that these villagers were being supported by the neighbouring revenue villages. “We are waiting to resettle these villages under the tribal settlement act. Also, the BPL survey is on and we may include these villages in the BPL list,” he said.

Behraich MP, Rubab Syeda, said she was aware of the problems. “But ensuring those rights like PDS shop and ICDS centre is something the state government should be doing.” On being denied the basic right to survival, Syeda said, “We cannot do anything about this.”