No water, school, they’re glad to be on poll map

Day begins for Malo Bibi (60), and for all the women in the 22 Muslim households of Rungthangchhara...

Day begins for Malo Bibi (60), and for all the women in the 22 Muslim households of Rungthangchhara in the same manner: Even before the sun is out, Malo rushes to an abandoned ONGC well 2 km away from her village so that she can collect water from the pit before others reach there to make it muddy. “A handpump was installed here prior to the 2003 polls. It has remained idle for over four years now,” she said.

Drinking water is a major problem for Rungthangchhara, located 55 km south of Agartala. Things are no better at Arjunsadhupara, a tribal village with 32 families, outside the Agartala municipality area.

Mangalakshmi Debbarma (63) walks early in the morning to collect water from a pit half-a-km down the hillock. “The Government had begun work on a water supply project at Bhadramisip-para, about a km away, in December. But the work has stopped due to the polls,” said a local resident, Sambhu.

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Despite this problem, when political parties come asking for votes, none of the villagers ask them to provide drinking water. “We are poor people. How can we ask such questions?” said Rahim Miya (47) of Rungthangchhara.

It is not just water that these villages don’t have. “Children often fall ill because of the muddy water. But the nearest hospital — a government-run primary health centre — is five kms away at Bishramganj,” said Phulbanu Khatun. “The only time a health worker comes here is during pulse polio programme,” she added.

And what about school? “Not a single child from our village has ever been to a school. There is no school here,” said Rungthangchhara’s Madhu Miyan (18), who got married more than two years ago.

The children of Arjunsadhupara are lucky. “We send our children to a school at Laltila, two km away. We also have an anganwadi centre at Bhadramisip-para,” pointed out Rati Debbarma, mother of three. Bhadramisip-para, that falls in the constituency of state transport minister Manik Dey recently got a pucca road.

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Livelihood is another major issue here. Subodh Das, a resident of Shankarbazar, a scheduled caste village next to Arjunsadhupara, said he got only 30 days work under National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme last year. “I got Rs 63 per day,” he said. At Rungthangchhara, Panu Bibi got 16 days work at Rs 70 per day.

People at both the villages said they were aware they should get 100 days’ work every year. “We have been told they will give us work after the elections,” said Safiqul Nur Islam at Rungthangchhara, who otherwise earns Rs 60 to 70 a day, but hardly 10 days work a month, as a painter’s helper in a nearby town.

But what came as a surprise is that none of these villagers has an NREGA job card. “We have not seen a job card. They call us for work, we put our thumb impressions on a register, and they give us the money,” said Sambhu at Arjunsadhupara and Safiqul at Rungthanchhara.

But people across the state are happy that they have one valuable document that people elsewhere in the North-east are yet to own. “We may not have a school or a hospital. But the Government has given us a voter identity card,” said Swarnalata Debbarma, a newly-wed woman at Arjunsadhupara.