One thing is common in every village in India. The gutter flows in the middle of the road! You will find that every household has a water tap just outside its main door. Obviously, when the water comes, most of the activities connected with water takes place just outside the main door – filling drinking water, cleaning of clothes and utensils and taking water in buckets for water storage inside the house. Since there are no drainages water flows in the middle of the road and over a period of time takes the shape of a gutter.
The funniest part is that villagers just do not mind it. Otherwise they would have done something about it. Just the excitement of getting water at the door step is so high, they are happy to live with the gutter in the middle of the road.
This causes no problem to the bullock cart or the tractor. Those who have motor bikes they enjoy the adventure ride of finding their way out of the mess.
This open gutter is the happy living habitat for mosquitoes. Villagers do not mind them as well. Because many of them are just not aware that this is the cause of illness prevailing in their village.
Young people who have got exposure to towns and cities move there. They find that the living conditions are little better (at least there is no gutter in the middle of the road, they have been pushed to the sides of the road).
Government officials are just not concerned with this state of affairs. They have their own problems. They are busy in getting a posting to headquarters or bigger towns.
Even today more than 50% of people in India live in villages. Rural infrastructure which serves these people, that is half of the country, is in total disarray.
Rural infrastructure comprises of small local projects with long gestation periods. Whenever we talk about villages we tend to confuse the issue with agriculture and start talking about irrigation projects, animal husbandry, soil conservation, cropping pattern, irrigation techniques and more such things. What about the people who live there?
People living in the cities view the villagers as only the producers of agricultural goods. Some of us think that villages are good places because there is no pollution. There is a kind of glamour associated with the concept of a village. It is alright to go to a village for a few days and return. How many of us would really stay back in villages – given the living conditions.
You ask anyone to talk about villages and they will say villages are the strength of our economy. You can live without technology but not without food.
Are we doing anything for the villagers who live there? Do we really care for them?
You will find that children in villages are malnourished. There are no good hospitals around. If anyone falls sick there are no doctors – sometimes up to 50 kilometers. There are no educational institutions in a cluster of villages. Children have to walk many kilometers to go to a school. Access roads are in bad shape. Transportation and communication facilities are worse. It is fashionable to point out a mobile in the hands of poor villagers, but what about the network? What about electricity to charge the mobile?
One of the most important aspect of life in a village is the dominance of rich farmers and their terror. There is hardly any policing in many of these villages. Villagers live in abject fear of these new lords. Freedom of expression and right to live are the words they have never heard of.
There is a total polarization in the name of caste and religion. Identity politics is at the forefront of a villager’s life. What have we done to free villagers from the clutches of this identity politics? Politicians from the city are happy to exploit and play vote bank politics when elections come.
People in the cities have a kind of patronizing attitude towards villagers. When students from villages go to nearby cities and towns they are made fun of because of their simple way of living and thinking.
If we continue to neglect villages, the migration from the village to the city will increase many fold. Already our cities are bursting at the seams. There is not enough infrastructure to support citizens who are already living there. It is better to provide a good life in the villages so that reverse migration takes place. No one living in the slums is enjoying the sub-human conditions of life there. They will go to their villages where they have their land and family properties. What they do not have is the liquid cash which they so easily earn in cities.
We need to provide employment opportunities in the villages where they can supplement their agriculture income with other means of livelihood. The talent in the villages, if properly honed, can bring a revolution in the economy.
There is a need to provide low cost and clean homes to people living in a village. How long they will live in ill designed mud houses? There is a clear need for innovation here where bright students of IITs and NITs design affordable houses for the poor using locally available resources. The size and scope of the market is very big. Where are our incubators who will promote innovative businesses? This is one sector where big builders of cities will never venture.
Villagers suffer because of mindless deforestation. They suffer because they are never taken into account while setting up industries in their vicinity, or starting some mining activities. They are not made partners in the development process. They did not know that they were sitting on a gold mine. Their lands are purchased at throw away prices using political reach and new buyers make money. A son-in-law of our national leader had been occupying eyeballs lately on television channels for the same reason.
Development of villages does not mean urbanization of villages. Development of villages means providing them with basic education and healthcare facilities, giving them hygienic living conditions and creating employment opportunities there. They are not asking for food security and free medicines. They want to live in dignity.
Currently what is going on is the exploitation of villages. How long they will suffer and provide you with food security?
There is an urgent need to bridge this gap between urban India and rural India – popularly known as the gap between India and Bharat. It is not ‘India that is Bharat’ but it is ‘Bharat that is known as India’ to the outside world. The mindset of ‘India’ has converted ‘inlands’ of Bharat into killing fields.
As long as we have leaders who are comfortable in the environments of United Nations and IMF we will continue to increase this gap. We need son of soils to lead this country. We do not leaders who blame the whole world for bad economic conditions and corruption in the country. We need leaders who understand our ‘inlands’ and take care of them.
Let the care revolution for the ‘Bharat’ begin, NOW!
Ecologically clean water ( Nitrate about 1 ppm ) soaks into the ground, will not flow. All municipalities and local administrations follow W.H.O. norms and use ALUM to 'purify' the water before supply. Mosquitoes appear when inorganic ALUM breaks down. If mosquitoes appear only at twilight, when the air is most polluted ( Sun is setting and moon has not yet risen ), villagers address the situation with simply lighting a DIYA outside their TULSI plant / door. Eco Technology can be used to clean water instead of man made toxic substances such as ALUM and villagers can sink the wash water outside their homes into the garden. In the past, toilet water used to be sunk into the ground with Bananas, Arum and Canna. Later, the water began to overflow as water quality deteriorated with piped supply. Then came the sewerage system which led to polluting our water sources as the methods adopted were and still are faulty. We continue to be victims because we hug foreign knowledge which imprisons us in invisible prisons, keeps us sick and diseased.
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