Rural Rag - I

Tonight I was going through some old files in document section of my computer. I saw one file of my rural internship. I had done internship in February 2010   with Gramin Vikas Trust ( GVT ) at Meghnagar, Jhabua ( MP ). Saw many old photographs of Villages, villagers, project officials, my batch mates. During internship, I was invited by locals to attend their local festivals & marriages. Found their events’ photographs too in the folder. Then I found a word page with incomplete paragraph with raw data with some footnotes. The paragraph was about ‘a profile of a woman’. Among many projects, assignments and write-ups, one assignment from our institution was to write a profile of a woman from internship area. For this assignment, I had interviewed / interacted with three women and regularly I used to observe their routine, life style, food habits, health & hygiene, livelihoods, struggles and all other aspects of their lives.  I had maintained a diary for this. When I was preparing report, then I found that   out of three women, I had only one photograph of the woman. As for assignment point of view, I had to submit only one profile; I submitted the profile of that woman whose photograph was available with me. Rest two profiles I had collected for myself to do comparative studies.  Once I came to Institution from the internship, I became very busy for semester exam and never got leisure time to complete the profiles of other two women and do comparative studies.

Today, when I saw incomplete paragraph about the ‘Profile of the woman’, the whole episode came before my eyes. My interaction with Amma and their children, her poor health and her unsympathetic husband – everything became alive. Today I completed the profile but I am not sure about the correct name of the amma or her husband as there are many names in the word file (perhaps Basanti & Badiya Devle  as far as my memory goes by seeing foot notes ), but they were Devla family, I am dead sure about it. The profile of the Amma as in 2010 is given below, hope, in these four years her condition must have ameliorated.

Profile of the Amma ( Basanti devla )

Basanti devla wife of Badiya devla belongs to Futtalab village of meghnagar block in jhabua district. She is aged about 32 yrs. Old. She belongs to scheduled tribes. She lives with her husband and six children, three boys and three girls. She is illiterate and has one-acre dry land.                                                                                                               

Basanti devla got married with Badiya when she was 16 years old. During her sixteen years marriage she conceived ten times but four children could not survive even one year. She lives in small hut that is dark, damp and dingy. Her health condition is not good. She falls ill regularly but nobody cares for her health. Every day she works more than twelve hours in the house. She would like to work outside to earn money and ameliorate the condition but poor health condition and burden of looking after three small children do not allow her to do so. She has a faint idea about NREGS programme. Neither she nor her husband has NREGS job cards.

Her husband Badiya works in a godown as a labor at meghnagar. He gets 100 rupees every day. Generally, he works 24-26 days in a month. He drinks everyday and in inebriated condition, he beats Basanti without reason. He does not ask her anything in the household matter. She feels humiliated but she has no option but continue to live in this condition.

There is no food security in her family. One-acre dry land gives her three months food security. She has white ration card but ration given to her at public distributive system is not sufficient. Rest of the year she completely depends on her husband’s earning. As her husband is irresponsible man, she has really a very hard time. Main food of her family is roti. Dal or vegetable is one kind of luxury for them.

Her two children are enrolled in the village primary school but they do not go to school. The elder boy has got so many sore in his leg and body. His fellow students despise him. Even teachers do not want to see him in the school. The elder girl lives all day in the house and support mothers.

 Basanti is not happy with her life. She feels her life is useless. She would like to do something for her family and children but she does not know how to do it. Will she come out of poverty in this life; this question haunts her all the time.


PS :- As a rural development professional I  have prepared many documents, numerous  monitoring and evaluation reports, Project proposals, Project reports , perspective plans, etc but going back to basics and micro level gives a very child like joy. Feeling very strange kind of happiness to complete this document.  Apart from happiness such micro level knowledge always inspires to do best at macro level and such experience always helps me to become a better person.

 ~~~ Ramanuj Dubey