(4 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
Loading ...1,378 views
Just when urban India skips a beat over a plunge in Sensex, hundreds of families on verge of starvation are stepping out of their ancestral villages in Bundelkhand, leaving their homes and fields.
And just when Urban India goes ga ga over the launch of Nano, families are eating ‘roti’ made of grass in villages of Jhansi and Jalaun and farmers are committing suicides.
There are numerous villages where not a soul exists due to the mass exodus and only the elderly remain, waiting for their death.
The backward Bundelkhand region is reeling under the impact of successive droughts. For four years there has been no rain. The farmer with small land-holdings is the worst sufferer. Ironically when a tragedy of such magnitude is unfolding in this region, politicians are rushing to Bundelkhand.
Never so many political rallies were held in this region in the past. The politicians have smelt power. Cashing in on Bundelkhand’s misery, they hope to attract the disillusioned voter. Also, there is possibility of a new state being carved and the possibility of power in another state.
CM Mayawati charges the centre for not giving a special package for the drought-hit region. And at his rally Rahul Gandhi, hits back at Mayawati, claiming that her government misused funds.
A 72-year-old man lying on the cot is barely able to talk but too proud to say that he is hungry and that there is no grain left in his house. He dies a few days later and his son breaks down before TV journalist Anamika, ‘na aata hai, na athanni ghar mein’.
Jaswant later said that his father died because there was nothing to eat in the house. The neighbours said that the chulha hadn’t seen fire for fifteen days in their house. But there is an unwritten rule, no state accepts death due to starvation.
The official in this case also puts it in a slightly different manner. “This 71-year-old man died because he was ill and couldn’t afford treatment”. A channel reported six suicides in just 24 hrs. Hundreds of farmers have ended their lives in Bundelkhand and though ruling party and the opposition parties contest each other’s claims, the truth is that life is getting harder and darker in the countryside.
The unbridgeable disparity between urban and rural India is only getting worse. After Vidarbha, the country side of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, the Bundelkhand region of UP and MP is witnessing the same phenomenon. The reality is that stock markets fascinate us. And we turn a Nelson’s eye towards rural India that continues to bleed. How long will our economy survive if the villages keep getting vacated and the migrants’ inflow to urban centres continues?
Photography by Carf
