Rural India 2007

I’ve lived my entire life in Bombay/Mumbai and I’m quite “spoilt” with the comforts of urban living. For the record, I’ve lived in a village a few times (maximum time spent being 5 days) and also gone camping and roughed it out a couple of times in the 22 odd years of my existence, so I’m not exactly daddy’s little princess. But after my recent visit to my mother’s native place I’m appalled by the difficulties people have to put up with in rural India.

My mother’s family of origin has their ancestral home in a village in north Gujarat which is about 130 km away from Ahmedabad. This village has a population of about 2000 (1200 registered voters is what one my relatives told me), only has a primary school, a panchayat house, a temple and I’m not sure about how the postal system there works. There is no primary health care centre, no high school or college, no retail shop. Well there is electricity all day (power cuts are frequent though) but currently the water comes only for 30-60 minutes every alternate day that too at 5 am in the morning!!! This is when the predominant occupation of the people there is agriculture, I wonder where is the water for irrigation. One can move around the residential part of the village (excluding the farmlands) only by foot, maybe a two wheeler can go on a few of the lanes. The plumbing and drainage system there is just about functional. Most of the houses are only about 150-200 square feet in size. The silver lining (at least for me) is that I did see set top boxes and dish antennae so at least they have television and radio for entertainment.

Now I’ve nothing against the simple life but I believe that water, electricity, sanitation and health care is the minimum that the government should provide. After all we’re a socialist sovereign. What happened to the promises of “bijli, pani, sadak”? In fact, last year during the heavy rains in Gujarat, many of the natives of the village suffered from Chikungunya and they had to travel to the nearest town to seek medical help due to absence of a health care centre.

People tend to romanticize the simple rural life and say that city bred people are spoilt or haven’t seen the “real deal”. My maternal grandparents love that place and spend about a month there every year. So they tend to paint a very rosy picture, after all they were born and brought up there. My grand father did try and explain that I just have a mental block and that there are no major difficulties in living there and my grand mother who knows very little English was trying to convince me that my trip there is like a picnic. But I just get very bored there and the moment I leave from home to start my journey, I’m just counting hours/days waiting for it all to end.

Also, the fact that we don’t have basic amenities in many parts of India is nothing to be proud of (Yes I know, even a mega city like Bombay has its share of water problems). I guess I’m thinking more about this today as its municipality election day in Bombay.

On a lighter note, I’ve visited this village 5 times till now and I do have some nice memories as well. I remember when I was about 6-7 years old and went there, everyone was shocked to see a girl wearing shorts (it was summer) and my mother did have to answer some uncomfortable questions. I’m assuming with the advent of satellite television, people may not be so shocked today and there were no stares this time around when I was the only adult female wearing jeans there. But my mother did have to answer questions about my prospective marriage which thankfully is not even under consideration at home. In fact one of my second cousins (my age) with whom I played with when I went there as a child is now married with a 3 year old baby. Some things never change.

P.S.: Since Water, a movie about the plight of widows, has been nominated for an Oscar award, I must add that even in 2007 my maternal grand mother considers a widow to be unlucky. On our way out of the house, a widow crossed our path, so she went back inside and started out again. This is sad but true and there was no way I could convince her that her behaviour was discriminatory.

Posted by Sentimental Fool.