What will corona do to us! Before corona, hunger will kill us: Migrant workers in Kerala

Painter Mohammed Tanveer is bedridden in Kerala after breaking his thighbone, his family - including 5-yr-old nephew-back home in Bihar's Samastipur district is surviving on just one meal a day.

On April 2, right in the middle of a nationwide lockdown against COVID, farm labourer Sudha Bibi (55) raised Rs 60,000 from her relatives and neighbours in Samastipur district of Bihar. Never before has she seen Rs 60,000.

She was responding to an SOS from her son -- 2,525 km away -- in Kasaragod.

On March 23, a day before the nationwide lockdown came into effect, Mohammed Tanveer (26) -- the seventh of her eight children -- fell from the scaffolding while repainting an old two-storey house at Udma. He broke his thighbone.

The owner of the house gave Tanveer Rs 10,000 for treatment and called in an ambulance. "We thought that will take care of the medical expenses," said Mohammed Jahangir (29), elder brother of Tanveer, who was painting along with him.

Sudha Bibi's son Mohammed Tanveer lying in a room after a thighbone surgery in Udma, 2,525km away, in Kasaragod (Photo | EPS)

But the General Hospital in Kasaragod did not admit Tanveer as it was converted into COVID Care Centre. After knocking at two other hospitals, he was admitted to a private hospital in Kasaragod. The contractor, who employed the two brothers, agreed to foot the hospital bill. The surgeons at the hospital inserted a steel rod to help support the fractured femur till it heels. 

After 10 days at the hospital, Tanveer was ready to go home. The bill came to Rs 75,000. Seeing the bill, the labour contractor backed off. 

"I pleaded with the doctor to reduce the bill. He brought down the bill to Rs 65,000 and said it was a private hospital and it was the best he could do," said Jahangir.

Left with no option, the brothers called their mother back home. 

In Samastipur, Sudha Bibi shares her one-room house with her three daughters, two daughters-in-law and a five-year-old nephew, Shah Alam. Her husband, who used to make mattresses, died one year and a half ago, forcing the sons to leave their village in search of better jobs.

Tanveer landed in Kasaragod six months ago and found a job as a painter. "I brought in my elder brother because I liked this place and the wage was better too," said Tanveer, lying on the floor of a congested room he shares with four others, including Jahangir. 

For the family, the going got better. Every week, Sudha Bibi's three sons -- the eldest is working in an industrial estate in Delhi -- send her around Rs 4,000 to Rs 6,000. She, too, work found work as a farmhand. 

But now, the family is steeped in debt and no work at hand. "We are poor. We came here for work but got trapped," said Jahangir.

Tanveer said his mother and sisters back home often ate only once a day. "Sometimes, even my nephew sleep without dinner," he said. 

"What will corona do to us! Before corona, hunger will kill us," said Tanveer.

In Bihar, the government said it would give foodgrains free of cost through ration shops. "But my mother said they did not get anything," he said.

In Udma, the situation is slightly better for the siblings. The panchayat delivers packed meals for all the five persons in the room. "But we will have to manage on our own for breakfast and dinner," he said.

Yet, Tanveer was literally sobbing to go home. "Please help us. Please do something and take me home. At least my mother and sisters are there to take care of me," he said.

The lockdown has been particularly harsh on the migrant workers who are living without work and wages. They have been pleading with the governments to take them home. Kerala has around 3.85 lakh migrant workers, most of them longing to head home. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told Prime Minister Narendra Modi to run non-stop trains to take workers home and financial support for unskilled workers. But the Centre has rejected the transport proposal.

(Source: TNIE)

Daughter of Bihar takes oath as Washington State Senator with Gita in hand

Mona Das, 47, migrated to the US along with her parents in 1971, when she was just eight months old. A Democrat, in her message on election, she said, "Mahila Kalyan, Sabka Maan! Jai Hind and Bharat Mata ki jai."

In a proud moment for India, Bihar-born Mona Das has been elected Senator of the 47th district of the State of Washington in the US in her very first attempt. She is a member of the Democratic Party.

Mona Das, 47, migrated to the US along with her parents when she was just eight months old.

Mona Das, who took oath as a Senator on January 14 with the Gita in her hand, takes pride in her ancestry. Her ancestors belonged to Dariapur village of Kharagpur division in Munger district of Bihar.

Her grandfather Dr GN Das is a retired civil surgeon from Gopalganj district. He worked at Bhagalpur Medical College Hospital and Darbhanga Medical College Hospital. Mona Das was born in Darbhanga Medical College Hospital in 1971.

Her father Subodh Das is an engineer and lives in St Louise MO.

Mona Das, with her roots in Munger district of Bihar, was sworn in to the Washington
State Senate on January 14 to represent the 47th Legislative District. Photo: Mona Das

A graduate in Psychology from Cincinnati University, Mona Das's message on the day she was sworn in was replete with her love for India and its culture and tradition.

Her message started with greetings on the occasion of Makar Sankranti, which was celebrated in India a day later on January 15. "Namaskar aur pranam aap sabo ko... Makar Sankaranti ki badhai ho aap sabo ko."

Mona Das further said, "Like Mahatma Gandhi and the present great and dynamic leader Prime Minister Modi ji said, education is the key to success for girls in life. By educating a girl you have educated an entire family and successive generations as well," she said in her message.

As an elected Senator, she has decided to encourage girls to push forward and shatter the glass ceiling.

Mona Das also plans to visit her ancestral village. "I have plans to one day visit my ancestral home in Dariapur in Bihar and travel through the rest of India to learn more about the immensely diverse culture that my native country is," she said.

In her capacity as Washington State Senator, she would like to make herself available to meet with key individuals in villages to provide guidance and mentorship in their efforts to improve the educational opportunities for women and thus affording them a better future. This, in turn, will yield far reaching benefit to the society as a whole, she said.

Her message ended in the same manner it had started. "Mahila Kalyan, Sabka Maan! (Women welfare, everyone's respect!) Jai Hind and Bharat Mata ki jai."

Mona Das, who defeated two-term sitting Republican party Senator Joe Fain, will serve as vice chair of the Senate Housing Stability and Affordability Committee. She will also serve on the Senate Transportation Committee, the Senate Financial Institutions, Economic Development and Trade Committee, and the Senate Environment, Energy and Technology Committee.

This session, she plans to advocate for the environment, communities of colour and equity for women.

(Source: India Today)

How a Bihari lost his mother tongue to Hindi

The pitfalls of forcing the use of Hindi on non-Hindi states have often been commented upon. But the hegemonic project is also threatening to subsume languages like Magadhi and Bhojpuri in the northern belt, writes Roshan Kishore on Live Mint. Read on: 

There was a popular self-deprecating joke among Biharis in Delhi University’s North Campus in the early 2000s. Delhiwala asks his Bihari classmate why his feet are soiled. Bihari answers in Hindi, “Arre yaar, main chal kar aa raha thha, achanak pyair kaado mein chala gaya”. Now, kaado is a word used for a puddle in languages such as Bhojpuri and Magadhi. The Bihari does not use keechad, the acceptable Hindi word for puddle. It is a joke because no matter how much the Bihari tries to hide his not-so-urbane identity behind modern clothes, his language gives him away.

Jokes apart, the exchange also captures a slow but steady cultural shift that has been taking place in the Hindi heartland. Hindi, or rather sarkari Hindi (more on this later), has been slowly eating away multiple languages spoken by millions of people north of the Vindhyas. For a typical Delhiwala it could be Punjabi, Haryanvi or even Urdu. In the region I come from, the casualty has been Magadhi, or Magahi, as we call it back home. As the name suggests, it is related to the Magadh region, which was once the seat of power for mighty emperors, such as Ashoka.

It is extremely unlikely that my young cousins, who were brought up in Delhi and other metros, would ever feel comfortable speaking this language. But just a couple of generations ago, it used to be the language of conversation in my family.

"Within the Hindi academia, there is a polarized debate on whether advancing the cause of languages, such Bhojpuri and Magadhi, would weaken the status of Hindi itself"
-

This detachment is not without implications. Even today, these languages dominate when it comes to cultural practices. One example should suffice. Chhath is perhaps the most important religious festival in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. As the number of migrants from these regions has grown in mega cities such as Delhi and Mumbai, the question of whether or not governments should declare a public holiday on Chhath has become an important political issue. Rituals apart, Chhath is also known for its devotional folk songs.

I have not come across a single Chhath song written in Hindi. They are either in Magadhi, Maithili or Bhojpuri. Most of the Hindi speakers in Delhi would find large parts of these songs (if not all) incomprehensible. Those who are interested can try listening to some on YouTube.

A Malayali teenager who has been brought up outside Kerala but knows his mother tongue, Malayalam, can land up in Kerala any time and effortlessly understand what is going on in any social or cultural function. A Bihari of similar profile would find it difficult to relate to these Chhath songs. It would be wrong to assume that only nostalgia is at stake. Millions of people still use these languages for their day-to-day interactions. They would not be comfortable conversing with a person who does not know that kaado means keechad. The short point is that the expat Bihari teenager would be left without a mother tongue in their motherland.

How does one reconcile this with the fact that Hindi is the main language of communication in almost all of north India? A look at the census statistics, which is the country’s main source of language data, can help. The census has specific instructions for recording mother tongues. A mother tongue is the language spoken in childhood by the person’s mother to the person. There are allowances for situations when the mother is dead, but the underlying principle is clear. A mother tongue is the language spoken at home, not the medium of instruction or language of social interaction.

The Eighth Schedule of the Constitution lists 22 languages. In keeping with the mandate of capturing the mother tongue, the 2001 census (latest available data) lists sub-categories under each of these languages. The broad category of Hindi has 49 mother tongues listed under it, including Hindi. Of the 422 million people in this group, only 61% actually reported Hindi as their mother tongue. Bhojpuri and Magadhi are among the top 5, with shares of 7.8% and 3.3%, respectively.

In Bihar, the tables are turned. Less than one-fourth recorded their mother tongue as Hindi. Bhojpuri and Magadhi had a share of 33.6% and 20%, respectively. In absolute terms, these numbers would be more than 20 million and 12 million, respectively. That’s a lot more than the population of Australia, which is around 24 million, according to the latest World Bank figures.

These numbers bear testimony to the ongoing cultural violence inflicted by Hindi in its own backyard. Much has been written on the pitfalls of forcing the use of Hindi as the national language on non-Hindi states. But what about the hegemonic project which is threatening to subsume the likes of Magadhi and Bhojpuri? Is this yet another aspect of the politics of Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan, which is associated with the political right in India? A slight digression on the history of Hindi nationalism would be useful here.

Orient BlackSwan’s Hindi Nationalism by Alok Rai, who has been a professor of English at the Allahabad and Delhi universities, can be a good primer for those without any grounding in the topic.

Rai happens to be the grandson of the legendary writer Munshi Premchand, who wrote in both Urdu and Hindi. The book gives a detailed account of how Hindi, as we know it today, gained dominance in India. Persian was the official script in India in the pre-British period. This acted as a natural disadvantage for the non-elite, especially Hindus, who did not know the script. It was only in 1900 that Sir Anthony MacDonnell, lieutenant governor of North-Western Provinces and Oudh, allowed Devanagari—the script in which Hindi is written—to be allowed in courts. Rai argues that two factors were behind the decision. They wanted the language of administration to be accessible to the common people. Also, the Muslim elite had played an important role in the 1857 mutiny. By ending the dominance of Persian in the British administration, their socio-economic position could be weakened. The Hindus who lost out for not knowing Persian had no reason to complain. What was settled by decree in the matter of script was not so easy when it came to language. The British wanted a standardized Hindi to be developed in India. Hindustani—an eclectic mix of Hindi and Urdu—was ill-suited for the job.

An anecdote in Rai’s book shows that the British quest for a standardized language predates 1857. The then government’s education department’s annual report of 1846-47 talks about the principal of Benares College, J.R. Ballantyne, admonishing the students for leaving “the task of formulating the national language in the hands of villagers”. Ballantyne asks them to “get rid of the unprofitable diversity of provincial dialects” and create a standard literature. His remarks were a response to a student’s argument that they did not clearly understand what the Europeans meant by Hindi as “there are hundreds of dialects, all in our opinion equally entitled to the name”.

Soon the question of language spilled into the domain of politics. Competing Hindu and Muslim elites wanted to purge their standardized languages of Persian and Sanskrit words. Herein began the communalization of Hindi and Urdu. Once this binary gained momentum, hundreds of dialects “which were entitled to Hindi” became collateral damage. Anybody who opposed this was branded a traitor. Rai cites Nathuram Godse’s final testimony, where he lists Gandhi’s opposition to Sanskritized Hindi as one of the reasons for killing him.

This history is extremely relevant today. Attempts and proclamations to impose Hindi are threatening to rekindle the fires of anti-Hindi agitations of the 1950s and 1960s.

There is not enough opposition to these sectarian ploys from within the cultural and intellectual world of Hindi. As a result, the entire Hindi-speaking population is being branded as language chauvinist.

This is not surprising in the context of the preceding discussion. The biggest victim of a monolithic Hindi project has been Hindi itself. Under the garb of building a mega narrative for nation and culture, our inherent diversity has been pushed to the margins. Rai quotes Hindi poet Sudama Pandey Dhoomil’s powerful articulation of this tragedy, which was written in the 1960s:

Tumhara yeh Tamil-dukh

Meri iss Bhojpuri peeda ka

bhai hai

Bhasha uss tikdami darinde ka kaur hai

(Your Tamil pain

Is brother to my Bhojpuri pain—

Language is merely a morsel for the deceitful beast...)

Of course, the problem is easier to discuss than solve. Within the Hindi academia, there is a polarized debate on whether advancing the cause of languages, such Bhojpuri and Magadhi, would weaken the status of Hindi itself. The hegemony of Hindi is useful when lobbying for more official patronage.

I, personally, am not sure whether including Magadhi in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution (Maithili was added in 2004) or opening a couple of university departments would address the problems which were discussed at the beginning of the piece. Can such policy changes solve the growing demographic alienation from the language?

Will somebody make a Bhojpuri or Magadhi film which would be screened in a south Delhi multiplex in the next five years? Can the Hindi-belt elite rise above caste politics to promote a secular, yet vernacular, popular culture? What does Hindi-speaking India stand to lose if this diversity is allowed to erode with time? Is our political class worried about it?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the most influential mass leader in our country today, understands the importance of this diversity. On 27 October 2013, Modi addressed the Hunkar rally in Patna to launch his 2014 campaign in Bihar. He made it a point to utter a couple of sentences in Bhojpuri, Magadhi and Maithili—three of Bihar’s major dialects.The crowd, like it always does for Modi, cheered.

Unfortunately, there is nothing to suggest so far that Modi’s political prowess on the issue can undo the damage which has happened due to the push for a Sanskritized and hegemonic Hindi by his fellow-travellers.

Dancing with the wolves: A peek into the life of Bihar’s Anaarkali of Ara

When she is done hurling the choicest of abuses at her husband, Pooja Singh Rajput locks herself up in the bedroom of their tiny house at the end of a quiet bylane in Bhojpur district’s Ara town in Bihar. The pretty, tall 26-year-old woman, wearing a royal blue velvet suit with a pink dupatta, a trace of sindoor in the parting of her hair, declares that she won’t perform at the wedding tonight. It is too close to her relatives’ place, who, she believes, are unaware of her profession. Ram Kumar Pandey, her husband of 18 months and the owner of a local orchestra group, doesn’t budge. “One moment, he is my husband. And the next, he is an agent for whom I am just a woman who is supposed to dance dirty before raucous men to help him make a quick buck,” she says, referring to Pandey who has 14 girls on his roster who dance all night to Bhojpuri songs laden with sexual innuendos at hotel parties, ‘room parties’, birthday functions and weddings. “I am not a small-time dancer. I have worked in two films. I will perform on my own terms,” says Pooja, fanning herself with a jute hand fan.

Dismissing her tantrums, Pandey says, “She will be all right in no time. She is a darling.”

Five years ago, Pooja, a Ludhiana native, was shooting for a Bhojpuri music album in Ara, one of more than a dozen albums she has featured in, when her choreographer introduced her to Pandey, a well-built man who sports a handlebar moustache and is never seen sans his grey baseball cap. Pooja did not think very highly of live dancing until Pandey persuaded her to give it a shot. Four years later, she married Pandey and became the ‘star performer’ of his troupe.

Just like Anaarkali, the feisty live performer in the Swara Bhaskar-starrer Anaarkali of Aarah, Pooja is unapologetic about her profession and demands respect as much as money.

In fact, that holds true for the hundreds of stage dancers who are an integral part of Bihar’s live entertainment trade.

Bihar does not have many female dancers to call its own. In the state capital Patna, around 60 km from Ara, Shobha Sigdha, a 24-year-old dancer from North Kolkata’s Sealdah area, is irritable as we have woken her up at 5 pm. Her roommate, Naina Sharma, is also unwelcoming. “The girls were working all night. Usually they return by 6 am and are up only around 7-7.30 pm,” says Ashok Kumar, 31, who runs the event management company Rajdhani Entertainment, and is one of the most popular artiste coordinators in Patna.

Every year during the wedding season -- April to June and October to December -- Ashok’s agents in West Bengal, Jharkhand, Mumbai and Delhi send him a different set of girls.

For the period that they get work through Ashok, the girls are not allowed to smoke, drink, have a boyfriend or exchange their phone numbers with anyone.

In return, Ashok takes care of their accommodation, food and gives them assignments worth Rs 3,000-6,000 per night. Though Ashok says that the most important thing he gives to his artistes is security. During live shows, it is common for unruly, drunk men to open fire. In January, revellers shot dead a 20-year-old dancer during a tilak ceremony in Rohtas district, 150 km south-west of Patna. In December, celebratory firing at a marriage function in Punjab’s Bhatinda district took the life of a wedding dancer. “I run a verification check on the organiser of the event. I ask the organiser to give me a point-person who will be accountable in case anything untoward takes place. Plus, I remain alert myself. When I notice something wrong, I tell the audience to behave properly,” says Ashok.

For the girls, it is the money that keeps them hooked and does not allow them to think about such mishaps. “Sochenge to karenge kaise (I won’t be able to perform if I have these events playing in my mind),” says Shobha, who does not understand Bhojpuri. “I dance to the tune. Music is same everywhere,” she says in a matter- of-fact tone.

Naina is here with her husband Dilip Kumar Sharma, 27, a pad player. Both are first-generation artistes from Munger, east Bihar. “I am always fearful when she goes for an event without me but we can’t help it beyond a point. Every profession has some kind of risk involved.”

A glow worm flickers afar as we take a right turn off the highway. A bumpy road passing through the fields takes us to an illuminated canopy set up in a moist patch of land outside the house of the bride in Garedhiya block, around 40 km from Ara — this is where Pooja will lead a group of four dancers tonight. Ram Kumar Pandey asks Pooja to wait in the SUV as he goes out to check the arrangements for the troupe. The rickety ride has woken up their four-month old baby daughter, Srishti, from deep slumber. A group of kids surround the car and incessantly bang on its window panes.

They don’t get Pooja’s attention.

“My parents are against me taking Srishti to events. It is a bad influence for her. We have a caretaker for her but she is on leave,” says Pooja, consoling the toddler wearing a white frock, wrapped in a pink towel.

While Ram Kumar is nowhere in sight, she makes a quick phone call to a friend in Mumbai who, she says, lives in Andheri West and is a model like herself. “I am coming very soon, may be in a month or two. I am banking on you for accommodation. You better not ditch me,” she says before hanging up. “This one gets Rs 5,000-6,000 per shoot. I sent her my portfolio. She said I could easily get Rs 10,000. These shady dance shows are not meant for me.”

The history of the dance shows, now a fixture at different kinds of functions across Bihar, is less than 50 years old. Women stage dancers in Bihar were first seen working as ‘fillers’ during nautanki, a form of operatic folk theatre that travelled from eastern Uttar Pradesh to neighbouring Bihar. “Audiences crying over Lord Ram’s vanvaas would suddenly be whistling to the thumkas of the female dancer,” says Mohini Devi, a septuagenarian classical singer in Ara.

Gradually, female live dancers broke away and began performing — singing and a bit of dancing -- at events. Naach became a regular feature in parties hosted by landlords and upper caste politicians in rustic Bihar. Among the most acclaimed of these performers, were the sisters Chand Rani and Bijli Rani, who used to live in Natwar, a hamlet 70 km from Ara, around three decades ago.

“Then came the cassette culture that changed things forever,” says Uday Kumar, a Patna-based playwright. “T-Series’ audio cassettes of Chand Rani and Bijli Rani’s songs found takers within Bihar and among lakhs of men from the state who were working in metro cities. These men used to visit their native villages with tape recorders and cassettes, leaving the villagers amused,” says Kumar.

Consequently, female singers and then dancers started replacing male singers in Bihar’s orchestras in the 1980s. Munna Burman, a keyboard player in Ara, recalls the shift. “I have played in shows that had four male singers and one dancer. Now the situation has reversed. I have stopped going to shows where dancers perform because I cannot stand this vulgarity.”

In 2005, after the Maharashtra state government banned dance bars, many of the dancers came to Bihar in search of work.

Three years later, YouTube launched in India and erotic music videos of dui arthiya (double meaning) songs by Bhojpuri folk singers such as Tarabano Faizabadi were put on the site, contributing to the current shape and scale of Bihar’s live entertainment industry. “Men have these soft porn videos playing in their heads when they ask dancers to perform,” says Burman.

At 10 pm, Pooja is giving the final touches to her make-up. The sanskritik mela (cultural fare) begins with Ganesh Vandana followed by three live songs.

Ram Kumar Pandey doubles up as an emcee for the event: He repeatedly requests the groom’s guests to eat dinner; announces the money tossed to artistes; and calls for a fan for the green room.

At 11 pm, the lights dim and Pandey calls Maaya, first dancer for tonight, on the stage. She dances before a deadpan all-male audience to Chhoo le chhoo le (touch me, touch me), a song from 1997 Hindi film Mahaanta, starring Madhuri Dixit and Sanjay Dutt. YouTube has multiple music videos and clips of ‘sexy dance’ performed on this song at events in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

After the acts of the three dancers, Pandey calls Pooja, the ‘Bhojpuri glamour,’ on stage. Men welcome her by whistling, clapping and hooting.

Pooja moves like a moth on the wooden stage as disco lights -- pink, violet and orange -- race to catch her flight.

She dances like she does not care. Not about the man on the stage showering Rs 50 notes on her. Not about her relatives who live nearby. Not about the friend expecting her in Mumbai. Not about her daughter left unattended in the airless green room.

Dressed in a pink choli, a black slip beneath it, and a matching sheer lehenga prominently displaying her black underwear, she spins, slides and sashays to the song Raate diya buta ke kya kya kiya (what did you do after turning off the lamp) by popular Bhojpuri singer Pawan Singh.

She grabs a pole and leans into it, sporting a coy but confident smile. This is all she will give away tonight to the raucous crowd of men filming her non-stop on their mobile cameras.

By 1 am, Pooja has changed four costumes and danced to seven songs. As she is about to enter the green room, Pandey holds her hand, signalling to perform once more. She pushes him back angrily and leaves the stage.

Pandey follows her, assuring the audience that khoobsurat si, pyaari si (beautiful, lovely) Pooja will be back on the stage in a moment.

(Source: HT)

Bihar woman refuses to accept baby born with deformity, says he looks like an alien

A mother in Bihar rejected her baby born with deformity but has seen many visitors who are of the view that the baby is a reincarnation of a Hindu god.

Khalida Begum, a mother of four, gave birth to the baby on Monday, according to a Mirror report.
The 35-year-old woman was shocked upon seeing her baby with a small head and his bulging eyes.

A baby boy born with an extremely rare genetic condition has been called an 'alien' by his mother. She also refused to breastfeed him initially.

"Several body parts of the baby is not completely developed. When I saw the baby after delivery for the first time, I was completely shocked to see the alien-looking boy. I was so shocked and saddened by this that I asked the midwife to take the baby out of my sight," a Zee News report quotes Khalida as saying.

According to the local reports, the doctors have claimed that the newborn has been diagnosed with an extremely rare genetic condition called harlequin ichthyosis. The condition gives the person thick skin and the features are rendered deformed.

Experts are also speculating that the boy might be suffering from another rare defect called Anencephaly.

Even though Khalida rejected her baby, the locals, including boy's father Mohammad Imtiyaz, are of the view that he might be a reincarnation of a Hindu god.

(Source: India Today)

15 progressive Indian villages that will make you want to ditch your city life right away

In today’s world, Gandhi’s words that India’s survival depends on the well-being of its villages seem even more pertinent.

Seventy percent of India’s population – roughly one-tenth of humanity – live in the countryside. This makes rural India a focal point for issues of national and global concern: the impact of high population and development on natural resources; lack of sanitation and its impact on health; water pollution from raw sewage and pesticide runoff; soil loss and desertification due to erosion, overgrazing and deforestation.

This is also why the ability of India’s villages to offer fulfilling lives to their inhabitants is germinal to India’s future as a great global power.

Over the years, a few of India’s resilient rural villages have been trying to remain relevant and adapt to change without losing their valued traditions and skills that have survived down the ages.

From renewable energy to organic farming, here are 15 Indian villages that have walked the talk and are shining examples of what a community can do when it comes together for a better tomorrow.

1. Dharnai, Bihar

Once struggling to get basic electricity like most villages in India, Dharnai has now changed its fate and become the first village in India to completely run on solar power. Residents of Dharnai had been using diesel-based generators and hazardous fuel like cow dung to meet the electricity requirement for decades, which were both costly and unhealthy. Since the launch of Greenpeace’s solar-powered 100 kilowatt micro-grid in 2014, quality electricity is being provided to more than 2,400 people living in this village in Jehanabad district.

2. Payvihir, Maharashtra

An obscure village in the foothills of Melghat region of Amravati district in Maharashtra, Payvihir, has set an example for the country by consistently showing how communities and NGOs can work together to conserve the environment and ensure sustainable livelihood for people.

In 2014, Payvihir bagged the Biodiversity Award from the United Nation’s Development Programme for turning a barren, 182-hectare land under community forest right, into a forest. Recently, the village also came up with an out-of-the-box idea of selling organic sitafals (custard apples) and mangoes in Mumbai under their brand Naturals Melghat!

3. Hiware Bazaar, Maharashtra

Amid the desperate denizens scrounging for water in the drought-affected parts of Maharashtra stands a village that has not felt the need to call a single water tanker – in fact, it hasn’t called for one since 1995. The village also has 60 millionaires and the highest per-capita income in India.

Facing a major water crisis each year because of the measly rainfall it gets, the village decided to shun water-intensive crops and opted for horticulture and dairy farming. Their consistent water conservation initiatives led to rising groundwater levels and the village started to prosper. Today, the village has 294 open wells, each brimming with water just as the village brims with prosperity.

4. Odanthurai, Tamil Nadu

Odanthurai, a panchayat situated in Mettupalayam taluk of Coimbatore district, has been a model village for the other villages for more than a decade. The panchayat has not only been generating electricity for their own use, but also selling power to Tamil Nadu Electricity Board.

Having already won international acclaim through its unique welfare schemes and energy self-sufficiency drives, Odanthurai near Mettupalayam has begun efforts to develop a corpus of Rs 5 crore to install wind and solar energy farms. This project will enable free supply of electricity to over 8,000 residents.

5. Chizami, Nagaland

A small village in Nagaland’s Phek district, Chizami has been scripting a quiet revolution in terms of socioeconomic reforms and environmental protection for almost a decade. A model village in the Naga society, Chizami is today visited by youth from Kohima and neighbouring villages for internships in the Chizami model of development.

What is unique in the Chizami model of development is that marginalised women have played an important role in bringing about this socio-economic and sustainable transformation that is rooted in traditional practices of the state.

6. Gangadevipalli, Andhra Pradesh

If India lives in its villages, then the model it perhaps must follow is Gangadevipalli, a hamlet in Andhra Pradesh’s Warangal district where every house has the bare necessities of life, and more. From regular power and water supply to a scientific water filtration plant, a community-owned cable TV service and concrete, well-lit roads, this model village has been steadily gaining in prosperity thanks to a disciplined and determined community that has also managed to work in harmony towards goals set collectively.

7. Kokrebellur, Karnataka

Kokrebellur, a small village in Maddur taluk of Karnataka, offers you an unusual and mesmerizing sight as you’ll find some of India’s rarest species of birds chirping in the backyards of these village homes. Named after the Painted Storks, which are called Kokkare in Kannada, this small village (which is not a reserved bird sanctuary) has set an example of how birds and humans can co-exist in complete harmony. The villagers treat these birds as a part of their family and have also created a small area for wounded birds to rest. Birds are so friendly here that they even allow you to go very close to them.

8. Khonoma, Nagaland

From being a cradle of resistance to the British colonial rule, Khonoma has come a long way to become India’s first green village. Home to a 700-year-old Angami settlement and perfectly terraced fields, this unique, self-sustaining village in Nagaland is a testament to the willpower of the tribal groups of Nagaland to protect and conserve their natural habitat. All hunting is banned in the village, which also practices its own ecofriendly version of jhum agriculture (instead of the traditional slash-and-burn method) that enriches the soil.

9. Punsari, Gujarat

Punsari village, barely 100 km from Ahmedabad, could be a textbook case of development. Closed-circuit cameras, water purifying plants, biogas plants, air-conditioned schools, Wi-Fi, biometric machines – the village has it all. And all of it was done in a matter of eight years, at a cost of Rs. 16 crore. The man behind the transformation is its young tech-savvy sarpanch – 33-year-old Himanshu Patel – who proudly states that his village offers “the amenities of a city but the spirit of a village.”

10. Ramchandrapur, Telangana

The first village in Telangana region to win the Nirmal Puraskar in 2004-05, Ramchandrapur came into focus a decade ago when the villagers pledged to donate their eyes for the visually challenged. Among its many achievements, all the houses in the village have smokeless chullahs and toilets with tap-water facilities. It is the first village in the state to construct a sub-surface dyke on the nearby river and solve drinking water problems by constructing two over-head tanks in each house. The village does not have drainage system and all the water generated from each house is diverted to the gardens, which are planted by the villagers in each house.

11. Mawlynnong, Meghalaya

In the tiny hamlet of Mawlynnong, plastic is banned, spotless paths are lined with flowers, bamboo dustbins stand at every corner, volunteers sweep the streets at regular intervals and large signboards warn visitors against littering. Here, tidying up is a ritual that everyone – from tiny toddlers to toothless grannies – takes very seriously. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the village community, this small, 600-odd-person hamlet in Meghalaya is today renowned as the cleanest village in India and Asia.

12. Piplantri, Rajasthan

For the last several years, the Piplantri village panchayat has been saving girl children and increasing the green cover in and around it at the same time. Here, villagers plant 111 trees every time a girl is born and the community ensures these trees survive, attaining fruition as the girls grow up. They also set up a fixed deposit for the girls and make their parents sign an affidavit that ensures their education.

Over the last nine years, people here have managed to plant over a quarter million trees on the village’s grazing commons. To prevent these trees from being infested with termite, the residents planted over 2.5 million aloe vera plants around them. Now, these trees, especially the aloe vera, are a source of livelihood for several residents.

13. Eraviperoor, Kerala

At a time when the country is abuzz with talks about Digital India, and how technology can be taken to the remotest corners of the country, the Eraviperoor gram panchayat in Pathanamthitta district of Kerala is leading way. It is the first gram panchayat in Kerala to have free Wi-Fi for the general public.

The village has also launched a free palliative care scheme for the poor and is the first panchayat in the state to get ISO-9001 certification for its Primary Health Centre. It has also been recognised as a Model Hi-tech Green Village, by the Horticulture Department, for its green initiatives.

14. Baghuvar, Madhya Pradesh

A small village in Madhya Pradesh, Baghuvar is the only village in India that has functioned without a sarpanch since independence, and that too efficiently. Every house in the village has its own lavatories and there is a common toilet complex that is used for social functions. The village has underground sewage lines as well as the highest number of biogas plants in the state. The gas produced is used as cooking fuel and to light up the village. Thanks to its unique way of water conservation, this village also has enough water to survive drought-like conditions for years.

15. Shikdamakha, Assam

Way before Swacch Bharat, in 2010, a remote Assam village had set cleanliness goals for itself. Shikdamakha, near Guwahati, runs cleanliness drives and competitions, and wants to surpass Mawlynnong in Meghalaya as Asia’s cleanest village. A plastic-free village that earned the maximum points in the cleanliness sub-index of Union Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Shikdamakha has also earned the coveted Open Defecation Free status recently.

(Source: Better India)

Bihar breaks world record with 11,000-km human chain

On Saturday, hours before hundreds of women in 30 cities across India took to streets to demand safety in public spaces, an estimated three crore people across Bihar came out for another demonstration – to form a human chain in support of prohibition.

Yet for readers relying only on English newspapers the next morning, the only gathering they would have heard of is likely to have been the women’s marches, branded #IWillGoOut on social media. Most prominent newspapers carried small single-column reports on #IWillGoOut on their inside pages. Photos of the march even made it to international publications, which mistook them for protests against United States President Donald Trump. Almost none of them mentioned the gathering in Bihar.

For the record, 3.2 crore people gathered on Saturday afternoon in cities and towns across Bihar to stand together and hold hands for 45 minutes in support of the prohibition of liquor.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had banned alcohol in the state in April with a stringent law that penalised entire families if one member possessed liquor. The Supreme Court in October stayed a Patna High Court order that quashed this law. The case is still being heard.

The Limca Book of Records has confirmed that this chain, which involved everyone from senior politicians to schoolchildren, is the world’s longest such chain at 11,000 kilometres. The record book will include it in its 2018 publication.

“I think this number is not inflated,” said Naresh Chandra Mathur, the Limca Book of Records observer who was present in the control room for the event as reports from across the state trickled in. “Even in Patna, in Gandhi Maidan, there was people’s participation. Initially, the event was confined only to students. Then slowly other communities such as Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims all joined in. That was how it grew beyond earlier estimates.”

Despite all this, few English news outlets seem to have sent any reporters to cover the Bihar human chain, or covered it in their national editions. Most of this coverage was pushed online instead. The Telegraph ran a longer compilation of news reports with quotes from officials. Hindustan Times had an editorial and reports in its local editions. The Hindu also had a reporter on the ground. Most other reports were from news agencies.

What English papers missed
Hindi newspapers in Bihar, however, went to town covering the human chain. The event made for great political copy. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and alliance partner Lalu Prasad Yadav attended the rally at Gandhi maidan in Patna, as did members of legislative assembly from both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party. It was initially supposed to be 5,000 kilometres long, but after some debate, the government extended it to 11,000 kilometres.

It was also entirely a political event, with schoolchildren across the state made to join the chain. This had some grave consequences. A 15-year-old in Vaishali district on her way to the event fell from a truck and died, after which villagers in the district blocked a national highway and protested against the human chain. Another 80 children are reported to have fainted in the heat. The record for the chain began at 12.15 pm and ended at 1 pm.

When questioned about this after the event, Kumar was reported in The Telegraph to have said, “We are here talking about children, but even trained jawans who participate in Independence Day and Republic Day functions with full training and rehearsal faint and fall down.”

Former chief minister and head of the Hindustani Awam Morcha Jitan Ram Manjhi did not participate, stating that while he supported prohibition, he did not think the government should force schoolchildren to stand for hours for it.

There were other instances of chaos. A woman is reported to have given birth in a car while stuck in traffic caused by participants of the chain in Patna. Around eight lakh people from Patna district alone had joined the chain. Human chain participants in Madhubani allegedly burnt down six toddy shops on their way home.

Not for Trump
That English media outside Bihar did not cover the chain is perhaps not surprising, given that newspapers in large urban areas are notorious for their elite bias in coverage, choosing to focus on events in cities than in states, even ones as large as Bihar and despite the government having organised it.

The #IWillGoOut marches, on the other hand, were largely spontaneous reactions to reported incidents of molestations in Bengaluru on New Year’s Eve, and were organised on social media by city-dwelling women.

Without government support, the women’s marches also faced difficulties in getting police permission. The march planned for Mumbai had to be confined at the last minute to a small garden in Dadar because of the ongoing election code of conduct. The police asked organisers of the Delhi march to shift the location from Connaught Place to Jantar Mantar, before finally granting permission for the original venue.

Despite these last-minute hitches, foreign media organisations covered the event through photos as a part of their slideshows on other marches by women around the world – they mistakenly assumed that women in the #IWillGoOut marches had organised their march to coincide with others protesting the election of Donald Trump as US president.

(Source: Scroll)