Expanded PMUY - I

Expanded PMUY (On a GOI assignment)

The District assigned was Kokrajhar. Subdistrict Gossaigaon. As per the database, the distributor assigned to me had 49 villages under his purview and 10042 households. Out of approximately 4000, KYCs had been completed.

As I studied the location of the cluster of 49 villages I realized that they share a border with Bengal and Bhutan. Two major communities are the inhabitants of that area - the Bodo tribals and Santhals along with some other minor linguistic groups.

The distance from my home was 340 Kilometers out of which approximately 60 Kilometers are in poor condition. I visited 16 of the 49 villages and I am sharing my experiences here.

The villages were without electricity or any visible sign of development or government presence. A few water supply schemes were there. Interestingly the roads were accessible and better compared to village roads in many parts of Assam. A few villages did have some electric poles – but electricity was not supplied as per the villagers.

Villagers were healthy and clean and no visible signs of malnutrition or disease were noticed among the men, women, and children. Another interesting thing was even though a Sunday – no drunkard or country liquor sellers were noticed during our sojourn. Houses were mostly thatched and concrete structures were noticed but rarely.

A few years back there was a huge communal flare-up between the two major communities. Members of both communities, at that time, had to forsake their homes and live in relief camps. However, the situation stabilized and they came back to their home and hearth.

However, the mutual suspicion remained although people were civil and polite with each other.

As I entered the first village I realized I will be having a problem with language. Although I can understand Bodo, a little bit but with that minimal knowledge communication is not possible and I have to rely on my distributor. Similarly, the Santhal language spoken there was quite different from the language I knew or could try to understand.

The second noticeable fact about that location was that it is a Christian belt. However, interestingly there were various groups of the Christians like – Presbyterians, Lutheran Church and most strangely of all – Church of North India. I have never heard about this “Church of North India”.

There was a clear division of communities even within the churches. No Bodo devotee was found in a church where the pastor was an Adibasi and vice versa.

Since it was a Sunday the people congregated in the various churches and we decided to approach them as they came out after prayers. We also visited various market squares and one rice mill to propagate our message to the maximum possible extent.

The previous experiences of my student days when we intermingled with a lot of remote villagers gave me some insight on how to tackle this initiative of propagating the government’s message.

Although villagers were friendly and nice they do not trust us. However, much we may explain they will always try to get the final clearance from their community elders. These could be senior Church members, school teachers, Anganwadi workers, Asha workers, Village Gaon Burhas (Headman) etc. We avoided political parties of all kinds. So we concentrated on convincing these community elders and treated them with a lot of respect.

So started our job of driving through obscure village roads and wherever we heard sounds of human activity like the singing of gospel songs, talk or laughter we stopped and approached them with care and sensitivity. It is important to note that the suspicion is built up or not built up depending on your first approach.

Due to my language problem, I could not use my charm on those people. However, it was extremely gratifying when three old Grandma’s wanted a photo with me. I loved them and they blessed me in their own language. Actually, come to think of it, the language of the heart is always understood and it does not require any dialect or words.

This request for a photograph gave me an idea. I advised the distributor Mr. Dinen Narzary to take his wife or mother during his visits to other villages so that the womenfolk may shed their inhibitions and get involved. I am sure the success rate will be more.

There were some worrying incidents and information also but I shall share them in my next blog.

Hope I can bring all the 10042 households within the periphery of this superb government of India initiative to empower the women. Keeping my fingers crossed at this moment.

Three Cheers to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for giving me this opportunity. Do not know what will be the success rate but at the least, I can try.