Samikhsya Bureau
If statistical sophistry can be the solution than the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has done it well, playing into the gallery. It is a whopping allocation of Rs.36,600 crore for nutrition related programmes.
But such trajectories often bypass many realities at the bottom, and it did in the past and may do so in the years to come.
A case in point is the life of the Bonda tribe on the hills of Malkangiri , in Odisha , where nutrition, health and hygiene, such terms are yet alien. Why only Malkangiri, but, the situation reveals similar grotesque plights in many tribal thick areas in Odisha.
The administration may have opened up a few developmental outlets but, majority of such facilities cannot travel high enough to reach the peaks like Kichakpada or Andrahal village in the hills.
To the inhabitants of such Bonda villages, the words emanating from the Budget must sound like compelling fictions, those even fail to ensnare their innocence, let alone a serious participation.
Talking about Kichakpada, perhaps the only Bonda hamlet situated at a height of over 2000 feet above the sea level, the words like nutrition or ‘swasthya’ are like bitter ironies in contrast to what they live with.
Wedded to an ethnicity, that this tribe loves and hates with equal measure, today, cannot help this group to move forward further in the confluence of half ethnicity and half modernity.
But, there has to be a balancing act here through creating avenues for the very basic things like health and hygiene those miss here.
‘Beti bachao, beti padhao’ such slogans can never resonate in these deep woods when the women of these areas have to get down the hills to fetch a pitcher of drinking water that is of multiple use. Or a bloody good distance down the hills to, often, get a life-saving medicine or even to deliver a baby at a local health centre.
The facilities like tube-wells for this population is pathetically few and far between. During a recent visit to Kichakpada, which is not even motorable for 2 & half kms and Andrahal ,on the way, the conditions were like a pressure-cooker bound.
