Chaudia became a panchayat in 1952. It consists of nine villages, Chaudia, Harekrushnapur, Banchanidhipur, Dhrubapalli, Rajendrapalli, Rajarajeswarpalli, Harishpur, Kanakpalli and Shailendrapalli. Its population is around ten thousand today. This area is in the hinterland of the supposedly developed and thriving Dhamara Port. This panchayat has no round-the-year access by road to Chandbali. The Pradhan Mantri Sadak Yojana incorporated a proposed road from the panchayat way back in 1987. The work reportedly started in 2013 and the 12-kilometer road is yet to be completed. Though it is asserted that safe water supply arrangements have been started in 2010-11, it relates to only four wards. The water supply scheme functioned for 15 days and is nonfunctional thereafter.
In the nine villages, 40 tube-wells push out saline-affected water. This factor was capable of being anticipated as the area is located in the costal belt. Now the tube-wells do not really serve their purpose. The supply of electricity in the area is precarious. It is alleged that to repair a simple fuse, one has to travel 12-15 km on makeshift roads to Chandbali to convey the message for necessary service. Being devoid of ordinary road facilities, the residents do not have proper medical and ambulance services. Patients have to be carried in contraptions hanging on the shoulders of at least two persons to go to the Dhamara hospital.
Similarly, basic requirements of education, communication and other healthcare facilities are not available to the residents of the area who have to live in a world of their own and accept deprivation as a part of life. The area is not in a remote part of Odisha infected by Maoists. It is not inside any thick forest. There is hardly any justification in the hands of the authorities to explain away the callous denial of basic amenities to the residents. The elected representatives of the area are reasonably educated, conscious of their rights and could have been reasonably assertive of the reasonable basic needs of the community.
The Pradhan Mantri Sadak Yojana was conceived of quite a few years ago to provide all-weather road linkage amongst all the villages. Additionally, there is a Mukhya Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana. Despite these yojanas, the residents of such unfortunate areas have continued to suffer in silence. There is a denial of basic amenities and this affects the large community of youth amongst the more than ten thousand residents. The future of the youth of the region is being irreparably harmed by the indifference, insensitiveness and inaction on the part of the authorities. We cannot any more befool the youth of the area by consoling them in any manner by saying that in a democracy you get a Government you deserve. Having got the Government they deserve, they cannot be further denied of their rights to express their grievances and dissatisfaction in being kept as an area of darkness in the supposedly economically vibrant present-day Odisha.
The objective of picking up this instance is to demonstrate that at the micro level there is hardly any concern for the provision of basic amenities sustained through appropriate remedial actions. The decision-making system is over-bureaucratised. Everything may superficially be looking honky dory, but the reality remains at the grassroots level: unwept, unsung and unheard.
One can multiply this example, and every district shall throw up the morbid details of gross neglect of pockets within its geographical area. There has to be continuous evaluation with a view to ascertaining the areas that require special attention, and the requisite measures in this direction cannot stand abandoned or rendered ineffective. Such a situation would lead to a vicious circle and enhance the disparities in the facilities available in the different pockets of obvious neglect. Surely, the persons representing this area have to answer why such apparent neglect has continued to foster itself and what efforts they have made to remedy the situation.
The dominant population of such areas is the youth. Apart from the other concerns for their community, they have to focus their attention on the reasons that have caused such continued unmindful neglect of the area. They should then concentrate on the remedial requirements. They may have to advise their representatives regarding the manner of articulation of their requirements, formulate new strategies and modalities to assert and enforce their rights and have a roadmap for their area to be on the path of progress.
The question is what has prevented this powerful source of social energy to have been choked or diverted. The impact of their activities would also inspire the youth in areas like Puri Sadar sub-divisio where islands continue to exist in a waterlogged state for weeks together. Country boats become the sole source of transport in the area. These examples can be multiplied. But when they are not reported and commented upon, they go unnoticed and remain buried under the heap of inaction in the hands of the supposedly alert authorities.
A simple and single emphasis on completing road links amongst villages cannot be permitted to be neglected any further. Alongside, the schools must have buildings and teachers, the PHCs must have the requisite doctors and paramedical staff and the farmer must have within accessible distance easy source of knowhow-consultancy and availability of quality inputs at a reasonable price and eventually an assured market with assured reasonable return, protected through the policy measures of the State. This elementary step has been getting brushed aside.
The urban middle class or intelligentsia has lost its reality touch with the rural areas. The new social movement for the better has to commence from these far-flung panchayats, which stand neglected, so that a few of us in the so-called urban areas do not take away the major share of the cake without permitting an equitable distribution of elementary and basic facilities.
Antyodaya has to play its vital and pioneering role to rectify the distorted picture. Youth power alone cannot remedy the situation, and it requires the constructive support of the other sections of the society. In this important task of eradicating the distortions and aberrations in the path of our progress and development, all the differences and disharmonies in our social order need to be overcome. This is now an unavoidable requirement. Concerted and organised measures are to be initiated to cause a visible movement towards a change for the better. This certainly concerns all of us!
(The writer, a Senior Advocate, is a former All India Service officer, a former diplomat, a former editor, a former President of Orissa High Court Bar Association and a former Advocate General of Odisha. yantdas@hotmail.com)