Hundreds of women under the banner of the Society for Rural, Urban, and Tribal Area Improvement (SRUTAI) went in a procession and staged a demonstration in front of the BMC office here and submitted a memorandum to the BMC Commissioner on Wednesday demanding implementation of all the welfare schemes and a Crime Branch inquiry into the role of Community Organisers and their corrupt practices.
The demonstration was led by SRUTAI president Rabi Rath and secretary Jaganath Gantayat.
More than 70 Women Self-Help Groups functioning in the Brahmapur Municipal Corporation (BMC) area are deprived of getting loan through the SJSRY in phases. Their members demanded an impartial probe into the matter.
The SRUTAI has constituted these SHGs in different wards of the BMC, but the Community Organisers of BMC have deliberately neglected them, particularly in providing financial assistance under different schemes of the Government and in sanctioning loans for their vested interests, the memorandum alleged. Even the information sought on 23 points under the RTI Act has deliberately been ignored, the memorandum said.
The members’ charter of demands also included investigation into the failure of the BMC in implementing the different programmes of the State and Central Governments for development of poor women in urban areas and investigation of the entire assistance spent under the Swarna Jayanti Sahari Rojgar Yojana right from the commencement of the scheme by the Crime Branch.
Among others, Indira Kumari Nayak, Bishnupriya Padhi, Badrinath Gantayat, Rajendra Panda, Subash Panigrahi, Niranjan Nayak, Harapriya Sahu, Kishore Panigrahi, Ashok Behera, Pitambara Patra, Sasmita Sabat, Prafulla Panigrahi and Ramanath Gantayat led the demonstration.
ing. IIJQotIJHzIJzy little haven in the hills. I always have loved mountains. In Kim, Kipling wrote ‘Who goes to the hills, goes to his mother.’ I cannot agree more with him. living in the hills is like living in the bosom of a strong, sometimes proud, but always comforting mother. Every time I go away from here, the homecoming is warmer and sweeter.”
He says had he not decided to make Mussoorie his home, he may have been a different person today. “There's nature all around me. My shrubbery is my favourite place. Watching nature change its colours with the changing seasons enchants me. The sparrows are here all the year round. And so are the thrushes. It is summer and fruit-eating birds have arrived. The presence of these birds adds tranquility to my life."
The writer-in-residence in this hill town, Bond wrote his first book The Room on the Roof at the age of 16 .The work has the Doon valley as its backdrop and paints an endearing picture of the pristine beauty of the valley in the 1950s. Generations of children have been studying the book as a text in school. “I was 17 when The Room on the Roof was published. Makes me feel quite ancient sometimes,” Bond said.His latest book is Tales of Fosterganj, a novel about a charming Himalayan hamlet which he loves.
“Actually Fosterganj is Barlowganj near Mussooie disguised as a fictional place,” Bond told The Pioneer. “There are more than a dozen chapters and they all are interlinked,” said the author who has been attending literature festivals in Dubai and Mumbai.
Tales of Fosterganj has several characters whom the author met and knew in the 1960s in Barlowganj. The novel is also set in the 1960s.Ruskin Bond has a gentle charm. It has kept him going even as he wanders around the hill side identifying wildflowers for children or just listening patiently to the local baker's complaint of poor yeast and as the years have gone by, he has become a living legend, an institution.
Having long ago, effortlessly, crossed his ‘century’ of published titles; Ruskin Bond has maintained his integrity as a writer and has worked towards his goals with single-minded devotion. Perhaps his greatest achievement is that he has persevered in his dream of becoming a full-time writer. And he writes for those ‘gentle readers’ who are interested in the beauty of nature and the dignity in the lives of ordinary people rather than in stormy events.
His stories achieve a universal quality that transcends the regional locale and endorses the human endeavour to survive against odds and to preserve what is beautiful and meaningful.