Basic amenities for living such as safe drinking water, suitable toilet, electricity and housing have not been ensured for a vast majority of rural poor households as yet.
Studies have found that mostly Dalit habitations constitute a major part of it. There have been attempts under different targeted schemes in mission mode such as NRDWM, SBY, PMSBHGY and PMAY to reach out to these sections of people who are not only poor but also socially-marginalised.
Though it remains a fact that the people in unorganised sector, especially rural poor labourers, contribute more to GDP, but they get a less share in the absence of equity in distribution of public finance and national wealth.
Basic amenities are non-negotiable primary necessities for life and should not be postponed with a plea of shortage of fund or any other administrative reasons; rather it is proved that ensuring basic amenities has generated employment and improved quality working hour of the working class people in rural areas.
A majority of the Dalit habitations in rural areas of the State need to be developed with basic amenities for a decent and dignified living. It is possible only by investing Government resources available out of different schemes for the rural poor. But in spite of schemes, why the situation remains unchanged is surely a debatable issue.
In order to develop the Dalit hamlets, the most primary necessity is to provide them homestead land and water source in the hamlet premises, preferably piped water, or tube well, and develop water harvesting structures for other domestic use of the people.
Every day, observation shows that the poor people in hamlets spend around two hours in the morning and evening to collect drinking water as their households are not connected to piped water. They are forced to prefer open defecation in the absence of toilet and most important non-availability of required water. Even for daily bath, washing, cooking and other household use, water scarcity has been an everyday continued problem with rural poor.
As the sources of public water such as rivers and canals are getting polluted day by day, the crisis has been become more acute for them who cannot offer for installation of private tube well at their hamlet or house premises. Many of them are landless and lack financial resources to meet the growing expenses of digging water sources.
Dalit women and adolescent girls have to walk a long distance and routinely wait in queue for hours together to fetch water for the consumption of whole family.
The children, elderly people and people with disability in family are the worst sufferers and mostly their every day care lies with women in family usually who are also working outside home along with managing all domestic works in family.
Care of animal and animal shelter has been a major issue with Dalit families rearing cows, goats, sheep and hens in family to earn some for which collection of water is very essential which is also mostly the responsibility of women.
Almost in a majority of the villages, Dalit women face social discrimination at water bodies, ponds, tube wells, public wells and water taps where the upper caste women usually do not allow the Dalit women to touch the water sources.
A majority of rural Dalit women have no private place to take bath and usually they go outside for open defection and lack proper sanitary care due to lack of safe water and suitable hygienic facilities for personal care. A large majority of women sanitary workers belong to Dalit communities who face all kinds of indignity and discrimination in everyday life while serving the people in the village.
This kind of human suffering is very casually discussed in our public domain, social movements, women and Dalit movements.
There has been availability of adequate financial resources with Government from a number of sources, including Government and private, to make available piped drinking water to every household and preferably to all rural poor but unfortunately there is no political will to ground this people-centric mission.
The four major important schemes of the Government of India relating to basic amenities for rural poor such as National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) and Swachha Bharat Mission (SBM) Gramin for drinking water and sanitation, Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijili Har Ghar Yojana(PMSBHGY) for universal household electrification and Prime Minister Awas Yojana (PMAY) Gramin, for achieving housing for all by 2022 are not being implemented by the State Government in a time-bound manner. Rather, bureaucratic apathy and lack of community involvement in planning act as hindrances.
There must be meeting with all eligible households in Dalit hamlets to make them aware about these basic amenities schemes for them and plan its effective use and sustainability. These schemes are supposed to be implemented in a mission mode with time-bound approach but there has been no such planning by the State Government to achieve the target.
It is observed that in most the villages, there has been frequent breakdown of thousands of hand pumps and tube wells, but the local service providers are not effectively attending the urgency that leads to suffering of people depending on existing public water sources. The water quality also has been a major issue in all areas but remain unaddressed by the Government.
The matching contribution from State can be provided from the State sources such as SCSP and TSP, District Mineral Foundation(DMF) Fund, Building and Construction Workers Welfare Cess fund and CSR funds available with private and public sector companies and fund from local sources by Panchayati Raj institutions. But there has been notional allocation in the State budget and a huge publicity by the State Government without implementation of schemes and programmes for the rural SCs and STs. The financial resources available for SCs, STs, workers and mining affected people under provisions of law are diverted by the State Government for general purpose violating the norms and guidelines of the fund.
The other most important issue is that the Government has not been promoting consciousness among people and the block level officials and PRI leaders are not adequately trained for the implementation of these schemes involving people.
For the success of the schemes, the Government officials are not only responsible for execution of the schemes but also have to motivate and educate people in order to bring their behavioral change through health and hygienic education and awareness.
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