The Sun singes their bodies, squabbles break out, so does laughter. Some are old, their foreheads wrinkled, some are just school children. There’s no contractor, no official, no one to supervise. But all that doesn’t matter. Facing a crippling drought, the villagers of Pipantola are digging their own well.
“Go to the small river. You will know what a drought means for us,” said one of them. Pipantola, on one of the many hills that dot Chhattisgarh’s Kabirdham district, is a village of Baigas, one of the seven primitive tribes in Chhattisgarh, classified by the government as “protected vulnerable tribes”, with a combined population of less than 72,000.
And a decade ago, a drought like this would have meant starvation deaths in villages like Pipantola and Sindurkhar nearby. Yet so far, there has been none, thanks to the will of the people and a state government scheme that ensures every tribal family gets 35 kg of rice a month.
In Pipantola, for instance, the “chhoti nadi” that sustains life is a stagnant pool of water, coated white with a pungent odour. It is here that clothes and utensils are cleaned, baths taken, water consumed.
“We are digging the well because we will not survive another summer like this,” said Jugti Bai, washing her clothes in the pool, her famished cattle wandering nearby.
[related-post]
“This is a small Baiga hamlet, and the Agar river was enough for everyone in the village. This year, for the first time, the stream from the river has completely dried up, and the pool has become stagnant and dirty. So I convinced them not to wait for the government and build their own well,” said Naresh Bunkar, a social activist working for tribal rights in the region.
“In two months, we have dug halfway, but there’s more to go. Everyday, every family of the village works. An NGO I work with, Goonj, has promised them clothes in return for the work,” he said.
Ten kilometres uphill from Pipantola is the larger Sindurkhar, with at least 50 Baiga families making up around 30 per cent of the population. Much like Pipantola, every Baiga family here is engaged in farming, but only to sustain themselves.
”Every year, the families plant small crops such as sikia, maria, kodokutki (all millets) and, sometimes, jowar and bajram, so our families can eat through the year. The soil is infertile and rocky, and our crop is not of high quality, so we can’t sell. But this year, there was no rain, and all of it has failed,” said Samaru Baiga, from Sindurkhar.
In Samaru’s hut, there are two bowls of food for the day. One is a bowl of rice in a pool of water, the other contains leaves of charrota, a plant, stirred in oil. Every day for the past few months, there has been nothing else.
Samaru’s neighbour Sukrat Das Manikpuri, an OBC whom the Baigas often turn to for advice, says even the 35 kg of rice from the government often falls short. “Everything has to be rationed because most Baiga families have four to five children, some even eight or nine. There are always too many to feed… without any crop at all, and given the dependence on rice, there is a problem. Besides, there is absolutely no nutrition in our bodies. We need the government to give us pulses,” he said.
Nayan Singh Baiga, for instance, has a wife, mother, and four children to support — the rice ran out in the middle of April. Now they eat ‘khanda’, or discarded rice husk, that sells in the closest town at Rs 20 per kg. In his hut, his mother sifts through the white ‘khanda’. “We have to remove the stones,” she said. But try as she might, the small stones remain.
”We are now beginning to have stomach problems, and the doctor has said our systems cannot digest these small stones. But what else can we do? The forests once had so much produce… harra, bahera, amla. But their acquisition has seen all of those disappear. Only the sal remains now,” said Manikpuri. Harra and bahera are fruits and leaves of trees found in the region and considered to have medicinal properties.
Villagers in Sindurkhar say there have been attempts by the state government to provide drinking water. In fact, the Agar river, which flows about a kilometre away, leads to an embankment where a pump house, a well and underground pipes are connected to six tanks set up under the Nal Jal Yojana.
”But the problem, especially during summers, is that the taps only work for ten days a month. Every month, the administration sends up trucks of diesel for the motor but that only lasts for so much time. For the rest, we have to go to the river. This summer, the water is dirty, shallow and stagnant,” said Mangal Baiga.
The other government initiative in the village is the setting up of handpumps. But the hills are mineral rich and the water polluted. As proof, Mangal Baiga fills a plastic bottle at the pump. For the first few minutes, the water is clear. In half an hour, it turns yellow, with red sediments at the bottom.
”We don’t know what is in the water. They gave us a purifier once for a handpump but that couldn’t take the load. We only know that we cannot drink, wash or bathe with this water,” he said.
The residents of Sindurkhar are not entirely angry with the administration, though. Last week, government officials visited and promised drought relief compensation to those who held land under the Forest Rights Act. Of the 60 registered, around ten were given compensation amounting to Rs 1,000 per acre, villagers say.
”But at least there is rice, a primary health centre, and a school. Most importantly, they have been connected to the plains when they brought a road. In other places, there is not even this much,” said Naresh Bunkar, the activist.
But then, he added, a drought means they will need more than bare basics.
Meanwhile, the villagers of Pipantola, Sindurkhar and other villages with a Baiga population hope that the rains will arrive soon, the Agar will rise, crops sown and the water clean.
They say that the government officials who visited last week told them that the rainfall expected this time was close to normal. And yet, Nachkar Baiga of Pipantola can’t help but ask: “What if the rains don’t come?”