On National Highway 30, you can go from Raipur, the capital city of Chhattisgarh, to Jagdalpur, the district headquarters of Bastar. On this stretch, in Kanker district, is a small town called Charma. Just before Charma, there is a small ghat . Driving down this ghat some weeks ago, I saw around 10-15 villagers, most of them women, returning from the nearby forest with headloads of wood.
They were all from two villages located not far from the highway – Kochwahi in Kanker district, and Machandur in Balod district. Most of them were Gond tribals who work as marginal farmers or agricultural labourers.
![](/media/images/02-DSC09578-PT-Headloads_on_the_highway.max-1400x1120.jpg)
![](/media/images/05-DSC09341Crop-PT-Headloads_on_the_highwa.max-1400x1120.jpg)
The few men in the
group had strapped the wood onto bicycles, while all the women, except one,
carried it on their heads. I spoke to them; they said they left home early in
the morning and returned by around 9 a.m., usually on Sundays and Tuesdays,
after collecting firewood for their homes.
![](/media/images/Headloads-on-the-highway_July2020.max-1400x1120.jpg)
However, not everyone was collecting it just for
home use. I believe a couple of them were taking the firewood they'd gathered
to the market. Marginalised communities – and they exist in large numbers here – make
a few rupees from the sale of firewood. It
is one fragile plank of the livelihoods people scrape together in this troubled region.