Jaideep Hardikar

Sarbajaya Bhattacharya

Editor

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Anil Narkande
worked hard setting up the wedding venue, like he does every time. But he did
not foresee a twist in the tale! 

The 36-year-old
farmer, who doubles up as a decoration and music provider in Bhandara’s Alesur
village, erected a large yellow shamiyana
(marquee) for a wedding in a neighbouring village and decorated the venue with
tens of plastic flowers. He sent in chairs for guests; a dark-red special
wedding sofa for the bride and groom and put in DJ equipment and lighting to
provide for music and illumination at the wedding venue.

The groom’s
modest mud-and-brick house got a face-lift for the wedding – the bride was  coming from Seoni in Madhya Pradesh, across
the Satpura hills. 

Things went south
on the eve of the wedding, says Anil, who was looking forward to a roaring
start for his business in the ensuing summer wedding season. A day before the
nuptials, the 27-year-old groom, who migrates for work to other states, ran
away. 

“He called his
parents and said he would drink poison if the wedding was not called off,” Anil
recalls, “he had a crush on someone else.”.

By the time the
wedding was called off, the bride and her wedding party had already arrived. A
happy occasion turned into a huge embarrassment for the boy’s parents and their
village.

The groom’s crestfallen father told Anil that he
won&#39;t be able to pay his fee.

“I didn’t have
the heart  to ask for money,” says Anil,
sitting in his home in Alesur, a village in Bhandara where most people are
small farmers and farm labourers. “They are landless Dhivars [fishermen caste];
the groom’s father had to borrow money from his relatives,” he says. Anil asked
the man to only pay his labourers, and decided to forgo his own bills.

The freak
incident caused  a loss of Rs. 15,000,
Anil says, as he shows us his godown of decoration items – bamboo logs, stage
frames, huge speakers and DJ instruments, colourful pandal cloths, and special sofas for the newly-weds and other
things, for which he has built a spacious hall alongside his modest cement
house.

Alesur village
lies at the foothills of the Satpura range, in the forest belt of Tumsar tehsil. In this one-crop area, farmers
grow paddy on their small holdings, and after the harvest, most migrate in
search of work. With no major industry or other services that generate
employment, a vast majority of tribal and backward class population in this
area depend on the forest in the summers for their livelihoods. And Tumsar has
a bad track record when it comes to MNREGA work.

So, many like
Anil run small businesses to eke their living, which too has been affected by
stagnant or declining farm income.

DJs and
decorations have caught on in the countryside, but running a business is not
easy in hard times, says Anil. “Economic condition of villagers is precarious.”

Anil has always been a BJP voter – his Gaoli
community has had proximity with the local BJP leaders, but he’s seeing a shift
in the political choice of the villagers (the Bhandara-Gondia Lok Sabha
constituency cast its vote in the first phase of the General Elections on April
19). “Lokanna kaam nahi; trast aahet
[People have no work; they are worried],” he says. The fact that the sitting
BJP MP, Sunil Mendhe, did not visit the area to meet people even once in his
five-year tenure, has fuelled the anti-incumbency against him, a cross section
of people PARI spoke to say.

Women here go to
work on big farms every day, Anil says. If you come to the village in the
morning, you’ll see them on motor-vehicles, leaving for work, and returning
late in the evening. “Young men leave for other states to work in industries,
road or canal construction sites, and heavy duty jobs,” he says.

If he had better
health he too may have migrated for work, says Anil, who has two children, one
of whom has Down Syndrome. “I did go to Nagpur after I failed in the tenth
class and worked as a waiter.” But then, he returned home, took out a loan and
bought a tempo to ferry women labourers. When that became unremunerative and
cumbersome, he sold his vehicle and came up with the idea of setting up a decoration
business, about five years ago. Even for these events, he says, he mostly works
on udhari (credit). “People take my
services and promise to pay me later,” Anil says.

“I don’t take a
fee from my clients if they want me to put up a pandal for post-death rituals,” he continues. “And I charge only
15-20,000 [rupees] for weddings because that’s how much people can afford.”

Anil has invested
nearly Rs. 12 lakh in his business. He has an ongoing loan from a bank against
a collateral of his seven-acre-land, which he pays in installments.

“My farm and milk business hasn’t been yielding
any better income,” he says. “I am trying my luck with bichayat [decoration], but more people are coming in this
business.”

There’s another
tragedy that’s quietly driving the public anger here: accidental deaths of
young migrant labourers from the villages at distant work places. And in most
cases, there is no closure or help with investigations.

Take, for instance, one of the two households
PARI visited in early April: Vijesh Kowale, an unmarried 27-year-old from the
landless Gowari (Scheduled Tribe) community, died while working at an
underground canal site of a major dam near Sonnegownipalle village of Chittoor
district in Andhra Pradesh on May 30, 2023.

“We had to spend
Rs. 1.5 lakh to bring his body back to our village and perform the final rites
here,” his father Ramesh Kowale says. The apparent cause of his son’s untimely
death according to the post-mortem report: “Electrocution.”

Vijesh
accidentally touched a live wire at the site in an inebriated condition, the
first investigation report (FIR) says. He died in an area hospital where he was
shifted.

“We were not
given any compensation by the company that recruited him despite their
promise,” Kowale says. “I am still to repay the hand-loans I took from my
relatives last year.” Vijesh’s elder brother Rajesh, about to get married,
works as a truck driver, while his younger brother Satish works in local
fields.

“It took us two days
to bring his body by road in an ambulance,” Ramesh says.

In the past year,
says Anil, four to five young villagers like Vijesh have died in accidents at
their distant work places. But that’s another story.  

In the village of
Chikhali, Sukhdev Uikey hasn’t had a closure of his young and only son Atul’s
death.

“Was it a murder by the members of his own group
or an accident, we don’t know,” says Uikey, a small farmer who also works as a
labourer in the village. “We did not get to see his body, because the police in
Andhra Pradesh cremated it without informing or contacting us.”

In December 2022,
Atul left with a group of migrants from this region for Rajahmundry in Andhra
Pradesh to work in the paddy fields as a thresher operator. On May 22, 2023, he
called his parents to say that they were on their way back home.

“That was his
last call,” Uikey remembers. After that Atul’s phone was switched off. His  sister, Shalu Madavi says he never returned
home, “we learnt about his death about a week later when we began to make
enquiries and went to that place.”

The family were
shown some video clips which made things even more confusing. The clips showed
Atul lying on the side of the road near a wine bar. “People thought he was
drunk. But he must have been hit,” his father says. The post-mortem report
mentions a deep gash on the back of his head. 
“The police showed us where he was cremated,” a restless Uikey says as
he shows the FIR and post mortem report to PARI. “It’s a mystery what actually
happened to our son.” The men who had gone with him are tight lipped about his
death. Most of them have left the village for work this season, he tells PARI.

“Such accidental
deaths of migrant workers are very common, but there’s not much we can help
with,” says Sulochana Mehar, the Chikhli sarpanch,
who tried in vain to follow up on the case with the Bhandara police. 

Uikey and his
family are more interested in finding the truth about Atul’s death than voting
in the Indian General Elections. “They are of no use,” Sukhdev says of the
public representatives, underlining the fact that MPs and MLAs have lost touch
with the grassroots in more ways than one.

Back in Alesur, Anil says he knows both the
grieving families – the Kowales and the Uikeys – because he put up the mandap [tent] free of cost for the
families during the post-death rituals in their homes. “I am better off with my
business and my farm even if the income is not much,” he says. “At least, I’m
alive.”

In Bhandara: a series of strange and unfortunate events

بھنڈارا کے مہاجر مزدوروں کے لیے انتخابات بے معنی

భండారాలో దురదృష్టకర సంఘటనల పరంపర

தொடரும் துர்சம்பவங்கள்

ਭੰਡਾਰਾ ’ਚ ਵਾਪਰੀਆਂ ਅਜੀਬ ਤੇ ਦੁਖਦ ਘਟਨਾਵਾਂ

ଭଣ୍ଡାରାରେ ଅଦ୍ଭୁତ ଏବଂ ଦୁର୍ଭାଗ୍ୟଜନକ ଘଟଣାବଳୀ

ഭണ്ഡാരയിലെ വിചിത്രവും നിർഭാഗ്യകരവുമായ സംഭവങ്ങൾ

ಭಂಡಾರ: ಸಾಲು ಸಾಲು ವಿಚಿತ್ರಕಾರಿ, ದುರದೃಷ್ಟಕರ ಘಟನೆಗಳು

पलायन रुकता न रुकती हैं मौतें, किसकी ख़ातिर ये चुनाव हैं होते

ભંડારામાં વિચિત્ર અને દુર્ભાગ્યપૂર્ણ ઘટનાઓની હારમાળા

भंडारा: नवा पीढ़ी अऊ अजीब अलहन के कनेक्सन

भंडारा में दुर्भाग्यपूर्ण घटनन के विचित्र श्रृंखला

ভান্ডারা: আজব গাঁয়ের আজব কথা

পৰিয়ালৰ নিৰাপত্তাৰ খাতিৰত জীৱনৰ নিৰাপত্তা হেৰুৱাইছে ভাণ্ডাৰাৰ যুৱকসকলে

भंडाऱ्यामध्ये अवचित आणि अघटित घटनांची मालिका

Bhandara

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In Bhandara: a series of strange and unfortunate events

Young people in this Maharashtra district are forced to migrate as there is no work for them in their villages. The General Elections 2024 are the last thing on their minds

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