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This note is focused on the government schemes and infrastructure in Jhabua.
Missing in action in the villages is electricity. Though each house has
an electricity connection, most of day goes without it. There are also no
streetlights. The mothers complain that at night children cannot study,
no work can be done as there is complete darkness. There are no public telephones,
with only a few people owning mobile phones. The main source of water is
the hand-pump and a nearby pond. But the water level has gone down. There
are pockets in which the fluoride content is much more than the permissible
range, but people drink from the same hand-pump. Brown teeth, nimble and
bent bones are a common site in schools and in scattered villages. Most
villages do not have a public market. There is a ration-shop that is the
center of the village activity. Transportation facilities have increased
with more public buses and bus-stops near the villages. The Prime Minister’s
Road Scheme is hard at work. Construction is on its way to connect the highway
to the main falia (hamlet) of the village.
Aaganwadis
(govt. preschools) are completely missing in the villages. I haven’t
been successful to observe a functioning aaganwadi during my entire fieldwork.
I saw some primary schools with the mid-day meals being cooked, children
lining up for food, also spoke with the helper who cooks the meal, but
other schools I visited complained about lack of school funds for preparing
the meal. So far, there has been a mixed response to mid-day meals. The
cycles promised to the middle school girls are missing, they are still
walking miles to come to school. I see children in the primary schools,
but I also see school verandas converted into classrooms. Children sit
on their mats, with no furniture. It is common to find grades 1 to 5 sitting
in a single classroom with no teacher. Only one out of five villages I
visited had a primary private school. I asked a key informant in the village,
do you feel that the number of teachers is sufficient in the school? They
say yes, but when I ask them about the teacher student ratio, they say
it is around 1:60-80. This ratio has become an acceptable norm in the
villages. There are no adult-education programs all the women I spoke
to were not educated. Have we given up on our mothers, I ask?
Radhika Iyengar
Doctoral
Student, Teachers College, Columbia University
Consultant, Jan Shikshan Sansthan, Jhabua (www.jssjhabua.net)
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