Invitation to a village

After quite some time, I got another opportunity to visit a nearby village. This visit was quite different from most of my previous visits. I went after the Village Headman invited me to visit the village and advise them on how to develop the place. This village, Patna in Manika block of Latehar block was a village where the Project on Community Based Rehabilitation for the Disabled was working. 

The Village Headman was disabled himself. It was quite a sad story on how he got a bad limp. He slipped and fell from a bund when he was studying in the third standard. From his description, it looked as if he had a posterior dislocation of the hip which was never managed properly. 

A meeting was arranged where the villagers could discuss issues with me. However, there was a small hitch. Most of the villagers thought that I would be late like most of the other guys who get invited to the village. 

So, I had time to walk around and see the village. Below are few of the snaps from the walk . . .

The violet colored plants are wild tulsi.

The water body on one end of the village

Recently, there was a government program promoting organic farming using compost. These are compost pits made using government grants. Unfortunately, nobody was sure about how to make the compost.

The dried looking fields. The farmers were trying to plant wheat

The lunch we got in the village. Rice with pigeon pea curry (dhal). Side dishes included mashed pigeon pea leaves made in two different ways.

My jottings after the visit to Patna village –

1. The segregation on the basis of caste within the small village of about 180 families affected the progress of the village.

2. Similar to most of the villages in our region, they had abandoned traditional cropping which included millets. That had spelt doom for them. Members from about 80 families had already migrated to other places in search of work.

3. There were 4 graduates in the villages. They were running pillar to post in search of a job. None of them was even exploring the option of self-employment/enterpreneuing.

4. There was a medium sized lake on one side of the village. The villagers were not able to use it for commercial gains.

5. The villagers had heard about the intervention we were doing in the neighbouring villages of Ghutwa and Ekta under the Climate Change Project. They wanted us to help them out too. There are challenges. Patna village is in Latehar district whereas the Climate Change Project is being implemented in 30 villages of the Satbarwa block, which is in Palamu district. Considering the enthusiasm the village had to see change, I would have to oblige them.

A Scramble Across Bihar . . .

Emmanuel Hospital Association, of which NJH is a unit has it's governing body meetings twice in a year had decided to have the Regional Administrative Council for 2012 of the Eastern Region in the Madhepura Christian Hospital, Madhepura, Bihar. For us, it was an opportunity to travel across this part of the country by road. The reason being that train travel would mean that it would take at least 30 hours to reach Madhepura from NJH, whereas a rough calculation told us that it should not take more than 20 hours if we were to travel by jeep. 

We calculated all the kilometers and the route. The google maps told us that it's going to be 565 kilometres. According to google it should take us only 10 hours. But, considering our previous experiences, we estimated 15 hours on the road.

The time of departure from hospital was fixed at 4:00 am on November 5th. And we were all out of the hospital by 3:50 am. 

Dinesh with the vehicle

The team, Dinesh, Majerus and Vandana

Muddy roads from Daltonganj . . .

Progressing on to potholes . . .

And then to larger ones . . . The rains only made it worse . . . 

Some places, it became like small ponds . . . 

Beside the road, the scenery was breathtaking . . .  

Inside Hariharganj town . . .

Relief as we left Jharkhand. We expected better roads and we were rewarded . . . 

Bihar welcomed us . . .  

The GT road at Aurangabad . . .

The GT Road towards Delhi . . . 

I dozed off for most of the time between Aurangabad and Patna. Then, we got into the traffic jam within Patna which delayed us by almost 2 hours.

On the Mahatma Gandhi Setu over the river Ganges

Policemen patrolling the bridge. 

The famous Hajipur bananas along the banks of the Ganges . . . 

The road from Patna to Muzaffarpur was a mess. The 75 kilometer stretch took us more than 2 hours. To make matters worse, there was poor road signs except in the highways.

Muzaffarpur . . .  

 After the snail pace progress till Muzaffarpur, we were relived to see the brand new highway from Muzaffarpur to Purulia. It happened that the construction of the highway was still in progress. Thankfully, the work was over till the place where we had to make the turning towards Madhepura. 

The brand new Muzaffarpur-Purnia highway

Typical rural India on the 4 lane highway . . . 

Guesses on what this is? 

Well, we drove into the Madhepura Christian Hospital campus sharp at 8:00 pm. It had taken us 16 hours totally. If we excluded the time spend for breakfast and lunch, that was what we had calculated. It has been an exhilarating experience for the team. More on Madhepura Christian Hospital in the next blog . . .