Dedication of the borewell

Only today did I realize that I did not put the snaps of the dedication of the borewell that was dug in the campus more than a week back. 

I could not believe my eye when we could put a 2.5 inch pipe attached to the motor. You can see for yourself the flow of water from the water pump. 

We read from Isaiah 35. 

Dr Pradhan cut the ribbon

The people who made it possible -
From right to left - Dinesh, our engineer; Mr. Shekhar, staff from Sampurn Development India; Mahendar, our Maintenance staff, Mr. Prashanth, staff from Sampurn Development India; Mr. Ilias, our Maintenance staff

Once again, our gratitude to Sampurn Development India and their staff. And all praises to our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. 

The Village Visit

Few days back, I had the opportunity of doing visits to few villages as part of our community health projects. It is not that I do not visit villages regularly. These village visits were quite different as I had the opportunity to walk through an entire village after quite a long time.

As is the custom, my colleague and I went straightaway to the village headman’s (mukhiya) house as soon as we reached the village. After exchanging pleasantries, we got into the serious discussion about the issue of people with disabilities for whom we had made the visit. 

I shall write about this in another of my posts.

The mukhiya was from a caste which is designated as backward. He got the opportunity of being elected as the mukhiya because the panchayat had the status of being a reserved panchayat where only a person from the backward caste could be elected.

What I would like to portray here is my walk from the mukhiya’s house to the government run village play school (anganwadi).

The mukhiya’s house was very close to the main road. However, his immediate neighbours were all people who were deemed as that of a higher caste. It was obvious that most of these people did not want to do anything with the mukhiya.

Cursory glances went up as we walked through this ‘high caste street’. There was no word uttered. Contrary, there were murmurings going on mainly between the womenfolk who were sitting in the courtyards of their homes.

The next street belonged to people of another caste whose major occupation was dairy farming. However, here the mukhiya had people asking him very sarcastically about the work he was doing. There were women asking him if there was some new government scheme in the pipeline. The tone and mannerisms did give away the mistrust they had on him.

The anganwadi was in the area where another caste was dominant.

I enquired about the Harijans - the supposedly lowest caste. Gandhiji gave them the name Harijan which means God’s people.

One of the men pointed to clump of thatched houses a bit distance away from the anganwadi.

Previous experience has taught us that it may not be wise to rush to this group. The problems would be the maximum here. But, almost the whole of any rural Indian village do not consider them humans. We would visit these houses at a later time.

Other than the caste system, one more aspect which concerned me . . .

The filth and dirt in the streets was appalling. One of the villagers commented that if it rains it becomes worse. Of course, the situation was worst in the area where the dairy farming caste was living. Conditions were perfect for the outbreak of an epidemic of any water borne disease. It would be a miracle if nobody got malaria in the entire village every week. And of course, the worst part . . . there were no toilets. It was open air defecation all around.

Any good things . .. …

There were televisions and music systems in quite a few houses. There were jazzy bikes parked in front of few houses. There was a sort of serenity and peace in the whole place although the divisions within the community was obvious. 

It is not uncommon to see romantic depictions of rural Indian vistas portrayed in many avenues.

However, I’m sure that what is depicted above is not an uncommon scene in many of our villages.

(Apologies for no snaps from the visit in this post. This is because of feedback about villagers not being comfortable about outsiders taking snaps. There is regular talk about the press and NGOs taking snaps from villages and using it for nefarious purposes. The snap given above is that from another village) 

Rupture Uteri . . . and the luckiest of them

Over the last 1 week, we’ve had 4 patients with rupture uterus.

Two of them were previous Cesarian sections who tried to deliver normally elsewhere. One of them continues to be very sick. Today we found out that she has developed a vesicovaginal fistula too.

However, the luckiest of the lot seems to be Kanti Devi, a 28 year old lady who had a twin pregnancy after 2 previous successful pregnancies, both of whom needed Cesarian sections.

Now, for the present twin pregnancy which she was not aware about (as she did not have any sort of antenatal care), she started to have pains since about 3 pm on Friday afternoon. 

The kept her for some time at home after which by around 8 pm, they took her to a nearby private clinic.

At the private clinic, she delivered a baby by normal vaginal delivery. However, after that the people in the private clinic waited as they most probably diagnosed a second baby.

They waited for almost couple of hours after which they realised that something was amiss.

The relatives brought her to NJH with a diagnosis of undelivered second twin.

Dr. Shishir, who was on duty did not need to ponder much to diagnose a rupture uterus. 

The surgery was uneventful.

I’m sure that this would be a very rare presentation of a rupture uterus - a patient with 2 previous Cesarian sections who in her third pregnancy conceives twins. She delivers a live baby by normal vaginal delivery and then ruptures her uterus and loses the second baby. 

And here is Kanti Devi with the surviving twin . . . 

The snap has been taken after obtaining consent from the family including the patient. 

Climate Change . . . What an association

We’ve been working quite hard in the area of bringing resilience in our surrounding communities towards climate change. The strategies have been manifold.

The major strategies being aimed towards equipping families to alternative livelihoods, facilitating the cultivation and acceptance of drought resistance crops like millets, group formation aimed at co-operative agro-based livelihoods and forest conservation.

It was surprising to read in the BBC about a study published in Science with research done at the University of California, Berkeley, which says that shifts in climate are strongly linked to increases in violence around the world.

This makes lots of sense to a place like Palamu where NJH is.

Palamu has been famous for the periods of irregular drought and unpredictable rainfall. Even as the rest of the nation celebrates a good monsoon, Palamu has been in the throes of an bad drought.

The study brings out the fact that it is all the more important that the government and civil society organisations think seriously about ways to mitigate the effects of climate change.

And the key I believe is to look back at the way our forefathers have tackled changes in climate. Many a time, we have come to conclusions that forceful interventions in the name of development and modernisation has brought about more challenges than solutions in the long run.

A simple example is that of the Green Revolution which had been touted as the long standing solution to food insecurity. However, on looking back, we see that it caused many a damage to traditional dietary habits of communities. At least in the Palamu region, this holds true as communities which depended on millet crops which are drought resistant were forced into or enticed into water dependent crops of rice and wheat.

I’m sure we need to look more into this aspect of climate change, but one cannot take away the fact that people like me do not find it difficult to accept such a research. 

Pangasius

Last week, we got some new type of fish which is being promoted by the Government of India. It's called Pangasius - the common name being Vietnamese Cat Fish.

Pangasius fry which we procured last week

You can read more about it in Wikipedia.  

However, the reasons which attracted me are much more . . .

1. The fish was being promoted by government of Jharkhand.

2.  They are touted to grow well in not that clean water.

3.  As you may have read, these fish reach a size of 1 kilogram in a period of 6 months, which is quite fast for any variety of fish.

4.  These fish have less number of bones which make them quite table friendly.

5.  The meat is quite tasty and ranks quite high with regard to consumption.

Yes, there is a risk involved. However, since we are doing it in our pond which gets completely dry at least once in 2-3 years, we can always phase it off if we feel that Pangasius is somewhat of a threat to the environment to the ecology. 

We wait with quite a lot of expectation from this new venture. And it could be the beginning of a new chapter in the history of inland fish farming in Palamu region. 

Snap of the fish being sold in a market in Vietnam (source - Wikipedia)