FLAME OF THE FOREST

Flame of the Forest

Patnagarh was once a princely state, but is now a small town in the district of Bolangir in Western Orissa. Even though there have been three ministers from the erstwhile royal family in recent times, the region clearly hasn’t benefited too much from their interventions in the state government. The forty kilometer drive from Bolangir (where we were staying) to Patnagarh was resplendent with ‘palash’ trees in full bloom. Even though I was familiar with the flower, prinicipally through its reference and use during ‘basanto utsav’ in Shantiniketan, it was only here that I realized why it is referred to in English as the ‘flame of the forest’.

 Women Carrying Mehula flowers

Bolangir is one of the poorest districts in Orissa, part of the infamous KBK districts, where hunger deaths, distress sale of children were reported during Rajiv Gandhi’s time as prime minister of India. Since then many hundreds of crores must have been provided as development assistance to this district, but not much development is in evidence. The Humanity is a small voluntary organization started by group of youth, fresh out of University in Bhuvaneswar, who decided to work with the poor rural and tribal people of the district in the mid- nineties on issues of development. Today they continue to be committed to the work and in keeping with the times today much of their work revolves around ensuring that the people are able to get the full benefits of state run programmes like NREGS (National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme), PDS ( Public Distribution System), Mid-day Meal and so on. We have been working with this group over the last few years for informing the rural population about the National Rural Health Mission and its different provisions.

Even though we are in the twenty first century of malls and supermarkets, I saw the ‘barter’ system working in the village of Tentulikhunti. It was quite accidentally that I saw a little girl clutching a tin in one hand and a twisted plastic bottle in another walk resolutely down the village path. On asking my associates I came to know she was going to the village shop. I followed her as she waited patiently at the shop window for the woman who ran the shop to appear. She took the tin full of rice and filled the bottle with some oil and handed it back to the girl. The little girl put the bottle in the tin and walked home where her mother may have been waiting to complete her cooking for the afternoon.

Our meeting at the village anganwadi centre started late because the villagers hadn’t returned from their ‘mehula’collecting trips. Early in the morning each family designates someone to go to collect the ‘mehula’ flowers ( also known as mahua) that have fallen below the trees in their small parcels of farm land. From a distance these flowers look like grapes – a little smaller in size and a few shades paler. This flower is then dried for a few days in the courtyard and then sold to the local traders. Today it sells at 9 rupees a kg, and a family with a few trees can manage a collection of up to twenty kilo’s a day. But it is back breaking work of picking the flowers one by one before the sun becomes too hot. Later in the day the cattle eat up whatever is left behind. The dried ‘mehula’ becomes the base for the local country liquor. Today the major production comes from Government registered distilleries, but the home made stuff is supposed to far superior. Unfortunately we didn’t get an opportunity put these claims to the test.

Transparency is an important buzzword in contemporary development circles. The World Bank has made it an important criteria for judging aid effectiveness and Transparency International, an international NGO compiles annual rankings of countries’ around the world and India doesn’t rank very favourably. The Right to Information is considered to be an important tool for transparency. The full blown practice of transparency was very much evidence in the villages of Patnagarh. Many of the village walls were painted with the provisions of different government schemes, and the walls of the Primary School were painted showing amounts that had been received from the government for different provisions like maintenance, books and stationery and even the names, date of joining and birth dates of the teachers. The names of all the members of the Village Health and Sanitation Committee and their responsibilities were painted in four inch tall alphabets opposite the Anganwadi Centre. However not one of the literate villagers we spoke to had taken the trouble of reading through the information. So much for transparency! You can live in glass house but if people don’t care they won’t look inside to see what you are up to, let alone throw stones at you.

Sunflower : A cash crop

The children of villages around Patnagarh were a very animated lot. In the school, they burst into a song on the instruction of the teachers to welcome us. The smaller ones were playing adult roles to perfection. I have already talked of the girl who went shopping. I saw another slip of a girl, not more than five years old, busy trying to fill two vessels of water from the hand pump. After many attempts to carry both filled vessels at the same time, she went home with one filled vessel and the other swinging from her other hand. The smaller children had plump cheeks and a glint in their eyes. It is unfortunate that some of these children will not grow into adults, many girls will be married and forced into motherhood well before they are physically or emotionally prepared, and if the circumstances are desperate some may even be sold. Surely, children in India deserve better.