Sonam Sikarwar is 25-year-old, pregnant and a worried woman. She came to Budhpura Dhani (village), in Golari gram panchayat of Dholpur district, about 260 kilometres (km) from the state capital Jaipur, as a bride five years ago. This is going to be Sonam’s second delivery, and the baby is expected anytime now. Any joyous anticipation is overshadowed by anxiety as the nearest hospital is 40 km away in Bari. 

“My people neither have a motorcycle nor any other means to hire a vehicle in case of an emergency. Ambulances do not come such distances and I don’t know what I will do if I go into labour,” she told Gaon Connection. There are also jungles to negotiate before reaching the bigger towns such as Saramathura, Bari and Dholpur, she said.

“Women in our village have died during childbirth, because transport could not be arranged to take them to the nearest medical centre in time,” said worried Angoori Sikarwar, Sonam’s mother-in-law. She narrated an incident when a woman went into labour during the rains when the Chambal river was in spate. They attempted to take her to the hospital in a tractor, but she died on the way.  

Sonam and her family’s village, Budhpura, falls in the Dang area of Dholpur district under Golari gram panchayat. Other villages in the area include Sone ka Gurja, Budavali, Babupura, Pali, Kharer, Badapura, Karua and Sevar that are located on the banks of Chambal river. Similarly, there are about 25 villages in Madhya Pradesh on the other side of the Chambal. The Dang region lies in the ravine area of south eastern Rajasthan which is spread across eight districts and covers around 2206 villages in 22 panchayat samitis.

The people here have been living without medical facilities for years. Even during the pandemic, no medical authorities bothered to visit. The nearest medical facility, Bari that is also the legislative seat of Sevar village, is 40 km away.

“In 2017, a wall collapsed on my son and shattered his thigh bone. We could not arrange for a vehicle soon enough to take him to the hospital and he died due to excessive bleeding. Had there been even a person to dress his wounds and provide first-aid in the village, my son would have been alive today,” lamented Asendra Singh Parmar from Sevar who lost his 18-year-old son for want of treatment. 

“Although COVID-19 has taken over the world, not a single health worker has visited Sevar. Since March, no child or pregnant woman has received their scheduled inoculation. A medical team from Bari did tour the region on October 18, but it did not stop at the village,” Dharmendra Singh Jadon, a grocery store owner in Sevar informed Gaon Connection. He did however say that some people from the Golari panchayat, came and instructed the villagers to stay home. 

Sevar village does boast a sub-health centre operating from the Rajiv Gandhi Kendra building, but the post of a doctor there has been lying vacant for years. Although the centre has an auxiliary nurse midwife (ANM), a village level female health worker, the villagers complain that she operates the centre only once or twice a month. Then there is a tiny hospital in nearby Sone ka Gurja village but that too is devoid of any medical staff. 

“There is a shortage of medical facilities in the villages along Chambal in Dang area,” acknowledged Gopal Goyal, chief medical officer of Dholpur district. But he insisted that they were doing the best they could. “The post of doctor in Sevar-Pali village may be vacant, but there is a doctor in Golari,” he told Gaon Connection. Golari is about 15 km from Sevar Pali at a height and it takes about 40 minutes to reach. When asked about the missed inoculations, Goel said that he’d look into the matter. 

Quacks or jhola chhaap doctors as they are known are in great demand in this area. These ‘doctors’ are from Madhya Pradesh and in the absence of government health facilities, make a quick buck treating patients. “If someone falls sick in our villages, we call them from Morena or Savalgarh in Madhya Pradesh. Their fee is five hundred rupees and they charge anywhere between fifteen hundred to two thousand rupees for treatment. They often botch up cases, but we have little choice, and they are available on call,”  Kusuma Chauhan, a villager from the area told Gaon Connection. 

Congress Member of Legislative Assembly, Giriraj Singh Malinga from Bari assembly constituency hails from Sevar. He has been an MLA since 2008 and this is his third term. He was with the Bahujan Samaj Party and is now on a Congress party ticket. The villagers complain that even then, he has not once visited any of these villages, not even his own village Sevar. “I will go there and talk to the villagers and provide all the facilities,” Malinga assured Gaon Connection when asked about the lack of facilities. However, he had no answer for why there was not a single doctor in his village or even the region, despite his being an MLA for 10 years.

In 2005-2006 the Bharatiya Janata Party state government set up the Dang development board to develop the eastern and south-eastern districts of Rajasthan that was once known for bandits roaming the area. The board presides over about 2,200 villages falling under 22 panchayat samiti belonging to eight districts (Bharatpur, Dholpur, Karauli, Sawaimadhopur, Bundi, Baran, Jhalawar and Kota). The combined population of these villages is 20 lakhs. 

A fund of Rs 300 crore was even created for the development in these villages for the period 2015 to 2020. The main function of the board is to work for overall economic and social development in the villages of Dang area and provide its residents basic facilities like roads, water, health, electricity and a drainage system. Apart from this, the board was to provide employment opportunities to the local people. 

But since 2018, the board has had no president or member to execute any of its objectives. As per the data accessed by Gaon Connection from the department of rural development and panchayati raj in Rajasthan, only 50 per cent of the funds provided to Dang development board was utilised till March 2020. Out of Rs 80.94 crore, it could spend only half the money (Rs 42.66 crore). The fund was to be utilized towards 1,575 schemes but only 898 (about 57 per cent) were realized due to government apathy. These works included basic civic amenities like roads, water, health and sanitation. 

Read the story in Hindi.