Supplementing The State’s Efforts

Not just the state, a few other organisations are also pitching in to provide holistic education in the adivasi areas where the writ of Maoists used to run. Ekal Foundation, for instance, runs one-teacher non-formal Ekal Vidyalayas in 810 villages in Bastar. They educate children on health and hygiene, impart valuable lessons on society, community, India’s heritage and culture, religion, good agricultural practices including organic farming and a lot more after regular school hours. “We also teach about respecting women and elders, yoga and pranayam, general knowledge, and tell stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharata to kids aged between 6 and 14. Swami Vivekananda is our inspiration,” said Sanjeev Rungta, the general secretary in charge of Ekal activities in Chhattisgarh.

Jhane Bhoier teaches three groups of children at the Ekal Vidyalaya at Charbhata village, about 5 kilometres from Bahegaon on NH 30 that connects Jagdalpur to Bhairamgarh. “The children go to regular school and then from 5 pm to 8 pm, come to the Ekal Vidyalaya. I also teach women once a week on health, hygienic cooking and about our rituals and customs,” she says. Charbhata’s sarpanch Pancham Bhoier says that the Ekal Vidyalaya has brought about a marked change in youngsters in the five years since it was established in the village. “Our children have become more knowledgeable, disciplined, obedient and smart after going to Ekal Vidyalaya,” he says.

There are also more than 250 Saraswati Shishu Mandirs run by the RSS in Bastar. “We also run Vanvasi Kalyan Ashrams and are doing a lot of work to wean adivasis away from the death grip of Maoists. We have suffered a lot too; 25 of our workers have been killed by Maoists over the last five years and we have had to close down 10 Saraswati Shishu Mandirs. We run Sanskar Kendras from those schools now,” says Hemant Shukla, the RSS in-charge of Bastar. The Ramakrishna Mission and some other organisations are also running schools for adivasi children in the remote areas.

Healthcare And Other Facilities

But it is not just smooth roads and swanky residential schools that dot the hauntingly beautiful landscape of Bastar. State-of-the-art hospitals and other healthcare facilities provide the best of healthcare to the people virtually at their doorsteps. Remote Bhairamgarh, for instance, boasts of a 30-bed hospital, two smaller five-bed hospices and a dozen clinics where treatment and medicines are free. Shivendra Thakur is the doctor in charge of the Prathamik Swasthya Kendra (primary health centre) at Matawada, a Maoist stronghold till very recently, in Bhairamgarh. “We have 10 beds and cater to at least 50 patients a day,” he says. The health centre looks like a modern clinic in a metropolis and has an air-conditioned operation theatre, something that similar facilities in most other states of the country can’t even dream of.

A few kilometres away from Matawada lies Jangla village. What catches the eye is the Jangla Adarsh Anganwadi Kendra in the village. Its brightly painted facade, and a small children’s play park in front, make it a happy arena for kids. A little distance away is the two-storey Jangla Panchayat Bhawan that has 3G connectivity and a host of other facilities: a lok shiksha kendra (adult literacy class), an SBI kiosk, a PDS outlet and an e-cafe where villagers can fill in e-forms for crop loans, housing finance and any other government benefits, get MNREGA payments and find out the status of government projects. “This kendra has empowered the members of all the 306 families of Jangla. Major changes have occurred here over the past one year. And it has resulted in the influence of the Maoists waning. People now muster the courage to oppose the Maoists and have asked them to stop their activities here,” says Komal Nishad, the secretary of Jangla panchayat.

Bijapur’s pride is the 150-bed hospital in the district headquarters. It boasts equipment that rival those in the best private facilities even in the national capital. “We have modular operation theatres where orthopaedic and general surgeries, including laparoscopic surgeries, are carried out. We have 21 doctors, including 11 postgraduates, 30 paramedics and 46 nurses and the equipment in our ICUs and OTs are worth over Rs 5 crore,” says district civil surgeon T R Kunwar.

Doctors from other states flock to serve in such facilities in Bastar because of the handsome salaries (the standard government salaries are supplemented by money from the district mineral fund made up of mandatory contributions from mining companies) and the excellent facilities available. Kushal Sakure, who completed his MBBS from Aligarh Muslim University and is a gynaecologist at the district hospital, says he opted to work here because of the facilities. “I visited this hospital once and decided to work here. I will never get these facilities anywhere else in India,” he says. Similar state-of-the-art hospitals are being set up in other districts of Bastar.

Incidentally, Chhattisgarh offers free health cards to its citizens through which a person can avail of free treatment of up to Rs 50,000 a year. A few more health schemes offer a wide variety of free or heavily subsidised treatment, including surgeries, hospitalisation (including ICU and ITU facilities) and medication.

Bijapur district collector Tamboli says that the development offensive in his district has started yielding spectacular results. “After the end of the Salwa Judum chapter, people fled from the villages, especially the remote ones, and this vacuum was filled by the Maoists. The Maoists destroyed all infrastructure in those villages. With roads and a development push, we are slowly reclaiming all these villages. We have 1,150 anganwadi centres and 911 government-run schools in the district. Of the 600 villages in the district, half are electrified; 27 new villages were electrified last month itself,” he said.

Dantewada district collector Saurabh Kumar talks of the attitudinal change among villagers. He cites the example of Badegudra, a remote village and an erstwhile stronghold of Maoists. The district administration reached out to the villagers with the latest agricultural knowhow and slowly convinced the villagers to switch to organic farming. “About 160 farmers in Badegudra are into organic cultivation and their produce is fetching very good prices. The villagers, who were hostile towards us a few years ago, now welcome us warmly. And they are no longer sympathetic towards the Maoists,” he says.

Today, more than 25,000 farmers in Dantewada practise organic farming. “My vegetables fetch twice the price I used to get before turning to organic cultivation. The yield has also increased from about 36 quintals of rice per hectare to 56 quintals now,” says Rati Ram Yadav of Karli village in Geedam block. “Bhumgadi, a farmers’ society, has been established with 4,000 farmers are shareholders. The society now has 12 warehouses and a full time CEO. Their organic produce under the Adim brand name is being sourced by private retail chains in Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chandigarh as well as by ISKCON. Very soon, organic rice and lentils from Dantewada will be sold through outlets at the Delhi and Mumbai airports,” says Kumar.