A woman with her underweight child at Bhadua village. (Express photo by Abhishek Angad) A woman with her underweight child at Bhadua village. (Express photo by Abhishek Angad)

Sixty-year-old Bishoka Sabar’s daily routine includes a trek to the forest range of Dalma Hills for collecting wood, which she sells in a nearby market, earning Rs 100 on best days. That leaves little for her family of four, including two grand-daughters, ages 4 and 7, who mostly survive on starch and rice, availed through the PDS. When Bishoka has money to spare, she buys some daal for Rs 10.

This afternoon, the girls have been fed rice, starch and mango chutney.

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Bishoka is a Sabar tribal, one of 24 families belonging to the earlier primitive tribe, now classified as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) living in similar dilapidated homes in Ramchandrapur village of Ghatshila block in Jamshedpur parliamentary constituency. Flies hang over her younger grand-daughter’s face, and a stench over the entire area.

The Jharkhand government classifies a tribal community with particularly ‘low development indices’ as ‘PVTG’, to be provided an “enabling improvement”. The PVTGs are entitled to Rs 600 pension along with 35 kg of free rice. Bishoka is among the luckier ones to get some benefits; some families have not gone to the bank to rectify errors to receive the Rs 600 pension. The Ujjwala Scheme for gas cylinders has not percolated down to here yet.

Census 2011 put the Sabar numbers at 9,688 in Jharkhand, spread out thinly across the state. Consequently, they as well as other PVTGs don’t figure in election plans of any party. Ramchandrapur has no political banners of any sort, nor has anyone come seeking Sabar votes.

With voting in Jamshedpur four days away, Bishoka’s neighbour Nomita says, “I don’t know when the election is and I don’t know who the candidates are. We will discuss and vote.”

Explained Integration through motivation The PVTGs in Jharkhand do not have much representation in the government or politics because of their low population. They also seem to be absent from the election discourse. As their condition continues to worsen in spite of the availability of a few government schemes, the only solution seems to be their integration into the mainstream, which officials say can happen only through intensive “motivation”.

Less than 15 km away, in the same block, Bhadua village is home to 22 families of Behror community, another PVTG, numbering 10,276 in last Census. At the entrance of the village stands a van bearing the Jharkhand Mufti Morcha’s flag and seeking votes for Mahagathbandhan candidate Champei Soren.

A few women standing nearby are unsure who is running for elections. “Shibu Soren (the JMM president) maybe,” says one, adding she has not seen any political leader in their area.

Champai Soren is running against incumbent BJP MP Bidyut Baran Mahto, who had polled 1 lakh votes more than his rival, the JVM(P)’s Dr Ajoy Kumar, in the last election. This time the JVM(P) is allied with the JMM.

Only three-four families in the Behror settlement have pucca houses under the PM Awas Yojana; some are excluded from the pension scheme due to lack of Aadhaar linking; almost all get rations, but not enough to last a family an entire month; and only a few consume daal on a daily basis. Like the Sabars, many Behror families rely on forest wood and bark of “charhod” tree, with which they make ropes, for sustenance.

Arun Behror, who works in Tamil Nadu, says he recently arrived to find that his wife was among those whose Aadhaar was not linked with schemes, denying them pension.

Ten kilometres away, in Digha village, a local block level employee is distributing free rice to 15 Sabar families, who live in even worse conditions. Officials say say most girls here are married off below 18 years of age and many bear underweight children.

Logen Soren, who has a month-old son, says he was 1.4 kg when born. There is an anganwadi, but she doesn’t go there.

Besra Savar’s 10-year-old daughter now collects firewood to cook, after his wife and six children died when a tree fell on their roof and it collapsed. Besra, who battles a liquor addiction, doesn’t send the daughter to school.

Denying that PVTGs remain ignored by parties, JMM spokesperson Supriyo Bhattacharya says his party has been focusing on them. “Our government started a Special India Reserve (Primitive Tribe) Battalion… We try to give them some representation during panchayat elections.”

The ruling BJP lays claim to the tribe battalion as its government’s achievement, adding that they have also ensured benefits to PVTGs such as ration at doorstep and lower qualification for government jobs.

Ghatshila Block Development Officer Sanjay Kumar Das says they had done an informal survey of the PVTGs, and found a lot of resistance from within to education, and to availing government facilities such as anganwadis and MNREGA. “Immediate intervention of district- and state-level authorities is needed” to change that, he adds. Das also claims that only a few PVTG members are without Aadhaar cards, and would be covered once elections were over.

However, at least in the case of the MNREGA, the tribals say the payment comes “many days later”, causing them to stay away.

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