When a student’s family had to continue to live in a dilapidated house in Uttarakhand amid fears of landslides in the monsoon, she decided to hone her writing skills to get the officials’ attention. It worked.
Hidden in the Himalayan valley of Bageshwar district in Uttarakhand lies my village, Ganigaon. With a population of about 800, the area transforms into a scenic hillside during the monsoon season. The landscape turns all the more idyllic.
However, for the residents of this underdeveloped village, rains mean a threat to their lives. Every year, during the monsoon season, the residents of Ganigaon live in fear of heavy downpours and the damage it can cause to their life and livelihood.
For several years, our family of seven, which includes my sister and two young brothers, slept with the fear that the roof of our one-room makeshift house would collapse, burying us all under rubble.
One night in 2019, when it was raining heavily, a massive landslide from the adjacent hills struck our house. Our roof collapsed. Fortunately, all of us survived.
We spent the entire night waiting for the rain to stop. We spent the next day covering our roof with makeshift materials. We had nowhere else to live. It was a stressful time since nobody knew when another disaster might strike.
My father, Angad Singh, is 41 years old. He is the breadwinner of the family. As a labourer, he does seasonal short-term jobs whenever he can find them. Our future was uncertain.
We decided to apply for assistance under the Prime Minister’s Housing Scheme or the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana – Gramin (PMAY-G) through the village panchayat. This scheme, launched in 2016, envisaged pucca houses with basic amenities to be provided by the government to all houseless families and to families living in kutcha or makeshift houses in rural areas by 2022.
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The office of the village panchayat that resolves our issues is located in Garur district. To reach there, we have to travel 25 km each way on the hilly terrain, and spend about Rs 200 on the fare. We had been making this journey to the government office for more than five years. But every day, we would return to our crumbling house without hope or assistance.
According to the village sarpanch Hema Devi, the panchayat had submitted applications for all those in need, and that they took every effort to expedite the allocation of houses.
Some villagers also accused the panchayat of corruption. A woman resident, who had also applied to the panchayat but was yet to benefit from the PMAY-G scheme, alleged that only people who paid bribes received allocation.
So we continued to live in our unsafe house.
Two years ago, I joined Charkha Development Communication Network, a Delhi-based organisation that empowers adolescents through various means, including writing. This is the only organisation that is working with adolescent girls in the remote villages of our region. I attended Charkha’s writing workshops, and gained insights about various government schemes aimed at rural development. I gained the skill to pen down my thoughts and present the multiple issues that my family and others in our village faced.
I decided to leverage my writing skills to highlight our plight.
I learnt that every citizen has the right to get a house under the PMAY scheme. Charkha’s district coordinator Neelam Grundy and I visited the block office in Garur and applied for support under the scheme.
Finally, after about three months, the government heard our concerns. We received financial assistance under the PMAY scheme.
Today, we have a solid two-room house, and we feel secure. We no longer fear the rain.
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Education has the power to change society. Even as adults, individuals can become educated and bring change around them. We need to be aware. Even though there are obstacles, change is possible through education and the power of writing.
The famous Urdu poet Akbar Allahabadi was right when he said, ‘When you face a cannon, pull out a newspaper’. Because not only does this help in combating corruption but it also helps raise awareness among the public.
I am a living example of this. I am in college now. I want to be a teacher and help youth get through obstacles in life.
The lead image shows Hema Rawal, her brother and her grandmother in their new house, built under the Prime Minister Awas Yojana. (Photo from Charkha Development Communication Network)
Hema Rawal is a college student, doing her BA in Bageshwar. Article syndicated via Charkha Features.
