Uttar Pradesh’s Dalits in pathetic condition: Joshi

LUCKNOW - Lamenting the condition of Dalits in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh Congress president Rita Bahuguna Joshi Saturday said the community remained neglected even in the Ambedkar villages that are on the priority list of the Mayawati government.

Joshi was narrating her experience of spending Friday night in Nai Garhi Purva village in a remote corner of Allahabad district, where she stayed under the roof of a Kol tribal.

The exercise was carried out as a continuation of the initiative taken by Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi last month to not only spend the night with a Dalit family but to also share a meal with those who were once termed untouchables.

Inspired by Gandhi’s example, Joshi had called upon her party MPs, legislators, district presidents and even lower unit functionaries to follow suit on Oct 2, the 140th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

Joshi told IANS said she had carried some wheat flour, vegetables, pulses and cooking oil with her and gave them to the tribals to prepare a meal to avoid imposing on them as their only source of their livelihood were the meagre daily wages as labourers in the mushrooming stone quarries in the area.

She said she reached the village after traversing the last 2 km on foot, shortly after sunset Friday, and it was an “eye-opener” to be in a place without roads, electricity, drinking water, schools or hospitals and where exploitation of labour was blatant.

Spreading a mat on the floor in an open quadrangle, she held an “open house” with the villagers, who narrated their misery and problems.

What shocked her was the “total absence of anything like minimum wages. The poor labourers rarely earn more than Rs.25-30 for the day’s toil. To make matters worse for them, they are forced to shell out a ‘tax’ to the local zila panchayat (district council) boss.”

According to her, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was almost non-existent in the hamlet with a population of nearly 700.

“Local officials have made a mockery of the scheme, under which 80 residents were issued job cards way back in July 2008 but these were handed over to the beneficiaries just about 15 days back,” she said.

The situation was equally deplorable on the education front too. “Of the 250 children in the hamlet, only three were attending school largely because of the 4 km distance to the nearest government educational institution,” Joshi pointed out.

The situation she found has prompted Joshi to repeat the initiative once every month. “We will undertake this exercise once a month right down to the level of each of the 830 development blocks across the state,” she added.