Tale of grit and determination
CCpur hamlet lives up to NREGS spirit
S Singlianmang Guite
Lamka, Sep 21 : A tiny hamlet in Churachandpur’ s Saikot TD block is set to dig its way through to the benefits and riches that the flagship programme of the UPA Government, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, has to offer not only for now but for the future as well.
Forty-four odd job card holders of Luihoi Muolcham and its Machets (surrounding villages) have since last year embarked on a mission to dig their way through to an adjoining village, Tuitengjang, located about 8 kms south to make their village accessible under the NREGS.
The village and its Machets have about two hundred residents.
“We have so far dug about 3.5 kms, and we are not sure when we will be able to dig through,” Hauneikam Gangte, the village chief who stressed on the need for such a road to connect his vast land, said.
Last year his fellow villagers worked for more than one hundred days but when the State decided to exclude Saikot TD block from enjoying the benefits of full hundred working days and granted them only fifty days wages instead, their labour for the fifty days went without pay.
Yet without a murmur they resumed their mission this fiscal amidst the hostile terrain. They have already invested thirty-five of the forty days of work that was allotted to them in the first phase.
At 10 kms from here on the east, Luihoi Muolcham still remains as remote a village in the interiors due to its inaccessibility.
The coming of NREGS and the recent allocation of funds under BRGF to build a bridge to connect them with a State highway is beginning to have a positive impact and the villagers know this best.
Despite being engaged in one of the toughest NREGS works ever witnessed in the country, the villagers show no sign of giving in, sparing not even the injured.
An old woman whose left hand was smashed by a tumbling rock still attends to the children at a Creche; her hand resting on a piece of cloth slung over her shoulder.
When this correspondent visited the village, a woman partially fell into the dug-up portion but was helped out without injuries.
In their bid to make the most from their vast land with the new road, the villagers dream of rearing animals in hundreds, and substitute the now obsolete jhum cultivation with other more paying occupations.
“It is this dream that keeps us going despite the rock-strewn hill often turning our mission into a protracted one,” the chief, who has promised to allot lands in hectares to the villagers for agricultural and animal farming after digging their way, said.
“Without this road my land will forever lie wasted,” he added.
Because the villagers have taken the onus to dig their way through so as to connect their land with the outside world, Luihoi Muol-cham has been chosen as a model village by the scheme’s implementing agency, the DRDA Chura-chandpur.
What difference NREGS will make for an isolated hamlet will soon be known.
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