A Dana Majhi lesson: Media shaming leads to development

How Majhi’s grief-laden journey gave us an opportunity for self-flagellation; his new house is a salve to our conscience
A Dana Majhi lesson: Media shaming leads to development

THUAMUL RAMPUR (KALAHANDI): The road from the tuberculosis ward at the back of the District Headquarters Hospital (DHH) of Bhawanipatna opens out onto the main business centre of the town and heads towards Sagada. In the small hours of August 24, Dana Majhi took this road and melted into the darkness carrying the body of his wife Aman on his shoulders.

His companion on the dark journey was Chandini, his 14-year- old daughter. Further up the road out of town, the signs of development start to fade away, kilometre by kilometre. Our destination is Melghara, where everyone is headed these days to meet Dana Majhi who has now become an icon of sorts.

The road, treacherous after morning showers common in Thuamul Rampur block of Kalahandi, needs horsepower which only a four-wheeled drive or a bike can generate. As per Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna stats, only 1,200 habitations out of the 2860 or so in Kalahandi remain uncovered by a road network.

This road, punctuated by long stretches of absence, leads us to the primary health centre (PHC) of Nakrundi gram panchayat. Last year, Dana Majhi went to this PHC with his sick wife. Pharmacist Sudhir Sahoo recalls him, his memory refreshed by the media coverage of his recent journey. Aman had developed a fever and the PHC’s medication worked.

The PHC serves 28 villages in the Nakrundi, Kerpai and Gunupur area. It has six beds and two doctors, one MBBS and the other AYUSH. The AYUSH doctor is now on leave and the MBBS one, a retired dagdar babu retained on contract, sought and got an urban position. So Sudhir ‘manages’ with a lab technician Bholanath.

The health centre receives about 20 patients every day, 90 per cent of them malaria cases, mostly deadly Plasmodium falciparum fevers. All that Sudhir Sahoo has to deal with them is some rapid test kits. “We test them for symptoms and refer them to the DHH whenever necessary,” he says.

They don’t have the means for slide tests. Dana Majhi’s village is a 15-minute drive from the PHC. “There it is,” says our escort, pointing to a plateau with small number of people milling about. “That’s Melghara.”

We stop to ask for directions at the primary school, a one-classroom affair for 66 students, Class I to V, with cement bags stocked in the headmaster’s room. Locating Dana Majhi’s house is easy enough, it’s a one-room house with an asbestos roof and there are people milling about. In the last 10 days, he’s been visited by hordes of people all asking about his grim, grief-laden 10 km journey.

Dana stands ramrod straight all of his 5 ft and 7 inches, obviously physically very fit but creases in the his forehead say something. He takes the questions with an icy cool countenance but appears to detest the unwanted limelight. And his tale has grown cryptic with repeated telling. “Aman had become very weak and would cough all day,” he tells us.  

“She could not work at all. I was advised to take her to the Bada Medical (DHH) and a vehicle was the only option,” he says. Dana borrowed Rs 4,000 from the village’s Narishakti self-help group. He paid Rs 3,000 for a Mahindra Marshall to take her to Bhawanipatna. At the DHH, the diagnostics and medicines cost him Rs 80. The only food his wife got from the hospital was an egg.  But Aman died at 2 am. He asked the inmates of the TB ward what to do next. “They said ‘take her home.’ Chandini (his daughter) too said the same,” he says.

Ever since their journey, man, woman and daughter, captured international media attention, Dana has become the face of Kalahandi, a district once associated in the national consciousness with starvation deaths and sale of children. His posters adorn the walls of Bhawanipatna today and he has been shanghaied into political rallies and dharnas.

He has also become an opportunity for self-flagellation as a nation uses the Indira Awas Yojna (IAY) house not awarded to him and the MGNREGS work not given to him as tools to stir its own conscience.

Dana’s fellow villager Dasaratha Majhi shows us his blank job card. “We last worked in December, for six days, but have not been paid,” he says. There’s cheating on the wage rate too. The mandated wage is Rs 174 per day of MGNREGS work. They get just about Rs 100.

The records show that since 2004, Rs 7.94 crore has been spent through an NGO under the Odisha Tribal Empowerment and Livelihood Project (OTELP), an externally-aided project, for ten village development committees including Melghara for asset creation, capacity building, rural finance, livelihood, etc.

Yet, Dana has nothing but shifting cultivation in the hills to rely on. Or maybe a few goats and fowls. As a forest dweller, he is entitled to the land he has been inhabiting but no claims have been generated through the gram sabha under the Forest Rights Act (FRA). Chandini, the eldest of his three daughters, is a Child Labour School dropout and works in the hills.

Now, after that tragic walk, Dana Majhi is getting what he and his fellow villagers ought to have got. He has been promised Rs 75,000 under IAY, Rs 12,000 for a toilet under Swachh Bharat Yojna and his own land under FRA. The Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna will have him on its register soon.

His three daughters and two nieces will be given admission at Sirimoshka High School, 30 km from Melghara. But what a price to pay to get what he was entitled to.

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