MELGHARA (KALAHANDI): Dana Majhi is not home. Fellow villagers say he might have gone off to a panchayat election meeting.
Sixty kilometers from Bhawanipatna, his home Melghara is a non-descript village sitting on a hilly slope. Majhi continues to be its only claim to fame. His pucca ghar bears testimony to changing fortunes of the impoverished man who had to carry his dead wife’s body and walk 11 km because the district hospital could not arrange a hearse service.
Thanks to the support that poured in, Majhi is not the same distressed man that he was on August 23, 2016, a night of ignominy which haunted the Odisha government for long. Very little though, has changed for his village of 55 households, all tribals.
The three-km long motorable road from Nakrundi gram panchayat headquarters into Melghara cries out for repair. It was damaged after being washed away by the floods of 2017 and 2019. On January 9 last, a day before panchayat elections were notified, the foundation stone for a 13.5 km long road from Melghara to Silet GP was laid by MLA Pradip Kumar Dishari at an estimated cost of Rs 8.19 crore under Mukhya Mantri Sadak Yojana.
Road alignment and earthwork is in progress to make it motorable. “We target to complete the work by December this year,” the executive engineer of RD department Saroj Kar says. Inhabitants of villages and hamlets of Nakrundi and neighbouring Silet are dependent on the lone primary health centre (PHC) at Nakrundi which is run by an NGO in PPP mode and managed by one Ayush doctor, a pharmacist, GNM and an attendant, grossly inadequate to provide health services to the people. Ambulance or other vehicles also cannot reach these villages.
Anganwadi centers in Melghara, Amjhola and other pockets are unable to cater to needs of the areas. “The anganwadi worker of Melghara stays some 50 km away. Same is the case with Amjhola,” says Jitu Majhi, a villager.
The primary school of Melghara has an enrollment of 65 students with just one teacher. The school has two rooms but in dilapidated condition. Nobody has bothered to repair it.Most areas of Nakrundi and adjacent Silet and Kerpai GPs are inaccessible too. Covered by hills, forest and crisscrossed by streams and Nagavali river, inaccessibility of these GPs once brought them the name ‘Chandra Mahal.’ Several decades later, ironically, they are in the same bad shape.
To cross Nagavali and streams, at several places between Melghara and Silet, people have constructed bamboo bridges. There is no tower either for mobile connectivity in the area. “Though Dana Majhi episode got Melghara attention, the area remains ignored,” alleged Sanu Majhi, former samiti member of Thuamul Rampur block. He, however, hopes that the area will get road connectivity following the Mukhya Mantri Sadak Yojana project.
Dana Majhi had hogged headlines in 2016 after pictures and videos of him carrying his wife’s dead body went viral. Moved by his plight, various organisations had come to his aid and provided him with over Rs 15 lakh.