While on one hand, India is celebrating its 75th year of Independence and moving ahead in digitization, on the other, incidents of the struggle of villagers has come to the forefront where the locals of Markatwadi, a remote village in Mokhada, Jawhar in the Palghar district of Maharashtra carry patients in makeshift palanquins (palkis) to the nearest hospital as there is no tarred road for the ambulance to reach the village.
Just days earlier, Sita Dive (26), a full-term tribal pregnant woman, was stranded in Botoshi village in Mokhada. She developed labour pains and needed emergency treatment in a hospital for delivery or else she could have died due to complications. Thus, three lives were saved, thanks to the locals who paved a makeshift path to allow the ambulance to reach the patient.
In the recent case, on Tuesday, Sundar Jairam Kirkire (35), a resident of Markatwadi had severe gastro and was vomiting and her health was worsening. The village has 50 huts and around 250 people reside with no contact with the outside world as there is no 'pucca' road for any vehicle to enter leaving alone the MSRTC bus services.
Sundar bore the trauma for a whole night and it was incessantly raining, it was at the dawn of Wednesday when her husband Jayram called Manda Wagh, an Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) worker who managed to reach Sundar's house and found her condition critical due to severe gastro. Wasting no time, she called Tukaram Pawar, a social activist from Pathardi in Mokhada and narrated the ordeal. While Pawar was keeping his vehicle ready to help the woman, he said he could not enter the village as there is no tarred road.
Jayram then decided to make a palanquin of bedsheets and covered it with plastic sheets along with other people of the village, made Sundar sit in the makeshift palanquin in a foetal position and walked four km in the pouring rain and crossing the rough terrain and managed to reach the main road at Belpada where Pawar was ready with his car and Sundar was rushed to the Khodala Primary Health Centre (PHC) where her treatment began hours later. "Had not Pawar taken Sundar in his car, the patient could have died due to gastroenteritis," said Wagh.
Meantime, former sarpanch Jijabai Pawar and her deputy Trimbak Malak had written innumerable times to Dr Manek Gursal, Collector, Palghar for a 'pucca tarred road' in her village but to date, there is no response nor an acknowledgement to their letters.
"We hope the new CM Eknath Shinde will listen to our just demand and sanction funds to construct a pucca road in our village so that patients like Sundar need not be taken to hospitals in a palanquin or inviting death due to the lack of a proper road," Jijabai Pawar.
"We are in the 75th year of India's Independence, and we expect a road to be constructed in our village, which will be an ideal way to celebrate our nation's freedom," she added.
