Karahal (Sheopur) Diaries

For the last 8 days I had been camping in the Karahal block of Sheopur district in northern Madhya Pradesh. It is the worst block in whole of MP and one of the worst in the whole country in terms of malnourishment, and health parameters. It is on eof the 6 district where we are working in MP. I visited and conducted village meetings in 23 villages.
A few years back I had not even heard the name of Karahal ( I knew Sheopur-Kalan which was then a part of Morena district of Chambal region). Knowing of its abysmal condition I first visited there in July 2019 and placed a highly dynamic Sevavrtaee of ours Rinkesh who quickly got into action. We set up our first Seva Kutir last July ’19 and since then, we have opened 41 Seva Kutirs in as many villages in Karahal block of Sheopur district, serving more than 4,000 malnourished tribal children in the age group of 3-14 years.
Karahal block has the one of the lowest life-expectancy figure in the whole country, and the malnourishment among tribal children here is the worst in the whole of Madhya Pradesh. We plan to take the number of Seva Kutirs here to 100 in the next 1 year and thus serve more than 10,000 children and provide them nutritious food and good quality education. There are in all 114 villages in Karahal block, mostly inhabited by Sehariyas.
The Sehariyas are among the most deprived and poor communities in the whole country. This is demonstrated by government statistics as well as our field experience. The Sehariya fall under the ‘poorest of the poor tribal communities’ and is classified as a PVTG (Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group). and severely lag in terms of health, education and income parameters. In terms of health, the chief reason for this condition is the absence of nutritious food for children as well as mothers (in fact as is often the case with malnourishnent, the problem starts before childbirth from the mother’s health itself)
As per the Government’s National Family Health Survey- 4 and Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey, following are the key health statistics for Sheopur district:
• Sheopur district has the highest Stunting rate (low height –to-age ratio, showing chronic undernutrition) for children in MP.
• It has the highest underweight rate for women in Madhya Pradesh.
• It has the highest percent of anemic population in Madhya Pradesh. M ore than 90% of females are anemic.
• It is one of the worst in MP in terms of women with more than 10 years of education, which, as per experts, is a key factor influencing children’s health.
• Taking into account health, educational and other developmental parameters, it has the lowest ranking among 53 districts of MP as per the government surveys, and on an India level survey of around 600 districts, it is among the worst 5 districts.
The Sehariyas are engaged in farm or sometimes non-farm labour work. They were traditionally entirely dependent on forests and also lived quite close to the forests. But for the past several decades, with forests getting depleted, their dependence on forest has hugely reduced.
In a Sehariya household in these villages, there is no concept of breakfast. If anyone – be it a child or an adult is hungry, then they would eat previous night’s stale rotis with black tea (as milk is not available) or just the rotis itself. Milk and hence milk products like curd, ghee etc are totally unavailable in the Sehariya households. They do not have the capacity to rear cattle because there are no pastural lands. Grazing is legally prohibited in these areas due to forest laws, though some people stealthily take the cattle into forests in dark hours.
They have meals two times a day, in the afternoon and at night. This meal consists of rotis (of wheat or bajra). Apart from rotis, pulses and vegetables are not available all the time. One thing to note is that meal would consist of only roti with pulses (only rarely with vegetables). Often when even these are not available, they use chutney of chilies or they eat the rotis with onions. As a proxy for proper vegetables, they depend on the forest shrubs and use certain naturally growing plants as vegetables which are generally not used by other communities, such as pamar, sag, sareta, baasi. Even these are available only in the months of the rainy season.
In other seasons, around 60-70 per cent families have no ability to buy vegetables from the local market which is also weekly in nature (the village haat). They would have vegetables in their meals once in a week. Only some of the families get to eat it for 2-3 times in a week. So, their staple diet is rotis and pulses. Rice is taken quite infrequently in Sehariya communities. They get wheat at subsidized rates from the government (around 30-35 Kgs for a family) and also some amount of rice, sugar and salt. In their own farms, they would grow bajra or in some cases wheat. Thus, the children severely lack in terms of protein, vitamins and minerals which is indicated in the health parameters.
Some other insights are :
1. Out of all the districts where we have travelled we witnessed that the implementation of PMAY (the housing scheme) – which otherwise has been quite effective in rural MP in other districts I have travelled to – was very poor in Sheopur district. Only a miniscule percent of houses under PMAY have been built, and that too only in a small number of villages. The Sehariyas live in very small, low huts.
2. The Sehariyas marry at an early age. It is not uncommon to find girls and boys married at the age of 14 or 15. We met many such girls and boys. In all our meetings we emphasised on not getting children married at such ages, and the whole village should pledge for that. We also asked the villagers to have to goal that all boys and girl should study till Higher Secondary at least, that will open possibilities of government jobs due to benefits of reservation. There were very few government employees from Sehariya tribes. In a large number of villages there has been no single graduate ever, and very less number of Higher Secondary pass-outs.
3. In villages where demography was mixed (like 90 percent Sehariya but a few other households like Yadavs, Gurjars, or Thakurs) there was clear harassment of the Sehariyas. Even children of these other communities bully the children from the Sehariyas. It is clear that right from childhood the venomous seeds of caste-identity is sown.
4. Sheopur being a district close to may parts of Rajasthan, the young people between 20 and 40 form a big chunk of migrant labour to those areas of Rajasthan. Sehariyas migrate to towns like Sawai Madhopur, Bundi, Kota, or even Jaipur as migrant labour.
5. There are many months when there is no income at all for those who do not migrate (who are typically in the bracket of 45 plus).
6. The elderly who become physically unfit for hard labour take up tasks like taking cattle (goats etc) belonging to others for grazing. They usually take flocks of 10-12 and are paid Rs 150 per month for each goat. So one who manages a flock of 10-12 goats each day of the month earns around Rs 1500 to 1800 monthly.
7. There are only 2 government ambulances in an area which is 4000 sq km. And no other means of public transport. The plight of the people who need emergency medical attention like from accident, snake-bite can be imagined. Usually ambulance service is sought for birth delivery cases and for that the date is booked well in advance. The elderly are hardly taken for any medical consultation – it is assumed that those in their last leg of life will pass away sooner or later, it is, as it were, accepted naturally by all.
8. In all our meetings we also dissuaded the people from wasting their already limited resources on liquor, tobacco products like pouches of gutkha etc.
9. We saw that a fairly large number of people were not receiving their Old-age pension of Rs 600 monthly or their Vidhwa (widow) Pension. We have helped to get a large number of people to get Vriddha pension / Vidhwa pension cards.
Seeing this dire need we have decided to start ambulance service from Parivaar is this area.
I will personally be camping more frequently in Sheopur. I intend to visit there again later this month for an extended period.