NAINITAL: A tourist paradise of serene lakes, tranquil climes and cosy cottages. At the end of a lovely drive. Right? Wrong. Ask 12-year old Chandra Mohan of Pharpharia village in Betal Ghat, tucked away in the remote hills of Nainital district. Which still lacks one of the basic needs of life in the mountains—roads. Children like Chandra walk eight km up a hill every morning to school. The ill have to be carried 18 km on a charpoy to the nearest health centre in Betal Ghat.
Yet, Chandra, the son of a scheduled caste labourer, will struggle against the odds like others in his village. During his holidays, he joins his father at the construction site for a daily wage of Rs 45. Father and son do not mind the backbreaking labour— they haven't known any other life—but they nurse the hope that one day they will work on a road to their village.
Pharpharia is not the only village where the comforts of urban India—even if it is only a pot-holed road—have not reached. Khaula, Talli Sethi, Malli Sethi, Chulia Bidari, Ghuria, Halsaun...are cut off every monsoon and the winter. "It is difficult to survive.
But our ancestors were born here and died here, so will we," says Hari Ram of Malli Sethi village, where a road has been promised for years but never constructed.
There is a small one-room ayurvedic dispensary in the village manned by Dr Sushil Dimri, who has been posted in the village for nine years. "I am trying for a transfer. It pains me to see the villagers suffering but the lack of roads and communications makes it difficult to get medicines."
Twenty-eight years ago, Kundan Singh, a resident of Betal Ghat, died when a rock fell on him. He was being carried to Bhatraunjkhan (the closest medical centre) on a cot when he died. Three decades later, says Gopal Singh of Talli Sethi village, "the doli or the cot is still the only mode of transport out of our village."
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