Out of sight is out of mind. That’s precisely the tragic story of a Purvanchal village lost in its odd location between two districts.
The oddity of its location makes
Siura Gopalpur
locus classicus – a classic place. It’s barely five kilometres from the Mau
district
border and 20 from Mau town. But the village of 1,600 voters presses the button for the Salempur Lok Sabha constituency, which is 50 km away in Deoria district.
The fast-flowing Ghaghara, the second largest tributary of the Ganga, has long kept the electors from the elected. Few here remember which
MP
or
MLA
visited them the last. To exacerbate matters, the village doesn’t officially belong to either Mau or Deoria district – it is part of the
Ballia
district.
The connection to three districts – through proximity, Lok Sabha and district administration – has been a bane. Village head Manoj Kumar said, “This is our dilemma. We are the ‘nowhere
people
’.” Life for the residents of nearly 300 houses is challenging.
The village has power cables, but no power. “Connections were provided on paper to people under Saubhagya Ujjwala on the basis of their Aadhaar cards in 2018. But many had no idea such a thing had been done. Mayhem followed when people later received power bills up to Rs 40,000. Villagers have stayed away from using power since then. And most people can’t even afford it,” said Kumar.
Batteries are used to charge a few mobile phones people have here.
The village has a road that was laid in 2007 under Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana and has since vanished. In the rainy season, villagers are cut off from the rest of the civilization for days in the absence of a metalled road.
Healthcare is scarce too
There is a primary health centre, five km away in Kasaundar, but no doctor. “A compounder administers medical advice at the PHC when any patient is brought in. In case of serious illness, patients need to be taken to the district govt hospital, which is in Ballia town. There is no good private hospital either in a radius of 30-40 km,” said Rohan Singh who lost his father a decade ago to complications arising out of typhoid and hepatitis that went undetected for days.
There is no employment here and agriculture is mostly unreliable.
Many years ago, a villager had gone to work in a factory in Chennai. Many have followed him since. A few other youngsters have also gone to the Middle East as skilled labourers.
“For ages, we have not seen any MP or MLA visiting our village, not even for election campaigns. We don’t exist, we don’t matter,” said Bahadur Singh (71), grandfather of six. His two sons, Ram Milan and Raju, are semi-skilled labourers working in Saudi Arabia for a couple of years now. His third son is waiting for his elder brothers to arrange for a visa and help him land a job there.
There is no piped water here
Vishal Chauhan (28), who is preparing to become a teacher, said, “The groundwater in the village has heavy metals, like iron, and arsenic. But villagers do not have a choice. We stop using water from hand pumps that give out coloured water and instead use water that appears relatively cleaner. Nobody from the district administration has ever come to the village to inspect which hand pumps are providing drinkable water.”
Ironically, the former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar’s village Ibrahimpatti is just 18 km from Siura Gopalpur, and his son Neeraj Shekhar is Rajya Sabha member from BJP. Before that, he twice made it into Lok Sabha from Ballia constituency on the Samajwadi Party ticket after Chandra Shekhar’s death in 2007. He is now the BJP candidate from Ballia constituency this time. But that’s irrelevant in Siura Gopalpur – pretty much like the village itself that plunges into darkness soon after dawn. Nights here are longer.
