LUCKNOW: About 800 poor families, living on roadside for the last two years on a road in Reusa block of Sitapur district in Uttar Pradesh (UP), have decided to go for Jal Satyagrah to attract the attention of ' insensitive' state government. These families were displayed after Sharda river changed its course by seven kilometres, flooding and eroding their villages in the process.
The families, while fighting for their survival, have been seeking help from the state government since long but got nothing. Now, the displaced people have decided to stage a Jal Satyagrah by getting down into the waters of the river Sharda and standing there all day long for two days from Monday onwards. And, if the action fails to move the state government, people have threatened to follow it up with an indefinite Stayagrah.
"Despite our best efforts to draw the attention of authorities towards the plight of the displaced villagers, authorities have not done anything substantial to arrest the erosion by Sharda, which threatens to engulf more villages in the coming monsoon, or to rehabilitate the people displaced over the past years. The most the administration does is distribute some relief which is pittance and the people really consider it a disgrace to their dignity," said social activist and Magsaysay awardee, Sandeep Pandey, who has been working with the villagers.
Narmada Bachao Andolan has been using Jal Satyagrah since 1993 as a means of protest wherein people facing submergence stay put in waist or sometimes neck deep rising waters of the river and endanger their lives. Last year in Ghoglagaon of Khandwa district in Madhya Pradesh people were left standing in water for 17 days and the government was not willing to talk to them until the body parts of some of the people in water started dissolving. In UP it is being staged for the first time.
"In past 50 years, Sharda river has devoured many villages in four blocks of Sitapur District - Reusa, Sakran, Rampur Mathura and Behata. Villages which have been completely erased include Kashipur, Senapur and Mallapur among others. The river becomes demonic during monsoon when water from the Banbasa dam in Sitarganj and from rivers in Nepal is released to protect the dams there. The erosion due to Sharda and Ghaghara, another river which also originates in Nepal and then joins Sharda not very far from Sitapur, affects Pilibhit, Lakhimpur Khiri, Barabanki, Bahraich, Basti and Ballia districts of UP as well," said social activist Arundhati Dhuru, who is leading the protest and was also associated with Narmada Bachao Andolan.
Thousands of farmers living on the bank of these rivers are able to cultivate only one crop a year because of the flood. People are not able to take advantage of schemes like NREGA also because of this reason and hence the farmers and labourers of this area face problem of food scarcity. A number of them have migrated to cities in search of some decent living.
In 2011, four primary and two secondary schools in Kashipur and Mallapur were submerged in water. About one thousand hectares of agricultural land was also flooded. Another primary school and community hall were lost to the waters in 2012 in Mallapur. Primary schools in Kamharia, Sheikhupur and another in Kashipur are also facing threat. The food security measures such as ICDS and MDM are almost non existent resulting into severe malnourishment among children.
"But the government doesn't seem to be worried about its own infrastructure getting immersed in water and people of the area being denied the benefits of various developmental and social welfare schemes. The gravity of the nature of emergency doesn't seem to have dawned on the ruling class. The people have been left to fend for themselves," said Dhuru.
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