By Devendra Kumar Budakoti
One of our village mango trees, called ‘Lamtharya’, known for its distinct flavour and sweetness could not bear the brunt of heavy rain and storm and was uprooted. I came to know of it after seeing one of my nephew’s Facebook posts that ‘Lamtharya’ has been uprooted. For me, the uprooting of this tree also symbolises the uprooting of the village. What was the storm that uprooted most of the village families? This troubled my mind and made me look into the social history of the village. I realised that my village was a part of the larger picture of the same social history unfolding in the state of Uttarakhand.
The Lamtharya incident actually triggered thoughts of uprooting of families. Most of the new generation may not have even tasted the Lamtharya mango flavour and sweetness. The new generations sometimes come to the village for a vacation/holiday. The uprooted generation talks of good times and are invariably nostalgic about their childhood, adolescent and youthful days in the village. This is the generation that enjoys the old folk songs and understands the meanings and nuances in the lyrics of Narendra Singh Negi. The new generation does not have much in common to share about village life, so the uprooting of the old tree will not be of any significance to them; however, they may be interested to know the social history of the village.
The social history of Uttarakhand is reflected even in our village and vice versa. In the post-independent period, many of the hill folks started buying land and later settled down in the Terai foothills. The Ex-Servicemen who fought in the Second World War were offered land in the foothills by the government in the early fifties. They moved with their families only in the late fifties. Later, other family members and their families also joined them in the early sixties.
Families moved out gradually in the seventies and the momentum caught on in the eighties and peaked in the nineties.
The first generation of Uttarakhandis left their villages due to the ‘Pull factor’ of employment and job opportunities. Subsequently, literacy levels, realising the value of education, indirectly pulled people to leave their village. Today, the ‘push factor’ is lack of livelihood options besides the poor educational facilities. The manufacturing and service sector in the state is still underdeveloped and with no income from agriculture, people had no choice but to leave their ancestral villages.
Witnessing the development in the plains, men in the seventies, started taking their spouses and children with them. In the eighties, those retiring from service started building their homes in the plains. By the nineties, those who could afford followed the same pattern of permanently settling in the plains.
Till the late sixties, there were no roads connecting the majority of the hill villages, no electricity, or water system, and students had to walk many miles to school. Some development came in the ‘80s and ‘90s, by which time many of the families had settled or planned to move out of the villages. All this happened gradually and hence, today, even if the wild boar and monkey problem is solved, agricultural activities will not be revived as most of the families have left the village.
Chai village is a case study and similar phenomena can be seen in other villages of Uttarakhand. Many villages have been deserted or on the verge of desertion. With no job and income source in the village, many families have also moved out to nearby towns and cities to give better education to their children.
Development and prosperity in the hills are yet to be seen even after two decades of state formation. Villages are still getting deserted, and the youth are going out for employment. The 2011 census authenticates this, by showing the demographic shift from the hills to the foothills and in the plains.
I don’t know if academicians, development experts and planners have any blueprint on hill development. In the prevailing situation, soon Chai will be another village added in the list of deserted/ghost villages of Uttarakhand.
(The author is a sociologist and an alumnus of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research work is quoted in books of Nobel laureate Prof Amartya Sen)
