The roads to Garo Para in Uttar Panialguri village are just layers of mud and pebbles. A part of the predominantly tribal Alipurduar II block, one of six blocks in the district with a population of 70 lakh, the village is in the Buxa Tiger Reserve. With a population of 3,896, the village, in the Dooars, the foothills of the Himalayas, is surrounded by forests with trees as diverse as sal, teak, jackfruit, and mango.
Nothing much has changed here for decades, say the villagers, mostly from the Garo tribal community, except for the Anganwadi Centre that was set up 16 years ago in a hut, where about 50 children come, six days a week.
Caretaker and cook, Mamata Dey Sarkar, has worked here for the past 12 years. “Didimoni (teacher) comes on alternate days as she attends to two centres. Every day we risk cooking in the same hut with children who keep coming close to the firewood. There is no veranda or electricity, and the tin roof leak in the rains,” she says. The rains come every month, besides the regular monsoon.
“During every election campaign we are assured that our request for a properly built centre has reached the head office (the block and district office in Alipurduar; the main office in Kolkata). We now have zero expectation,” says Ms. Sarkar who earns Rs. 6,300 a month.
Earlier this year, before the election campaign began, municipal water taps were installed at every house in Garo Para, but nobody knows when the water connection will be provided.
To reach a high school, children walk 6 km one way as there is no public transport. “To complete his graduation, my son had to walk 10 km daily to catch a bus to Alipurduar town, but now he works in a hotel in Chennai,” says Gagan Sangma, who collects wood from Buxa forest for a living.
Pronoti Marak says she and her husband were one of 150 labourers who worked for 50 days at a stretch in 2021 to construct a bridge across the Cheko river. However, the contractor asked the workers to drop the work unfinished, assuring them payment. “We were promised a wage of Rs. 220 a day. We haven’t seen that contractor since,” alleges Ms. Marak.
Construction of this bridge is crucial for the people of Garo Para, say the villagers, for the embankment to be strengthened. Lalason Sangma and Sarojini Marak used to own 15 acres of land beside the Cheko, but are now left with 6 acres. The floods eat away bits of land every year.
‘We lost everything’
“We used to grow paddy and vegetables. We had coconut, palm, and banana farms but we lost everything. Three years ago, the panchayat pradhan issued 15 bamboos to create a temporary dam, but when the river filled up, the bamboos were submerged,” says Mr. Sangma, sitting outside the couple’s bamboo-mud hut, flanked by the forest on one side and the river on the other.
Two years ago, the block development officer (BDO) asked him to get signatures of villagers in support of a pucca bridge. “Everybody in the village gave their thumb impressions and signatures. But nothing happened,” says Mr. Sangma, who rows boats at a picnic spot nearby and earns Rs. 1,750 per month. In the rains, there is no income.
“Most pregnant mothers deliver babies at home, as ambulances never come here,” says Ms. Sarojini Marak.
The Garos are one of the few matrilineal tribes in the world. Grooms move in with bride’s family after marriage. The inheritance comes through the mother, and children bear their mother’s surname. “The Garo community believes in safeguarding women, and this can only be done by making them the head of the family. This system also minimizes the chances of women facing social injustice and violence,” explains Nibha Marak, a social worker in the village.
Tribal certificate
Beena Marak, whose husband works in a brick kiln nearby says, “There are 27 Garo families in our village. The BDO officials say the mother’s surname is not accepted in any government document. None in our family could make a tribal certificate and because of this hurdle we have missed out on many opportunities.”
The people of Garo Para say they have attended all the Duare Sarkar camps, started in 2020 by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, to deliver services at people’s doorsteps. Mr. Sangma produces receipts from the BDO office and Duare Sarkar camps, as proof that he has submitted all the documents asked for. “It has been over a decade of trying for our tribal certificates,” he says, adding that they were no longer sure who to turn to.
BDO Chiranjit Sarkar says, “All the state-run schemes will reach every part of Bengal post this panchayat election; there is no doubt about it. We can’t comment on the government’s plans for Uttar Panialguri at this point, and why the schemes didn’t reach here for so many years.”
