Welcome to the land of Saharana, which is inhabited mainly by the Sahariya tribes. This is the world of the Sahariyas, a tribe that has known only poverty, hunger, exploitation, diseases, and death.

 

I was on the visit regarding my study on watershed development and there I got the opportunity to help the foreign visitor who was there regarding to study the malnutrition cases in Rajasthan. We all pitched over a village name Saharana situated near the kasbathana block. When we reached there all the nude and half clothed children playing over there were catches our eyes. Their physical structure telling their condition, that what they all are the victim of? And after this ongoing fathom we proceed to talk with the tribal families who are the abiders of this area. When we did the discussion with them we confronted with the things which was really heart rending. My colleague who is here in India to study this subject of malnutrition in which I accompany her to collecting data. She was sensitive towards this all and she burst out with tears when she saw the youngest victim who was 2 year old child. Only words she spoke “child is starving”. There was not a single Sahariya child whose stomach was not bloated by malnutrition.
 
Once upon a time Sahariyas apparently owned forest land, which was then converted into arable land. A lot of this land particularly the canal irrigated land was mortgaged at ridiculously low rates to settlers and the Sahariyas were largely left with infertile land. Even where they owned arable land, they could not cultivate it because they did not know how to do this and high cost of production prevented them from experimenting. In the name of development the Sahariyas found themselves at the receiving end of civilization.

The land lord exploited them as labourers, did not pay them the minimum daily wages and even discriminated against the women. Even the condition is more deteriorating than our imagination, if they get the opportunity to have a meal than the menu consist in it only the chapatti with chatani. The day they get work they buy some vegetables. Their survival depending on work.  When the rains came they were forced to stay indoors and confront the diseases of the season.
 
One of the traditional birth attendant, who handles all the deliveries in the village, said the government had given instructions that the medicines should be given with milk. But there is nothing called milk here”.
 
Even after the NREGA plan there is no wage guarantee for these Sahariya tribes because they do not posses their Rashan cards and they get the work once in a week or within a 15 days and condition is like this that they were not sure about that in the day they get second time meal or not. Because of this unpredictability of work, earning and food, all the burden comes on the shoulder of women because of the custom of tribe, men are remain in inebriated state and women worked a lot to earn for two time meal. And because of this she does not get the proper care and unable to take care of herself and when she will get pregnant. She does not get the proper care from her family and proper rest because of the poor state and illiteracy. Well there is also a provision of Aganbadi in which it provides the supplementary nutritional foods to pregnant women and children but because of the lacunae in the government and Aganbadi worker they are not getting which is the necessity of them. And the condition of children in this village is literally deteriorating which is really a heart rending. And it is the true picture of India in villages at which we avoid always at the name of , rapid technological advancement, at the illusory healthy state where our future generation is undernourished from we are expecting that they will have the power to change the world. Yes they will, but if the condition remain same than it will be a malnourished developed country. This will be the great oxymoron and a matter of shame for us.