Does cutting into virgin land, dry water springs, loss of flora and fauna, and overall destruction of an ecosystem sound like a price good enough?
He doesn’t really walk. He has a spring in his stride. With a ready smile and a loud namaste, milkman Sobhan Singh Kohli carefully pours out the milk in your vessel and engages in chitchat if you want. Weather, traffic, neighbourhood gossip, politics…. But if you’re busy, he returns your “thank you” with a warmer “thank you” and rushes off. He brings milk from his village Choti Bhitarli (13 km from Dehradun) to a number of homes on or near Rajpur Road.
“I remember how hard I worked for years and liaised with authorities to get the road to our village made. From the district magistrate to the MLA, we knocked on all doors,” Sobhan says. Since childhood, he had always seen it as a kutcha road, which was dusty otherwise, and would get washed away every monsoon.
Sobhan’s grandfather who lived in Tehri first settled down in the area along with a few others, who would get their cattle to graze here during cold winter months. The quiet and green hills and conducive climate grew on him over the years, and he settled here permanently.
“Most of the families in my village rear cattle and sell milk. We would have to hike to the roadhead with milk cans on our backs until the villagers got together and carved out a kutcha road again,” he says, adding how it meant delays for the customers as well, and sometimes loss of business for him.
After many letters, applications, meeting administrative officers and political figures and similar demand from other villages, work started on the Purkul-Kimadi road, which passed through Bhitarli as well, under the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojana. Sobhan says the entire project has been going on in fits and starts, and that too of an inferior quality.
“But now that the road has been made to our village, we have even bigger challenges,” Sobhan shares. He reveals how the area around the road is now gradually slipping and sinking. What’s worrying is also how torrential rainwater flows directly onto the road since it doesn’t have an outlet, making the road scary during rains.
Meanwhile, the natural water spring in the area has dried up and the village that never ever had water scarcity until five years ago is now having to give up farming. “When authorities had approached us for water pipelines and taps, we had said we didn’t need it and that they should do it for villages that didn’t have abundant water like us. And look at us now,” says Sobhan, his voice thick with emotion. The water lines were finally laid last year but the village continues to struggle for a reliable water supply.
And then there is the property market malaise that has hit the region fast and quick. “People are chopping trees, flattening their lands to sell it off to outsiders to build resorts, homestays and what have you. Human greed has finally reached our village, too,” he says. Big JCB machines are working overtime in the region and Sobhan fears, perhaps rightly, that the vibrations from these activities are further harming the hills that are already fragile. He recounts a heart-rending incident of how he rescued a newly born kaakhad (barking deer) fawn from crows that were pecking it its eyes, with its family no where in sight. “Its family probably ran away due to the sudden human footprint in its territory, leaving the little one behind. It broke my heart to see this area I called my home come to this,” he says, adding, “But I’ve lived at least half of my life. What will happen to my two young sons? I honestly think we might have to relocate from here to the crowded and hot city of Dehradun in a few years.”
Meanwhile, the land that was lying fallow around Choti Bhitarli is now available for crores of rupees. All sorts of people with deep pockets are coveting this land at present. Sobhan tries to raise his voice against it, and reveals he gets calls that are veiled threats to mind his own business.
“But yes, we have a road. And now I wish it had never been made,” says Sobhan, disconnecting my call, too overwhelmed to talk anymore.
An exclusive series of life portraits of the people of Uttarakhand. A commentary on their joys and fears, struggles and resilience in the face of changing times, development and climate change, these tales will showcase those who often go unnoticed.
