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In the tribal areas of Lakhimpur Kheri: Upset Tharus rue broken promises by parties
Lakhimpur Kheri ‘Struggle’ defined her life back in the late 90s when she used to pedal almost 50km daily to and fro Bilraya Gram Panchayat, ferrying her four daughters on her bicycle from school
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Lakhimpur Kheri ‘Struggle’ defined her life back in the late 90s when she used to pedal almost 50km daily to and fro Bilraya Gram Panchayat, ferrying her four daughters on her bicycle from school. Now, 20-plus years later, Lakshmi Devi is struggling to rid her village, Bela Persua, of the tag of ‘out of network coverage area’.
Bela Persua is a Tharu-inhabited village in Lakhimpur Kheri district of Uttar Pradesh on the Indo-Nepal border, where there is no mobile network and this issue is one of the major poll issues that concerns Tharus the most.
Out of the eight assembly constituencies of Lakhimpur Kheri district, only Nighasan and Palia Kalan constituencies are inhabited by the Tharus. Both constituencies have around 60,000 Tharu voters.
“Sir, hum log junglee log hain. Politics zyada to nahi jante bas itna jaante hain ki mobile connectivity ka na hona ek badi wajah hai ki hamara gaon tarakki nahi kar paa raha hai. Har chunaav mein waade zaroor hote hain par poore kabhi nahi hiuye. Is baar humlog badlaav ke liye vote karenge (We don’t know much about politics but the no-connectivity issue is hampering the growth of our village. In every election, false promises are made to woo us. But this time we will vote for change),” said Lakshmi Devi, who is into her 20th year as a village head, Bela Persua, which is inhabited by around 15,000 Tharus, including 10,000 voters. Being a highly literate village, more than 500 people are employed with the state government.
Devi says that the mobile network is one of the major issues, not just in Bela Persua but also in the other Tharu-inhabited villages that are located around the Dudhwa National Park. “Being situated in and around dense forest areas on the Indo-Nepal border, telecom companies seem to be least interested in installing mobile towers in the area,” said Devi.
During her first tenure as village head she ensured that her village got a school so that others would not suffer the way she did to get her daughters educated.
Her efforts however got successful in the year 2014 when BSNL did install the mobile tower in the village. Her struggle to get the mobile network began in 2010. In 2014, she managed to coax the BSNL to install a tower in the area. But the problem didn’t end there since the poor power supply hampered the tower connectivity, bringing things back to square one.
She said the internet issue also hampers the education, banking and entire e-governance that functions solely on the internet, which is not available following poor mobile connectivity.
“Our village gets electricity for two hours during the day and six hours during the night. In dearth of adequate power that is not even sufficient to re-charge the tower’s battery for backup, the tower hardly operates for an hour in 3G mode and 1.5 hours when in 2G mode,” said Akhilesh Kumar Verma, a local shop owner, who mans the tower.
Verma said that it’s been almost two years since a technician visited to see the mobile tower.
In the absence of a mobile network, people here use the SIM cards of Nepalese telecom companies as the village receives healthy signals of their network. “The SIM of NCell, a Nepalese telecom company, costs around ₹100 and call charges are ₹3 per minute. This SIM is also a threat since no ID proof is required to procure a SIM card,” another villager said.
On July 6, 2021, S Mohammed Haider, a social activist working for the welfare of the people in the tribal areas of Lakhimpur Kheri wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding establishment and strengthening of cellular mobile network of BSNL as well as other telecom operators, in far-flung tribal villages, adjoining Nepal.
In the letter, he also highlighted the fact that the dismal mobile connectivity in the region is badly affecting the ongoing Covid-19 vaccination drive in which registration is a must on the Cowin mobile application. The network problem persists in the entire district as the BSNL towers hardly have any power backup to run in case of loss of electricity supply, making the lives of the people miserable, who find it impossible to get any administrative or medical support even in emergencies, the letter stated.
Political equations
Other than a mobile network, the issue of privatisation is the second big issue that rules the roost in the villages inhabited by the Tharu. The mindset among the Tharus is that they have to gain education and armed with it they have to bag (only) a government job.
“The way privatisation is happening, in the days to come there will be hardly any government job left for us,” said Suman Verma, a youth who hails from Kadiya Danga area of Tharu areas.
The tribals in the two constituencies, Nighasan and Palia Kalan, say, they often feel cheated as previous governments used them for votes and did nothing for the welfare of Tharu belt in Lakhimpur Kheri district.
Considered among the strongholds of BSP, Palia Kalan assembly constituency was won by the BJP in 2017 assembly elections. Harvinder Kumar Sahani, a BJP candidate, won the seat by defeating Saif Ali Naqvi of the Congress by a margin of 69,228 votes. However, in 2012, 2007 and in 2002, the seat was with the BSP.
The Nighasan constituency too is with the BJP after its candidate Patel Ramkumar Verma won assembly elections 2017 after defeating Krishna Gopal Patel, a SP candidate, by a margin of 46,123 votes. In 2012, the seat was again with Ajay, a BJP candidate whereas in 2007, the seat was with SP and in 2002 it was with BSP.
With the fight between BJP, SP and BSP, people familiar with the region said that in both constituencies, Tharus will play a crucial role in deciding winners.
Twenty years later, Lakshmi Devi’s four daughters have finished their studies and are all now state government employees. That struggle of hers has come to fruition. However, the fight for mobile connectivity continues. With polling slated to take place on February 23, she promises that the vote will send a message that this village of literates is anything to take for a ride for too long.
