Gullarghat, a
location once said to house more than 150 families, has now become a land ruled
by tigers of Melghat. Gopi Nanda, the only tribal still staying in the
location, said, “We were shown many locations to rehabilitate at. After a lot
of deliberations our elders of the village decided to move from this location.”
He said that out of the 150n families in the village about 30 were not
interested in moving but due to the majority wanting to move out they were left
with no other option.
Another issue,
pointed out by Nanda, was that the amount that was settled by the government
for the rehabilitated villagers was never given completely to them. He said
that due to the huge amount of Rs. 10lakh which many villagers thought would be
enough to help them sustain the villagers accepted the program and moved out of
Gullarghat. Problems started to arise once the money was exhausted and they
were left to fend for themselves. Nanda stated that there were a couple of
reasons behind people running out of
the money; firstly there was no skill development or money management training
given to the villagers. The other major reason was that a few people did not
either receive or collect the complete amount of Rs. 10 lakh. This occurred
due to the rush of moving the tribal villagers by the government and because
the some villagers were content with the first installment of Rs. 5Lakh they
had received in the beginning of the rehabilitation and did not bother to
collect the rest.
Upon speaking with
the Melghat Tiger Reserve officials they said that as far as the dissemination
of the amount promised to the villagers was concerned, the administration had
guided all villagers into opening a bank account and all their dues were paid
to them electronically via bank transfers. Also a lot of women had received
skill development training such as tailoring work, typing on computer etc. The training were given in order to help them sustain
themselves and their families.
Through all this
deliberations and interviews one could argue that even when the government took
an initiative to educate and rehabilitate the tribal’s of Melghat they might
have inadvertently made a decision that could make the tribal villagers not only
landless but also homeless.
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