‘When will a good road be built to my college so that there can be more buses?’

IN THE grimy female medicine ward of the Nabarangpur district headquarters hospital, Kanchan Harijan sits on the bed with her younger sister Rashmita Harijan. Their father, Paramananda Harijan, 45, squats on the floor as there are no chairs available for attendants.

They have been here since the night of December 14 when Rashmita had to be rushed to hospital after being diagnosed with sickle cell anaemia.

Dr Priyaranjan Bahali, who did the morning rounds at the ward, told them that Rashmita’s haemoglobin level was 6 gm/dl, less than half of the ideal count.

Kanchan, a Class 12 Arts student of Sai Vinayak College in Majhiguda, admits she is worried about missing school. “My final examinations are in March and I don’t want to miss classes even for a day,” she says.

The Dalit girl from Pakhanaguda village in Nandahandi block of Nabarangpur is the most educated in her family of five that includes Rashmita, their younger brother Balaram and her parents. Two years ago, after she scored 56 per cent in her Class 10 exams, Kanchan’s parents enrolled her for Plus 2 in a private college. The monthly fees is Rs 2,200, and Kanchan knows the money is daunting for her father, who works as an MNREGS labourer.

Rashmita stays in an SC/ST residential school in Nabarangpur district, 20 km from their village. “She was so sick we had to bring her from the hostel to the hospital in an ambulance,” says Kanchan.

The primary health centre near their village has few facilities and villagers must After the photograph of Dana Majhi carrying his wife’s body on his shoulders, with his sobbing daughter next to him, made national headlines, the Naveen Patnaik government announced a free ambulance scheme for district headquarters hospitals called Mahaprayana Yojana. Odisha has around 1,000 ambulances for its population of 4.3 crore come to the district headquarters hospital.

Rashmita was lucky as, like in the rest of Odisha, the number of ambulances available in Nabarangpur, arguably India’s poorest district, remains very low. In August this year, Dana Majhi, also an MNREGS labourer, had made national news when he was forced to carry his wife’s body for 10 km for lack of an ambulance, in Odisha’s Kalahandi district.

What bothers Kanchan more, though, is the lack of buses as she must travel 20 km every day to college. She pays Rs 10 for the 30-minute ride, but rarely gets a seat. “The bus is so crowded and I am always pushed around. It’s a pain,” she says. The problems of travelling and the family’s financial condition have also forced her to put on hold her plans of joining a coaching class.

“When will a good road be built from our village to my college so that there can be more buses?” she asks.

In fact, Kanchan says, the only time she has been out of Nabarangpur is when she went to the Shiva temple in Gupteswar in neighbouring Koraput district with her uncle two years ago. Her dream is to see the Jagannath temple in Puri someday.

Before that though, she hopes to clear her Class 12 exams in March with good marks so that she can do her graduation and then post-graduation in economics. And then, she hopes, she can return to her village and become a teacher at the local high school, just like her science teacher. “He was very good, and never shouted at us.”

DEBABRATA MOHANTY