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It is a beautiful little green island where neighbours live like friends. Where girls are treated with respect. Where violent protest rallies don’t take away the bulk of people’s wake-up hours. Where the bells toll in temples undisturbed and where the imams call out for prayers uninterrupted. And where God is seen as a unifier and not a polling booth.
Yet the innocent islanders were terribly unhappy because reaching the mainland was a nightmare, especially during the rains. For decades they had to walk, often in the dark, over a wobbly bamboo raft to cross the river.
Recalling his past, one of the villagers said every patch of dark cloud still made him shudder because it reminded him of his struggle to cross the bamboo bridge in driving rain. He said he used to occasionally feel like someone who had missed the Big Ark, which was sized, designed, riveted by the heavens and skippered by the heaven-sent.
But life has changed now. They now have a bridge. It is made of wood and cars and motorcycles can now drive the village folk to the mainland.
The inhabitants are really happy that the river, once looked upon as a waterway of sorrow for five months a year (monsoon), has been bridged. It has revolutionised life in the village called Joynagar, West Bengal, India.
There was a time when residents of the village stood at barred windows, their eyes looking for a way out of the island block as rain used to lash their only possession, their thatched dwellings.
The area’s new pride has united hamlets around Joynagar, cutting an hour’s journey by more than half and pleasing farmers who can earn more because their crops reach the markets faster and fresher.
The bridge also helps connect hundreds of boys and girls in the area to buses and trains ferrying them to schools and colleges around Calcutta.
The bridge, that came after nearly 60 years of independence, is just the tip of what most of rural India needs urgently.
The architects of Independence, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, did speak of developing rural India before all else. Both were learned. Both were lawyers. And like all lawyers they handed over their briefs to a set of juniors, who are yet to drag almost half of their backers out of difficult living conditions.
Granted, too many people to deal with (billion plus), too many mouths to feed (nearly 35 per cent live in abject poverty) and too much of corruption (Indian citizens pay bribes of Rs 211 billion — $4.6m — annually to officials in public service branches, a study by Transparency International and the Delhi-based Centre for Media Studies once reported). But development is not negotiable. And governance is all about that.
No doubt India today is a world power, but we can’t deny that we also have a large number of poor and undernourished children, women and men. They form the majority and live in our villages.
It shouldn’t have taken India, which has been constantly making missiles, 60 years to make a 200-metre wooden bridge.
Well, let’s put our past behind and move on. Let’s invest in technology to cultivate dry areas and boost farm production. Agriculture accounts for about 18 per cent of the $1.3 trillion Indian economy, which directly employs 235 million people, almost equal to the population of Indonesia.
If just a bridge could mean so much for so many and at so many levels, we can imagine where India would be if it worked hard on bridging the original gap. And that’s the gap between the rich and the poor. If Indian politicians stop seeing people as ballots the gap will die a natural death .
THE INHABITANTS ARE REALLY HAPPY THAT THE RIVER, ONCE LOOKED UPON AS A WATERWAY OF SORROW FOR FIVE MONTHS A YEAR (MONSOON), HAS BEEN BRIDGED