UP Elections 2017: Politicians turn a blind eye as illnesses plague this UP village

Locals in Gogwan are a worried lot. Lack of development and jobs for the youth is one issue but the most pressing one is that of health. Illness runs high in this village – one of the largest villages in the district of Shamli. Cancer, heart attacks, tuberculosis and jaundice continue to claim lives, and according to a list prepared by the locals, 33 people died in this village, in 2016.

“Barring one that died in an accident, the rest of the deaths are due to illnesses, largely cancer or water-borne,” said Mursaleen Khan, a resident of Gogwan.

Gogwan, comes under the Kairana constituency, where the sitting MLA is            Nahid Hassan from the Samajwadi Party (SP). Despite Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s campaign slogan ‘Kaam bolta hai (Work speaks),’ villagers say that this does not hold true for this village.

“He (Hassan) has never utilised any funds for the development of the village. “Money has been systematically siphoned off under the name of providing rations or employment guarantee scheme programmes. Up to Rs 432 crores were allocated for 100 villages in the block but not a single paisa has been used for the upgradation of water and health facilities here,” alleged Mursaleen.

The village has an approximate population of 12,000 persons and a voter base of 3,000-5000 people. The majority of the locals here are Muslims and barely 25-30 homes are Hindu who belong to the lower caste of Kashyaps. Kashyaps are landless labourers or those who own hardly any land.

The political fate of Gogwan will be decided by a fight between the BJP’s Mriganka Singh and Hasan. The rivalry is ironic given that there was once a deep friendship between Mriganka’s father, BJP MP Hukum Singh and Nahid’s grandfather, Akhtar Hasan. Even today, the families are said to be close but politics is another matter.

Other candidates in the fray include Anil Chauhan from the Rashtriya Lok Dal party and Masiullah Khan from Akbaruddin Owaisi's party The All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (AIMIM). These two have not visited the village so far.

Before Hassan, Hukum Singh was the MLA here. After the Lok Sabha elections, he became the MP so there was a by-election through which Hassan became the sitting MLA two years ago. But it will be a tough fight to regain his seat, as some Muslim homes bear the flag of the BJP.

“The votes between BJP and SP in the village have been divided. BJP has undertaken some development work in the village. They have upgraded schools here and even started a degree college in Kairana,” says Amir Ali, a villager.

Realising the danger to his seat, Hassan makes his way to the village. It is nearing evening and loudspeakers are blaring rustic announcements awaiting his arrival. Ignoring issues of development, water-borne diseases and the overflowing sewage problem, Hassan chooses to polarise villagers, “Come February 11, those Muslims who defected to BJP, their moustaches will be severed,” he threatens. 

The mood is ugly and villagers warn this correspondent not to go near the gathering.

“The party workers of SP are eve teasers. You could be groped in the mob. They are not good people,” says Mursaleen.

Despite repeated efforts, Hassan refused to speak to DNA.

There are many problems in this village that politicians have failed to address but the main one is that of health. Gogwan has a non-functional rural health sub-centre. It is dilapidated, a haunt for drug addicts who snort away ‘smack’ inside the structure. Painted advertisements of Shanticare Hospital, fourteen kilometres ahead on Kairana road, are seen in every alley of the village.

Shamli district is no better. Carved out of the larger Muzzafarnagar district in 2011 and six years down the line, the district still does not have its own hospital. It has been under construction since last year, and the work will take another two-three years to complete, say officials. There is no facility for treatment of cancer in Muzaffarnagar district hospital, 52 kilometres away.

That is why locals here are forced to go to hospitals in other states, where by then it is often too late. A year and a half ago, 35-year-old Ishrana Khatun breathed her last at a government-run hospital, 200 kilometres away in Chandigarh.

“My wife had a cancerous tumour on her liver,” said Khurshid Anwar (42), Ishrana’s husband. “Her stomach had bloated up. We took her to a private-run Shanticare Hospital. An ultrasound revealed a tumour. We were referred to GB Pant Hospital in Delhi, where we stayed for two days. Later, we went to PGI Chandigarh. It was too crowded in GB Pant. She later died,” Anwar added.

It’s not just Khatun. Devichand Chauhan (55), a resident of Gogwan village, is suffering from Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma, a rare cancer of the salivary glands, linked to exposure from carcinogens in the environment. Devichand is a labourer who toils away in the sugar cane fields of richer farmers. Since 2010, he has incurred five lakh rupees and more for his treatment. The family of eleven had to sell off 4.8 acres of land in exchange for a lakh and a half rupees. After having given up their land, they also had to raise loans of up to Rs 3 lakhs from their friends and family.

“Initially, we went to a private doctor - Kuldeep Saxena in Shamli. He fudged up my husband’s surgery. His food pipe was badly mangled,” said Devichand’s wife Rajbala. From Shamli, the family travelled to GB Pant Hospital and later the Delhi State Cancer Institute for surgery.

The only go-to doctor in the village with a population of over 12,000 persons is an Unani physician Dr Wasim Akram. Starting 8 am everyday, he sees upto 150 patients at his tiny clinic, suffering from acute abdominal pain, joint pain and fever. He then proudly rattles off names of high-end antibiotics - Monocef - 500, Alcin - 250, Althrocin, Levocetrizine - 25, Kanacort - 40, as sure shot cures that he administers for illnesses. As an Unani physician, he is not qualified to disburse allopathic medication, but lack of enforcement and ignorant villagers, have had his business flourish. 

According to officials, the problem is that most families in the village consume water from handpumps - dug at a depth until 180 feet - to suck out water. Also, in the past decade, the yield of sugarcane has shot up from 150 quintals per acre to 350 quintals per acre - due to the pumping in of pesticides and insecticides. As a result, illnesses in the village have also shot up. But families here like Devichand have no recourse but to drink this ground water. The majority of the houses in this village drink water straight from the hand pump without filtering or boiling it.

“BJP had promised to focus on development and not promote drugs in the village,” said Amir. “But no one is talking about providing us clean water or adequate share of our rations though. Most of it gets siphoned off into the black market.”

According to the Brookings India report, Uttar Pradesh spends Rs 488.46 behind an individual’s health care needs. With no state-run health insurance scheme in place unlike Andhra Pradesh or Maharashtra, health patients from UP are some of the worst hit in the country. Shuttling between private hospitals and bigger cities for treatment, catastrophic health expenses push them further below the poverty line, ensuring that standards of living fall, as politicians continue to play politics.