Exclusive! How a helipad brought hunger home

“Looks like the government want us to die,” 36-year-old Shobha Rathod says, staring at the wilting cotton shrubs on her fields. “If it weren’t for our children, my husband and I would have just consumed pesticide and died.”

Misery came knocking at their door in the garb of a proposed Prime Ministerial visit on July 1, 2006. The PM’s trip was scrapped at the nth hour. But not before the plot which the Rathods had farmed as share-croppers in Kolejhari village, in the heart of Yavatmal district in Vidarbha’s suicide country, was razed to build a spanking new helipad for the visiting dignitaries. The official posse in charge of the arrangements vanished in a jiffy, abandoning Shobha’s family to bear the brunt of the ‘quick-fix’ arrangements. Five years later, the financially ruined household is still counting its compounding losses.

“The tehsildar’s people said they wanted to build a temporary helipad for the PM’s chopper and this piece of land was deemed ideal,” recalls Shobha’s husband Pandurang, 40. “We were in a quandary since it meant that our standing crop would be destroyed. But then collector Harshad Kamble assured the landowner that he would be compensated. We could only watch as JCB machines flattened the land and road rollers created an even, smooth helipad.” With the helipad came a temporary Western-style toilet block for the VIP visitor.

Everything was set when the word came that the trip was cancelled. By evening, the police posse disappeared, leaving the Rathods and their landowner, Vinod Sangeet Rao, foxed. “I have other land, which I till, but Pandurang and his family had to go through hell,” says Rao, who has been assured that the compensation will come through in the next two months. “I have heard this reassurance so many times that I just don’t believe them.”    

“Our innumerable trips to plead with the tehsildar, collector and the divisional commissioner have only meant more and more losses as each trip to Yavatmal costs Rs100, and Nagpur costs Rs250-300,” laments Pandurang. He had to borrow money from the local money lenders to lay fresh soil on the ‘helipad’ plot, which had turned into a rocky, untillable patch.

Yavatmal Collector Shravan Hardikar told DNA that he was unaware of the case as he’d taken charge only in June. “Please give me the details and we will look into the issue,” he said.

Now with heavy rainfall, the Rathods are staring at impending crop-failure. They still hope for compensation for their initial loss, which led them into a debt trap. “It will give us some breathing space at least,” says Shobha.

A prayer escapes Shobha as she looks at the overcast sky. “Seems like our hard work will be wasted yet again. After the first lot was destroyed by heavy rains, we had already sowed the second time,” she says. That the government authorities have chosen to be as insensitive as the monsoon upsets her more.