Last week, I sat under a mango tree in the tribal village of Mundalwad with around 60-70 men and women. They belonged to the Pawda tribe. I had gone to Nandurbar, the tribal-dominated district of northern Maharashtra, to see the work that is being done by UNICEF and the Tata Trust to pull back around 10,000 severely wasted children from the brink. 

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As I had come from Delhi where a debate was on over the three years of the Modi government, I asked those gathered whether they knew who the Prime Minister was. There was silence. They looked at each other, as if not very sure.  

Then a woman piped up: “Narendra Modi.”  

Did they know who the Chief Minister of Maharashtra is? There was complete silence. No political leader had come to their village, they said later, for as long as they could remember, not even their local MLA. 

If the PM or the CM were to agree to fulfil one of their wishes, “remember, only one”,  I pressed on,  what would they ask for?

Several women spoke up in unison. “We want an English-medium school for our children.” In many ways, time had seemed to pass them by, and they were clear they wanted their children to be connected with the world out there.  And to them, English was the way to do it. So much, I thought, for going back to regional languages and Hindi! (Men wanted “rozgar”). Nobody had a radio in the village to be able to listen to the PM’s ‘Mann Ki Baat’, though they claimed to have three TV sets. But practically every home had a mobile phone, some “even two”, and they used them to “communicate” with their families. 

In Nandurbar — as also in other tribal pockets in central Indian states — it is children who get the rough end of the deal. The screening and treatment of 9,200 severe and chronically malnourished children in Nandurbar under CMAM (Community Management of Acute Malnutrition) is only a pilot project. The Maharashtra government wants to replicate the CMAM programme in other districts, but there is a long journey ahead. 

Here I was only 400 kilometres from India’s financial capital, in one of India’s most progressive states, but it was so far removed from the dominant concerns in our national or state capitals.  

As the debate intensifies in Delhi over the last three years of the Modi government, there are many achievements to its credit — less corruption at the top levels of government, a change in its work culture, an improved power situation and supply of free gas cylinders to reduce the drudgery of women, to name a few.  

However, the Opposition has pointed out the flip side of the story — the mishandling of the situation in Kashmir, the increase in farmers’ woes, the killing of innocent people by cow vigilantes, and a climate of fear and insecurity among the country’s minorities. And above all — this is a big challenge for the Modi sarkar — the lack of creation of livelihoods, with the last year showing an increase of only 1.1 per cent, whereas the party  had promised to create 13 million new jobs, with, surprisingly, investment not forthcoming as expected, despite the climate of political stability created by Modi’s recent victories. 

But, clearly, for the Pawda and Bhil tribals of northern Maharashtra, it was health, education and livelihood that mattered. 

In the last three years, the government has failed to give primacy to health, nutrition and education as it should have done. We have witnessed cutbacks in the social sector, with a state like Maharashtra reducing its budget on health and nutrition by a whopping Rs 2,000 crore. JP Nadda’s ministry has been one of the proactive ones, and there is a new national health policy in place.  

But can a “Kuposhan mukht Bharat” not become Modi’s mission as are Jan Dhan, Make in India, Skilled India, Digital India and the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan?

Half the deaths of Indian children today occur because of malnutrition. Four out of 10 children are stunted, and they are almost half our future workforce. Should this be happening in the India of 2017, which looks at itself as a power of the future? 

Should not the most dynamic and competent of ministers — as also bureaucrats — be given charge of the social ministries to turn this situation around. It is showing slow improvements, but that is surely not good enough. 

A government, after all, will ultimately be judged by the well-being of those who are on the margins, like the communities  in Nandurbar. And by what it does for the most vulnerable and voiceless, like the severely wasted children who, if helped, can defy death and grow to their fullest potential. And, who knows, another Narendra Modi may emerge from the hills of Nandurbar.

The author is a political and social commentator