Field Notes: ‘What Do We Want? Just Freedom Like You’

PRIYANKA BHADANI

Ram Sakhi was collecting mahua in her village in Madhya Pradesh.

After a day and a half of familiarising myself with the local Bundelkhandi language and food and acclimatising to the harsh heat (almost 40 degrees), I set out towards the core area of the Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR), over 30 km from Madla, where I was staying.

It was April 2, when a conversation with middle-aged Ram Sakhi would unsettle something in me I hadn’t named yet.

On my first day in Panna, a local contact working at a senior position in a public sector undertaking (PSU) told me that getting inside the core area of the Panna Tiger Reserve isn't an issue.

“People often go inside to see the Gangau weir,” he had said, telling me about the colonial-era canal system completed in 1915.

But I was surprised and disappointed when the two guards at the barrier told me, “Entry has been made stricter in the last few months.”

I needed permission.

“But why don't you go to the villages nearby today—there's a lot of upheaval in Silon and Kabar,” one person remarked.

The twin villages, in Rajnagar Tehsil in Chhatarpur District, were only five kilometres away. It seemed like a good idea to explore rather than figure out another route.

Villagers in Silon were not too forthcoming when talking about any news or notes of evictions, though they spoke of earlier evictions and displacements and how they had upended their lives.

In Kabar, however, several people came forward to tell me about regular visits of government vehicles with officials and surveyors over the last few months. They showed me three markers of the Ken-Betwa River Link Project that were put up in the last few months.

Kabar is not yet on the Project’s list of affected villages.

"Is that why they are not making my Aadhar card?" one of the villagers wondered.

I asked Ram Sakhi, who was in her late fifties and collecting mahua flowers, if she had heard anything about the impending displacements and what she was expecting from the authorities. "Kya chahiye humein? Bas tumhaare jaisi azaadi." ("What do we want? Just freedom like you.")

She spoke in the local Bundelkhandi.

The dialect wasn't very difficult for me to understand because it sounded similar to Magahi, spoken in my hometown, Gaya, in southern Bihar.

But her response was nothing like what I was expecting. Some of the men from the region, standing around us, laughed. Perhaps because she spoke of freedom, a possibility that barely exists for women in general. I, on the other hand, froze.

It took me a while to respond to Ram Sakhi and ask what she meant.

"You carry a bag and roam around. But look at me. I can't step out of this village. Look at my hands," she said, turning her hands over—palm first, then the back.

Her palms were cracked and calloused, lined with cuts and caked with mud, the skin worn from working the fields. Her back was tanned and split.

Freedom, she said, is a possibility when you've financial independence. "It's hard to come by, though, even if I work day and night," she said, talking about her alcoholic husband and wayward son.

She hasn't received any financial aid from the government—“no Ladli-Bahna or anything.” She wasn't expecting anything, even if the displacement became a reality.

There was extreme sadness in Ram Sakhi's voice. Her young daughter-in-law was collecting the flowers a few metres away, and her toddler grandchild played between them.

Over the next week, I met hundreds of people. I spoke in detail to some and had brief conversations with others.

Some of the men were protesting, raising their voices. Some didn't have the strength, the will, or the wherewithal to fight or protest. Some were critical of the powers that be. Some were completely clueless. Some were alcoholics. All of them were unhappy with the promises of inadequate compensation.

But the women? Almost all of them felt powerless. Just waiting for someone to tell them what to do when the displacement happens. Where to go?

When I met Kali Bai in Kathari, in the buffer zone of PTR, she was busy with her toddler in a small grocery shop, and a sewing machine peeked from behind in the next room.

It's been over six years since she married and moved from a village in Chhatarpur with electricity and piped water to this remote village, Kathari, in Panna. Kathari, one of the eight villages marked for evacuation as part of the Ken-Betwa Link Project, hasn't had electricity or piped water in decades.

Kali Bai misses the comforts of her maiden home. “Thodi vyavastha hoti toh accha hota,” she said. ("It would have been nice to have better arrangements.")

But she makes do with a solar bulb. Even with all the struggles, she wished the displacement wasn't a reality.

"No one wants to leave their home," she said.

Towards the end of my visit, I finally entered the core area through the Bhusaur barrier.

“It worked for you now, but maybe it won't work in the near future with authorities cutting access in fear of revealing too much of the ground reality,” said an NGO worker I had met earlier during the trip, visibly relieved when I told them I made it in.

I’ve been relieved, too, to have been able to tell the story of the people affected by a massive developmental project. But the conversations with each woman have lingered. Some have stayed with me in ways I didn’t expect and can't explain.

It has been over a month since I returned to my comfortable home in Delhi-NCR, and Ram Sakhi's “bas tumhaare jaisi azaadi” keeps coming back during small, ordinary chores.

I find myself wondering—would I have been able to walk away from a toxic marriage, start over in a new city, marry again, remain childfree by choice, quit a well-paying job while nearing 40, and begin studying again—if it weren’t for the "azaadi" I have (been given?)

Sometimes, it takes someone without access to certain ideas and thoughts to hold up a mirror and show us what we might be taking for granted.

Read Priyanka Bhadani's full story here.

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