Just 15 kilometres from the gleaming high-rises of Mohali, where Punjab’s urban dream meets Chandigarh’s manicured lawns, lies a settlement the city prefers not to see. The Valmiki hamlet of Majatri village is close enough to the capital’s comforts, yet light-years away from its basic necessities.
“We may be living close to the beautiful capital city Chandigarh, but during the last year our supply of proper quality drinking water has remained disrupted,” says Manjit Kaur, her voice carrying the weight of a year-long thirst.
That disruption is no minor inconvenience. The government tube well that once supplied clean water to the hamlet developed a fault. Nobody repaired it. So the community did what impoverished communities everywhere are forced to do: they took loans to dig their own bore well. The water that now gushes from it is brackish, saline, and slowly poisoning their health.
Gurinder Singh remembers last year’s monsoon with a shudder. “Several families here have houses with damaged roofs – weak roofs that could collapse in heavy rain,” he says. “In my own home, our family had a horrible time. The only small room we have was filled with rainwater.”
They have applied for the government’s improved rural housing scheme. They have pleaded, returned, and pleaded again. Nobody has listened.
Absence of toilets and proper bathing spaces only deepens the indignity. For a community officially recognised as among the most vulnerable in Punjab – the Valmikis comprise about 11 per cent of the state’s population and are considered particularly disadvantaged even within the Dalit or Scheduled Caste categories – the state’s neglect feels less like oversight and more like abandonment.
Then there is Rinki Rani. She deserves more than sympathy – she needs a roof that doesn’t drown her children. Widowed young by a sudden illness that snatched her husband away, Rinki now raises small children alone. The house she inherited is slightly bigger than her neighbours’, but economic ruin has left it in such disrepair that every monsoon turns it into a pond. She is a prime candidate for the rural housing scheme. She has received nothing.
Her day begins long before the sun. She wakes, gets her children ready for school, gulps a cup of tea – if she is lucky – and leaves home at 6.30 am. Two buses or a shared auto-rickshaw later, she reaches the city. Then she cleans four households in frantic succession before rushing back home, just in time to give lunch to her children returning from school.
The lunch itself is a study in scarcity. “We may cook one vegetable and spread its use over three meals,” she says quietly.
Not a single Dalit household in this hamlet owns farmland. Everyone survives on uncertain, low-wage labour. A typical family’s male member travels to Mohali for construction work – perhaps 20 days a month, earning between ₹10,000 and ₹13,000. The woman works as a domestic help in three or four city homes, bringing in another ₹8,000 to ₹11,000. Together, the household earns ₹18,000 to ₹23,000 a month. Then deduct ₹5,000 to ₹6,000 for daily transport and other incidental expenses. What remains is a threadbare existence.
Those who have secured slightly more regular work – as sanitation workers or gardeners in the city or at a nearby university complex – earn no more than their daily-wage neighbours.
Almost every household is in debt. Some are large loans; others are small instalments for mobile phones, televisions, gadgets now considered essential for survival in a connected world.
But perhaps the cruelest irony is this: parents here have scraped and sacrificed to send their children to college. And for what? Most households have at least one educated youth – holding college degrees or post-school diplomas – who cannot find a job worthy of their education. No government post. No private sector role with a regular, adequate income. Nothing.
“This has been a very sad and frustrating experience,” a resident tells me, the words hanging in the air like a confession.
The government is supposed to give special care to the Valmiki community, ensuring that at least some of its educated youth find government employment. The residents of Majatri have seen none of that care.
There is one slender thread of relief. The free ration of 5 kg of wheat per family member per month has been reaching the hamlet fairly regularly – occasional identity card glitches aside. It is not enough. But it is something.
The people of Majatri are not begging. They are demanding what is rightfully theirs: proper drinking water, safe housing, and regular jobs for at least some of their educated young. They live within spitting distance of a capital city that prides itself on being India’s most planned and beautiful urban centre. It is time that pride extended 15 kilometres down the road.
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The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, A Day in 2071, and Man over Machine
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