A fragile, saree-clad Mathi Daji Kadali charges at a few men standing on her land. Ms. Kadali, who is in her 80s, struggles to finish her sentences, but conveys in no uncertain terms, her right over her land. “I won’t leave my land till I die,” she says in Adivasi Warli, a language most inhabitants of Aamgam Dongri Pada in Palghar district are fluent in.
The villagers get a sinking feeling the moment they see someone in a suit carrying measuring instruments. Ms. Kadali gives vent to what most residents here are hesitant to express. “They (the politicians) may not have given us any facilities, but we have not lost our strength.”
Mathi Daaji Kadali (80) of Aamgam fumes at a system that cares little that she has tended to her land for decades. “I won’t leave till I die,” she says.
The coastal district, nestled in the foothills of the Sahyadri range, is barely 109 km from Mumbai. The Mumbai-Surat highway cuts through the district, and the Vasai-Virar belt is a train ride away.
None of this proximity to the country’s financial capital has helped. For decades, the district has faced an acute water shortage due to poor rainfall, malnutrition, unemployment and a shortage of infrastructure, such as roads, healthcare systems and educational institutions.
Train for whom?
For the residents of Aamgam Dongri Pada, which has over 120 homes and nearly 600 residents, farming and daily-wage labour are the main sources of income. There is just one borewell in the neighbourhood, and a groundwater well is quickly drying up in the heat.
The irony of their existence is compounded by the proposed bullet train project, which will pass through the heart of this hamlet. Ramu Babu Bhoye (50) lets his anguish show with some reluctance. “If the project sees the light of day, the entire hamlet will vanish. How is this even development?”
Ranjana Kurhada, a teacher from Varwada village, is among the few in the district to openly express their dismay at the proposed bullet train project that will take away their land and leave residents with fewer opportunities.
Shalu Rupji Bhavar (50), agrees. Generations of her family have lived here, and not once in several decades, she asserts, have they ever been to the market for groceries. “We are nine of us. We have mango and guava orchards, trees that bear chikoos and farms that yield us rice, jowar and split peas, besides our cattle. How can they expect us to leave all of it and go away?” she says.
Not far from here is Uplaat village, which has 17 smaller hamlets and is home to atleast 15,000 people. Its sarpanch, Gulab Wadia, says people in the village have never in their life been on a train. “The bullet train project has no benefit for us. It is for those who stay in the cities. If the government wants to do something for us, it must fix our ground-level problems, such as drinking water, malnutrition, education, electricity network, poor quality of roads, and unemployment,” she says.
While only 30 houses have been given toilets, the concept of community toilets is not feasible in Palghar, she says. “In several villages, houses are at a distance of 1 km to 1.5 km from each other. Accessing these toilets will be a problem late in the night as wild boars, venomous snakes and other animals frequent our fields.”
Ramesh Bhura (in white shirt), sarpanch of Varwad village, bemoans the lack of infrastructure in the district as fellow villagers look on.
The biggest problem, though, is healthcare. While the government hospital in Talasari refers most patients to Gujarat, doctors in the neighbouring State often do not touch them.
“The hospital in Talasari is ill-equipped. By the time a patient is taken to Gujarat, their condition worsens. Hospitals there don’t care about people from Maharashtra. Not a single person referred there has come back alive. People have stopped going there out of fear and the stigma,” says Ms. Wadia.
As one moves towards Patilpada, in the interior of Uplaat village, roads start narrowing and the ride turns bumpy. For Pascal Dongarkar and his wife Cycilia, who is a member of the local gram panchayat, and the other villagers who mostly ride a bicycle or motorcycle, shoddy roads and irregular electric supply have been a reality for three decades. “Our area has seen no new roads, while work on some is incomplete. Electricity lines have not been connected at places. They have installed poles four to five years ago,” Mr. Dongarkar says.
Women from Aamgam, Talasari taluka, walk back home after their day’s work in Gujarat. With Palghar providing few employment opportunities, the women have no choice but trudge to the neighbouring State, even if they are not welcome there and wages are poor.
Rohit Hadal (19), who has been raised in Patilpada, is a first-time voter. The Commerce student wishes to move to Mumbai to work as a banker, but says he will vote for those who work for the betterment of his village. “We face power outages five to six times a day, and the roads have not seen any development in several years. The face of the village must change.”
In Varwada hamlet, the bullet train is the big issue. Subhash Patkar (23), a Science graduate, spends ample time on his family’s five-acre farm, which he is anxious about losing to the project. “We do not want such development,” he says.
Electoral alliances
Palghar saw its first election (the district was created in 2008. See box) in 2009, and Baliram Sukur Jadhav of the
Bahujan Vikas Aghadi (BVA) was its first member of Parliament.
In 2014, Chintaman Vanga of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) defeated Mr. Jadhav with the party’s vote share surging to 53.72% in 2014 from 28.78% in 2009.
Mr. Jadhav only lost 0.88% of his vote share in 2014.
In 2018, following Mr. Vanga’s death, a by-election was declared. The BJP denied his son Sriniwas Vanga a seat and selected former Congress member of the Legislative Assembly and State minister, Rajendra Dhedya Gavit. The Shiv Sena gave Sriniwas Vanga a ticket instead.
Mr. Gavit won the election, held in May last year, but polled 22.96% less than the senior Vanga.
Mr. Gavit has now switched to the Shiv Sena and will fight this Lok Sabha election as part of the BJP-Sena alliance.
His opponents believe the alliance will pay dearly for the selection. “The selection of Rajendra Gavit as BJP candidate in 2014 has made a dent in their voting pattern,” said Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee Secretary, Manish Ganore.
“We have now come together to end this ‘switch-party-for-power’ politics in Palghar,” he said, in a reference to the support the Congress has received from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Communist Party of India (CPI), CPI (Marxist), and the Janata Dal. “The BVA, Congress, NCP, CPI and CPI (M) have their own vote-sharing agreements in the talukas, and as a combined force, will defeat the BJP-Sena alliance.”
Mr. Gavit, on the other hand, believes he understands the region the best, being a tribal. “I have tried my best to develop the district,” he said. Mr. Gavit claims to have initiated road infrastructure and check-dam projects, as well as built wells during his tenure.
While he does not oppose the bullet train, he said he would ensure rehabilitation for project-affected people.
The BVA, on the other hand, believes the BJP-Sena alliance has lost its grip due to its ‘anti-people policies’. Says party chief Hitendra Thakur, “The district is facing several problems but they want to bring in the bullet train and displace people. Who is the multi-crore project for?”
Mr. Gaonre too said people in the district were focused on the ruling dispensation’s failures. “When the region was reeling under malnutrition, unemployment and water shortage, the BJP-led government was busy with the bullet train project. The train is only for the rich and will in no way serve the tribal population,” he said.
It remains to be seen if the unrest over the bullet train will loosen the saffron alliance’s grip over the district. In the 2018 by-election, the Congress bagged 5.38% of votes while the
CPI (M) won 8.11%. The BJP, in comparison, had won 30.76% of votes, and the Sena, 27.42%.
It all began in 2009
n Palghar Lok Sabha Constituency was created on February 19, 2008. The first election was held here in 2009, and Baliram Sukur Jadhav of Bahujan Vikas Aghadi was elected as MP from the 48th Lok Sabha seat of Maharashtra, reserved for Schedule Tribes. As per Election Commission of India data, he defeated Chintaman Vanga of the Bharatiya Janata Party with a margin of 12,359 votes.
n Palghar has 1,008 villages and 3,818 sub-villages as well as 477 gram panchayats. The literacy rate is 66.65%. In 2014, the constituency had 15,78,077 voters, according to ECI data.
