Sonapi, a village in Saranda’s Chottannagra panchayat, is split in half by the river Koyna that has its origins in the streams flowing down the hills of the sal forest in Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district. Two hamlets, Sonapi and Hendeburu, sit on the side that can be approached from a kachcha road that turns from the tarred Sedal Gate-Manoharpur road at the CRPF camp in Chottanagra (some four kilometres from Sonapi). Jilingburu and Koraigoda, the two others, remain cut off from the rest of the world during the monsoons, except for a 10 km-long forest path at the foothills of Kudlibad.

I have chosen the worst summer day – one in early June – to visit Sonapi. The mercury was at 440C when I left the guesthouse at Manoharpur – and it was only a little over 10 am then. An hour later, I am following Deepak Barla, a 20-year-old Sonapi youth as he leads me from the eponymous hamlet to Koraigoda, across the Koyna.

Labai Surin, the munda (traditional village head) of Sonapi village is sitting in the shade of a jackfruit tree, tearing strips of bamboo from a dry, yellow stalk. With the strips, he will weave a basket that serves as a fishing net when set up on the rocks on the bed of the river against the current.
We begin talking about the river. “We have no bore-wells here (in Koraigoda) because the machines can’t cross the river,” rues Surin. “During the monsoons, the river swells and we are completely cut-off unless we trek down the pagdandi (forest path),” Surin adds. Jilingburu and Koraigoda use the river for drinking water as they do for bathing, and washing utensils and clothes.

“We dig a hole on the banks of the river and collect the riverbed filtrate for drinking,” he says.
Sonapi spreads on both sides of the rivers into a large consolidation of small land holdings belonging to the 42 families in the village. On these lands, the villagers mostly grow rice and pulses. “All agriculture in our village is rain-fed,” says Deepak, who has come home for the summers. Barla is enrolled in a graduation course in Hindi at the St Augustine’s College in Manoharpur.

For a village by a river, it is surprising that no attempts have been made to lift the water into the fields. “For a pump to run there has to be some kind of power supply,” Barla wryly notes, “the only power we have in our houses is of the solar-charged-battery generated variety. It lasts for three hours a day and is enough to light a few bulbs and may be run a TV.”

“Besides, the cultivation is mostly for sustenance. If there is a shortage, it is met by the public distribution system,” he adds.

We take leave of Surin as he seems to be keen on resuming his chore. Deepak, his younger brother Ajit, a 14-year-old and I walk along the edge of the river’s gorge to Jilingburu. Typical of Saranda villages, the homesteads in the hamlets of Sonapi are far-flung, standing in clusters of two or three. One has to walks across fields and clearings to get to one cluster from another. The Koyna flows quietly, now a feeble stream. The Barla brothers assure me that it turns a bright orange in the monsoons carrying the iron-rich mud from the hills in its waters. “The gorge nearly vanishes in the monsoons,” says Ajit.

We walk to the house of Sukram Surin, the rozgar sevak (a village level functionary aiding the implementation of the MNREGS). Like everybody else in Saranda, Surin is busy getting ready for the rains while the dry days are still here. He climbs down his roof where he had been realigning terracotta tiles to cover holes.

Deepak tells me that Surin will have data of the three union government schemes central to Saranda Development Plan – Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY), MNREGS and the listing of below-poverty-line (BPL) beneficiaries. Surin brings out a few printed sheets listing the total number of IAY beneficiaries in the village. The 42 families in the village are divided into 89 households all of whom have applied for the housing grant of Rs 48,000 given by the union government to the BPL cardholders. Of the 89, applicants 80 households have a BPL card to their name. The rest should have become automatically ineligible. But as part of the SDP, the norms have been modified to include households that are not listed as BPL but have been selected after they meet a certain conditions. So, in reckoning, all 89 households are eligible. However, Surin informs that only 22 households have received funds under the grant, that too, only the first instalment – a sum of Rs 24,000. “Those who have their own money have started putting a roof on the mud huts they have built with the grant. The others need to receive the second instalment before monsoons or the mud walls that they have put up will get washed away,” he says.

We switch over to MNREGS having discussed IAY in as much detail as we could. Now, in the course of my visits in Saranda over the last two months, I have learnt that the implementation of MNREGS has been patchy, with payment issues dogging most of the projects. In Sonapi, the 30 villagers digging a pond stopped work in February after having worked for a month. “None of them has received the wages for the 30 days they worked on the pond,” informs Surin. “There is another project – the repair of an old pond that has been stalled due to payment issues as well,” he says. Here, the 10 workers who were digging have not been paid for four weeks of work.

The four of us – Deepak, Ajit, Sukram and I walk to see the ponds. The summer heat is searing and the nearest pond, the old one, is a good 700 metres away from the nearest homestead at the fringe of Jilingburu. Ajit has a gamchha loosely wrapped around his head and face in the manner of a veil. “So that my brain will not fry,” he jokes. Deepak, who is walking ahead, has a cap on as does Surin. The old pond is now a shallow puddle.

What strikes me as odd is the concrete structure that is a part of the pond’s frame. It turns out that the village once had a check dam. It now serves to reinforce the bund of the pond. The stream on which it sits – Togojaya – has dried. Its bed is now neatly divided into small patches for growing vegetables.

We walk on further, about a few hundred metres more, to the new pond. We all agree that it is not yet a pond. And we all hope that it becomes one before all MNREGS work is officially halted. Having seen the ponds, I am keen to meet the mate (project-specific payment functionary) who, I hope, will explain the current state of the projects.

Sahu Surin, the mate, says that the muster rolls (the record of the workers’ attendance and work) have been submitted. The payment, however, stands delayed. “If I go to the engineer (project in-charge), he asks me to meet the panchayat samiti member. The panchayat samiti member, in turn, sends me back to the engineer. Meanwhile, I am left to answer the workers’ charges,” Sahu rues. He excuses himself and returns to attend to some chore.

Ajit, Deepak and I take leave of Sukram and walk back to our jeep parked on the other side of the Koyna. Someone has left steel plates in the river to be washed by the current. The village school, a pink building, whose compound is fringed by tall sal trees, stands aloof from the village, by the kachcha road that goes to Chottanagra. The teachers, Bimla Kumari Michihari and Pushpa Topno, come regularly, I am told – probably the only bright spot in Sonapi’s near-blighted existence. I am reminded that I have not asked Ajit if he is studying. He is – in a residential school in Anandpur run by Christian missionaries. I ask Deepak if his education could come of use in Saranda. “It could, but there is no training being provided by the government for educated youths. The only training I have heard off is the one Usha-Martin (a mining company active in Saranda) has offered. Vocational training will be given according to the individual’s level of education. I don’t know, though, if this training will get anyone a job.”