Village Voice: Thar of Sanjoy Ghose

Sanjoy Ghose was the founder of URMUL Trust a civil society organisation that has been working in desert districts of western rajasthan since 1984. 

In his early years of tryst with the Thar desert Sanjoy used to write a column called ‘Village Voice’ for Indian Express an English national daily newspaper. Following is an excerpt from one of them….

For hours in the morning after you wake up, there is a strange feeling of emptiness, inspite of the crowded train compartment. The hazy sunlight outside is fractured by dust, an unstoppable, innocuous stream, filtering in through the tightly shut windows, and settling with the flakes of engine soot in your hair. It is past winter now, and the desertscape is flecked with green, a bonus from the unseasonal rainfall a few weeks ago.

To an outsider, coming in for the first time (as I did just five years ago) it seems a mystery how this inhospitable waste can support life. For miles there is just sand and sand : then a few shrivelled khejdi trees. Suddenly out of nowhere, emerging from behind a dune, a large collection of houses, some thatched, some pucca. The women in bright reds and greens, in the distance like vivid scars disappearing into houses, pausing to look at the train as it passes by.

Bikaner was even more of a surprise. For several minutes before the city comes into view, there is lush green on either side of the tracks. I learnt later that this was the work of an enterprising man who used the sewage of the city that drained to the outskirts to grow vegetables ! And after the green, the city gradually comes into view. Passing the Nagnachji temple, and the exquisite carved chhatris, little box like dwellings packed close together, clothes on lines. The railway crossing at Rani Bazar, camels imperiously staring through the window as the train crawls past.

The train is invariably on time, arriving at 8.30 in the morning. Then the walk to the jeep, harrassed by the same three women who make their living off alms from travellers. Through the city, the impressive 500 year old Junagadh on the left, from where the kings of Bikaner ruled. On the right, in a "public park" a less impressive but similar palatial structure houses the offices of the District administration : the "Collector‑sahib", todays maharaja.

The drive to Lunkaransar is a stark contrast of wasteland and affluence, thanks mainly to the canal, which has had three incarnations ‑ the Rajasthan Canal, when it was started, in the early 1950's, the Indira Gandhi Canal, after her death, and now (by some canny coincidence, just after the elections) the Kunwar Sen Lift Nahar. An old Rajput from Adsar explained that Kunwar Sen was the engineer who first designed the canal, in the time of the most illustrious of Bikaner's maharajas, Ganga Singhji. Vast tracts of sand give way to shades of green, young wheat punctuated by the pungent yellow of mustard and tara‑mira.

This is an area in transition ‑ from a mainly pastoral living to one of settled, irrigated agriculture. It hasn't been all sweet, either. Sevan grass, the main fodder of the rich cattle economy, has virtually disappeared. That grass needs very little water to flourish, and can withstand the prolonged droughts the area is subject to. The only way it can be destroyed is by tractor harrowing. Camel ploughing, the traditional method, did not go deep enough to unearth the bush from its roots‑ but the pressures of time and science are against the camel.

Just before Lunkaransar, a walled enclosure holds four enormous heaps, covered with black tarpaulin. Food, stored by the Food Corporation of India. In the drought of 1987, those tarpaulin covered heaps were mocking reminders of the contradictions in our country. No food to distribute under the famine relief works, but the stored stocks were from a "different head".

Lunkaransar comes from Lunkaran, the son of Rao Bika, the first king of Bikaner. "Sar" means a body of water, like a tank, or natural water catchment. Some people attribute it to Loon (meaning salt in marwadi), because the water in the area is really salty. When we started work a few years ago, we rented a small house close to the main bazaar, where we set up a small lab, ran an outdoor clinic, and sometimes even admitted patients who needed watching. We all lived there as well, six of us. We hired a jeep, which came to have a personality of its own. We called it 2899 (in Hindi). The driver was Narayan, a 24 year old who claimed as many years experience, as a mistry and a driver. When we came upon better times, and moved into a "campus" of our own a couple of kilometres down the road, we bought a vehicle, and Narayan joined us. Last heard, 2899 was playing the role of Ravana's rath in the Ram Lila celebrations in Bikaner. An ignominous end for a noble machine.

In our new campus we have a small six‑bed hospital, which has been through seven doctors in the last three years. They join, stay briefly till they can get a job with the government, and then leave. Six months ago we decided to close it down, and wrote to the Government offering it to them, if they could manage it. Our present doctor goes out with us to villages around, and stays at Lunkaransar between the 19th and 25th of each month, to treat tuberculosis patients whom we supply drugs to.

Tuberculosis is a mystery. You find it everywhere ‑ in small villages, sparsely populated, among muslims and Hindus, among men and women, and of course children. It's a mystery because the climate is so extreme (49 celcius in summer, to below zero in winter) and the people don't seem to be sick ‑ yet it's stalking the district, selectively killing the weak and the poor. It's a strange disease because it's so easy to control, and cure ‑ in just two months of treatment, the person feels a new being ‑ and stops taking the medicines. The disease developes again, and then it's too late to try the same drugs, to which the person would have built up resistance.

I remember begging with Kesra Ram not to stop ‑ we were supplying the drugs free, but he wouldn't listen. He had already mortgaged his land and sold his wife's jewellry before we met, and had just given up. When he died, the village talked about how stubborn he had been ‑ but that taught me a lesson I'll never forget. It's not the medicine ‑ it's the trust and belief that make the difference, and that doesn't come from driving into a village in a jeep with a couple of hours to spare to do "development".

August 1990

(Source URMUL Trust Archives)