town in Gujarat, helping more than 300 haplessly poor families, Hitesh Ankleshwaria reportsAt first glance, it looks like a typical government ration shop. The sizeable crowd that has gathered for the doors to be unlocked adds to the perception. The faces are wrinkled and lustreless. These people are caught unaware by the mathematics that defines poverty line in this country. They are neither BPL nor APL. So, for long, they did not get the benefits of the BPL category. They did not even get enough food after working extremely hard.
But an 82-year-old man, Navneetbhai Manibhai Shah, decided to intervene about 10 years back. Navneetbhai has managed to change the face of Verasa village on the outskirts of Balasinor town in Kheda district of Gujarat. The mud houses have been replaced by concrete structures. Children study in a big primary school building with a huge playground.
Balasinor is a small town with 38,000 residents as per the records of the Nagarpalika. More than 45 villages surround it. Balasinor is peculiar in nature, it falls in the ultra-rich Kheda district but is bordered by the tribal districts of Sabarkantha and Panchmahal. The two main cities of Kheda district, Anand and Nadiad, are 65 to 70 km away from here. The land is rocky, the landscape arid, life is hard. The terrain is marked by small mounds every here and there. In Balasinor, Hindus and Muslims are in equal proportions and communal tension is a normal thing. Kshatriyas, Thakor, Targara, Muslims and tribals make up the population of the nearby 45 villages.
Verasa is a tribal village, 3 km away from Balasinor. Ten years back, it had only around 50 mud houses and lacked every basic amenity like a primary school, a health centre or a PDS ration shop. Poverty and superstition reigned supreme.
The man who changed all of that is just five feet tall and weighs around 55 kg. He says, “I can not walk easily.” But he gets up early in the morning and starts his work from 5 am. His day ends at 8 pm. At noon, he rests for an hour. He lives alone in Balasinor and does all the work himself. His family members live in Mumbai. Out of his six children, three are settled in the US and three are running businesses in Mumbai.
Navneetbhai retired at 70 from his hardware business. He had noticed how the government provides ration at a concessional rate to BPL families through Pandit Dindayal shops. BPL families can get grain, sugar, oil and kerosene from these shops. But the ration shop he launched at Balasinor’s Patva Sheri, named “Rahat yagya nu ration card”, is unique. Here, all things are distributed for free. For that, Navneetbhai has identified 300 needy families from the villages surrounding Balasinor. These families get grains, oil, sugar, kerosene, soaps and washing powder absolutely free of cost eight times a month. Navneetbhai has prepared his own ration cards for these needy families which contain their names, addresses and even photographs.
Navaneetbhai calls his work “Rahat yagya nu ration card”. He has created the Mahtama Gandhi Trust to oversee the work. He recalls, “After retirement from my business, I decided to spend rest of life in native Balasinor. I migrated to Mumbai as a 17-year old in search of a job. I came from an ordinary background. At that time, Balasinor offered virtually no employment opportunity. In Mumbai, I started my own business. Hard work made me prosperous and I bought a house near the White House in Valkeshwer. All my six children are well educated and settled. My eldest son is 63 years old and I have 11 grand children. I was not ready to sit idle after retirement. I intended to do some thing, not to earn but only to serve. In 1995, I returned to my native Balasinor. Everyday I went to the temple and prayed. And then it happened.”
The old man continues, “I can remember it very well. One evening evening, during my regular stroll, I came across a little tribal girl, malnourished and in torn, dirty clothes. She was transfixed on something and I stopped to see what she was up to. There was a dead lizard. She picked it up and was about to swallow it. I stopped her. She said she was very hungry. I had never witnessed something like this in my life. She was scared and hungry. I took her home and gave her some eatables. I got her name and that of her village. Next day, I walked to her village, Verasa. There I saw how tribal people lived in absolute penury.”
Navneetbhai takes off his spectacles, wipes off the small droplets of tears that have started rolling down his cheeks.
On that fateful day, he met his friends Dahyabhai Master and Rasikbhai Lakdavala. “I persuaded them to help these poor people. Our Dashnama Vaishnavite community has always stood ahead for the service of the poor. I decided that even if I had to stand with folded hands before anybody for the sake of these poor people, then be it. I decided to build a school and pakka houses for these people even if I had to go begging from house to house. I started visiting that tribal village regularly. Rasikbhai gave me Rs 2.5 lakh and I decided to transform the village. But after roaming here and there for a few months, I found that it was very difficult. So I decided to try another way,” says the crusader.
Navneetbhai made a list of his relatives, well wishers and friendsfrom India and abroad. He says to TSI, “I elaborated on my plans and surprisingly received positive responses with plenty of money.”He pauses and then starts again, “I did not want to run this scheme like a government scheme. So I did some research work. I got good support from Pravinbhai Sevak (a resident of Balasinor) who is a retired bank officer. We both visited Sabat, Karanpur, Sahiyawadi, Kotarbot, Sakaria, Sarola, Pepatiya and other nearby villages and went from hut to hut. We looked at the conditions of every family and prepared a list of potential beneficiaries. We also set up some rules e.g. to enroll only those families whose family members work very hard but hardly get two square meals a day, those who do not have any home appliance, where no male member has any addiction, so on and so forth.”
Navneetbhai shows TSI the ledgers, lists of donors and other documents. “We started our work with 250 families. The donations we received from donors were used to buy food grain from Ahmedabad. Then we called the beneficiaries, made their entries on the cards and distributed the grain amongst them. We made a rule that no beneficiary would misuse or resell these grain or other items. To make the system foolproof, we frequently visited their homes and kept a watch on them. The card would be cancelled if any beneficiary was found to violate any rule,” he says.
Navneetbhai shows TSI a list of around 100 beneficiaries whose names have been cancelled for violating the rules. His passion towards this work was splendid. Pratap Rupanayak from Verasa is a beneficiary. He doesn’t remember his age, is illiterate and physically challenged and a bit short of hearing. He has been regularly getting essential commodities on the ‘Rahat Yagna’ ration card for the last five years. One of his sons is a labourer in Surat. Pratap and his wife don't have any other livelihood. TSI can see the changes Navneetbhai's efforts have induced. Bhuriben Bala, a 70-year-old lady, is from Karnapur, 10 km from Balasinor. One of her sons is mentally challenged, another one is a labourer. She used to struggle to feed her family of eight. After receiving this relief, Bhuriben has admitted her three grandsons in schools. Her eyes are full of satisfaction and gratitude.
Right now, Navneetbhai's ration scheme has 300 beneficiaries. In a country where lakhs of tons of grains rot in government godowns, 600 million live in abject poverty and the Union agriculture ministry finds it impossible to distribute grains for free, Navneetbhai’s ‘Rahat Yagna Ration Card’ scheme is a slap in the face of the establishment.
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