Extreme deprivation and lofty economic goals reveal stark disparities that must be addressed

It was a panoramic view of a deep gash on the earth—two thousand feet deep and a few kilometres both in width and length. Dust suspended permanently in the air from the digging that was continuing at the bottom by massive earthmovers and excavators, all of which looked like ants from our height and distance.

Thirty minutes further, we had to leave our cars. Only bikes could go on that path off the road. I sat pillion on a Bullet after a few decades. The mud slipping under the tyres, the loose rocks scraping or the underbrush directly below where there was no path. We had to leave the bikes after four kilometres and walk up the hillock for another kilometre. Even in October, we were drenched with sweat.

We sat in the long veranda of the decrepit school. Twenty people from the village of 52 households and us. There were no children in the group; we saw a few later, one ill in delirium and some playing. And no elderly in the group, because “everyone dies before 50″. None seemed taller than five feet two inches, their thighs as thick as our arms. A glance enough to show you hunger, if you are willing to see. No need for research on nutritional status.

Banish the thought that the conversation was sombre or their demeanour melancholy. Instead, it was amusing confusion. We wanted to understand why they had switched to growing barbati in their rocky slopy fields.

None of the things they said fit into categories of explanation we understood—rainfall pattern changes, topsoil erosion, market forces. They simply said, “Well, we changed.” When someone tried to guide them to answer “cutting big trees is the cause,” one of them put a stop to the meandering with a chuckle and said, “All big trees are still growing.”

We did learn a few things, like “everyone dies before 50.” No child continues schooling beyond class five, if at all. If someone falls ill, you just let it be. Unless you put the person on a charpoy and four people carry it five kilometres on the path that I had ridden on the Bullet, to the road where you wait for the tempo. Usually, death arrives earlier.

The group conversation ended. I asked a man whether anyone had gone to work in the cities. Yes, he said, three people. A young man to Delhi and another to Chennai as labourers. “And the third?” I asked. An 11-year-old girl, he said, to somewhere near Delhi. “The thekedaar gave the parents ₹10,000; she must be happy, but we don’t know.”

We walked another kilometre to another village. Thirty girls were waiting for us. All in green-and-pink panchi and parhan, the local dress. Shiny danglers swinging from their ears, and thick necklaces. Their bodies were slight, like 11- or 12-year-olds, only the adornment making them look their real age—16 to 18.

Laughingly, they told us how much they enjoyed dressing up for the meeting. Starting early in the morning from their own villages, changing in that village, waiting for us. They want to be policewomen, join the army, become nurses, doctors, teachers and football players.

Each of those is a long treacherous path out of those woods and that life. But at least they were not traded at the age of 11 for ₹10,000. They are here, so nothing can hold them back today. Every one of them loves to dance. They dream of a future and try to achieve it.

On the drive back, we stopped at a sparse, clean, well-lit building—a hospital in that nowhere. The doctor who leads the place is from another part of the country, which may well be another country. She was sent here as a part of her course in medicine and then came back on her own and never left.

It was a small place then. She put her head down and just treated whoever came to her, and everyday she wrote letters all over the world, asking for help. The trickle from those letters of 20 years has built the place. Now there is another doctor and 20 other staff members.

She showed us around. No detail small enough for her; the snake bite of the kid, the history of each patient in the ICU, the drugs stocked out, the date of the complaint for the malfunctioning ultrasound, and everything else.

The smile and laughter never left her. And that was very strange—every one of her team members seemed in inexplicable good humour. Perhaps because that building is a haven in that scarred land. Whoever finds their way there will find succour. How do two doctors handle 300 patients every day? She just smiles.

Indu left the place 50 years ago, with the memory of a scratch on the surface of the earth. Far from healing in these 50 years, it has turned into a deep gash, not only on the earth but in our humanity. We have moved to artificial intelligence and robotic neurosurgery and 8% GDP growth, while in that gash, it’s easier to die than reach the road.

So, Indu said, “there is no forgiveness for us.” But from that apocalyptic proclamation, even she leaves out a bare white building. Written outside which, in invisible letters but visible to all those who need to see is, “here, there be angels.”

The author is CEO of Azim Premji Foundation.