Mail News Service
Jamshedpur, Nov 22: Sabars have been declared endangered tribe among Adivasis and the governments at state and national levels are trying to draw them away from their lifestyle of forest survival and channelize them into the mainstream of human activities. But these efforts are either in vain or a segment of the Sabars has been left to live and die under an inhuman sky.
A visit to an almost inaccessible village by minimum modern standards, Sabarnagar in Gwalkanta Panchayat of Potka Block is the abode of 150 families of this endangered tribe surviving to die uncared, unattended. Destiny, as of date, had ruled that they are born to die.
Situated atop a hill barely 20 kilometers from the Potka Block office, they had been provided shelters ages ago under Birsa Awas Yojna which are now in decrepit condition and the Sabar families somehow manage to protect themselves from the vagaries of monsoon. The Sabars in this village are victims of several diseases and survive as if by God’s mercy. They have no Health C entre to turn to and neither have doctors visited the village. Quacks are their gods on earth. Just in case, there is a Community Health Centre in Potka but trekking over treacherous paths, if they could be called that and reaching that 20 kilometer away centre is an inhuman and torturous task that makes the Sabars prefer death to remedy. Premature death to be precise. Congress leader Jairam Hansda stated that the denizens of Sabarnagar had been settled on the welfare department’s land by the Jharkhand government but they had yet to be provided forest lease rights.
As a result, Hansda contended that government provisions for such tribals ST provisions and projects) like jobs after completion of matriculation examinations, tribe certificates, income certificates and other schemes remained out of their reach. He said that he had demanded from the government that the Sabars be issued forest lease documents so that they could avail of government schemes and be brought into the mainstream of activities. Jairam Hansda rued that in all these years, not a single commutable road had been laid and the residents of Sabarnagar still had to brave mud tracks and hostile conditions to survive.
