How remote areas, tribal hamlets and hill districts are coping with Covid-19 days

A group of about 60 Abujh Marias were seen in the Orchha forests of Bastar several days after a nationwide lockdown was announced on March 24 to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

Each of them — Marias are categorised as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) — was carrying luggage. And they looked worn out after a long journey, hiding in railway wagons and then trudging through the jungle. They were bundled into police vehicles and sent to the district headquarters, Narayanpur, to be quarantined, says an eyewitness, Rohit Kumar Sahare, a local schoolteacher, over the phone.

Abujhmad, in which Orchha falls, is a tract of hills and forests in Narayanpur district of Chhattisgarh. It is also a hideout of Naxals.

The district magistrate, Padum Sinh Alma, confirms the news to ET Magazine. “Some tribal workers reached Jagdalpur hiding inside a freight train from Visakhapatnam (in Andhra Pradesh). Then they took shortcuts through jungles to reach home. But they were stopped. Over 2,000 are in our quarantine centres now,” says Alma.

ET Magazine spoke to a few residents living on the margins — jungles of Bastar, border villages in the Northeast and a village in Rajouri right on the Line of Control (LoC) — to piece together this report as the lockdown has been extended till May 3.

The deadly coronavirus may not have caused havoc in these far-flung pockets, but mitigation measures, including shutdown and restrictions on movement, have hit them hard. The villagers in these areas seem to be fully aware of the global menace and are enforcing social distancing norms as well as barricading entry points to keep the outsiders away.

The district administrations have also sought the help of newly formed rural squads to enforce the lockdown and facilitate delivery of essential goods to households.

Cut to Siaha, a district in Mizoram, bordering Myanmar. It is home to the Mara tribe which lives on marginal farming and piggery. The district headquarters, also named Siaha, is 384 km south of the state capital Aizawl — a road journey of 12 hours on hilly terrain. The administration banks on 76 village-level task force (VLTF) that are formed to be in charge of 52 villages in the district.

They are critical not just in sensitising villagers on the coronavirus and restricting outsiders, but also in ensuring the availability of foodgrains and vegetables. In the district, everyone is familiar with the new acronym, VLTF, as they are with corona and Covid.

“The Maras live on both sides of the border — in India and Myanmar — and they frequently visit each other’s homes. When we blocked 11 exit points to Myanmar in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, those from the other side objected. We gave them the reasons in writing.

The VLTFs are mostly manning these roads,” says deputy commissioner Bhupesh Chaudhury, adding that essential commodities such as rice, dal, edible oil and salt are being brought by trucks from Silchar in Assam.

In Arunachal Pradesh, bordering China, the residents of Kaying village have revived a traditional fire brigade system called Lam Kang in Adi language, after a massive fire gutted 55 homes on the first day of lockdown on March 25. Under Lam Kang, volunteers have twin roles, as watchmen and firefighters, keeping buckets of water ready 24×7 and not relying much on the state administration. Kaying in Siang district is the nearest village from the hillock, which hit headlines last summer when an Indian Air Force transporter, AN-32, crashed there.

“Our villages are mostly self-sufficient. They grow rice and vegetables. No one will go hungry even if essential commodities are blocked for days. Here, the fear is more of import of the virus,” says Rajiv Takuk, deputy commissioner of Siang and an Adi tribal. The administration has so far barricaded seven arterial roads to the district. Also, villagers are blocking their by-lanes and imposing hefty fines, up to Rs 50,000, on those venturing in and out of a village.

Even in Orchha in Bastar, villagers are highly sensitised. Schoolteacher Sahare explains: “Residents of remote villages gather outside the police station every Wednesday to buy essentials. They all practise social distancing. Local people are not allowing any outsider to come in.”

Because of regular Naxal threats, the presence of civil administration in Orchha tehsil is considerably weak and residents usually queue up at the police station even for civil queries and complaints. So far, there has been no Covid-19 positive case in any of the seven districts in Bastar range.

Many border areas might have survived the pandemic so far — there has been, for instance, no Covid positive case in Sikkim — but Mangalnar, a border village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri district, bang on the LoC with Pakistan, has been declared a red zone after a resident from the village tested positive.

One of the villagers, Mohammed Mumtaz Khan, told ET Magazine over the phone that the residents have been strictly adhering to social distancing norms and no one is facing a problem in procuring essential commodities barring LPG cylinders.

“The virus will go, but shelling by Pakistan will go on. That is our bigger problem. The government must build the remaining 30% of bunkers in our village,” he says, sharing horror stories of last Sunday’s shelling throughout the night.