The day Delhi Dehradun Corridor was being inaugurated with much fan fare a seventy year old critically ill woman was being lifted on shoulders by several men covering 8 kilometres uphill route on foot to take her to hospital

Twenty five years ago when Uttarakhand came into existence after the relentless struggle of thousands and thousands of people of Uttarakhand and 43 sacrifices including a dastardly genocide of Mujaffarnagar where our women activists were brutally raped and several killed , the basic concept and objective was to make Uttarakhand socio, educationally, economically, medically prosperous so that the inhabitants of Uttarakhand are fully empowered to raise their heads high as the true prosperous Uttarakhandies. But unfortunately, what happened is just the reverse and adverse. rather topsy turvy.

Unemployment, inflation, state’s fiscal deficit , corruption , scams , migration , illegal mining , inefficient bureaucracy, sale of liquor etc have been on a massive scale up/ high – including women security at stake and law and order situation jeopardised.

Half of the state’s land have been sold to the outsider capitalists and on the health front we have lacked badly leading to massive migration with three thousand villages becoming ghost villages and equal number of schools in the interior – rural areas closed.

The state is paying hundreds of crores as interest to banks and financial institutions every month and the fiscal deficit of the Himalayan state crossing Rs. 75000 crores.

Just three days ago honourable prime minister Narendra Modi and union minister of transport and National Highways Nitin Gadkari have inaugurated the Delhi Dehradun economic corridor built after sending whopping Rs 14000 crores to decrease the distance from 5.5 to 6 hours from Delhi to Dehradun to 2.5 hours.

The inauguration ceremony at Dehradun was executed with extreme fanfare and tax payers money lavishly spent.

Hundreds and thousands of people were lined up on both sides of the roads to greet the honourable prime minister and his cavalcade.

The day when all this vulgur ostentation was being done in Dehradun with massive spending on the glittering function , the villagers of a remote Dumak village at Joshimath, Garhwal were covering a tiring journey on foot lifting a seventy year old critically ill women in a temporary make shit arrangement ( A cot) to ferry her to hospital covering the eight kilometres uphill trek completely perspiring and their shoulders in acute pain.

In Uttarakhand’s Garhwal and Kumaon division in the absence of roads in several villages especially in remote areas people have to carry the pregnant women and critically ill people including senior citizens on cots/ temperory make shift structures covering several kilometres to reach the connecting roads and then hiring the private taxis , thus waiting for hours together.

On the one hand thousands of crores of rupees are being wasted on shortening the distance between Delhi and Dehradun but in view of the lack of medical facilities, health centres and hospitals in Uttarakhand people are migrating to towns, Metropolises and cities vacating the villages on a massive scale.

Uttarakhand lacks good government hospitals, surgeons, doctors, paramedics, medicines, medical equipments and health centres at the decentralised level discouraging the villagers , compelling them to migrate to the cities and towns.

The Uttarakhand CPI ( ML) Secretary and national executive member Indresh Maikhuri has posted on his X handle with pictures of a seventy year old women being lifted by several persons covering the distance of ten kilometres on uphill road as she was ill. It was on the day when the PM was inaugurating the Delhi Dehradun Corridor.

He write on X in Hindi : While the country’s Prime Minister was in Dehradun, inflating the hype of “development” at the gathering
assembled in the name of inaugurating the Delhi-Dehradun Expressway, telling everyone how traveling from Delhi to
Dehradun has now become incredibly easy, around the same time, in the remote village of Dumak in Joshimath block of the same state, people were struggling to carry a
70-year-old ailing woman to the road.
The 75-year-old Prime Minister was putting on a 12-kilometer roadshow in front of the sponsored and herded crowd, and at that very moment, the people of Dumak were battling to somehow complete the arduous 8-kilometer uphill trek on foot so that the
70-year-old elderly woman could be rushed to the hospital. This scripted narrative that you deliver in a Gujarati style with a Garhwali twist
—”Meri Didi Bhuliyo”-never includes those struggling elder sisters who sometimes fight to reach the hospital, sometimes give birth to children on the roadside, sometimes
lose their lives due to lack of treatment, does it, Prime Minister ji? Why does your “development” run out of breath before it even reaches them, Prime Ministerji, even
G
though the people of Uttarakhand have
twice blindly trusted your slogan of “double engine” by linking the engines of Delhi and Dehradun! And yet, why this neglect that puts lives in jeopardy, Prime Ministerji? Said Indresh Maikhuri.