M F AHMAD
Daltonganj, July 6: Around 17 houses with 55 members want to move out of the top of the Jaigir Pahar under the Garu East range of the Palamu Tiger Reserve (PTR).
These people have been living atop this Jaigir Pahar for decades and every year there is some addition or deletion in the numerical strength of the population here.
Now, they want to come down and settle on the plains, close to the road. These people have urged the PTR to bail out them of this arduous living atop the Jaigir Pahar.
It is a four-kilometre journey from the plain to the Jaigir Pahar and back. For the sick and the disabled, there is no end to the miseries. Rains almost cut them off from the people below. Their new companions during the rains are snakes and scorpions. Green snakes abound in the Jaigir Pahar.
These people collect their government ration from the PDS located in the plains at Kabree village and far from their dwelling atop the Jaigir Pahar, around 6 km.
Deputy Director of the South Division of the PTR Kumar Ashish said, “The residents of Jaigir Pahar have expressed their desire to shift from atop the Jaigir Pahar to some plain area close to the road where agriculture is also convenient.” People of Birjiya, Oraon and Lohra communities live atop the Jaigir Pahar, said Ashish.
Kumar Ashish said, “The Jaigir Pahar residents have one more issue. It is the difficulty coming in the marriage of their boys and girls. No outside family wants to settle any marriage here just for the topography to the Jaigir Pahar, absence of road and other facilities like education, medicine, electricity etc.”
The residents say, “We want our younger generation not to languish like them. For the sake of the younger generation we 55 people in all want to leave the Pahar living.”
“People are now getting more and more conscious about reaping benefits of the governmental schemes but their living atop Pahar or in the jungles come in their way of utilising or gaining benefits of the schemes,” opined Ashish.
Jaigir Pahar has always been sedated, unlike Burha Pahar which remained turbulent for 20 years or so until it was liberated from the Maoists last year by the security forces.
