While struggling for the survival of her own family, Sarkunwar found the courage to help several hundred people

Sarkunwar
Photo by Gaurav Pandey

Sarkunwar’s courage was tested very early in her youth. Her husband who had gone out to work suffered a serious injury and returned disabled to his home (Udgavaan village of Talbehat block, Lalitpur district, Uttar Pradesh). 

At a time when she was pregnant, she fell down in a well and was rescued only with great difficulty.

A difficult drought year had come and most people were going out to work. What could Sarkunwar do? How would she survive with her disabled husband and children?

She collected the scattered small fruits of neem tree and selling these, somehow arranged the means to grow ginger, which could be sold for   Rs. 10,000 to find sustenance for some very difficult days.

She heard a new scheme called NREGA has come and she can get work under this. When she reached the work-site she was asked to go away as she did not have a job card.

She went around trying to get a job card made, but could not succeed. Then she met some members of a voluntary organization Parmarth visiting the village and they helped her to get a job card. While inter-acting with her they found her to be exceptionally courageous and capable of taking new initiatives. Impressed by her abilities as well as zeal they decided to encourage her. Soon she had not just become a NREGA worker but a mate supervising the NREGA work.

Around this time Parmarth was coming up with the idea of water conservation and sanitation volunteers called Jal Sahelis and keeping in view her extraordinary zeal for such work and responsibilities, Sarkunwar was selected as the first jal saheli. Subsequently she was also elected unopposed as a ward panch (representative) and a member of the village school committee.

Sarkunwar played an important role in ensuring that good quality check dams are completed in time to being irrigation to nearly 150 farmers whose land was more or less uncultivated due to lack of any irrigation. Similarly she played an important role in planting of nearly 15,000 trees under NREGA and in the construction of 120 toilets for her village. She made regular visits to the village school to check that mid-day meals are being served to children properly.

She made her presence felt at several meetings on development schemes. In a typical such meeting when only achievements were being mentioned, she would get up and say loud and clear—this may well be so in some other villages but I cannot see this achievement so far in my village. With such plain speaking she would ensure that neglected or half-completed development work in her village was attended to properly.

All this not only won her a lot of appreciation and respect in her own village, people of other villages and even some officials started referring to her and addressing her as ‘neta ji’( leader).


While Sarkunwar has been so active on the wider social front, she has certainly not neglected her family and farm. Her farm may be small but she manages to grow a diversity of crops and trees here. She and her husband spend most of the time in a shelter very close to the farm, some distance away from the main village habitation, so as to be able to take better care of the farm.

All this work has not tired her, and she is still full of enthusiasm for any new initiatives and exciting possibilities, as I learnt in the course of two recent visits to her farm.

Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Man over Machine and When the Two Streams Met.        

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