Uttarakhand’s ‘ghost busters’

To get to Barsu from Dehra Dun, the Uttarakhand capital, you need to drive 180km on the rickety, mountainous and rain-battered National Highway 58 towards Rudraprayag district. Another 6km of consistently poor roads, followed by a half-kilometre climb on foot takes you to what was once the village of Barsu, nestled in the Shivalik range, overlooking the outer Himalayas.

“We once had 83 families in our village, but since my father’s time people have been moving away to the village of Punar, and further on to Rudraprayag, Dehra Dun and Delhi,” says Vijay Semwal, 40. He had left Barsu when he was a child but has now returned and is leading efforts to bring the village back to life, literally. “We managed to get people to notice our plight and, over the last few months, we have begun work on developing 200 nalis (roughly 22 acres), growing fruits and vegetables. Within five years I want to make sure all the families return and take up what used to be their homes and fields.”

A lost age

Government gazettes indicate that Barsu village has been in existence since 1372 AD. “At one point the entire 2,000 nalis (98 acres) used to be well-cultivated. But for as long as I can remember, while the rest of the world was racing forward, we didn’t have electricity, water or even a decent road,” says Semwal.

Barsu is a ghost village, or, as they say in Garhwali, a bhootiya gao. And it’s not the only one of its kind.

In Uttarakhand, there is an under-reported but pressing social epidemic of sorts — the migration of young people away from villages and into the State capital and other parts of the country. In fact, among the State’s nine hill districts, some such as Pauri and Almora have shown negative population growth in the 2011 census. The absence of industry and, consequently, gainful employment is fuelling this migration.

The 2011 Planning Commission report says that nearly 58 per cent of the villages in Uttarakhand have no access to proper roads. It is estimated that the total number of displaced people from the State is well over a whopping 20 lakh. A number so big, that those displaced if they are brought together in one place will equal a district as big as Haridwar.

The most dangerous outcome of this migration is that the State, which was essentially created at the beginning of the millennium to empower the mountain people, runs the risk that within the decade would have more seats in its Legislative Assembly from the plains than from the mountains. This would defeat the very purpose of carving it from what was till then a joint Uttar Pradesh.

Back to the future

When Praveen Pawar, a consultant with the United Nations Disaster Management Team (UNDMT), was in Uttarakhand after last year’s deluge, he stumbled upon a remarkable fact. “I was looking for ways to show the State government apparatus that it should tap the resources available in its land. Give the people reasons to stay rooted and not move away,” says the 38-year-old consultant who recently moved back to Maharashtra from Uttarakhand. “I heard about Barsu and put my theories into practice and began work on the village’s restoration.” His brainchild is the ‘Barsu Project’ — a four-year plan which, if implemented, would return the entire village and its 2,000 nalis to their former glory by 2018. Currently running it as a philanthropic venture, Pawar is trying to rope in friends and funding agencies to raise the ₹45-odd lakh required for the project.

Once restored, the village, he hopes, will not only get back its inhabitants but also develop into a centre for homestays, aromatic treatments and other eco-tourism projects.

The day-to-day running of the Barsu project is handled by a Rudraprayag-based NGO and Semwal, who are together also in charge of overseeing land improvements, hiring labourers and supervising the restoration work. The local administration has chipped in with three solar-powered street lamps and water supply for restoring the land.

“We want to see how the Barsu project develops and replicate it in other areas, if successful,” says Raghav Langer, district magistrate, Rudraprayag. “Slowly, we will enable the people of Barsu to benefit from schemes such as MGNREGA and National Agriculture Development Scheme. The redevelopment of such villages can be an effective check on migration.”

The houses remaining in the village are also being restored. Some of them are more than 200 years old, rich with intricate architecture that bring to mind those found in centuries-old houses across Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Semwal, who is giving us a mini-tour of the village, says, “Well, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but they say that many people in Uttarakhand came from dakshin (south) and settled here many centuries ago.” (Interestingly, several historians, including DP Saklani, the author of Ancient Communities of the Himalayas, have made references to the Dravidian connection.)

Semwal adds, “My father was one of the first to leave the village back then. Nothing will make me happier than being the one to bring all of my people back home.”

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