The Deprived Villages

Suruk-Samthar and Yang-Mahakum Gram Panchayats are remotely located geographical units in the southern Kalimpong Hills of Darjeeling district. The region is a part of 22-Kalimpong Assembly Constituency under 4-Darjeeling Parliamentary Constituency. There are about 8 villages accommodated within these two Garm Panchayats with the population of about 10,000.

The Villages suffer from three major fundamental development bottlenecks. They are lack of transport facility (road connection), no electricity and no facility for safe drinking water. The geographical location of the region and more importantly the presence of two major rivers- River Relli and River Teesta- around the vicinity of the region have been the major barrier for many of developmental ventures notably the construction of road network. Hence, this region is economically, politically and educationally the most backward region of Darjeeling Hills. According to a study conducted by Ram Kumar Tamang (2003) as part of his MPhil Dissertation at JNU, Panbu Forest Village under Yang-Mahakum Gram Panchayat is the most backward village of Darjeeling Hills in terms of socio-economic development indicators.

During the British period there was a link road from Kalimpong Town up to River Relli which the villagers used in-order to travel to and fro from their respective villagers and the town of Kalimpong. However, this link road was destroyed by the heavy monsoon downpour and associated landslides of 1950 and 1968. No measures were taken by the government to restore the road.

The Christian Missionary had also constructed a ropeway popularly called Samco Ropeway at a place called 27th Mile to cross the River Teesta that connected villages located in Suruk-Samthar and Yang-Mahakum Gram Panchayats to NH31A. The Ropeway built during 1940s had a distance of about 3 kilometers and helped cross the villagers both the Rivers: Teesta and Relli. In Mid-1990s, however, due to the lack of appropriate maintenance, the ropeway unfortunately met with a major accident. More than 12 people died as a result. Consequently, instead of repairing and re-installing the historic ropeway, the district administration banned the usage of this ropeway putting the future of the villagers in dark.

Today the only connecting medium of NH31A to the villages of the said Gram Panchayats is a manually operated, and often at risk, ropeway. Further, the ongoing construction of Teesta Stage III [low dam] in the area has rendered additional difficulties to the already distressed villagers by frequently aligning and realigning footpaths of the villagers besides damaging the local ecology.

The villagers after traversing the risky-manually operated ropeway have to walk the snaking footpaths through steep gradient of the hills crossing several rivers and streams that often become violent during monsoon.

The villagers have been sustaining such geographical hardship since ages and no initiatives have been taken by the government to connect the villages with proper road network let-alone taking initiatives with regard to other necessary socio-economic infrastructure bases notably electricity, primary health centres, safe drinking water, and adequate primary/secondary schools.

Although NHPC has agreed in principle to construct an over-bridge for the villagers after the completion of Teesta Stage III, the question of constructing road measuring about 5-10 kilometers that stretches from the dam site, where the bridge is supposed to be constructed, till Samthar remains a distant dream to the villagers.