Neshwin Almeida
MALKARNEM: It’s 5pm and the sun is on its setting trail. Even as villagers are heading home after the day’s work, some men assemble around the village bar for a quick drink. “People power” may be apparent everywhere but power, as in electricity, is the biggest uncertainty and the villagers have one thing in mind — prepare dinner as fast as possible. It is a picture of peace and serenity and looks like a scene lifted from the famous flick “How Green Was My valley”.
But tranquility is just skin deep. Beneath which there’s a moan. We ask a woman to direct us to Ganesh Gaonkar’s home. It’s the place where 23-year-old Vanita Dessai committed suicide in an alleged harassment case few weeks back. Ganesh is languishing in police lock-up and the case has miles to go before anything is proved. But one thing is for sure, the “scheming” are misusing the scheme to eliminate the Ladlis.
A scheme, its implementation and interpretation can be mind boggling. While, the Vanita case has brought out a sordid picture, for Deepa Velip, another girl who was married off two years ago in Malkarnem, the scheme was a saviour. She explains how she utilised the Ladli scheme money to kick-start a dairy business. She now looks after her family.
“With elections round the corner, you never know if opposition MLAs and some NGOs may use the Vanita’s suicide to downplay the scheme and may even get it scrapped and a lot of people will suffer,” said Videsh’s sister Nita.
Vanita came from a poor family which lives in a small hut in Cavrem, a village known for mining dust and unrest.
When Herald Team reached Malkarnem and asked for directions, we were literally taken on a cross-country route. Passing through bridges, bumpy roads and woody patches. We were an exhausted lot by the time we reached our destination.
In homes like this, where there isn’t any daily wage work with mining stalled and agriculture being the only source of income, this Rs 1 lakh is a windfall booty.
“Goa may not have had a history in terms of dowry and dowry deaths but these things are happening here today and a scheme like this is something like a dowry from the government. The government should rethink about the scheme,” stated Nathaniel D’Costa, a new age digital marketing manager who asserts that the Vanita case is a feud between families over the Ladli Laxmi scheme that has gone public and an eye opener for the government.
Tiny homes, poverty, no access to education and healthcare, no counselling on dowry and the real reasoning of the ladli laxmi money, betting debts, previous farming loans, cattle loans, lack of opportunities in the rural areas especially where mining has come to a standstill, all these issues and doles like the Griha Aadhar scheme, DYSS, Deen Dayal Yojana means a lot to the residents.
“In Margao and Panjim a ladli laxmi scheme takes almost a year to get processed. While, in Malkarnem, the Ladli Laxmi money is received within a few weeks, hence there definitely is a drive to misuse this fund. Either the government should pay it against wedding expenses only or find another way to pay the money to women from the Ladli Laxmi scheme,” asserts Jeremy Souza who’s waiting for three years for his wife’s ladli laxmi scheme to be reimbursed.
Many ladlis like Vanita are being harassed today by either their siblings and parents or their in-laws or husbands for the scheme money, which is perceived as a type of dowry. The government gifts the cash, but what about the security of the young women who are married off? Once the ceremonies are over, the reality comes to the fore and the poor girl is “sacrificed” at the altar of greed.
