KUMALIGAON (MEGHALAYA): It's Children's Day but 12-year-old Dipankar Barman and 9-year-old Dasarath Hajong don't have much to cheer about. Studying in classes 5 and 3 respectively at Betasing Nargsini LP School, these boys from the remote Nirghini village in East Garo Hills have been facing problems from a tender age.
"Every year during monsoon, our makeshift thatched houses get washed away by the waters of the swelling Nirghini River and we have to go elsewhere to live," said both the boys whose parents work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and are barely able to fulfill their day-to-day basic needs.
"Government officers, who sometimes visit our place, have said they would do something about it but nothing has been done so far," says Dipankar. "Our condition is worse, we have no place to move to during floods," says little Ajoy Paul, who, too, lives in a hamlet barely a few kilometres away from the international border with neighbouring Bangladesh.
The boys had either walked or cycled their way to Kumaligaon to witness chief minister Mukul Sangma launch a welfare scheme. "But the big people did not let us go anywhere near the CM or else we would have told him about our problems," says Dasarath, who belongs to one of the minority tribal communities in the state.
"Yes, insurgents sometimes come to our villages to catch hold of drunkards and gamblers," said one of the boys with caution when asked if he had ever seen any member of the several active underground outfits active.
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