A visit to Aganwadi at Patia

An Anganwadi means "courtyard shelter" in Hindi. It was started by the Indian government under the ICDS scheme. A visit to to such a place was not an easy affair, we had to visit many higher officials to just get the permission to visit it. After a toil of 2 hours we were allowed to pay a visit and beautify the  place. But the irony was the place we were allowed to visit was 17 km interior of the Patia village ; and it was raining cats and dogs.

After a painstaking journey we were finally in the Anganwadi. But to my surprise it was a single room shelter without proper facilities and the whole lawn in-front of it was filled with the rain water. Our main task was to carry out the Plantation drive and ask few questions and beautify it but everything seemed damaged and impossible. The toilet they had was used as the goat and cow shelter, the only source of water was a tube well that had supplied you with water sufficient with iron quantity to cure your anemia. 

The working conditions are poor and the salary of an Anganwadi worker is less than our monthly expenditure. All these made us think, what have we been doing to build our rural India. My team members felt helpless seeing these conditions but with utmost pleasure they carried out our tasks and promised them to help them in the future.

We always complain of the rising prices and the taxes we pay but do we really think why do we pay these taxes, and where does this tax really go. The money collected from us is utilized by our Government for the welfare of our rural India but what we saw was totally different from what we thought. Life is hard but they still enjoy the hardships and never complain. We must learn something from them and respect them.