It Never Hurts to Give a Little

India is a diverse land with 1.37 billion people sharing the diversity in their daily lives. The diversity prevails with their religion, their language, their culture while they share a common ground with their fierce faith and belief. Their belief’s have been sometimes very invigorating, while on several occasions, the same fierceness towards believing something has been lethal and the rural sector seems to suffer the most from it. 

In Madhya Pradesh, Umaria district having a population of 643,579 and is considered to be one of India’s 250 most backward districts with rural areas receiving funds from the Backward Regions Grant Fund (BRGF). Behind the forest cover, 80% of the rural population have a horrifying tradition seeded under their belief that has been tormenting the young ones. Children have been brought by their parents to brand their kids with hot iron with an equally dangerous belief that these ‘Dagna’ marks are the remedies of malnutrition and the parents themselves have been inked for life through the same torturous procedure.

However, to curb this helpless situation in the district, IAS Offices Swarochish Somvanshi took a stand, by launching an initiative named Operation Sanjeevani to educate the rural areas about the downside of their traditional customs of fighting malnutrition to file a case against such vile acts and to save the children who have faced the horror and those who might face it in future. When Somvanshi was given the collector’s post in the district, he saw the children suffering in the place both by malnutrition and the tradition of curing it by taking daunting measures. In the awareness programmes they would make the people understand the wrongs of the brandishing hot iron on children and tell them to choose an alternative of taking their kids to the Nutrition Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) to treat malnutrition painlessly through modern medicines.

This act of goodwill was already garnering some recognition, when his donation for one such NRC spread like wildfire over the internet. One Nutrition Rehabilitation Centre, which is a shelter to around 100 children suffering from malnutrition but rising mercury in the area was making it hard for the children to recover fast as infections due to heat was causing tantrums. On hearing the condition, Somvanshi generously gave away his office AC’s without a second thought. The Sanjeevani initiative have been a success in reaching out to 50,000 children, out of which, 637 children have the ‘Dagna’ marks branded on them. It is true that it still a long way from eradicating this sort of evil and initiatives taken by people like Somvanshi needs to be appreciated and supported for a better future. 

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