Village in eastern Rukum without a grain of rice

Published On: October 13, 2018 04:00 AM NPT By: LOKENDRA KHANAL

RUKUM, Oct 13: Dashain has arrived. However, there is 'not a single grain of rice' in their place, report the people of a remote village Pelma. They have no rice to prepare even the Dashain tika, they lament."

There is no grain of rice in my home. Dashain has arrived. It is really sad," said Bharat Pun, an elderly man of Pelma village situated in the eastern part of Rukum. "But it is not just my grievance. Nobody has rice at their homes. The Entire village lacks rice," he added. His neighbor Man Singh Budha has a similar complaint - "We don't have rice even for Dashain."The remote village is almost isolated from the rest of the world. Rice is not something they produce in their fields.

The scarcity of rice is hence not an unusual issue here. "However, not having even a handful of it to manage for Dashain tika is sad," they lament."I have no rice at home for the last six months. I had bought some rice from the market but that did not last long," Bharat reported. "Now I am told that everyone in the village is facing the same situation," he added. There are 54 households in the village. The families are discussing how to manage rice for Tika this Dashain. "I thought only I had been living without rice, but the fact is that no one has rice at their homes," said Pun.

Now, the villagers are planning to reach Taksera or Rukumkot to buy rice. But the two-way journey takes four days. And the route is not easy, Sat Singh Budha, ward member of Putha Uttarganga Rural Municipality - 1 attributes the situation to the lack of transportation facility. "Even though other villages of Rukum are connected to the road network, this village is not so far," he remarked."As there is no road, we don't travel much. Here in the village we have enough maize and other food grains, but we don't have rice," he said. "We requested the government to set up a food depot here but to no avail.

Now, in Dashain, we are all concerned about the lack of rice. Markets are far away, it's sad," he added.