Deepavali 2021

Deepavali in Kinwat has been special – last year also and this year too. I spent the last Deepavali with family at kinwat. Couple of village elders were generous enough to invite us to participate in their festivities. One thing that stands out right away is their communal celebration of Deepavali. People of that village come together for dance, music and food. They also invite people of neighbouring village. Their traditional dance (speaking specifically of Gond tribe) is called Gussadi also known as Demsa. It’s a popular dance form in this belt – Marathawada-Telangana border area.

The dance is done in a group – with their props like crown made of peacock feathers, anklets, improvisations like sunglasses, hats etc. The instruments team play different beats, sing songs with 21 different variations. They dance whole night in front of Patil’s home – the traditional village head of a tribal hamlet.

This year too, one village Vasvadi had invited me along with local people representative. The village has no road. We somehow managed to reach. Few village boys were leading us, clearing out the roadAfter reaching the village, we were given a warm welcome through the Gussadi dance. Then after reaching the stage, we garlanded the photos of Birsa Munda, Gond raja and Rani. Then we witnessed their traditional dance. We too participated in it. Then a short speech by me and the MLA concluded the event. I spoke about how this is my 4th visit to the village – of all the villages in Kinwat block on Deepavali the SDM & PO Kinwat along with MLA Kinwat decided to celebrate Deepavali at this village. It shows the importance attached to this village. I told them there has been sufficient progress in physical infrastructure wise – school, internal roads, drinking water, health etc but now they need to focus on Human Resource, skill development, livelihood – for that they need not go out anywhere – since they being tribals and forest dwellers, they can focus on harvesting and processing the MFP, for marketing we can always support; through that they can double their income and become self sustainable.

Then we had lunch.

This Deepavali was special, more for the people of Kinwat.

• on 2nd November we did 8500 vaccination in whole of Kinwat block, highest in a day for Kinwat so far – for that day the nanded district vaccination was around 12000. We had announced couple of days earlier that on nov 2nd we will have Mission 10000 vaccination; we created enough momentum by sending the message through newspapers, YouTube news channels, video bites, on WhatsApp group of officials. Since vaccination was already going on at decent pace, the nov 2nd was like a big push or shifting gears
• The village where we went to on Nov 3rd was 100% vaccinated
• NEET 2021 result was declared during nov 1st week – three of our students and one pass out were able to clear the qualifying score. Out of 59 students who appeared for NEET 2021 exam, only 3 were able to qualify; the other student who repeated the exam scored 326 marks who might get MBBS seat in a private college – the parents of those girls who appeared for this year’s exam were eagerly waiting for the repeat batch to start
• In One village Shivramkheda, which did not have 24×7 village feeder line, getting electricity for 24 hours a day was a dream. So in TSP 2020-21 we took up this work along with couple of other hamlets; there were obstacles in laying the pole as couple of farmers were obstructing it because of their pending land partition in the family. One day I personally visited the spot and convinced the farmers to let the pole laying work go on and after their partition is done, we can shift the pole again; they agreed; I told the MSEB guys to finish the pole laying and line connection before Deepavali and on 4th it was live. The Sarpanch sent photos of the pooja for the DP and thanking us.

Overall this Deepavali was filled with positivity, productivity and purpose. Signing off with that spirit.