A voice from the woods

Prakash Amte and his wife Mandakini receive the Magsaysay award in Manila today for their work in improving the lives of tribals. Jaideep Hardikar visits Hemalkasa for a first-hand account

Little has changed over 35 years in this part of the country, except that there's a better road and mobile connectivity. Yet just a shower or two during the monsoons is enough to snap them for days, as it did earlier this month.

It was in the 1970s when Murlidhar Devidas alias Baba Amte expressed his wish to start working among the Madia Gonds in Hemalkasa and his son Dr Prakash Amte volunteered to join him with his bride Mandakini. While there's been a notable change in the way the Madias now see the outside world, there's ironically hardly any change in the way outsiders view Madias. Explains Dr Amte: "There's more awareness among the tribals about education, health and economy, but the opportunities are far less and far between."

The Amtes remain a pillar of hope and service for a tribe living centuries behind the urbane India here in the dense forests of south Gadchiroli, 350 km from Nagpur. The
Amtes never broke the simple rule that the tribals follow in the forest-ecosystem: Don't confront, but connect. Here man can co-exist with animals, but he has to be a part of the ecosystem. "This one's a banded Krait," Dr Amte tells you while lifting a yellow-coloured snake from a tank. "It's 19 times poisonous than the cobra," he informs you. "It won't harm you unless you harm it."

A couple of year's ago, Dr Amte survived a major scare: Russel's viper, a poisonous snake, bit him as he was educating the daily visitors at his animal orphanage, rescue and rehabilitation centre. By the evening, Dr Amte's blood pressure dropped alarmingly and he was gasping for breath. Next morning he was fighting for his life, in a hospital in Nagpur. It took him ten days to come out of danger. "It was my mistake; I broke the rule and troubled the snake, it was not at fault to bite me," Dr Amte says. Animals don't hurt you, if you don't hurt them; they understand the language of love, says Dr Amte, teaching  his five-year-old grandson Arnav his first lesson. This is a lesson Dr Amte has learnt over the years and one that he has tried imbibing in thousands of visitors.

It used to be a grand feast for the tribals from surrounding villages to see the doctor-couple and their volunteers take 'Negal', the first tiger of the centre, to a nearby river on morning and evening walks in the eighties, without a chain. The animals — from the tiger to the leopard to owls — co-exist with man clinging on to a common thread of love in Amte's animal orphanage.

In the early seventies, when the Amte couple started working among the Madia-Gonds of Bhamragarh, animal hunting was much in common. After a decade of their work, their appeal to the tribals to not kill animals has worked wonders. "They have not only stopped killing animals, but bring injured and orphaned animals to us, so that we can tend to them here," Dr Amte informs.   After tending to the animals, Dr Amte visits the out-patient department, where tens of tribal patients wait for him patiently. He then starts conversing with them in Madia — the language the Amtes learnt, to be part of the eco-system and culture.

Patients come from remote parts of Gadchiroli and neighbouring Chhattisgarh, sometimes walking all the way to the Lok Biradari Prakalp hospital (LBP) which the Amtes take care of. This is a clear indication that the government has been unable to put into place a public health care system in these parts, now infested with Maoists.  Now, as Dr Digant informs, patients plead with them to treat them at the LBP hospital despite its limitations. "Last week a woman came walking for three days from a remote village of Chhattisgarh to us. Her right was precariously hanging from a shred of vein. A crocodile had attacked her in a river. We wanted to refer her to Chandrapur immediately, but she insisted on staying here. Even though we had to amputate her hand with local anaesthesia, she happily went back after recovery."

One of the most inspiring changes that their work has brought about among the tribals is education: From the tribe in the vicinity have emerged six doctors, all of them groomed in a modest school that the couple started in 1976. Also the population rate, which was on the decline then, has begun to significantly rise. The number of students at the LBP residential school, which gives free education to all children up to HSC, has risen from 15 students in the first batch of 1976 to 650 today.

Now, even Dr Amte’s sons Dr Digant and Aniket shoulder many of the responsibilities of their projects.
dnasunday@dnaindia.net