Villagers walk 20 kms to charge mobile phones

MOBILE REVOLUTION: People say they are tired of waiting for electricity, but mobile phones are popular.

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• Impact: In dark for 60 yrs, MP village gets power

Keywords: Mobiles, telecom

New Delhi: Some 80 kilometers from Sagar in Madhya Pradesh, the telecom revolution has touched a Dalit village. However, as they get no electricity, some 40 villagers who now have mobile phones, travel at least 20 kilometers everyday just to get their phones charged.

It's a common thread running through much of rural India. There is electricity for those who want to read. However, in this powerless village called Kajrai in Sagar district of Madhya Pradesh, it is the mobile phone that's lighting up the otherwise dark lives of people. So much so that villagers travel almost 20 kilometers meters everyday just to get their phones charged.

"We are thirty to forty people who have mobile phones in this village but we have to go to Mandi Bamora village to get our phones charged," says Rajesh Ahirwar, Villager.

The village of some 700 people has remained untouched by the development arm of the government. The mobile phone connects villagers not just to relatives and friends outside, it also helps them in times of distress.

''We have been living here for more than 50 years. All of us are Harijans but we don't have electricity, there are no roads and many people fall ill during the monsoons,” says Ganesh Ahirwar, Villager.

People say they are tired of waiting for electricity.

"I have lived my life and I have grown old now. But before death I want to see light in my village. However, no one seems to be bothered," says, Gauri Shanker Ahirwar, Villager.

In villages like Kajrai, it is not the government's ambitious universal broadband connectivity, but electricity that people need to ease the daily grind.