Hari Wagh, a below the poverty
line villager from Palu in Thane district.
Villager Interview
There are millions of citizens from India which are poorest
of the poor; people who earn just a few hundred or few thousand
rupees in a year. These people have limited access to health
care and they send their children in school but the children
dont know much of what is taught in school. India or for that
matter any country can not be a developed nation if we dont
improve all the citizens. See
Hari Wagh's online interview.
What is your name?
Hari Wagh. I am from Palu village (Thane district)
How much do you earn in a year?
Rs 6000/- to Rs 9000/- every year (The numbers shared by Hari
are Rs 1500/- per annum but are research with local community
shares larger numbers)
How many members are there in
your family? I have a wife and three sons.
How do you eat if you have
5 members in your family and your income is so low?
We get vegetables from the farm nearby, and we manage to sustain
ourselves with that.
What do you do for a living? I sell goats. I have seven goats now and each
one sells for around 800-1000 rupees. And the goats breed
among themselves, so we don’t have to buy new ones.
How many goats do you sell
in a year? As many as I can, whenever a male sheep (Bokad
as we call it) gets mature we sell it. We dont sell the female
sheep because she gives birth to more sheeps. So I sell around
three goats per year.
Why don’t you work in the farms? I can’t, I suffered partial paralysis in childhood.
Therefore I am unable to perform physical labour.
Did you take medical treatment
for this? Yes but it didn’t do me any good.
What does your wife do? She works as a labourer; she also cuts wood
and sells the wood that we don’t need..
Do you send your children to
school? Yes. I want to send the son who has accompanied
me to Ashramshala. They go to school but they dont learn much.
While interviewing another older villager,
we found out that a goat actually costs around Rs 4000/-.
The villager sells it for Rs 3000/- and the dealer has a Rs
1000/- profit. Hari Wagh, the villager lives on land given
to him free by the government. Hari cant tell the numbers
correctly, so he said a goat gives him Rs 800/- to Rs 1000/-
and not Rs 3000/- (If we assume Rupees 60 per USD, it means
Hari earns anywhere between USD 100 to USD 150 per year for
a family of 5)
