Bridging the Gap

Seva Setu, Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani’s novel project, brings the state’s schemes for the poor right to their doorstep.

- Uday Mahurkar

Bhavnaben Jagatsinh Parmar, 41, lost her husband in 2005. For 11 years, she had no clue she should have been getting a widow’s pension from the Gujarat government. With two school-going children and a mother-in-law to take care of, the farm worker from Memadpur village in the state’s Sabarkantha district had been surviving on the Rs 100 she earned daily and another Rs 1,500 she made every month selling milk from her buffaloes. Last month, Seva Setu, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani’s flagship programme bringing the state’s welfare services to the people’s doorstep, recognised her eligibility for widow pension and changed her life.

Bhavnaben had attended a Seva Setu camp, catering to some 25,000 people from Memadpur and nine adjoining villages, on December 30. Beginning February 1, she will start drawing a monthly pension of Rs 1,000. Another camp held on December 31 in Ahmedabad district’s Virochannagar village turned Laxman Halaji Parmar’s fortunes around. The 45-year-old backward caste villager, who scraped a living tilling his less-than-an-acre farm, has been enrolled under the Mukhyamantri Amrutum Yojana, Gujarat’s ambitious health scheme providing free treatment to the extremely poor for seven ailments, including heart and kidney diseases and cancer. Laxman had been eligible for the scheme for years, but remained out of its reach as he couldn’t afford to travel with his family to Prantij, the taluka headquarters, for the mandatory registration and documentation process. “I had been trying to do the trip for the past three years, but there was always paucity of time and money,” says Laxman. “I feel extremely gratified to have got the health card at my doorstep.”