WHAT LIES BEHIND THE GHOST VILLAGES

IN UTTARAKHAND'S REMOTE HILLS, OUTMIGRATION HAS REACHED CRISIS LEVELS. WITH VILLAGES EMPTYING OUT, THE GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN SPOOKED INTO ACTION

- AVANEESH MISHRA

IN BAINGWADI, A SMALL VILLAGE tucked deep inside Uttarakhand's Pauri district, the silence begins long before the houses appear. "There are only empty houses and hanging locks to welcome you here," says Pratap Singh, 85, a retired sub-inspector of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, who lives alone. Of his two brothers, one has settled in Pauri town, the other in Dehradun. His three daughters and one son all live outside the state.

"There is no one left," he says quietly. "People come back only when there is a wedding or a ritual that must be held here." Village pradhan Manvendra Rawat says of the village's 392 registered voters, 125 live elsewhere. "Even the MGNREGA public works are incomplete. There is no one left to do it," says Rawat.

The local school still stands, but with barely any children. Teachers, desperate to keep the school open and avoid a transfer, often pay out of their own pockets for the travel, food and uniforms of the wards. Yet, more schools stand sans students every year in the remote reaches.

Many families have stopped sending their children after leopard sightings became frequent.

If Pauri's hills tell a story of absence, neighbouring Tehri Garhwal district offers a glimpse of what that looks like at scale. In several villages of Ghansali tehsil, outmigration is so widespread that locals now call the area "Mini Japan", a nickname born after a high number of young men migrated to Japan in search of work.

Uttarakhand's mountains cover nearly 86 per cent of its land, and about 70 per cent of its people, ostensibly, still live in rural areas. For decades now, these hills have watched people leave-first for nearby towns, then for cities across India. The result: a landscape dotted with silent villages and empty homes.

LONG SHADOW OF MIGRATION