“Post...” When 82-year-old Ummibai heard the familiar voice of the postman, she was quick to come out of her mud-hut, as if she had been waiting for him for weeks. With a faint smile on her face, she looked a bit impatient when she stood in front of the postman. She almost grabbed the cover from the postman as if she couldn’t wait any longer. When she opened the mail, the smile slowly faded away from her face.

She had been expecting money from her son. But her son, expressing his helplessness in sending money this time around, had said in the letter that he would be sending it soon. Ummibai lives with her four grandchildren at Jattagi Tanda, Lambanis’ habitat, in the Muddebihal taluk of Bijapur district. Her only son, Khemu, along with his wife, migrated to Goa long ago in search of a source of livelihood. He visits the village only once a year, that too during Deepavali. Till then, Ummibai has to look after his four children. Once in two months, Khemu sends a paltry sum to Ummibai, who feels the amount is a pittance. She works as a daily wager to maintain the house.

Ummibai, who has not come out of her hut for the last one week due to continuous rains, is sitting anxiously in a corner of her hut. She neither has money nor a job. Her only worry is on how to feed her grandchildren tomorrow.

Stark reality

Like Ummibai, there are several elderly women in the tanda, who are finding it hard to survive as their sons and daughters-in-law have migrated to neighbouring states, leaving them all alone at home. They occasionally get some money from their sons. Otherwise, they have to work either in the fields or in the building construction sites to earn their livelihood.

The total population of the tanda is about 800. But only about 200 people, mainly elderly women and children, live there most of the time. The remaining go either to Goa or Maharashtra to work for almost eight months in a year. It is because of this reason that only about a 100-and-odd people were present to greet All-India Congress Committee (AICC) General Secretary Rahul Gandhi, when he visited this hamlet as part of his ‘Discover India’ tour recently.

Narrating the painful experiences of elderly women in Jattagi, Shrikanth Chavhan, a student from the tanda, says: "Bread winners of the family are finding it very difficult to get jobs here. Therefore, they go to places like Goa or Mumbai in search of food and employment, leaving their children and aged parents at home. They consider taking elderly parents and children along with them an unwanted burden.”

Ironically, when they come back to the tanda, they do not bring a huge sum along with them. They would have spent a major portion of their earnings on leading a lavish lifestyle and their drinking habit. And, whatever little money they bring with them is spent generously during their stay in the tanda, leaving their elders with almost nothing after they leave.

Shrikanth, who wants to set up an NGO when he grows up, to help Lambani men get jobs locally, says no one from his tanda knows anything about projects like the National Employment Guarantee Scheme launched by the Centre. "If they get jobs locally, they need not go to far away places, forcing their aged parents and children to live a pathetic life," he explains.

Ummibai’s story is representative of the lives of thousands of elderly Lambani women who are suffering in silence in hundreds of Lambani tandas spread across North Karnataka.