Sampark Madhya Pradesh

Dabari is a small village in Petlawad block of Jhabua district. Almost 98 per cent people of this village are Bhil tribals and the rest belong to general, mostly Thanurs, and backward classes, mainly Patidars. Most of the families in the village earn their livelihood from agriculture and agricultural work. Several people, however, have to migrate to other parts of the country for their livelihood.

The village Dabari has government fair price shop, but despite the presence of the shop, the villagers were unable to benefit from it as the shop owners indulged in great anomalies.

When village sarpanch Baduri Amra and her husband Mangalya Ba were confronted with this question, they said that Fridays and Saturdays were the days fixed for opening the shop. But generally the shop owner opened the shop only once in a day and that too not on any fixed time. As a result, the villagers used to wait for him entire day and used to go back without ration. He never gave ration to anyone according to his eligibility and indulged in great irregularity in kerosene distribution. No one from the village got allocated 5 litres of kerosene, but truck and tractor owners got 50 to 200 litres of kerosene and 1 to 3 quintals of ration.

To prevent this bungling of the shop owner, the villagers united and they were led by the sarpanch and her husband. They complained about the shop owner to the District Collector through a letter and its copies were sent to the Chief Food Inspector, Jhabua, and village secretariat, Dabri. The letter detailed out the bunglings by the shop owner, who asked the villagers not to submit the complaint with the secretariat and take back the complaint. But the villagers were adamant. As a result, the shop is now functioning properly ever since the complaint was made.