Describe a visit to a distant village in your summer to visit an old and alaying relative : composition
Answers
Answer I can’t paint a rosy picture of village life because a developmental economist sees much scope for development in such a village. But I do have some pleasant memories. The mornings there were beautiful. During a morning stroll, peacocks could be seen strutting on the fields. After the stroll, if you sit down for some tea in a rundown stall, you could overhear disgruntled men discussing Mulayam and Mayawati. On my first day there, I also met the village ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist), who had nothing but praise for the government’s health services. A team of doctors regularly came to the village she told me, with a smile on her face.
Later in the day start the power-cuts at regular intervals. My relatives there seemed accustomed to it. A surprising fact that I found out was that they are charged Rs. 180 a month for electricity regardless of how much they use. What would Ronald Coase say on that, I wondered. For economic efficiency, property rights should be better defined, the Nobel Prize-winning British economist had said.
There were two government schools in the small village, I found out. However, there was no police station or hospital. Both were available in a neighbouring village, though. But the nearest private hospital was some 10 km away. As Professor Amartya Sen would put it, the villagers face a much smaller set of “capabilities” than people like me in our Delhi experience.
Before leaving for Delhi, I had a bath next to a tube well with my cousins in a mango orchard while eating green mangoes laced with salt. These are some of the things I will never forget. I’ve forgotten my school projects and write-ups, the endless theorems and dates, but not those times I’ve spent with my cousins and friends.