A villager normally spends Rs 130 as bus fare to get a litre of kerosene and a few kgs of rice in an interior hilly hamlet in Manipur's Senapati district.
We do not have any public distribution system (PDS) agent nor does our village have a government office, senior members of the village, Tanyulong Lanka, claimed while interacting with a team of visiting mediapersons on Friday.
Tanyulong Lanka is about 100 km north-west of the state capital town of Imphal and the nearest bus stop is at a place called Makui, about 12 kms from the village. From Makui, one has to walk on a hilly route.
Villagers said for a litre of kerosene and a few kgs of rice given to the villagers through PDS quota, they have to either go to Kanglatongbi, a hill town in the district, for which the to and from bus fare is Rs 130. So either they take the bus or they have to walk for six hours.
They said that in order to avoid spending, they got up 2 am and start walking to Kanglatongbi about 50 km on hilly route to get their PDS items. The village inhabited by Liangmei tribe has about 1000 population.
Official sources said state public works department cut hills and tried to make a road to the village via Leimakhong, about 25 km north-west of here, but after making road for a about 12 km they stopped cutting the hills due to paucity of funds.
Senior village leaders said if the road was made, villagers would find it easy to reach the state capital and urged the authorities to continue the work.
They said so far only one MLA (member of legislative assembly) had visited their village in 1885.
From Makui to Imphal, there was bus service to Imphal once a day, senior village leaders said adding that during the monsoon, villagers had to cross five turbulent streams to reach Makui village by using local bamboo-made boats.
They said PDS items, which they collected from Kanglatongbi hill town were also given once in a year and amount was 'meagre'.