The Story of Musrundi

Situated just 18 kms away from Kalyan which is a hustling and bustling city with all the latest amenities, is a village called Musrundi. The Saaraakassh Trust team visited the adivasi village of Musrundi on 14th January 2017 to distribute Tilgul and clothes on the festive day of Makara Sakranti.

It was unbelievable that a village which is only a couple of hours away from Mumbai has only one well of potable water for a population of 400. That too this well starts drying up by February until the rain gods are benevolent and fills it up by July!!! And hence the thought germinated that something has to be done to get potable drinking water available to this village through the year. Easier said than done is what we realized as the nearest river body, the Murbadi river was 4 kms away from the village and the path in between is a hilly terrain.

However where there is a will, there is way. And after a couple of meetings with the villagers, work started on January 26th 2017. It was decided that the villagers would contribute by doing the physical labour. The cost was nothing less than 7 Lacs for this whole project. Being a novice in such grass root level work, Saaraakassh did not know that many documents are required to be in place before such a work can be undertaken. Getting the forest department permission was mandatory which we realized only after the electric poles had been delivered to the village! Once the required documents were in order, the permission from the forest department too was forthcoming.

Jain Irrigation came into the picture and at a very reasonable price gave us the underground water pipes. Their engineers themselves came to survey and later supervise the laying down of the pipes. Many of the villagers had by then lost steam and on the day of the laying down of pipes there were hardly any menfolk in the village. We went from house to house to gather the womenfolk to come and help in the physical labour as promised. With the Saaraakassh team leading from the front, and the womenfolk and children of the village the laying down of the water pipes over a stretch of 4 kms was achieved in a day’s time. Thus the herculean task of bringing water to the village from the Murbadi river through the mountainous terrain by laying a pipeline was achieved by 17th June 2017. The water pipeline inauguration was done by Mr. Sudhir Polekar, one of the Trust’s biggest and monthly donors.

However this water was not potable. And hence to make the water potable, a filtration plant too was installed. This was done with the help of Shri. Kamal Dogra who magnanimously sponsored the whole filtration plant end to end, the cost being nothing less than 5 Lacs. On January 14th 2018, the filtration plant was inaugurated at the hands of our Trustee, Late Smt. Vijayalakshmi Narayanan.

A year went by to achieve this project. But there is much gratitude at our end to all those people who made this dream project turn into a reality.

Though the Saaraakassh team has moved on to do shramadaan in the further villages; the connection with the Musrundi village is still deep what with our visits for the Zilla Parishad school functions, festivals and even weddings. Distribution of school items, stationery, toys, clothes and so forth is also done regularly at the village.

For Saarasskassh, Musrundi will always remain special as this is where its humble journey in the interiors of Maharashtra with the Adivasis began.


Tathaasthu
Shital...
To bring a smile to every wanting soul…