Amidst the swirls of grief and regret, daily life goes on. Rambai Baiga comes home from the kirana (daily needs) shop in Bandhwa Khurd village with no more than a katori-full of cooking oil. Her husband Harsh Lal Baiga sits on the floor of their mud house with their two sons and a daughter. It has been 21 days since the couple in Madhya Pradesh’s Umaria district lost their son, Rajan, 45 days old. The infant, born in November at Shahdol District Hospital, about 15 kilometres from the village, had pneumonia. To ‘cure’ the illness, he was branded on his abdomen with scalding broken bangles.
“I was then in Bakeli village [in the same district] at my parents’ house. One morning Rajan had difficulty breathing, so I called the neighbours,” says Rambai. The dai (midwife) also showed up and suggested the branding. “My father and brother had gone to work. I was home with my mother. We did not have a mobile phone to call them or an ambulance, or any means to get to a hospital.” She resisted the dai’s idea, but finally relented, she says. “After two or three marks I asked her to stop, because my son was crying so badly, but she did not listen.” On December 21, the baby was taken to the hospital he was born in. He died about a week later.
Daagna (branding) is a practice among some tribal communities of Madhya Pradesh, most prominent among the Baiga (traditionally priests), Kol, and Gond (traditionally rulers) tribes in the State’s three eastern-most districts: Shahdol, Umaria, and Anuppur, all part of Shahdol Division. Areas of Mandla and Dindori districts of Jabalpur Division are also affected. Many from the tribal communities, government officials, and researchers say that the practice has been passed down generations.
People believed the ‘shock treatment’ helps boost the baby’s immunity when they are sick. Dais use hot broken bangles or iron sickles to make small burn marks on a child’s forehead, chest, or abdomen. Pneumonia, respiratory problems, a stomach they believe is swollen, not crying, or even difficulty getting enough mother’s milk, all get the same treatment. The children are branded a certain number of times as per rituals. In many families, it is also a ritual to brand a child once a month or so after its birth.
In the past one month alone, four infants, all between birth to 4 months have died after they were branded because of a sickness. The first death was reported on December 19 when 3-month-old Ragini Baiga from Shahdol district’s Patasi village lost her life after being branded several times in attempts to cure pneumonia. Durgeshwari Singh and Ahana Baiga, both 3 months old, from Anuppur and Umaria districts respectively, lost their lives on January 1 and January 9, while in treatment at the government medical college, Shahdol.
The first death of 2023 was reported in February, with officials claiming that there have been six-eight deaths last year. The exact number is not a government statistic, because documents say babies died of the ailment, not from the trauma of branding. The reason on Rajan’s death certificate is pneumonia.
Journalist Shubham Singh Baghel, the resident editor of the Hindi daily Patrika (Shahdol edition), who has reported and run extensive campaigns against the practice since 2016, says that going by newspaper reports, about 50 babies were branded last year. He is the only non-government member of a task force of seven, formed by the Shahdol district administration, headed by Collector Vandana Vaidya, after the first death of the year was reported in in February. He says often it is the media that brings these cases out.
The first information report in Rajan’s death was filed only on January 19, almost three weeks after the incident. Before FIR was filed, the Superintendent of Police, Umaria, Nivedita Naidu had said, “We don’t want to add to the family’s troubles, because they were only trying to help their child, but lacked awareness to seek the right help.” She had added that even when people take their children to hospital they sometimes continue the practice, as a sort of adjunct ‘treatment’ to hasten healing.
The medium is the message
About 24 km from Rambai and Harsh Lal’s home lies Hardi-77 village, Shahdol district. There are messages painted on the walls of almost every second house. While most of the messaging is around awareness, some is about punishment for the possible consequences. Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) and Anganwadi workers go door to door to speak to people. Villagers say both the painted messages and health worker awareness drives have increased after an incident here.
In early November, 2-month-old Pradeep Baiga was branded with hot bangles nearly 50 times on his neck, abdomen, and other parts after his mother took him to a dai as he was not crying. He had to be taken to the district hospital and was later referred to the medical college. The child spent the next one-and-a-half months under treatment before he recovered and returned home.
The police filed a case against the child’s mother, grandfather, and the dai, and began a probe. The Superintendent of Police, Shahdol, Kumar Prateek says that in cases related to daagna, the FIR is registered under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Section 324 (voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons and means); Section 75 (punishment for cruelty to child) of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015; and Madhya Pradesh Drugs and Magic Remedies Act, 2012.
He feels strict police and legal action delivers the message that following this practice can get people into serious trouble. “The administration is running positive campaigns, but in cases like these sometimes fear does the job,” he says.
A message about punishment for branding is written on the mud wall of the house of Booti Bai Baiga, the dai who branded Pradeep. The woman, about 80, emerges from her hut and folds her hands, apologising. “I made a mistake. I have decided I am never going to do it again,” she says, as she sits down on the village road.
Her neighbours say that the police and officials of various departments have visited her house several times since the incident. Terrified of possible action against her, she has fallen ill, they say. Booti Bai claims she had stopped following the practice about 15-20 years ago when people started taking their children to hospitals and only banded Pradeep at his mother’s insistence. “That night the boy’s mother herself came to take me for the treatment. She herself had offered the bangle to the gods,” the dai says, adding that she only wishes the best for the child.
She’s unsure of how the branding could help, but says in the days before hospitals in the area people used traditional cures. “We were told by our elders that this cures diseases so, we also followed it.”
Pradeep’s grandfather says he too had received this ‘treatment’ as a child. Many adults in the village say they too have marks from branding, but since the district hospital was now less than 10 km away the practice wasn’t as prevalent.
Consistency lost
Baghel says that while Hardi-77 is close to the district headquarters, poor connectivity, a low administrative workforce, and lack of health infrastructure in remote villages, also force people to resort to such practices.
When Baghel began to report on daagna in 2016, he says he was laughed at initially. “Nobody in the administration took it seriously. I visited about 500 villages in the region and prepared a list of 2,000 children (between 0 and 5 years) who had been branded at some point. After I shared the data with the administration, they began to act,” he says, adding that the district hospital of Shahdol alone used to receive 30-40 cases of branding every month.
He remembers that the administration had run a two-day screening campaign. “They found over 7,000 children had been branded.” Across 2018-19 administrations of three districts with high prevalence — Shadol, Umaria, and Anuppur — launched campaigns to discourage people from practising daagna. Activities included regular monitoring of children through door-to-door visits, audio messages and slogans in local dialects, and even imposition of CrPC Section 144 (prohibiting public gatherings) to warn people of legal consequences. This was in the context of people coming together for the ritual after a child’s birth.
“The campaigns bore results and cases almost came to nil by 2021. The main factor was that the arms of the government were visible on ground and accessible to the public in even in remote areas,” he adds. He now blames the laxity of the current administration and absence of ground force for the resurgence of cases. “After the task force was formed in February, it did not meet until August. It is only after some deaths were reported in winter, they have taken some action,” he says.
The task force plans to start a campaign to get people to sign a sankalp patra (resolution letter) hoping that this will establish the seriousness of the act. They will also start audio messages in medical college and district hospital.
Reporting it right
Assistant Commissioner (Tribal), Shahdol district, Anand Rai Sinha, defends the administration and says that it is wrong to say that authorities got complacent, but admits that the efforts were not sustained in the way they began. “The campaign was also impacted due to COVID, when the chain was broken,” he says. “I myself feel guilty about the task force not being able to meet for a few months but now we have picked up the pace and are using various methods to raise awareness.”
Apart from slogans and surveys, Sinha says that the administration is also counselling families and organising street plays in local dialects. “During some visits, we also tell people that their government scheme benefits can be stopped if they follow the practice,” he adds, saying this is just to put fear into people. Prateek says campaign will soon begin at the police station level, where the force will go into villages with the message of legal consequences.
District Women and Child Development officer, Shahdol, Manoj Larokar says that the administration is also organising events with the women of villages to inform and counsel them against the practice. ASHA and Anganwadi workers have also been asked to identify midwives or quacks who follow the practice.
Dr. G.S. Parihar, the civil surgeon at Shahdol District Medical Hospital, says branding often delays primary medical care for basic paediatric sicknesses that can be easily dealt with. He claims branding itself does not cause death, explaining why the death certificates will have the illness but not the fact that a child has been tortured. “In many cases, the parents will try everything and will only come to the hospital when the baby’s health deteriorates,” he says.
A senior government doctor from Umaria district however, alleges that the administration often hides the actual cause of death to avoid attention from the issue. He also advocates for the strengthening of the health infrastructure. “In villages, people are dependent on one ASHA worker. Two or three villages come under one person sometimes, and they can’t monitor each household all the time. A sufficient number of doctors are still not available in the field either.” He says measures have to be at two levels: the level of awareness against the practice but also “make infrastructure available easily”.
