Used to walking miles with heavy piles of collected minor forest produce on her head till recently, 80-year-old Kaate Netam of Chhattisgarh struggles to even get up these days.
She fell off a motorcycle a few months ago, and sitting on the courtyard of her house in Pahunar village — nearly 350 km south of capital Raipur and 40 km from the district headquarters of Dantewada — pretty much sums up her daily routine since the accident.
That being the case, she is not ready or capable of a commute that involves a long walk followed by crossing the Indravati river on a boat to cast her vote for the coming Chhattisgarh Assembly polls, unlike in the past. In, or rather till 2018, that’s how she and her fellow villagers exercised their franchise because a security threat didn’t allow polling stations to be set up in the vicinity.
