In a stark illustration of the depopulation crisis gripping Uttarakhand's hills, the death of a 100-year-old woman in a remote border village revealed a distressing reality: there were not enough men left to carry her to the cremation ground. The incident, which unfolded in Tadegaon hamlet of Pithoragarh district, saw personnel from the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) stepping in to perform the last rites, filling a void created by large-scale outward migration.
A Village Left Without Hands to Bear the Dead
Jhupa Devi passed away on Wednesday in Tadegaon, a tiny settlement perched near the India-Nepal border. As per tradition, her body needed to be carried by male members to the cremation ground, located about two kilometres away on the banks of the Kali river. However, the village could muster only three able-bodied men: her son Ramesh Chand, grandson Ravi Chand, and one other villager. A fourth person was nowhere to be found.
Faced with this dire situation, they reached out to Gram Pradhan Deepak Bisht, who resides approximately four kilometres away in Jayal village. Aware of the treacherous, narrow paths connecting these hamlets and the urgency of the matter, Bisht immediately sent an SOS to the nearest SSB border observation post (BOP) on Tadegaon's outskirts.
Border Force Jawans Answer the Call of Duty
Responding swiftly to the appeal for help, the SSB unit dispatched a team to the village. Two junior officers and four jawans arrived promptly. They did not just provide the necessary fourth shoulder; the defence personnel took it upon themselves to carry the elderly woman's remains the entire distance to the riverbank and actively assisted in conducting the funeral rites.
"As per tradition, only male members carry the dead to a cremation ground. In our village, there were only three males present at that time. We were hoping for at least 10 able-bodied men to turn up, but unfortunately, there weren't any. So, we had to inform the SSB officers," explained Gram Pradhan Deepak Bisht. He directly linked the crisis to migration, stating, "Large-scale migration for education and work has left our village almost empty."
The Larger Crisis of Vanishing Villages
This poignant event is not an isolated one but a symptom of a deep-rooted demographic shift. Official records indicate that around 150 people once lived in Tadegaon, which spans three square kilometres. Today, it is largely inhabited by a handful of elderly people, women, and young children, with most residents having left in search of better education, healthcare, and livelihoods in towns and cities.
An elderly villager's lament summed up the grim reality: "Like most of the other remote hilly villages in Uttarakhand, there has been migration en masse from here too. And our village has now been turned into a place where there aren't enough men to even carry the dead to the burning ghats."
State government data paints a alarming picture of this exodus:
- Between 2011 and 2018, nearly 3.8 lakh residents left their villages temporarily.
- From 2018 to 2022, another 3.07 lakh people followed the same pattern.
- The number of uninhabited villages is rising, with 24 more becoming empty since 2018, adding to the 734 villages declared deserted between 2011 and 2018.
The story of Jhupa Devi's final journey, aided by the compassionate jawans of the SSB, is a powerful human story that underscores a critical socio-economic challenge. It highlights how migration is not just altering statistics but is fundamentally changing the social fabric and even the rituals of life and death in the Himalayan state.
