Soft power in border villages boosts security, shows way out of pandemic

New Delhi: Talk about India’s borders normally means security related issues of strategic importance. However, as the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic shows clear signs of abating, some communities in critical Indian border districts have shown a way not only on how to effectively tackle the Coronavirus, but also to build security.

In the most remote villages of Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh, bordering Tibet, and the districts of Leh and Kargil in Ladakh, all of which have a predominantly tribal population, there have, incredibly, been no recorded cases of Covid-19 and now, there is almost complete immunisation against the virus.

There are 75 people aged above 45 in Mago village, the most remote village in the Northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, right on the border with China. Mago is situated around 60 kms from the nearest community health centre (CHC) at Jang, and can only be reached on foot, because the motorable road in that hilly, forested terrain is unusable. Yet every villager there has been vaccinated, except one man, aged 95, who has never had an injection in his life and refused the vaccine.

The team of health workers walked 57 kms, for over seven hours, carrying equipment and the cold box with vaccines, to ensure that all senior residents of Mago were immunised. The villagers had all been primed about the disease and the preventive vaccine and were aware of what was happening before the team reached. Nobody, except the 95-year-old veteran, hesitated to take the vaccine.

District Immunisation Officer, Dr Rinchin Neema, said the experience was similar in Thingbu and Luguthang, two other predominantly tribal border villages in Tawang, to reach where teams of health workers had to walk equally long distances over streams and mountain trails. Armed with the electoral roll for each village, the team did a physical head count and ensured that everybody was vaccinated. The exercise was enthusiastic, especially when villagers were informed that His Holiness The Dalai Lama had taken the vaccine.

The other villagers aged above 18, numbering around 120, will get their vaccine shots on June 23 and are ready to participate in the day-long camp to ensure that the Covid-19 virus does not affect them. So far, not a single case of Covid has been reported from these remote tribal villages along India’s border with China. Resident staff at local community health centres have helped keep the communities Covid free. Rapid antigen tests have been conducted, and the aim is to ensure that Covid stays away.

This experience, of boosting ‘soft security,’ has been similar in another set of border outposts in the country’s Northwest, in Ladakh. Everyone aged above 45 in Shun Shaday, Icthoo and Kargiyat, the remotest villages of Kargil district, have received one dose of the vaccine. Health workers had to travel from the PHC at Zanskar, located 210 kms from these remote border villages, about 8,000 to 14,000 feet above sea level, and walk half a day over rocky mountainous terrain to reach them. Here, there were ponies to carry the cold boxes in which vaccines and other equipment are stacked, up the 60 kms from Paudam, where ambulance vehicles are left as no further motorable roads exist.

Unlike other tribal districts of the country, residents of these remote villages in Leh and Kargil are relatively better educated and more aware and knew about standard precautions required during the Covid-19 pandemic, like masking up and hand hygiene. And since these villages have a “natural lockdown,” as Dr Munnawar, CMO Kargil said, being cut off from the outside world for six months due to heavy snow, not a single case of Covid has occurred in these villages of Leh and Kargil. Villagers are keen to keep it that way. Now, with the vaccination available for them, there has been almost no hesitancy in taking the vaccine. All those above 45 have got a dose of the Covishield vaccine.

The infrastructure and experience for conducting such immunisation campaigns and informing villagers about the benefits of vaccination and how to overcome hesitancy has been in place since the polio immunisation campaign, Dr Munnawar said. Despite no incidence of Covid, villagers have fully cooperated with health authorities and workers to keep the disease at bay.

As villagers cooperated with health authorities to ensure that Covid stayed away, around 150 Self Help Groups (SHGs) and almost 3,000 tribal entrepreneurs under TRIFED’s Van Dhan Vikas Kendras in Ladakh made sure that, in the past year, the village population has been provided adequate economic sustenance to carry on with their normal routines.

The government’s outreach and the tribals’ enthusiastic embrace of these efforts is an indication of their comfort level within India. In doing so, people in these remote areas, who otherwise face such challenging conditions, have shown how security can be boosted and the pandemic be overcome in this vast country.