Sitting outside her mud house, 70-year-old Laxmi Suryawanshi is busy discussing with her friend how a vaccination injection against Covid-19 had led to the death of someone in her village, which is why she won’t take the injection. Like Laxmi Suryawanshi and her friend, there are thousands of tribals in Aarey Forest who are reluctant to get vaccinated.
Spread over 3,000 acres, which were once on the outskirts, the Aarey Milk Colony, which is in the heart of the “Maximum City”, has been “absorbed” by an ever-expanding Mumbai. Established in 1949, Aarey has 27 tribal padas, or hamlets, with an Adivasi population of over 10,000. There are Katkaris, Mahadev Kolis, Mallar Kolis, Warlis and other tribals who live in the hamlets inside Aarey.
Vanita Marathe, a woman from the same hamlet, says: “We fear vaccination, we don’t fear coronavirus. I will not go for vaccination. In case anything happens to me, who will look after my kids?”
Interrupting her, an elderly woman says: “A friend of my granddaughter got vaccinated and after that, she started having vertigo, fever, and nausea. For you, all these may be misconceptions, but what we have heard in real. We fear these injections and we won’t take them.”
Ask any of these tribals and they would say: “None of us are vaccinated and will not get vaccinated as anything may happen.” The tribals are involved in daily chores including farming and the search for livelihood. While in some padas, people could be seen wearing masks, in some others, people were without masks. The tribals are also not allowing outsiders to enter their hamlets and believe that if they step outside in the city, they may contract the coronavirus.
“People here believe that vaccination will lead to deaths; we have heard from other villagers, so why take such injections. Some or the other day we have to die; when that is destined, it will happen. No injection can save us. Instead, if we go out in the crowd at vaccination centres, we can contract coronavirus easily. We are safe here in our Adivasi padas; no one has got infected here till date,” says Lakshman Sutar, who is head of the Khadakpada tribal hamlet with 150 houses.
Tribals are also angry that no government representative has come to them to make them aware about how the second Covid-19 wave has assumed dangerous proportions and is taking the lives of people across the country. “We are just hearing in news and TV that the second wave of the coronavirus is dangerous, but not a single government representative—no corporator, MLA or MP—has come to us or asked about our well-being. No one has made us aware which vaccine is good and which is not or which are the nearby vaccination centres. For all that information, high tech mobile phones are needed, but not all here in our padas have such phones.”
Youngsters from the villages have also resolved not to take the vaccine. 21-year-old Umesh Kharpade says: “Let them bring vaccination centres in our padas; still I will not get inoculated. There are so many versions, some vaccines are effective, some are not. The government itself is not sure of anything. Their rules change so often; recently, they increased the time gap between two vaccination jabs again. Everything is so uncertain and fluctuating.”
There are some NGOs who are providing the tribals food during these difficult times. Some activists are trying to convince the tribals to get vaccinated, but demand better healthcare facilities in the area. Aarey activist Amrita Bhattacharjee, who works closely with the tribals, says, “This area does not have adequate healthcare facilities and the economically backward tribal families need to travel long distances to avail treatment for any health-related issues. In the tribal areas in Aarey, Covid related casualties are rare, though the Aarey forest is located in the middle of Mumbai which has witnessed many Covid-related deaths. Hence, the tribal community is afraid of entering the crowded urban areas of Mumbai for vaccination. They have demanded a vaccination center inside the 12 sq km area of Aarey Milk Colony. The partly functional Aarey Hospital premises should be utilised to set up a vaccination center for the tribal community. And the old hospital infrastructure should be upgraded to provide healthcare facilities to the tribal community in Aarey.”