Lesiang village in Manipuri’s Senapati district grabbed media headlines in April last as the Central Government claimed it to be the last village to be electrified under the Deendayal Upadhaya Gram Jyoti Yojana.
Also read: Manipur Leisang becomes last village to be electrified
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But a year later, the scenario is not that encouraging as the euphoria was short-lived.
According to a BBC report, the power supply is erratic in the village with the villagers still fighting with darkness.
Leisang is home to 13 families consisting of 70 people belong to the Kuki hill tribe, the village is just over 80 km from Imphal, the capital city of Manipur.
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However, the village is not easily accessible with large part of the highway from the nearest town of Kangpokpi is in a deplorable condition while the last three km is a steep climb over a rocky path and can only be navigated on a bike or by foot.
During the rainy season, the village is mostly cut off, with the path often waterlogged and slippery.
There’s no school or health facility in Leisang and though the residents have voter ID cards, they are hardly politically inclined and are least bothered about elections and their outcome.
Though all other villages in the surrounding area got electricity in 2017, the village of Lesiang saw the ‘light’ only in April last year.
On April 27 last year, when the bulb for the first time in the village no one slept for the whole night. They all gathered in the only house with a television set and watched throughout the night.
In the next few days, several families bought TV sets and many women dreamed of buying washing machines and rice cookers.
However, things did not remain so rosy for the residents of Lesiang village.
According to the report, villagers consider themselves lucky to have five to six hours of electricity in a day. Any mechanical fault, however small it may be, takes a minimum of three days to attend to and last year, on one occasion, Leisang was plunged back into darkness for three whole months.