No country for the poor: Odisha man forced to carry wife's corpse for 12kms

India is a poor country with a myriad infrastructural problems. Whatever Prime Minister Narendra Modi says, "acche din" for our 1.2 billion-plus people will only come when everyone has the basic "roti, kapda aur makaan".

One would expect that a country with taglines like "Digital India" had these issues sorted out.

Truth is, we are still poor, and we are still struggling.

Also read: Cheated of Constitution, why Adivasis remain India's second class citizens

Nothing makes this clearer than the story of Dana Manjhi and his wife Amang Dei from Odisha.

Amang was being treated for tuberculosis at the district headquarters hospital in Odisha's Kalahandi. She passed away on Wednesday.

Manjhi wanted to take his wife's body to his village, but the hospital authorities couldn't provide either an ambulance or a mortuary van.

Manjhi then decided to start anyway and traverse the 60kms between the hospital and his village on foot, with his dead wife's body on his shoulder and his 12-year-old daughter sobbing by his side.

He carried on for about 12 kms before he could get a mortuary van.

"The hospital authorities said that there are no vehicles. I pleaded with them saying I am a poor person and cannot afford a vehicle to carry my wife's body. Despite repeated requests, they said they cannot offer me any help," Dana Manjhi told Odisha TV.

The story here, in addition to the devastating personal tragedy befalling Manjhi and his daughter, is the bleak, abject poverty crippling tribals in India, despite all the "development" promised.

Digital India, if you think about it, shouldn't then be about how fast we can download Prem Ratan Dhan Payo on Reliance Jio's 4G, but instead how fast we can get the basic services to each and every one of our citizens in every part of the country.

As of now, it's deplorable India for most of our fellow citizens, to be honest.