This figure is both intriguing and undeniably impressive: INR 699,515,617,500, which is Rs 69,951 crores and more, or nearly $7.5 billion US dollars. This is the amount planned to be spent on the Olympics in Gujarat. Earlier this month, the Gujarat government earmarked over Rs 22,878 crores in its annual budget for Olympic infrastructure in the state.
Stroll around Bopal Ambli Road in Ahmedabad, and the infrastructure would put Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Centre to shame. Ironically, there is also a Billionaire Street that houses lavish villas and aspirational five-BHK apartments. One of them says it has been designed by Gauri Khan. Sadly, however, Naswadi taluka is less than three hours from here. Chhota Udepur district. When pregnant women in several villages of this taluka experience labour pain, their family members and relatives physically lift them after putting them in a stretcher. Sometimes it is four kilometres, sometimes two. They walk carrying the woman on the stretcher. They meet an ambulance where they shift the pregnant woman. This is a regular occurrence in several villages of Chhota Udepur. It is because of the lack of concrete roads. Ambulances cannot reach interior villages.
Earlier this week, a pregnant woman, Laxmi Ben (name changed) of Dubba village, complained of labour pain. Her family called up the government ambulance. An ASHA worker came promptly. Not with an ambulance but a stretcher. The family put her on the stretcher and walked for two kilometres to where there was a road. The ambulance was waiting there. Laxmi was transported safely to a hospital. She has delivered.
In another case, her labour pains had already begun. There was no road. No ambulance could reach her. So the people of Kunda village did what they’ve had to do before. They decided to lift her.
Jivli Bhil, pregnant and in labor, was placed on a makeshift stretcher stitched together from cloth. Her relatives and neighbors carried her on their shoulders for nearly a kilometre through Naswadi taluka in Chhota Udepur district. Only then did they reach the ambulance, and only then could she be taken to a hospital. She made it in time, and her child was delivered safely. But that is not the full story.
Kunda village sits in terrain where motorable roads simply don’t exist. Vehicles can’t get in. When a medical emergency strikes, especially at night and in labour, the only option is human arms. The ambulance waits where the roads begin.
Over the past year, women in labour have been carried on cloth stretchers across villages: Manukla, Khenda, Dukta, Jarkhali, Bhundmaria, Padwani. Distances ranged from two kilometres to five. In several of those cases, the baby arrived before any medical facility did.
In the Padvani–Kawant belt alone, at least three such incidents were recorded over the past five months. In Turkheda, the story turned darker. At least two women died within a year under nearly identical circumstances.
Reality check
At least half a dozen cases have surfaced publicly over the past year. But many of these villages sit beyond the reach of regular media coverage. Only the most extreme cases travel far enough to be documented. The ones that don’t make headlines still happen.
Turkheda, in Kavant taluka, recorded one of the most severe cases last September. Vansiben Rajubhai Nayaka was carrying her fifth child when labour began. There was no road for the ambulance to use. Villagers made a cloth sling and carried her three kilometres on foot from Khedi Faliya hamlet before she could be loaded into a vehicle. She was then transferred not once but twice — from Kavant’s Community Health Centre to Chhota Udepur, and from there to SSG Hospital in Vadodara. She died before she could deliver. Her newborn survived.
Locals said it had happened before. A woman from the same village had died the previous year under the same circumstances. Two deaths, same terrain, same absent roads, one year apart.
Months earlier, in July, a similar scene played out in Bhundmaria village. The 108 ambulance stopped three kilometres short — that was where the paved road ended. Family members reportedly carried the woman through mud, water and ravines to reach it. Someone recorded the journey. The video spread fast. People were shocked. Those who live there weren’t.
In March this year, a pregnant woman in Khokhra village in Naswadi went into labour. The 108 ambulance couldn’t reach her. No road. The same taluka where Jivli Bhil was carried just weeks later. Two incidents, same district, weeks apart.
The pattern is not confined to Gujarat.
Same story, different states
In Pardema village in Odisha’s Gajapati district, Lakshmi Mallick went into labour in January this year. The ambulance arrived at the panchayat office and stopped. The road ended there. Ambulance staff, ASHA workers and villagers built a stretcher together and carried her two kilometres over rough terrain. The ambulance was never the problem. The last two kilometres were.
Six months later in Bhanjanagar, also in Odisha, Pratima Jani’s husband did everything right. He called the ambulance early. It couldn’t reach the house. Neighbours arrived, found bamboo, built a stretcher on the spot and carried her a kilometre through difficult terrain. She delivered safely at the community health centre.
In Meghalaya’s Ri-Bhoi district in 2022, a 36-week pregnant woman with dangerously high blood pressure had to be carried five kilometres on a bamboo stretcher by volunteers from Jalilum village, who took turns along the way. The road had been in poor condition for years. Everyone in the village knew it. She delivered a healthy girl.
Even Kerala, the state routinely held up as India’s model for public health, has not been exempt. In Attapady in Palakkad district in 2018, a 27-year-old tribal woman was carried seven kilometres on a stretcher made from a bedsheet and a wooden log. Her family crossed a flooded river to reach help. Seven kilometres, a river in spate, a bedsheet. Even the best-performing states have corners that the system hasn’t reached.
And then things remain the same.
Reports keep arriving of the same terrain and the same cloth stretchers, the same kilometre-long walks to where the ambulance can finally go.
Laxmiben and Jivli Bhil’s case from Naswadi in Gujarat this week is the latest in that sequence — not an outlier, but a continuation. Every few months, sometimes within weeks, a family in Chhota Udepur finds itself doing the same thing: lifting someone in need of help, walking as fast as they can, hoping the ambulance is still waiting when they get there.
Two years ago, a study in the Economic and Political Weekly examined healthcare access in Gujarat’s tribal regions using geospatial analysis. The finding was stark: public health facilities in Gujarat show significant distribution biases against tribal regions and border districts. The location and spread of health centres are suboptimal in most tribal-populated districts, resulting in inadequate pregnancy care.
Gujarat’s tribal population is not small. It constitutes 14.8% of the state’s total population — roughly 89 lakh people spread across 14 districts.
The missing road is only at the start. What remains unaddressed are years of inadequate tribal development, an emergency response system, and health infrastructure yet to be upgraded.
While stadiums and mind-boggling infrastructure rise in Gujarat, the number of malnourished children also continues to rise. Gujarat has the largest number of malnourished children in the country. Gujarat has the highest percentage of underweight children among all states.(Source: Springer) Gujarat’s stunting rate stands at 39% and wasting at 25.1% — among the worst for major states in India.
The NFHS-5 data show that 80% of children under five years of age in Gujarat suffer from anaemia, worse than the already shocking Indian average of 67%. The survey revealed that children often inherit this condition from their mothers. Nearly 63% of pregnant women surveyed had anaemia.
65% of all women in the reproductive age group (15–49 years) were anaemic in Gujarat, a much higher share than the Indian average of 57%.
According to The Wire, Gujarat’s four major districts with urban populations — Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, and Rajkot — experienced sharper increases in stunting, wasting, severe malnutrition, and underweight cases than even some of the tribal districts. This is not just a rural or tribal problem. It is a Gujarat-wide failure.
Among tribal women — who make up 14.8% of Gujarat’s population — the numbers are catastrophic. A study of 2,805 pregnant women across ten districts of Gujarat found an overall anaemia prevalence of 64.2%. Tribal women had 2.21 times higher odds of anaemia than their urban counterparts. Former Congress MP Amee Yajnik says this is just an example. The BJP is all big talk. The reality of Gujarat is that there are more Naswadi talukas than those glittering Ahmedabad infrastructure. “Basic facilities for poor and rural women are especially deplorable”, she says.
It is shocking that a State that can spend billions on enacting infrastructure for the Olympics cannot get a road for pregnant women .
