Hazaribagh, Jharkhand: When Amika Toppo left her village in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh district in 2021 to pursue postgraduate studies, she hoped that the Scheduled Tribe girls’ hostel located on the campus of Krishna Ballabh Women’s College would help her fulfil her dream of becoming a teacher.

Instead, the 23-year-old spends much of her time dealing with problems she had not anticipated. She says the hostel has no reliable supply of clean drinking water, students cook their own meals twice a day, and drunken men have entered the premises several times because of the low boundary wall at the back.

Toppo, whose mother died in 2019 and whose father is unwell, is among more than 200 tribal students living in the state-run hostel. The hostel was built for 100 students. Students from across Jharkhand, studying from intermediate to postgraduate level, told 101Reporters that despite years of complaints about overcrowding, unsafe drinking water, inadequate food and lack of security, repeated inspections have taken place but little action has followed.

The hostel, run by the Welfare Department of Jharkhand, was established in 2001, a year after the state of Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar. Twenty-five years later, students say the facility, which was built to support the education of tribal women, has now become another obstacle to their education.

Life inside the hostel

Toppo says the girls living in the hostel feel unsafe because drunken men enter the premises through the low boundary wall at the back. Since no security guard is posted at the hostel, the students have had to drive them away themselves several times.

She says the hostel also lacks basic facilities expected of a government institution. There is no reliable arrangement for clean drinking water, no backup power supply during power cuts, and a promise to install solar panels has also not been fulfilled.

More than 200 girls aged between 16 and 28 now live in the hostel, which was built for 100 students. They are studying from intermediate to postgraduate level. Residents said that because of severe overcrowding, rooms designed for six students often accommodate 12 students.

The students also struggle to get regular meals. There is no cook at the hostel, and all the residents contribute ₹600 each month so that they can manage their own food. Every day, a team of four students wakes up at around 4 am to prepare breakfast before going to classes, and later cooks dinner for around 200 students.

Shukramani Tirkey, a 26-year-old student from Chatra district, says rising food prices have made it difficult to arrange nutritious meals. Rice, potatoes and one green vegetable are served for breakfast and dinner, while dal is prepared only twice a week because of the cost.

The students said food is available at the hostel only twice a day, although many students said they received three meals a day at home despite their families having limited means.

Hostel kitchen where only two meals a day are provided (Photo - Sushant Kumar Soni, 101Reporters)

Lalita Soren, a postgraduate student at Krishna Ballabh Women’s College, says residents spent much of the summer fetching drinking water from nearby hostels and other places. She said long queues form every morning and evening around the hostel’s only hand pump, but the water that comes out is red in colour and the students do not consider it safe to drink.

The shortage of water affects almost every aspect of daily life. The students say they struggle to cook, wash clothes and use the toilets, and often spend time fetching water after classes instead of studying. They said that despite repeated visits and assurances from district officials, including Deputy Development Commissioner Riya Singh, the problem has not been resolved.

According to the hostel’s in-charge warden, Tavishi Dhodrai, officials from the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) tested the hostel’s water a few months ago and found it unfit for drinking. She said the officials also advised the students not to use the water for bathing because of the risk of infection. Since then, students have been using it only to wash clothes.

Contaminated water flowing from a hand pump (Photo - Sushant Kumar Soni, 101Reporters)

Less than home

For many students, the purpose of the hostel was to make higher education more accessible. But some say that instead, the hostel has deprived them of even the basic facilities they had at their old homes.

Toppo says her family’s mud house in Kundwa village, though modest, never leaked during the rains and there was also no shortage of drinking water. “At home, we got three meals a day. Here, we cook our own food and often struggle for water,” she says.

She also says she felt safer in her village than in the hostel, where students say drunken men have entered the premises several times.

For students who have come from home to pursue higher education, the government hostel was expected to make this journey easier. Instead, several students say they spend most of their time arranging food and water or worrying about their safety.

Dreams amid difficulties

Manisha Tuddu, 24, from Bokaro district, says she is the first woman from her village to leave home to pursue higher education. Her parents work as agricultural labourers, and she enrolled in the hostel in 2019 to pursue postgraduate studies at Vinoba Bhave University.

She says her parents encouraged her to continue her education, while others in the village questioned whether girls should study away from home. But instead of being able to focus entirely on her studies, she spends most of her time cooking, fetching water and managing other daily tasks at the hostel.

“There were already a lot of difficulties at home,” she says. “After coming here, many of those problems have followed me.”

The administration’s response

Dhodrai says she has repeatedly written to the district administration about the shortage of drinking water and other basic facilities.

She says the Additional Collector recently assured the students that a new borewell would be installed, but work has not yet begun. She also cited a 2024 letter stating that security personnel, a cook and four meals a day would be provided at the hostel. She says none of these measures have been implemented.

Hazaribagh Deputy Commissioner Hemant Sati confirmed that his office had received a complaint regarding drinking water at the hostel. He said the matter had been forwarded to the concerned department for investigation and that a decision on installing a new borewell would be taken only after the investigation.

After visiting the hostel, Ramesh Kumar Hembrom, a nominated member of the District Development Coordination and Monitoring Committee, said there were inadequate arrangements for drinking water, electricity or security. He said that if these problems were not resolved soon, he would protest along with the students.

Cover Image - A queue for collecting water (Photo - Sushant Kumar Soni, 101Reporters)