View from the Margins: Uttarakhand’s ghost villages embody the state’s economic challenges

Voting is often the only chance that many of India's marginalised groups get to express themselves. As national elections approach, Scroll's reporters fanned out across the country to talk to groups with little socio-political power as part of a series called the View from the Margins. The aim: try to understand how the powerless and the voiceless have fared under a decade of the Modi government.

Poonam Raturi and her son Amit live in a spacious house on the top of a hillock in the village of Molkhandi, about 170 km from Uttarakhand’s capital Dehradun. The house offers a stunning view of the entire village, as well of as the forests and the Himalayan foothills in the distance.

Amit Raturi has lived here for all his 29 years. Poonam Raturi, 52, moved here after her marriage, 33 years back.

Both Poonam and Amit Raturi remember when Molkhandi was a bustling village. It had about 150 residents as recently as 15 years ago. Now, they are two of only 15 people living in the village. The village landscape is dotted with ramshackle, abandoned houses.

Molkhandi is fast approaching the status of a “ghost village” – a village completely deserted and uninhabited.

Both lamented the lack of employment opportunities and health and...

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