The recent death of a 10-year-old schoolgirl at Sultan Bathery in Wayanad district after she was bitten by a snake in her classroom has exposed the much touted Kerala model and laid bare the chronic underdevelopment of an area represented in Parliament by former Congress president Rahul Gandhi. The blame for Shehla Sherin’s tragic and untimely death can be attributed to a number of circumstances, including the alleged neglect of her teachers who delayed taking her for treatment and the fact that the government hospital at Sultan Bathery was out of anti-snake venom.

She had to be driven to Kozhikode, 90 km away, and died on the way. In the thickly forested area of Wayanad, snakebite is a common occurrence and it is criminally negligent that hospitals in the area do not stock anti-snake venom. When such incidents occur in Kerala, which has consistently performed well on all human development index indicators, including education, health, sanitation, maternal mortality and life expectancy, it is evident cracks are emerging in the system. What happened to Shehla indicates a breakdown of the system; her leg slipped into a hole on the floor of her classroom where the snake bit her.

In a state which claims to have achieved 100 per cent literacy, crumbling school buildings and dilapidated classrooms are the norm in Wayanad district. It is the only district from Kerala to feature in the list of 115 backward districts of India under the NITI Aayog’s aspirational districts programme. While the rest of the state tops all development indices, Wayanad remains neglected, facing acute agrarian distress and ecological degradation. Floods and landslides in the district in August left it battered. It has the lowest per capita income, lowest literacy rate and lowest sex ratio in the state. It does not have a railway line or a medical college.

The change in land-use patterns and largescale deforestation has resulted in the region coming under increasing duress. Tribals constitute 18 per cent of the district’s population and they are facing acute poverty and homelessness; piped water and electricity remain a distant dream in many pockets. A comprehensive plan to develop the region including restoring its environmental balance is the need of the hour. It is time for the highprofile Lok Sabha MP of Wayanad to translate his verbal salvos on twitter into concrete action and turn the region into a model constituency on par with other districts in Kerala while retaining its tribal ethos.

It is imperative that he doesn’t do an Amethi in Wayanad; he must repay the trust of the people of the area who gave him a huge mandate. A roadmap for Wayanad’s development can be easily conceived by Rahul Gandhi; he only has to implement it or ensure that the Left government in the state wakes up to the region’s neglect.