There are places in India that don’t appear neglected at first glance. You won’t always find headlines about them. They are not post-disaster zones or sites of immediate crisis. But they have lived in a different kind of silence. One that stretches across decades, policies, and shifting governments. These are the tribal regions we often describe as “remote” or “hard to reach,” though that says more about us than it does about them.

In these villages, absence is not abstract. It is alive.

• Only 58% of tribal households have access to tap water (Ministry of Jal Shakti, 2023)
• Over 45% of tribal-dominated areas lack functional primary healthcare centers (NITI Aayog data)
• In many states, dropout rates among tribal children are still above 30% by Class 8 (UDISE+, 2022–23)
• Less than 10% of rural tribal youth have access to digital learning tools (ASER, 2023)

This is where Ram’s story becomes impossible to ignore. He left behind a structured career to live in tribal villages that had, in many ways, been left out of India’s development narrative. He was not sent by an institution. He did not arrive with ready-made solutions. Instead, he stayed.

He stayed in villages where people no longer expected anyone to return. He listened without assuming. Over time, through conversations and slow trust-building, he worked with the community to repair what could be repaired. A broken water system was brought back. A learning space was revived not through construction, but participation. A health centre reopened with the support of local networks.

None of this happened overnight. And none of it was particularly dramatic. But it endured. It endured because someone was willing to be accountable without being in charge. That is not common. And in many places, it has never happened at all.

This isn’t about replicating what he did. It’s about reconsidering what we assume. Maybe the real question is not why these communities haven’t “caught up,” but why we keep deciding what catching up should look like.

Presence is not charity. Listening is not a favour. The failure here is not geography. It is ignorance. And the only real intervention may be to stop arriving with answers and start staying with questions.

Be their voice and strength. Be their cape.