``God must not want our children to live. Why else would he keep killing them,'' mutters Tuli Rathod (38), whose daughter Vrishala (3) died of malnutrition among 323 other children in 1992-93 in the district's Jawhar-Mokhada belt alone. Last year, Rathod, who lives in Vavar, lost another baby to diarrhoea. Now she hopes the local bhagat can save her two other children from the silentstalker.

The 1992-93 Jawahar-Mokhada malnutrition deaths, which catapulted India's largest parliamentary constituency to the world's attention, had succeeded in bringing the fruits of development to the backyard of the country's financial capital. Politicians and government officials descended on the remote, tribal pockets here and rained schemes and facilities on them.

Among the first `gifts' extended to these areas, which are severed from civilisation by extremely hostile terrain, was a road connecting Jawhar and Mokhada talukas to neighbouring Nashik district. Eight years later, the road to development remains blockaded by boulders and fallen trees every monsoon and for months thereafter.

Saguni Choudhary of Vavar had lost two daughters in 1992. In 1996, she was pregnant again. However, Choudhari's baby was not delivered by the nurse at the Primary Healthcare Centre (PHC). Its shelves stocked only paracetamol and a salve for minor infections. So, when Choudhary went into labour, she was carried in amakeshift hammock across the valley and through neighbouring hamlets to Beharpada, 10 km away. Today, three-year-old Anusuya, who bears her dead sister's name, is listed as having Grade-III malnutrition. Her mother keeps her fingers crossed. ``I hope my Anusuya does not go her sister's way,'' she says.

The anganwadi centre, also opened in 1992, was a godsend. Only, from being a nutritional supplement for children, the meagre sukdi and khichdi has become the staple diet of the entire family in most homes as there is little else to eat. ``I can do nothing as the parents take the supplementary food from me saying they will feed the child at home,'' says the anganwadi worker, Radhabai Mohole.

The Primary Healthcare Centre at Vavar has been locked for over six months now. The two auxilary nurses-cum-midwives, Mangal Bhoye and Manjua Pachkua, still visit the hamlet, but without either the doctor or medicines they can do little other than direct the Warlis to the Jawhar cottage hospital in case ofan emergency, 45 km away. This cost Laxman Budhar (38) his right hand, which he injured while dynamiting fish in a pond in December 1998. With the PHC having shut down just days before the accident, a bleeding Budhar had to run 12 km to Maalghar, from where he took a bus to the Jawhar district headquarters and sought treatment at the cottage hospital there.

The Public Distribution System (PDS) is another misnomer among the numerous schemes that have changed little since the horror of 1992. Inaugurated by the prime minister on May 15 this year, the Annapurna scheme promises rice at Rs 2 per kg to families Below the Poverty Line. And if the classification is not mockery enough, the 400 kg of rice stacked in Sonya Gaul's house only completes the irony: the tribals in Vavar-Vangani cannot afford to purchase the subsidised grain. For Gaul, though, the irony borders on the cruel. Having lost a two-year-old daughter to malnutrition in 1992, Gaul, who runs the local PDS shop, now stares at a problem ofplenty.

The Employment Guarantee Scheme guarantees nothing more than a few sporadic months of work every year. Hiring the tribals for projects only under the state government's Public Works Department, it offers Rs 37 per day against the Rs 60-80 they earn as contract workers in townships in the more populated parts of the district.

The Vavar school which teaches the English nursery rhymes is a three-room shed. Only two rooms, which comprise Stds I to VII, are functional. The third is locked as the roof has been leaking since the last seven years. ``That,'' says Parshuram Chavan, a tribal rights activist who has been working in the district for over a decade, ``is how much has changed here since 1992. Since then, over 250 children have died of hunger and disease in Vavar-Vangani alone, with estimates for Jawhar-Mokhada pegged at 400. Sarpanch Ratan Buddhar concurs. ``Apart from the outward signs of development, nothing else has changed. Over the last few years, even the resident district collector has notbothered to visit us.''

Resident District Collector Ganesh Patil, posted there a year ago, replies: It is my job to ensure that the schemes work. This can be done from the Jawhar headquarters itself.''

State Tribal Welfare Minister Vishnu Sawra, a tribal who hails from neighbouring Palghar taluka, told The Indian Express he is fully aware of the situation. But he shrugs: ``The adivasis refuse to avail of the measures initiated by the alliance government. We have done our best considering the legacy of the Congress government.''