Kalaunji Devi’s son ran fever for three days and died before he could be taken to the hospital in Bhabhua, 40 km away. She says she knows the road won’t bring back her dead son but hopes there won’t be any such deaths.

Akhilesh, another bachelor, says the villagers aren’t looking for any sympathy from the politicians. “Our leaders better remember that there are 103 villages in the hills of Kaimur,” he says. Sasaram constituency, under which both the Badwans fall, is represented by Congress’s Meira Kumar in the present Lok Sabha.

Guljari Devi of Burdwan Khurd says, “Nobody talks about our unmarried daughters. The two villages have over 60 unmarried girls who are at least 30 years old.”

The twin villages share a school till the eighth class. Only about two per cent of the students continue their high school education by scaling the hills to go to schools either in Adhaura or Bhabhua on the other side. The villages have 10 hand-pumps; five of them are dry. The villagers own land—between 7,000 sq ft to five acres per person. They own cows and buffaloes too but cannot go to the plains everyday to sell milk. They make khoya and go to the market once in 10 days to sell it.

Badwan sarpanch Ramnath Singh Chero says: “We have now reluctantly started marriages between the two Badwans. Three such marriages took place in the last three years. We hope the road will be our route to marriage.”