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Two pictures. One development model. One picture shows a husband carrying his sick wife for miles because a road has still not reached their village. No ambulance. No vehicle. Just his back and a long walk to the hospital. The other shows the state cutting through old, green forests to widen roads that are already wide enough. And this is where the question becomes uncomfortable. Why can development reach forests overnight, but not villages that have waited for roads for decades? Why are mountains being cut to make already wide roads wider, while people in places like Kamliyapalla, Pauri are still struggling to reach a hospital? If this is our development model, perhaps we need to ask a very simple question: Development for whom?

No amount of PR, government campaigns or development claims can erase stories like this. They keep emerging because they reflect the reality many mountain villages still live with. In Pokhri village of Mori block, 35-year-old Sangeeta, wife of Chain Singh, suffered a fractured leg after slipping while working in her field. With no road connecting the village, there was no ambulance, no vehicle and no quick access to medical care. Instead, villagers made a makeshift stretcher and carried her nearly 4 kilometres on their backs to the nearest motorable road. Only then could she be taken to Netwar, then to CHC Mori, and later referred to Purola for further treatment. This is the reality that many remote villages of Uttarakhand continue to face. Development isn’t measured by speeches or advertisements. It is measured by whether an injured woman can reach a hospital without first being carried on someone’s shoulders.