Pregnant Woman in MP Turns to YouTube to Demand Roads. Why Isn't Govt Listening?

Leela Sahu's viral videos have drawn a number of locals, including other pregnant women, to her cause in MP's Sidhi.

In a remote Sidhi village of Madhya Pradesh, pregnant women have been seeking safe roads to access hospitals. 

(Photo: Vibhushita Singh/The Quint)

The situation unfolding in Madhya Pradesh’s Sidhi district is nothing less than an indictment of decades of political neglect. When a young woman—22-year-old Leela Sahu, who also happens to be a popular YouTuber with nearly 5 million subscribers—raised a life-and-death issue such as road inaccessibility during her advanced stage of pregnancy, the elected representative’s response was to joke about pregnant women, saying "unko uthva lenge" (will get her picked or lifted). The incident reveals both apathy and arrogance in equal measure.

But this is not just about potholes or unfinished infrastructure. It’s about the stark reality of several parts of MP, particularly its tribal and remote regions, where basic public services and basic amenities still hang by a thread.

The recent death of a pregnant tribal woman, Priya Kol, in neighbouring Rewa district because she couldn’t access a hospital on time, is not an accident. It is a preventable tragedy—and a policy failure.

Twenty two-year-old Leela Sahu's viral videos have drawn a number of locals, including other pregnant women, to her cause.

(Photo: Special Arrangement/The Quint)

'Uthva Lenge'

The kuchcha road (dirt road) leading to Sahu’s village hasn’t been rebuilt in two decades. That’s 20 years of missed opportunities, during which, except the 18-month Congress government led by Kamal Nath, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been in power. Elections were held and manifestos promised change. Budgets were passed with grand declarations of “vikas”. In 2003, when the BJP first came to power in the state, it did so riding the wave of “sadak, bijli, pani.”

Sahu tells The Quint she has been raising the issue of the construction of a 10 km patch of two roads—7 km in one direction to connect her village, Baghaiya Dhola in Khaddi Khurd Panchayat to the Sidhi district headquarter, and three km on the other side to tehsil Rampur Nekin. Both these locations have hospitals, she states.

After the BJP swept all the 29 Lok Sabha seats in MP in the Lok Sabha 2024 polls, Sahu had made a video and posted on social media, tagging Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari, and MP Chief Minister Mohan Yadav.

“I reminded them of the bad roads and requested them to construct them as the people rewarded the BJP with a massive mandate."

Leela Sahu

But midway into 2025, tho political promises echo hollow in the Orwellian villages of Sidhi where ambulances cannot reach and public servants gorge on dry fruits during conservation events.

For years, no one seemed to be bothered with the plight of the masses in the region. But since Sahu's viral barrage of videos attacking the government, many have now joined the fight, especially in her remote village area where she has been joined by other local, pregnant women.

They claim that the elected representatives must be held accountable not just for their failure to provide basic amenities but also for their words and actions when dealing with complaints, especially from women.

After one of her latest videos, shot in her typical satirical style, Sidhi MP, Dr Rajesh Mishra, jokingly said, “Every delivery has a date, uske ek hafte pahle uthva lenge.” Following outrage over the offhand remark, he reiterated, “I went through my statement again... there was nothing wrong in it”.

If this was not enough, Rakesh Singh, the Public Works Department Minister of Madhya Pradesh, referred to the video and said, “Roads are not constructed by making videos but by a government procedure”.

Is it the voter's job the build the road though? Sahu raised a concern about her village and health. Leaders must speak—and act—with sensitivity, especially when people's lives are at stake, or they must face public ire.

Case in point is Minister of Water Resources, Tulsi Silawat, who had to run away from reporters recently after they hounded him about a road that was constructed a month ago but caved in seven times in three days since it was opened to vehicular traffic on 18 June.

Perhaps more disturbing than the poor infrastructure itself is the political culture that sustains it. A sarcastic remark about airlifting pregnant women may seem inconsequential, but it reflects a larger disconnect from ground realities.

A State in Scandal

One could argue that a broken road or flyover are isolated incidents. But that’s the problem—they’re not.

The road leading to Sahu's village.

(Photo: Special Arrangement/The Quint)

In July, the BJP government was left red-faced after the discovery of technical flaws in the construction of a 90-degree turn bridge in Bhopal. Seven engineers were suspended. A similar blunder was spotted in an overbridge being built in Indore.

Reports of cancellations of the designs of several proposed bridges and flyovers started doing the rounds after such repeated controversies. And yet, soon after the outrage over the news died down, the cancellation orders were also reportedly revoked.

The issue of inaccessible roads might have gone unnoticed if not for Sahu’s online following and her willingness to speak up. But this is just one thread in a broader tapestry of dysfunction unraveling across the state.

Take Shahdol district, where a bizarre scandal recently came to light: over 400 labourers and masons were allegedly "employed" to paint a school wall—with just four liters of paint.

The math doesn’t add up, and social media did what oversight mechanisms failed to: it drew public attention, prompting an inquiry. In the same district, another controversy unfolded during a water conservation awareness event.

The event was meant to promote resource sustainability. Instead, it became a symbol of excess and insensitivity after public officials reportedly ended up consuming 14 kilograms of dry fruits in just one hour.

Then came the administrative standoff in Bhopal. On 14 July, a principal secretary locked the office of the chairman of the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) following a dispute over environmental clearance. The office was only reopened after intervention by the Chief Minister’s Secretariat.

The scandals emanating from Shahdol, Bhopal, and other districts suggest a governance model veering toward chaos. A principal secretary locking the office of a state authority chairman sounds like the stuff of satire, not statecraft.

Missing Transparency, Accountability, Direction

Despite the obvious overreach, the SEIAA chairman has not lodged a complaint with the Prime Minister’s Officer (PMO). And if that wasn’t enough, an engineer-in-chief recently launched an inquiry into a suspected Rs 1,000 crore scam—allegedly involving his own minister.

The message is clear: even within the bureaucracy, turf wars, and power struggles are hindering governance. And the common voter is paying the price. When seen together, the incidents paint a broader picture of a systemic breakdown in accountability and a culture of impunity that now feels normalised. It’s no surprise, in that case, that rural citizens including pregnant women on the brink of delivery are left to rely not on state infrastructure, but on social media clout and public outrage, to be heard.

These aren’t minor missteps; they point to a governance ecosystem that lacks transparency, accountability, and perhaps most alarmingly, direction. In the fifth term of BJP rule in Madhya Pradesh, people should not have to plead for paved roads or emergency transport. The very fact that airlifting expectant mothers is considered a viable solution—even if sarcastically—shows how far removed political leaders have become from the ground reality. This is not just a failure of logistics; it is a failure of imagination, empathy, and responsibility.

A state that cannot guarantee its citizens access to hospitals during childbirth has no business boasting about GDP growth or investment summits, said Umang Singhar, the Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly.

It must first invest in its people—in safe roads, in functional healthcare, and in honest governance, he said. Until that happens, every bump on the road in MP will continue to tell a story of promises made and lives lost. Every kuchcha road will remain a scar, not just on the map, but on the conscience of the nation. The state's leaders must remember: true development is not measured by GDP or "double engine ki sarkar" slogans but by whether the most vulnerable can access the most basic services without fear, struggle, or tragedy.

(The author is a senior journalist based in Madhya Pradesh. This is an opinion article and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)