Uttarakhand’s Pauri Ramleela is one of the oldest and most famous in the country. The Ramleela is the same saga enacted with different actors each year. Are the assembly elections any different?
“The story is the same. Every politician promises a ‘Ram Rajya’, makes lofty promises. But in reality, they do nothing. It’s all dramatic rhetoric,” Jagat Kishore Barthawal, a Ramleela actor tells The Quint.
The Ramleela actors are among the 91, 575 voters in the state’s Pauri constituency. The area has witnessed 341 villages turning into ghost settlements due to lack of job opportunities.
“Villages have become uninhabited because everybody is migrating from here. We want the next government to tackle that,” veteran Ramleela actor Gauri Sankar Thapliyal tells us.
The 118-year-old legacy needs government support to sustain, one the desires expressed by the actors.
Reporting: Ashutosh Singh
Producer: Hansa Malhotra
Editor: Mohd Ibrahim, Sunil Goswami and Rahul Sanpui
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