When 45-year-old Kulwinder Kaur first heard about a Bathinda nutrition centre opening in her village, Mehma Sawai, she was skeptical. “Another government scheme,” she thought, accustomed to promises that rarely reached her doorstep in rural Bathinda.
But when a local health volunteer knocked on her door with seeds for a kitchen garden and advice on managing her borderline diabetes, something shifted. “She spoke in our language, understood our kitchens, our budget,” recalls Kulwinder. “For the first time, health advice didn’t feel like it was meant for city people.”
A Trusted Face in a Medical Desert
In Mehma Sawai, like many villages across Bathinda, the nearest proper healthcare facility is miles away. For women managing households on tight budgets, taking time off to travel to a clinic—let alone affording consultation fees—remains a luxury. Non-communicable diseases like diabetes and hypertension quietly creep into families, often undiagnosed until complications arise.
Recognizing this gap, Ambuja Cement established a community Bathinda nutrition centre in the village as part of its CSR health initiative. But the real transformation came through people like Savita, a trained health volunteer from the village itself, who became the centre’s beating heart.
Where Street Plays Meet Diabetes Awareness
Savita’s approach was refreshingly simple: meet people where they are. She organized street plays featuring local talent dramatizing the consequences of ignoring health warnings. She distributed vegetable seeds door-to-door, turning kitchen gardens into practical nutrition lessons. During harvest season, she held cooking demonstrations showing how to prepare diabetic-friendly meals without abandoning traditional recipes—focusing on diabetes prevention tips like balanced Punjabi staples.
“I tell them: you don’t need fancy diets or expensive medicines to start,” says Savita. “Just add more greens, walk after dinner, check your blood pressure once a month. Small changes, big impact.”
Slowly, the Bathinda nutrition centre became more than a health outpost—it became a gathering place where women shared recipes, compared blood sugar readings, and held each other accountable. Mehma Sawai’s women, many of whom had never learned to read warning signs of hypertension, now confidently discuss symptoms and prevention.
Nine Villages, One Mission
The success of Mehma Sawai’s Bathinda nutrition centre caught attention. Ambuja Cements has now replicated the model across nine villages in Bathinda, each anchored by a trained community volunteer who understands local barriers and speaks the language of lived experience. These empowering efforts are fostering sustainable health habits, one village at a time.
For Kulwinder, the impact is deeply personal. Her blood sugar levels have stabilized. Her kitchen garden now supplies fresh vegetables year-round. But more importantly, she has knowledge—and that has given her agency.
“Earlier, illness felt like fate. Now I know I have choices,” she says, tending to her thriving spinach patch. “And I’m teaching my daughters the same.”
In villages where healthcare often arrives too late, these Bathinda nutrition centres are proving that prevention, rooted in community trust and practical wisdom, can be the most powerful medicine of all.
