BJP MP Sarangi brings country feel to Lutyens’, builds mud house with cow dung paint & mud bed

Last year, Balasore MP Pratap Chandra Sarangi faced an unusual problem — lack of space to house his guests. Then he came up with an unusual solution: a mud house in the backyard.

Balasore MP Pratap Chandra Sarangi in his under-construction house | Unnati Sharma | ThePrint

New Delhi: Coming up in a quiet corner of the VIP Humayun Road is a single-storeyed, two-bedroom structure. With its mud walls and furniture, bamboo roof, and stone-carved stools, the under-construction house is more suited for an idyllic countryside setup than where it is located — in the heart of the national capital.  

The structure is in the backyard of the official residence of Balasore Member of Parliament and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Pratap Chandra Sarangi, and, with its mud porch, walls painted with a cow dung paint, a bed made of mud, and dimly lit interiors, is as austere as the man himself. 

It was Sarangi’s solution to an unusual problem — the lack of adequate space for the guests who frequent his house.

“There was a space crunch in this house. When guests come, I cannot provide them a space to stay,” Sarangi told ThePrint. “So I decided to build this house in the backyard. In my hometown too, I prefer living in a mud house.” 

Balasore MP Pratap Chandra Sarangi in his under-construction house | Unnati Sharma | ThePrint

The stools in the house are made from stones acquired from a river bed in Haryana. The carvings on the front walls are made from a mixture of mud, cow dung, and neem juice.

Sarangi said that as a “former member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bajrang Dal”, he prefers a simple life. 

When Sarangi was sworn in as a minister of state in the Modi 2.0 government in 2019, his frugal lifestyle made headlines. A photo of the first-time MP coming out of his thatched house in Balasore, Odisha, went viral, and during the election campaign he was seen reaching out to voters on a cycle and autorickshaw. 

He believes that cow dung will give the house “anti-radioactive properties”, insisting that there is scientific evidence for this. 

“When the Bhopal Gas Tragedy (1984) and Fukushima nuclear disaster (2011) in Japan happened, scientists had suggested putting cow-dung paste on walls so that it is anti-radioactive. It has many health-friendly properties, which is why we have used it,” he said. 

Sarangi was sworn in as the Minister of State for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises and Animal Husbandry, Dairying, and Fisheries but was dropped from the government in the 2021 cabinet reshuffle. Since then, Sarangi spends most of his time in his constituency in Balasore and comes to Delhi during Parliament sessions or party meetings. 

 ‘Biodegradable and can be razed easily’

Bed at Balasore MP Pratap Chandra Sarangi’s under-construction house | Unnati Sharma | ThePrint

The house uses other naturally acquired materials too. For instance, it uses wheat stubble, which has been a subject of great controversy in Delhi in the last few years because its burning causes air pollution, said Sarangi. 

Construction of the house began in September and there are still some weeks of work left to be done before it can become liveable.  

Mud houses like this one cost 30 per cent less than concrete houses and are more environmentally friendly, Sarangi, who is footing the construction cost himself, told ThePrint.  

“It is less costly than a concrete house and is biodegradable,” he said, adding that the cow dung, mud, stubble, and limestone powder used in making the house were brought here from Sonipat in Haryana. 

“In the village, one can get the raw material for free but here we had to get the raw material from Haryana,” he said.

The artwork in the house is done by artists from Odisha using a paint made of cow dung that his former ministry, the MSME, developed and marketed in 2021. 

Launched by Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, the paint, marketed as ‘Khadi Prakritik’, was touted to be one that could give a boost to India’s agro-based industry.

Did Sarangi have trouble getting permission to build such a structure in his official residence? Not at all, he said, mainly because “it could be razed easily and without pollution”.

So what happens when the time comes for him to leave the house?

Here, Sarangi turned philosophical. “We all have to eventually leave everything that we have created,” he said. “I hope whoever comes here next can learn something from it. Or they can just mix it with water and raze it to the ground.”

(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)