Women's Day special: Yeddy ignores desperate woman

CM couldnt afford even a patient hearing to the proverbial last woman

As the awardees gushed over the recognition they received from the government, a woman who stood facing the stage, silently shed tears as she was not allowed to approach the chief minister with her tale of woe.

Sharanavva, a 45-year-old woman, hailing from Alakatti village in Bharamasagara hobli in Chitradurga had left her village on Monday morning to meet the chief minister. A chance announcement on the radio about the International Women’s Day celebrations with the presence of Yeddyurappa, spurred her to come to Bangalore to meet him. But the male security guards brusquely turned her away saying that the chief minister would not meet anyone.

As she stood there completely downcast, women constables approached her and gently convinced her to sit down. Not willing to accept defeat on her third attempt to meet the chief minister, she ran after him and just before he got into the car, she managed to reach him. But no words were exchanged. The chief minister took her letter and left.

“But the letter does not really say anything about the help we are seeking. I wanted to talk to him and explain our situation,” she cried out. Sharanavva is a widow who has a two-acre plot in her village and grows cotton and maize. Four years ago, she borrowed money from private lenders when the harvest was bad. The debts piled on as she never got a good harvest. From the last two years, she has been facing a fresh problem. Heavy rains in the area have been filling up the ponds around her land and water has been overflowing into the land. Now she has nearly Rs five lakh that she owes to both money lenders and banks.

But the situation got even worse after her house collapsed during the heavy rains last October. Now, she along with her son and daughter live in the kitchen of the village’s government school.

“We have nothing left. We have no money to clear the debt, we cannot grow anything on our land and we do not even have a house. How can we go on living like this?” she asked.

Her wish is to get some help from the government to pay back her loans and get a job for her daughter Asha, who has passed class eight but then had to be pulled out of school as the family could not afford to get her educated further.

“I can read and write in Kannada. I can get some job,” 20-year-old Asha says earnestly. Asha suffered burn injuries on her neck when she was ten years old, which makes it difficult for her to work outdoors during summer.

“We have been getting by as I do some manual labour. But we need help. The teacher of the school wrote a letter for us explaining our situation. But I could not even talk to the chief minister or make myself heard. There is no contact information in the letter,” she wailed.