36 families living in squalor, literally

The hamlet is located just 12 kms away from Somwarpet in Igurur GP limits. None of the residents of the hamlet have received any facilities from the government. While the State government claims of having something for everyone in its bunch of schemes, the old, disabled, girl children and widows here have not heard of any Sandhya Suraksha, Bhagya Jyothi or any other schemes.

A pucca house is something that these kurubas cannot even dream of and their picture of  house has some bamboos for walls and hays for the roof. These houses are comfortable as long it is summer but with the rainy season, lives becomes all the more uncertain for these people. With leaking roof and weak walls, living inside the ‘house’ with mushy floor becomes a nightmare. With all the problems, the fear of unwanted guests like that of the rogue elephants makes living all the more difficult.
There are no Anganwadis in the region and hence woods are the first school for the little children from the hamelt.

As far as water supply is concerned, one borewell in the area went kaput some time ago. Since this borewell has not yet been repaired, the people in the hamlet have to bank on the foul water from Harangi back water, which smells bad.

Health care facilities are also not accessible to these people. The nearest Primary Health Centre is about 5 km away by walk. Though electricity lines fly over their roofs, they cannot get benefits of Kuteera jyothi because they do not have a pucca house. Kerosene lamps are the only source of light for them. Small houses which should be spacious enough for four people accommodate about 10 to 12 people. With the dream of having tiled houses, these people have struggled to get some help from the government only to see their dream shatter like a castle of cards.
“We had pleaded in front of the Gram Panchayat to build us some good houses but they said revenue department has to allot us the land we are living in. When we go to revenue department, they say this land belongs to forest department and hence we need to get letter from forest department. We hear a ‘No’ for an answer from forest department for our request. With this circle, our dream of having a house still remains to be a dream,” say Muthappa- Susheela, Bhoja-Kaveri and Puttaswamy-Radha couples.

With only hopes of seeing brighter future, these silent lamps continue to live with small dreams.