CHIKKABALLAPUR: Just 60km from Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) is Deshmar Thanda, a Lambani settlement where 23 families have been living for the past four decades without access to basic amenities, including drinking water, primary healthcare, roads and even education.
TNIE visited a government school in Bagepalli town, about 8.5km from Deshmar Thanda, where a group of girls narrated to this reporter the ordeal of their daily lives in a village forsaken by the government.
Eleven-year-old Kalpana (name changed) said: “In our thanda, we walk 1.5 km every day to get water; there are no pucca roads either.
We walk for almost 2km through thorny paths to reach the bus stop, and then take a bus to reach school.
Kids walk 2 km to school The villagers, who have at least three families with children of ages eligible to be admitted to anganwadis, refuse to do so as they dread walking almost 2km over thorny, muddy paths with their children to reach the anganwadi.
However, the government school at Bagepalli has now provided them with free hostel facilities and the authorities are trying to convince parents to send their children.“We have no choice but to leave our children at the government hostel.
If we have to give them an education, we have to let go of our children and see them only once a month or during holidays,” said Kanchana, whose daughter is in Class 9 and stays at the hostel.
Our women walk 1.5 km to fetch water from a stored borewell water pit from someone’s farmland, to wash clothes and take a bath.
They have to walk till Nellampalli and wait for the bus to take them to Bagepalli Government Hospital.
Meanwhile, a human rights activist based in Kolar, said there is heavy flurosis in the water they drink, which further complicates their health issues.