Deputy commissioner of Uttara Kannada districts, BN Krishnaiah, visited Goyar for the first time on Friday. The village which consists of 35 households has no electricity and basic phone connectivity.
India’s moment, some claim, has arrived. But there are still wide swathes of territory that have been left untouched by the strides made by India’s modernity in the mainland itself, not to speak of the forgotten parts of Andaman and Nicobar. One such village in Karnataka, Goyar, nestling in Western Ghats and about 18 km off the Karwar-Kadra road, on Friday had its first-ever brush with the modern world, when the deputy commissioner of Uttara Kannada districts, BN Krishnaiah, came calling to the tiny hamlet.
A representative of the stature of the deputy commissioner was coming to Goyar for the first time. The village has no electricity and no basic phone connectivity, forget mobile signals. The village — which consists of 35 households has a population of 90, 40% of them children — depends Gotegali, a slightly better off hamlet on the Karwar-Kadra Road, for essentials.
The village has 35 families and the population is 90, 40 of whom are children. With 15 men and 20 women making up for the adult population the village is sitting on a gender disaster bomb.
The village can be reached only on foot. Given that there is no road to the village, it does not come as a surprise that the village has no two-wheelers. The closest to automobile in the village is a lone bicycle.
There are three rivulets one has to wade through to reach the village. A creaking bamboo bridge across the Sakali River, which originates in Goa and passes through the village, connects the village to a kuccha road going to the nearest village.
The only presence of modernity in the village is one school which has two teachers. The teachers, who have come here on posting, in fact even stay in the school though it lacks basic amenities like toilets.
“I had only heard about the jilladhikari (the deputy commissioner in Kannada) and never seen anyone in flesh and blood. But I do remember seeing one in Kannada film in Kadra long time back,” said 70-year-old Siddappa.
When asked how nobody from the district office had visited Goyar village, Karwar tahsildar GN Basavaraju said, “It is not that none of the officials have come here. I learnt that no official of the rank of the deputy commissioner had visited this place. I do not know the reason. Perhaps, the lower rank officials had not briefed their higher officials about the plight of the people in this village.”
“We have to travel 18 km even to buy a packet of biscuits or a matchbox. There are no shops here. We live in a constant fear of food supplies running out. Our families eat very less for the fear of walking 18 km to get essentials. This shows in our skinny and malnourished children,” said Gangavva, a villager.
The village has no doctor. No doctor visits here from the district or taluk centres. There is an old midwife who helps women during childbirths. “In an emergency, only god comes to our rescue,” said another villager Mahadeva.
There are 15 persons aged between 15 and 20 who go to Kadra for earning a paltry ¤150 a day. “We are not sure that we will get job every day in Kadra. Only after reaching Kadra will we know whether we will get any job for the day. But by then we would have spent not less than ¤30 to arrive in Kadra. By this time we would have walked long distances too and imagine our state with the morsel we would have had for our breakfast,” said Raju, a villager.
Krishnaiah, however, has plans to bring the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act to the village to build check dams, lay new roads and improve basic facilities in the village. He said that power, telephone and road connectivity and financial inclusions will also come to the village very soon.
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