A landlord’s riches-to-rags story

Thirty-nine-year-old Basappa Ningappa Talavara, with his wife and four daughters, was once a happy man practising agriculture on his own lands at Basapura village located in Navalagund taluk of Dharwad district. He was also supporting his brother Ellappa’s family, which comprises of five members.

But the September-October 2009 floods sunk his happiness forever. Neither adequate compensation nor rehabilitation has come his way since then, and he, along with his family has been living in a rundown rented house for one year after the floods claimed hundreds of lives and wreaked havoc on the people of North Karnataka.

Pointing at the debris, where his house once stood, Basappa says he has knocked on the doors of officials up to the taluk tahsildar, but all in vain. “The village panchayat here said Rs35,000 would be given to those families whose houses had been damaged completely. All I have got till now is around Rs5,000, that too in two instalments,” he says.

Basappa is just one of the many examples. If one walks around this village with around 500 houses, tales like Basappa’s stop you in your tracks on almost every road.

Worse, the recent rains have again washed away the roads and one has to literally wade through muddy waters to get across. “Whenever we see signs of heavy rains, we rush for shelter to the temple of Lord Vithala, which is located at a higher level as compared to the other localities in the village,” says Ellappa.

The recent rains have again damaged crops in the village fields. “I and my brother have sowed chillies in the four-acre land of which two acres is completely wasted as rainwater stagnated there,” says Basappa.

His brother Ellappa has stopped his daughter Sumitra from going to school, so she would be of help to earn livelihood for the family. “I have written my SSLC exam but I didn’t check my results as I have no option of studying further,” Sumitra says.

On the other hand, the new houses being built by the state government to rehabilitate these villagers are not yet ready. The government is supposed to build 456 houses on the new land next to the village, of which 375 are being constructed. It will take a few more months to complete.

And having no confidence in the government’s rehabilitation plan, some villagers have moved out to other towns and cities. “Honnappa Sangappa Hatti, a carpenter from the village, has settled in Navalagund town, about nine kilometre from here,” says Ravindra Jainer, another villager.

When questioned about the problems, Bhadrapura village panchayat vice president Manjunath Ningappa Naikar, under whose jurisdiction Basapura falls, says he has appealed to higher officials and politicians for help several times, but to no avail. “We are now planning to appeal to the local MLA for help,” he says, fearing that his efforts may yet again not yield fruits.