Laterite ‘exposes’ backwardness

Laterite ‘exposes’ backwardness
By SNV Sudhir
Yerakannapalem (Vizag), Nov 17, 2011: Tribals of eight villages coming under Sarugudu panchayat in Nathavaram mandal are elated a lot these days. And there’s a reason behind their euphoria. Now they say very soon everyone in their village would be able to go to a nearby shandy without much delay as the mining company promised a road connecting them to ‘outside world’.
Thanks to laterite, after knowing its presence in their area everybody is making a beeline to them including officers and mining lobby. All these villages on the hill do not have a pucca road and no vehicle plies through their area. Even in an emergency medical situation they go to a nearest primary health centre in Nathavaram on the other side of the hill by walk. There is a school for these villages but without any proper facilities and no teacher available, which shows official apathy towards development of remote villages in the country.
“All of us are grateful to laterite due to which everybody is coming to us after 65 years of independence. Nobody looked at us until now. For delivery we had to carry our pregnant women on our shoulders for 4 hours to go to a nearby health centre. At times our women died while on the way. Now mining people promised us jobs, roads, schools, hospitals,” Venkataramana of Yerakannapalem told this correspondent. There are around 500 families in these eight villages and the mining company promised them 200 jobs and Rs 1,000 per household until mining goes on, informed a villager.
“Politicians come to us only during elections asking for votes. That’s it after the polls none revisits us. Not even officials. Now this mining company has come we are hopeful of our development which government failed to do all these years,” told Sivaramakrishna, who depends on farming.
Most of the villagers are dependent on farming of paddy and sugarcane which they sell for their living at a nearby market. “They are not aware what a private firm does. They just use and throw. Above all pollution caused by mining would spell doom to the environment. God save them,” said representative of an NGO Samata, G Srinivas.