Anaicut: Predominantly tribal constituency long plagued by neglect of basic infrastructure

Anaicut constituency faces severe neglect, lacking essential infrastructure like roads, water, and electricity for its tribal residents.

Tribals are at the core of Anaicut Assembly constitutency that encompasses hillocks like Peenjamanthai, Jarthankollai, Kurumalai and Palampattu in Jawadhu Hills in Vellore district. Basic civic needs like bitumen roads, water supply, electricity connection and a government hospital still remain a distant dream for residents in the hills.

Formed in 1977, Anaicut Assembly seat covers more than 70 farming and tribal villages, mostly in the hills that come under Vellore and Anaicut panchayat unions. Residents of many tribal hamlets in these hills have to walk on muddy pathways to reach towns and villages in the plains. “A proper bitumen road is a pre-requisite to envisage other basic amenities like water supply, power connection and fair price shop. Raw materials to build these civic amenities could be transported only when there is a proper road,” said M. Annamalai, president, Athiyur village panchayat.

Apart from its own hamlet, Athiyur village also includes Kurumalai and Vella Kaal Malai tribal hamlets. After years of continuous effort, residents managed to get a nod from the Forest Department to allow the District Rural Development Agency to lay a bitumen stretch between Kurumalai and Vella Kaal Malai hamlets, a distance of around three km through thick forests in the hills.

Before residents in the hamlets could witness bitumen road laying work for the first time in Kurumalai hills, the work was halted due to the enforcement of Model Code of Conduct (MCC) for the Assembly election. “School students walk on the uneven rugged terrain from Athiyur to Panchayat Union Middle School in Kurumalai at the foothills every day. We watch our children, who trek through the forests to the nearest schools, helplessly,” said M. Duraisamy, a tribal headsman in Kurumalai hills.

Lack of bitumen roads have also deprived residents in the hills of bus services and ambulances. Sick persons have to be carried in a sling cloth by abled men in the hamlets to the government hospital at Odugathur, nearest town around 20 km away for treatment.

At present, each hamlet in the hills, on an average, has one common farm well to provide water for irrigation and domestic consumption. Most of the farm wells, which are 40 ft deep each, are storage points in the hills to collect excess rainwater during monsoon.