Life in a treacherous terrain affected by Maoism in Karnataka Premium

Tribal leader Raju Gowda fights for road improvements in Karnataka's Western Ghats region amid Maoist history and challenges.

For nearly three decades, 60-year-old Raju Gowda, a tribal leader of the Malekudiya community, has been fighting for the improvement of roads in the Naadpal Gram Panchayat limits in Hebri taluk of Udupi district of Karnataka. Only narrow mud roads connect many of the hamlets that dot this Western Ghats region to the mainland.

One such road goes to the three now-vacant houses of three brothers at Peetabailu, where Maoist leader Vikram Gowda was killed in an alleged encounter with Anti-Naxal Force (ANF) personnel on November 18. The village is nestled in a valley at the foot of two hills.

It is impossible, Raju Gowda admits, for the government to spend crores of rupees to take permanent measures for improving the undulating narrow roads. These houses are located on patches of revenue land in the Someshwara Wildlife Sanctuary (of Kudremukh Wildlife Division) where there is a bar on paving roads. “The basic thing we ask the government is to put a layer of mud over the road to make it easy for residents to walk or use their vehicles. Vehicles of those who have licence to move wooden logs in the forest also use these roads,” he says.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, attempts made by the government to relocate tribal residents in these areas fuelled the Maoist movement in Karnataka. After over two decades, the Maoist movement may have suffered a severe setback, but the fear of displacement remains. The latest looming threat, according to tribal community leaders, has been the Kasturirangan committee report on the Western Ghats, even though Karnataka has rejected it.

With a number of petitions, the government, through the Naadpal Gram Panchayat, has been regularly sanctioning amounts ranging between ₹50,000 and ₹1 lakh for putting layers of mud on roads. Showing recently done levelling work for the 100-metre-long road with a steep ascent leading to 12 houses of the community members, Raju Gowda says he and a few other villagers, along with ANF staffers, worked for about seven days to remove the mud by the roadside to level the stretch.

“At the end of this work, each villager who worked on the road earned ₹5 per day,” says the elder, whose main earning comes from ferrying people and carrying construction material in this undulating terrain in his jeep. His vehicle is among the three jeeps and two autorickshaws in the gram panchayat, which the villages are all heavily dependent on during health emergencies and other needs.

“We are only raising our concerns to get relief from the government. We have not favoured Maoists using arms against the government for the fulfilment of our demands,” Raju Gowda is keen to clarify while taking the team of The Hindu in his vehicle to Peetabailu from Kabbinale near Hebri.