Snatched funerals of Polavaram-displaced Premium

Displaced by the Polavaram irrigation project, the Koyas, Konda Reddi tribes and Dalits along the Godavari coast are being forced to go against their traditions and bury the dead bodies of their beloved in their farmlands and abandoned places due to the lack of designated burial grounds in the R&R Colonies

It was 2020, and winter had just set in when a Koya tribal couple, Poonem Srinivas and Ms. Tulasi, rejoiced at sowing maize on their family land for the first time in their lives.

The seed, sown on their 2.95 acres, began germinating due to bountiful rainfall during the monsoon.

Mr. Srinivas’s mother, Ms. Veerayamma, had to miss joining her family in doing the farm work as she was bedridden with a prolonged illness. A few weeks later, she died from a paralytic stroke.

“I was left with only one option: to bury my mother’s body on the land where my family toiled to sow the seeds of maize. I have done it as there was no way to perform her last rites anywhere else,” said Mr. Srinivas.

Mr. Srinivas’s family lives at Kondrukota Resettlement and Rehabilitation Colony (R&R), which the Government of Andhra Pradesh built to rehabilitate families displaced from the Indira Sagar (Polavaram) Irrigation Project. The national project is being built across the mighty river Godavari at Polavaram in the Godavari Region.

The Kondrukota R&R Colony is located in Polavaram mandal of the Eluru district in Andhra Pradesh. Before displacement, the Kondrukota Panchayat was part of the erstwhile East Godavari district. In this colony, 425 Project-Affected Families (PAFs) belonging to the Koya and Konda Reddi tribes of the Godavari Valley were given rehabilitation.

Between the winters of 2020 and 2023, four other people, three women and one man, were buried on Mr. Srinivas’s land as he obliged.