Absence of bus facility to the tribal hamlet located in remote Kadambur hills has kept many children away from school.
As many as 90 families (139 men and 144 women) are living in the Uginium forest settlement that comes under the Guthiyalathur Panchayat. There are 183 electors, who will be casting their vote at the Panchayat Union Primary School. The area comes under the Bhavani Sagar Assembly constituency and Nilgiris Parliamentary constituency.
The highest qualified person in the hamlet is a girl who had completed her Class X while two Class XI drop-outs are the next highest qualified persons. Nearly 71% of people are uneducated. They cultivate maize, ragi, horse gram, tapioca and other millets in the small land they hold during seasons. They have to walk for 5 km through the forest area to reach the road at Karalayam Pirivu to board a bus to reach Kadambur.
After completing Class V, students have to go to the Panchayat Union Middle School at Karalayam that is located 7 km away from the hamlet. For Class 9, students have to go to the higher secondary school at Basuvanapuram that is about 12 km from the hamlet.
“There is no bus connectivity to our place and the students cannot walk 7 km through the forest area where wild elephants are present in large numbers,” said Rangasamy, a resident.
The Education Department is operating a vehicle for the Karalayam school students, but not to Basuvanapuram. “They had to spend ₹40 every day to use private vehicle to reach school, which is not affordable,” said Raman, another resident. None from the hamlet had so far joined Class XI in any school. Veeramma said that neither her life nor her children’s had seen any development in these years and added that child marriages were rampant.
M. Chinnasamy (21), a Class 9 dropout, said that while girls were married off before 18 years, boys went for work. He said that operating a bus during morning and evening hours to their hamlet would have made a big change in their lives which did not happen so far.
