The Banjara Tandas on the fringes and deep inside the thinly-wooded Konchavaram forest present a look of emptiness.
Faced with a severe summer and acute drinking water shortage, more than 50 per cent of the inhabitants have migrated to the bigger cities .
As one travels in the sun bathed and dust filled roads through the forest of Konchavaram in Chincholi taluk in Kalaburagi district, the once bustling Banjara Tandas present an empty look with all the able-bodied men and women having left the Tanda to work in the brick kilns and construction sites in Mumbai, Pune, Goa, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and other big cities, leaving behind the aged to take care of the young children.
ADVERTISEMENT
Kemu Naik, an aged person who was resting under the shade of a tree near his thatched house in Onti Chinti Tanda said his two sons along with her daughter in law have gone to Mumbai to work in a construction site two months back and he has been left behind to take care of three young children.
“There is no work in the Tanda and there is no alternative for us but to migrate to other cities in search of employment”.
Almost all the Tandas face severe drinking water shortage and in the non-agricultural season there is no other avenue of employment for the agricultural labourers and small and marginal farmers and the MNREGA has not made any impact in these tandas by providing employment.
ADVERTISEMENT
A repeated complaint in almost all the tandas was that the claims of work being provided under MNREGA were a mere eye wash and these works were executed by using the machinery.