On the afternoon of September 5, when labour pain struck Kosi, 26, a Gutti Koya Adivasi woman from the remote tribal hamlet of Korkatpadu in Telangana’s Bhadradri Kothagudem district, she couldn’t have prepared herself for the excruciating journey that lay ahead of her. Strapped to a doli—a makeshift stretcher consisting of a wooden cot secured with jute ropes to a log—her vulnerability was apparent as she was lugged to the nearest healthcare facility through a rugged 3.5-kilometre stretch of dense forest.
From the pucca road, she was first taken to a Primary Health Centre in Satyanarayanapuram in Charla mandal in an autorickshaw and then to the well-equipped Government Area Hospital in Bhadrachalam in a 108 ambulance, a government service across India.
Late that night, Kosi gave birth to a healthy boy weighing 2.6 kg through emergency C-Section. This was her first baby, said the medical staff, citing Kosi as a positive example because usually, the tribes marry in their late teens and have babies soon after.
The young woman’s ordeal in accessing healthcare has once again turned the spotlight on the critical gaps in road access and the daily travails of tribal people living in isolated habitations in the State, particularly during the monsoon.
Korkatpadu is located approximately 360 km from the State capital Hyderabad, and in the heart of the tribal territory of Bhadrachalam Agency, near the Chhattisgarh border. It is one of the eight Gutti Koya settlements in Charla mandal that remain disconnected from mainstream infrastructure, even mobile connectivity. In all, 79 tribal hamlets in the district await road connectivity. Most are deep within the forest, some up to 10 km within.
A recurring ordeal
“When we heard about Kosi’s labour pain, some of us got together and quickly made a doli. We had a tough time crossing the slippery stream beds and slushy path surrounded by thick forest. We prayed to our village deity, Maoli Matha, and made our way through the forest. Despite the rough, slippery terrain, Kosi’s mother accompanied us”Relatives of Kosi
The daily commute (they are mostly farm labourers in fields up to 15 km away) is an ordeal for the people of Korkatpadu as the forest pathway to the hamlet of 48 huts, some made in the traditional round way, often turns into a muddy trail, making it difficult to even walk. “When we heard about Kosi’s labour pain, some of us got together and quickly made a doli. We had a tough time crossing the slippery stream beds and slushy path surrounded by thick forest. We prayed to our village deity, Maoli Matha, and made our way through the forest. Despite the rough, slippery terrain, Kosi’s mother accompanied us,” recalls one of Kosi’s relatives, who shouldered the doli from Korkatpadu to Bodanalli, where the pucca road begins.
The trek through the rough forest route lasted nearly two hours. It was a journey fraught with treacherous obstacles. By the time she reached the hospital, Kosi’s blood pressure was high at 225/120mm Hg. She had to be admitted to the ICU, and after her condition stabilised, an emergency C-section was performed.
“Such a situation wouldn’t have arisen if there was a motorable road to Korkatpadu,” says Gangaiah, a fellow villager who helped carry Kosi in the doli, along with the others.
A few days before this incident, on August 24, Gangamani, a tribal woman, was forced to deliver her baby on the side of a road at Paspula village in Nirmal district due to an inordinate delay in the ambulance’s arrival. When she developed labour pain, her family members shifted her to Paspula in a bullock cart to the road after requisitioning the services of an ambulance. The mother and her newborn were shifted to the government hospital in Khanapur the same night.
“Ambulances cannot reach our village as also many other villages. The situation gets worse during floods as Korkatpadu remains virtually out of bounds. Even two-wheelers cannot ply on the slippery forest pathway,” says Jogu, a Gutti Koya farm worker. Not just for emergencies, even for work and regular errands, one has to trek through the forest pathway daily to reach Bodanalli en route R Kothagudem, he adds.
“When our people fall sick, or during medical emergencies such as snake bite, we go through unspeakable horrors. The PHC (primary health centre that is the basic unit of the government healthcare system) at Satyanarayanapuram is more than 10 km away”A Korkatpadu inhabitant
“When our people fall sick, or during medical emergencies such as snake bite, we go through unspeakable horrors. The PHC (primary health centre that is the basic unit of the government healthcare system) at Satyanarayanapuram is more than 10 km away,“ says a Korkatpadu inhabitant in his 20s, requesting anonymity. “In any case, we have to depend on dolis since ambulances can’t reach us,” he reasons.
“We have been living here for nearly 20 years, but are still deprived of a proper road and mobile connectivity,” says an elderly resident of the village who originally hails from Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district. He recalls how Maoists had earlier targeted mobile phone towers and road construction equipment in the interior areas along the Telangana-Chhattisgarh border.
The rebels had blown up the mobile tower of a private telecom service provider at R Kothagudem in Charla mandal in December 2010, a BSNL cell phone tower at Bandirevu in Dummugudem mandal in 2011, two cell phone towers belonging to private telecom firms one at Pedaarlagudem village, and another at Kothapalli village in Bhadrachalam Agency in early 2014, police sources said.
In the late 2000s, thousands of Gutti Koyas fled their homes in strife-torn south Bastar division of Chhattisgarh. They were unable to cope with the armed conflict between the then Salwa Judum (State-backed militia) and Maoists, said sources in local Adivasi organisations. They settled in the border mandals of erstwhile united Andhra Pradesh, on the forest fringes in Bhadrachalam Agency, the tribal heartland of Telangana.
In an effort to wean Gutti Koyas away from the influence of Maoists, the district police have been regularly organising outreach activities including medical camps for them. Ration cards and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) job cards were earlier issued to the Gutti Koyas in the temporary settlements in the forest fringe areas, sources in the Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA), Bhadrachalam, say.
Their children were enrolled in State-run schools. However, connectivity to around eight Gutti Koya habitations in Charla mandal is still a problem. The much-touted plan, formulated 10 years ago, before Telangana was carved out of Andhra Pradesh, mooted by the ITDA to introduce bike ambulances fitted with sidecar facilities in the hard-to-reach areas of the Bhadrachalam Agency has remained a non-starter.
Lack of motorable roads is taking a toll on the livelihoods of Gutti Koya migrant Adivasis, who mainly depend on farm work, tendu (beedi) leaf, and ippa puvvu (mahua flower) collection to eke out a living.
As many as 14 proposals for construction of roads and bridges at an estimated cost of ₹44.27 crore in Charla and Dummugudem mandals under the Centrally sponsored Road Connectivity Project in Left Wing Extremism Affected Areas (RCPLWE) continue to hang in balance the due to lack of forest clearance, sources from the Telangana Roads and Buildings department say.
A BT road (bituminous, or asphalt road) and three bridges have been sanctioned under the RCPLWE to provide road connectivity to Korkatpadu tribal habitation at an estimated cost of ₹13 crore, says Executive Engineer (Roads & Buildings) of Bhadrachalam, Venkateshwara Rao. As many as 13 other road works in Charla and Dummugudem mandals have also been sanctioned and the forest clearances for these are awaited, he adds.
The solution to increasing connectivity of the Adivasis lies in the implementation of policies from an ecological perspective with a tribal welfare approach, says a teacher and environmental activist in Khammam, who did not wish to be identified.
Expressing concern over the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023, he says the amendments will lead to non-forest activities in reserve forests and in turn to deforestation. The original Act The Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, should be implemented in its letter and spirit, he feels, stressing on the need for safeguarding the forests and the constitutional rights of the Adivasis.
