A once commercially well known village of Velichalamala of the Nambulapula Kunta, is today just a vestige of its past, the village itself becoming an abode of the elderly, thanks to the large-scale migration – both permanent and temporary.
Nambulapula Kunta is one of the mandals greatly affected by drought since the last six years, with several villages of the mandal having to be supplied water by tankers for all needs, be it drinking, bathing or washing during the last two years. Velichalamala village is one of those which have borne the brunt of the drought.
“To give you an example of the commercial importance and prosperity of our village, our village had three cloth stores almost 35 years ago. There were more than four kirana stores,” says a proud Boreddy Rami Reddy, an octogenarian who has seen the village going through all its hues of destiny, adding that the village had seen its heydays in spite of not being even a mandal headquarters.
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Today, the village doesn’t have a single cloth store. There is one very small store which sells a few soaps and shampoo packets besides some chocolates etc for the few kids left in the village.
The village today has 55 families, all of whom possess job cards under the NREGS scheme and most of them own over five acres of land, to which they cling on to, having gone in for horticulture, which earns them wages through out the year under the ‘watch and ward’ scheme of the NREGS.
However, today’s total of around 55 families is a pittance to the heydays total of over 250 families.
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“My family used to reap around 400 bags of groundnut. This year I reaped around 35 bags. Why would anybody want to be in this village, where both rain and fate have failed us repeatedly,” says Gopal, a farmer who owns 11 acres.
Gopal, a resident of the village, says that every single family of the over 40 families of Muslims have left the village except for one family, which has since shifted its profession from being farmer to dhobi (washerman).
Today less than 10 families in the village have able bodied men left in them staying on in the village, clinging on to the large acreages they own and refuse to leave it barren for it has provided them livelihood for generations.
In cases that have been peculiarly true of once prosperous villages such as these, migration is not a factor that has happened all of a sudden in just the last few years.
“It has happened over several years. As far as my memory goes, the first of the families leaving our village have been the minorities who left to the Arab countries around 25 years ago, with crops failing continuously and labour hard to get by,” says Boreddy Ramireddy.
The picture can be captured by the statistics of the NREGS work for the Velichalamala panchayat, including the Velichalamala village. Of a total of 509 job cards in the panchayat, only 82 have been provided work for 100 days, although the government has increased the eligible workdays to 150 and proposes to increase it further.
Through the years, tens of families left the village either completely migrating or migrating seasonally, coming back to take care of crops during the start of the rainy season. Adding to the disinterest in staying back in the village is the fact that the government has not paid more than 100 farmers of the panchayat, a single rupee, since March this year under the ‘watch and ward’ scheme.