Taps now, water later: Come election, tribals say politicians lure them with half-baked sops

Bengaluru: Crammed into a tiny room and learning for about five to six hours may not be what children look forward to.

But it’s obvious that the seven-odd children, aged between 3 and 10, are really happy to be sitting inside the spanking new Anganwadi at the Nagarhole Gadde Hadi, a settlement consisting of about 60 families of the Jenu Kuruba tribe in the forests of Nagarhole in Karnataka.

The children are aware that it’s a privilege that no one before them had enjoyed – the Anganwadi is the only pucca construction in that forest settlement.

The 12x12 room suddenly popped up in July last year, after years of cajoling, possibly because the election is round the corner, said anganwadi worker J K Bhagya.

“We even got a toilet. Before this we were operating from a shed,” she added, pointing to a bamboo structure with a tarpaulin for the roof next door.

These few and far between ‘sops for votes’ are the reason why the Jenu Kuruba community, which is fighting the government for decades for even the basic amenities – like land rights, access to water and electricity – bother to cast their votes, said J K Thimma, head of the settlement as well as the president of Nagarhole Budakattu Jamma Paley Hakkustapana Samiti, the banner under which the community often holds protests demanding their basic rights.

According to the official website of Nagarhole Tiger Reserve, the forest is home to 45 tribal settlements or ‘hadis’ – 1,703 families belonging to Jenu Kurubas, Betta Kurubas, Yeravas and Soliga communities. It is further stated that for the tribals residing inside the forest, Central and state governments have conceptualised many welfare measures.

Thimma though has a different story to tell. “For years, they tried to evict us from these forests by denying us everything.

Over the years, we have learned that even if there are many welfare schemes on paper, it rarely reaches us.

The Forest Rights Act was passed in 2006 to address the historical injustice done to us.

“We submitted our applications as per its provisions in 2009. But we are still waiting. Those who are employed by the government to implement those schemes receive their salaries on time, but we hardly get any of those intended benefits,” Thimma told news agency.

For the families that opted to be relocated, hoping for a better life, the situation is much worse.

From near Nagarhole Gadde Hadi, about 74 families were relocated to what was earlier known as Begaru Parai, now called Nanachi Gadde Hadi, in the Ponnampet taluk of Coorg district, in the 1970s.

While the coffee plantations just across the road enjoy round the clock electricity and tap water, the Jenu Kurubas have to depend on primitive water holes dug by them – ironically, even deep in the forest, their community members have access to proper wells and a NGO distributed solar set-ups that light up a bulb or two in their homes.

But come election season, things trickle in, said 43-year-old J S Ramakrishna, who makes ends meet by working as a farm hand in nearby plantations as well as with occasional gigs as driver.