Date:22/11/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/11/22/stories/2008112255000500.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

This village is all set to vanish

Bageshree S.

Forest Department reclaims land based on notification of 1935

— PHOTO: Bhagya Prakash K.

IN DANGER: A cluster of houses at Arlikattedoddi in Magadi taluk.

Bangalore: It is hard to imagine an entire village disappearing, unless it is engulfed by a flood or the backwaters of a dam.

But Aralikatte Doddi in Magadi taluk – a village with 74 households and their farm land, adding up to 95.26 acres – may be erased from the map of Karnataka if the Forest Department has its way.

It is one of the 25 villages in Magadi taluk in which people will lose homes and agricultural lands if the Forest Department has its way, going by the 1935 gazette notification.

While a section of people will be affected in several of these villages, Aralikatte Doddi faces the threat of being entirely wiped out, barring two houses, as the Forest Department is drawing strict forest boundaries afresh and getting set to clear “encroachments” as mandated by a Supreme Court order of 2000.

The villagers were unaware that they are “encroachers” until the Forest Department officials brought a excavator two months ago and started digging a trench through the land of Kenchappa Narasimhiah, a farmer with 1.5 acres of land at Gattipura Ambedkar Colony, adjoining Doddi. “My house and about 10 guntas of land have been spared. But people in Doddi are all finished,” says Mr. Narasimhiah. The mood in Doddi is dismal. “None of us have had a peaceful night’s sleep ever since we heard that our lands and houses will be taken away,” says Venkatalakshamma. Her neighbour Yashodamma points to the Government Primary School, power lines and the coin telephone booth, and asks: “Why did the Government give us all this if this village is not a village at all?”

Mada Bovi, who is “approximately 85”, says that he was born and brought up in the village. “I have spent my life struggling to make this dry land yield. The Government has given me ‘saguvali cheeti’ (cultivation rights) also. At this old age, if they say the land is not mine, how do you think I will feel?” he asks.

“We are not rich people who have property elsewhere,” says Shanthamma Puttaswamiah, adding that the “biggest” land holding in the village is three acres and 36 guntas. Life at Doddi is visibly hard and ragi yield from the land has been meagre because of bad rain. A few have planted mango saplings only recently. Many of the villagers earn their livelihood as farm workers.

“Women get Rs. 40 a day and men at Rs. 100,” says Tirumaliah. Yet, surprisingly, as many as 30 households in the village have been declared “above poverty line” category, making them ineligible for rice and kerosene through the Public Distribution System.

Some of the grown up children, who have migrated to Bangalore in search of a “better life”, have only faced harder times. “My two children work in a garment factory in Bangalore. They spend all they earn on rent and food. I cannot go there because I have never gone to school,” says Ms. Yashodamma. Her only pride is the small concrete house she has built after raising a bank loan.

“Some say our houses may be spared, but they will grow trees and turn our agricultural lands into forest again. But what do we live on if there is no land to cultivate?” asks Mr. Bovi. “That is as good as destroying our houses.”