A slushy, patchy, potholed road is pushing up transportation costs, preventing tribal inhabitants of Andrahal village in Odisha's Malkangiri district from availing government loans for building pucca houses.
At 5,000 feet above sea level and sitting atop a hill in the remote Malkangiri district in Odisha, Andrahal gram panchayat finds itself plagued by a particularly persistent problem.
Like everywhere else, the government provides Andrahal residents financial assistance under housing schemes to build pucca houses. But in practice, none is willing to build a pucca house here.
The reason for their reluctance is the remoteness of the area, as also the nearly non-existent nature of the road that connects Andrahal to the rest of the region surrounding the hill.
It means the cost to build a pucca house is prohibitive – almost three times more than what the government housing schemes provide for.
A very major chunk of the expenses would be incurred on transportation of raw materials alone that would necessarily need to be ferried from down below the forested and rugged hill.
There are 315 households under Andrahal, but none of them are pucca houses. The village is dotted with mud houses covered with tin shades. The only concrete construction is a community centre built with government funds.
It is not that Andrahal hasn’t witnessed any changes.
In the past, the gram panchayat inhabited by the endangered Bonda tribe was infamous as a Maoist hideout and completely inaccessible.
Today, the village is accessible, but the 8km road leading to it from Mudulipada gram panchayat, continues to be a nightmare.
The road is patchy – it is slushy, potholed and simply vanishes at certain stretches. Worse still, it does not extend to many hamlets under the panchayat.
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The fear of Maoists compounds Andrahal’s accessibility problem.
Previously, no private contractors were willing to take up road building projects in the region due to the Maoist threat. There were no bidders for government tenders.
Though the security situation has now improved with the Border Security Force (BSF) setting up camps in Mudulipada and Andhrahal, the fear still persists, forcing many contractors to stay away.
It has resulted in a road that is difficult to navigate and well-nigh traverse. The consequences obviously are borne by the Bondas inhabitants.
Under the housing schemes, a beneficiary can avail housing assistance of Rs 1.3 lakhs. For Andrahal residents earning Rs 20,000 a year on an average, the sum is inadequate. For them, the cost of construction escalates to a minimum of Rs 3 lakhs, given the extra transportation costs.
For every raw material required to build a house, the village depends on Khairput town, nearly 20 kms downhill. For ferrying bricks and sand and other raw materials required for constructing a house on a 25 square metre area, it requires a minimum of 20 trips. Each trip costs Rs 5000 each.
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“The road is narrow and bad. In monsoon season it becomes impossible to drive to Andrahal. Every contractor we talk to charges between Rs 5000-5500 for a single trip. How are we supposed to manage the cost?” quipped Laxman Jigdi, one of the villagers.
With transportation accounting for almost a lakh of rupees, there is little money left to build a house.
“Some five six years ago a survey was conducted to know how many people were willing to construct pucca houses under the housing schemes. Not a single household said yes.
“Why apply when in all possibility we will never be able to complete the houses. Everybody builds and rebuilds their mud houses,” Manguli Jigdi, the village sarpanch, pointed out.
The villagers depend on rain-fed seasonal agriculture and sell their produce in the local market in Khairput. A few members from the younger generation have now started migrating to Andhra Pradesh in search of work.
“We don’t have much savings. How am I supposed to spend a lakh on building a house? We can consider once we have better roads and transportation cost decreases,” another villager Sambari Kirsani said.
For now, they can only hope. Though Andrahal has no phone connectivity, electricity has recently arrived. More development will hopefully reach once there exists a proper road.
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Santosh Rout, a social mobiliser with the Bonda Development Agency, echoes the collective expectation.
“A lot of things have changed after BSF set up camp here. We are hoping that the road conditions will improve too. Better roads and better accessibility will change a lot of things for the people, including housing,” he said.
The rest of Andrahal agrees.
The lead image shows the approach road to Andrahal in a very bad shape (Photo by Aishwarya Mohanty)
Aishwarya Mohanty is an independent journalist based in Odisha. She reports on the intersection of gender, social justice, rural issues and the environment. She is also a Rural Media Fellow powered by Youth Hub.
