Nchinnababu’s Weblog

MY FIRST VILLAGE STUDY (KURDKERI)

Contents:

 

• Location and demography
• History
• Resources
• People
• My Observation
• Case study
• My Experience

LOCATION

Kurdkeri is a beautiful village which a population of around 3500 people with 420 households. This village is situated at 18km away from North side of Hubli. It is 6km away from the highway of Pune-Bangalore road near Varur.

HISTORY and PEOPLE

Ø  The history of the village is something very interesting. It something like this that some people from Kuknoor came to Unkal and from there they came and settled here and made their livelihood some 500-600 years ago.

Community groups:

 

Ø  Lingayats

Ø  Talwar

Ø  Harijan

Ø  Muslims

Ø  Shepherds (Kurubru)

DEMOGRAPHIES

 

Ø  Population: 3500+

Ø  No. of families: Around 450.

Ø  334 Children.

Ø  9 Handicapped people.

Ø  Literacy: 80% among people >50yrs.

Ø  Temples: 10.

Ø  Government High school: 01

Ø  Government Nursery: 02

Ø  SHG’s: 24 (18 Sujala, 6 BAIF-1 men)

Ø  Gram Panchayath: KARADIKOPPA. (2km)

Ø  Finance: Varur MG Bank. (5km)

Ø  Medical Shop: No

Ø  Water Tank: 01

Ø  Common public toilet: No

RESOURCE

 

Kurdkeri village has around 2000 Acres of agricultural land with 100 bore wells. And there are 16 tractors in the village which are used for the agricultural purposes. There

—  3 lakes. (Hirekeri, Chikkeri, Unkal Keri)

—  Water tap facility for every house, 10 public taps are there.

—  Good transport facility.

LIVELIHOODS

 

Ø  Major occupation of Men : 

   Agriculture, Daily wages (in Kurdkeri and Hubli), House construction, etc.

Ø  Major occupation of woman:

    Taking care of cattle, selling milk, curds (locally and in Hubli), daily wages etc.

NGO’s that work here:

 

Ø  BAIF

Ø  Deshpande foundation

Ø  AME foundation

Ø  Sujala

Ø  Karmani

OBSERVATIONS

 

Ø  Poor sanitation facility.

Ø  Lake being dried due to lack of rain.

Ø  Poor health facility.

Ø  Alcoholic problem.

Ø  Agricultural problems.

CASE STUDY

   In a village called Kurdkeri people are engaged in agriculture and nearly 4 different NGO’s work there. In this place people go to open places for sanitation. The Panchayath decided to provide Rs 1200/- for every individual family who like to construct individual sanitations, but the villagers did not find it right because to construct a toilet it costs them 5000/- where as Panchayath provides 1200/- it has become  very difficult for the villagers in finding the rest of the money as they are very poor. Then one fine villager named Rangaiah came forward with a proposal to one NGO saying to build a common toilet for the villagers as there was place provided by government for constructing the common toilets. He was also ready to provide water facility and was ready to maintain the toilets but only said that he will take the fertilizer himself. But the NGO he approached did not have that type of projects to build common toilets but were ready to provide some Rs 2000/- in constructing individual toilets. But now if you see the village now it has only 10% of individual toilets.

My Experience

It was a great learning and some of the unlearning experience for me in the village of Kurdkeri. I and Savita.k had been there. I was there for 3 days and 2 nights. I went there on July 25, 2008 (Monday). It was in the morning at 9.30 we went to the old bus stand and had breakfast at the Ayodhya Hotel me Savita.k and soumya later on we left soumya with sanjeev so that they can go to the village that was allotted to them and then we went our way at 10.30 AM on my bike. We reached there at 11.20 am.  As soon as we went there and started knocking the door and found that no one was there. Suddenly we saw the wife of our resource person came running to us. She received us gladly and she immediately went and called the resource person and he came and received us happily and said that he was waiting for us, I felt very happy hearing it.

Visit to the Agricultural field.

After half an hour of our reach there our resource person Basavanappa.Angadi was going to the field and I said “sir I also would like to come with you” and the resource person said ok and then we went to the field taking the Buffaloes that were tied at other place. After reaching the fields at 12.30 we had sat under a tree and I saw other farmer also coming to us who was little aged around 65yrs and he sat with us and I had a chat with them for some time. I started to ask some question related to the timeline of the agriculture.  As what was the seed that they were sowing 60 years back and what’s the crops that they were growing 30 yrs back and at the end as what are the crops that they are growing now. The points that I discussed are displayed below.

Meeting with a successful Woman SHG group

Later in the evening there was a SHG meeting of “Ullavi Chennabasaveshwara Sangha” which was around 4 years old and was a successful one. There I had some good time with them. The SHG group members shared their experience as how these SHG helped them in building their lives. And I had asked them some open ended questions related to their group. I was really happy by the way these SHG’s were running I praised GOD for them.

Later after the meeting we had dinner (rotti and rice with milk) with the resource person. Then later in the night the resource person went to the field to sleep there and I was given a place in the verandah on the first room to sleep. That night was really was terrible because I could not sleep the whole night at all. It was weather mosquitoes or some other thing I doesn’t know but they bit me so much that night was spent only scratching my skin. That scratching continued the next day also. It was really difficult.

Our second day experience

And on the second day we had breakfast and visited the school and had breakfast in the house of the in charge of the SHG group we met the previous night. There we collected some information relating to the agricultural problems of the farmer. And from there we met the principal of the Govt. School and had a chat with him for some time related to the growth of students as well as the school.

In the evening o f the day we had met the RMP of the place he is like a doctor of the place. There with his help we did collect some information related to the health status of the village. Later in the following day we even met two Anganwadi’s in the village and even collected some information related to the villager’s health status and the children’s population of the village and their health status.

Later in the afternoon of the last day around 11 am we left the place and came back to Hubli around 12 o’clock and were busy preparing for the presentation of our village stay.