Reflections on a trip to Madhugiri and Pavagada

 Well, we drove down to Madhugiri and Pavagada in Tumkur District this weekend. Tumkur is 70 km from Bangalore - a good two hour drive...The city traffic is particularly painful, what with the elevated roadway under construction. Madhugiri is 40 km from Tumkur- the road is good. Pavagada is yet another 50 km.

 The journey from Tumkur to Madhugiri is picturesque, serene, a mix of elevated lands intersected by river valleys and what seems to be a unending range of hills nearly 4000 feet long, most in the north- south direction. Typically, there are water bodies on one side of the road and green patches of paddy fields with local men and women in colourful local costumes working in the water soaked fields. The green patches and water body provide a visual relief to the otherwise rocky terrain and the hot weather outside. We halted at a number of places to take a snap or two on our way to Madhugiri.

 So why did we go to Madhugiri and Pavagada…and travel almost 400 km in a day…what is different here?

 Locals following politics in Karnataka would remember Madhugiri featuring in the news for a bi-election contested and won by Anita Kumaraswamy, the wife of Ex Chief Minister around December 2008. But that’s not why we went there.

 Madhugiri is one of the largest monolith (single rock) hills in Asia. It is over 3900 feet high and the sight of the smooth, steep slopes with some walls of an abandoned fort stare at you like a huge grey tongue of a massive passive structure living in deep sleep.

There is a ruined fort on the top with  circular granaries, which houses a ruined Gopalakrishna temple. Rumour has it that it is the 2^nd largest in this area after Sawanadurga, another monolith. Some say it is amongst Asia’s largest Monoliths. I have climbed up Sawanadurga, Siddarabetta and been to Sivaganga and Devarayanadurga, all of them a trekker’s delight. Most have temples and one side of the mountain can be quite steep. Some say there is possibility of spotting a bear as night dawns.

The fort at Madhugiri is said to be some 340 years old, built by Raje Hare Gowda, improved on by Hyder Ali and has witnessed many a royal battle between Marathas, the British and the troops of Tipu Sultan. The place now is a silent mute witness to history and resonates with heat and not many visitors except for groups of trekkers and climbers. It is a tourist spot and is famous for Pomegranates.

 Pavagada is similar to Madhugiri but the fort here was built some six centuries back in 1405 by a Vijayanagar Chieftain. The town’s Sree Shaniswara temple is the anchor place for the market...it looks colourful with ladies selling bangles and rolls of coloured cloth on pavements. Pavagada is famous for groundnuts. One particular sight that fascinated me on the drive (that cuts across Andhra Pradesh too) is the sight of women removing the covers of lentils (tur dal stocks) by letting it fall at an angle from a raised platform like the back of a lorry vehicle. The villagers were curious to see us photographing them. I also understand that Pavagada is a naxalite infested area!

 The most interesting part and the reason for undertaking this journey was to witness some yeomen work done by people like A Srinivasa in implementing government schemes. Would you believe that just three years back, some of these areas just 150 to 200 km from the IT capital of India Bangalore --near Madhugiri, Tiptur, Pavagada - did not have electricity and local hamlets housing 10 to 15 huts would stare at the high voltage transmission electrical lines that traversed their terrain not knowing when they would see the “light of a lamp powered by electricity”!

A couple of years back, this problem surfaced and the Central Government launched the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyut Yojana. State electricity boards and Governments identified districts that could benefit from this scheme and Tumkur was one of them. Contracts were awarded to private contractors to bring electricity into villages below poverty line free of cost. Mr. A. Srinivas worked for one such contractor and was tasked to execute a project of lighting 26000 houses in about 3000 villages in this district. This journey started in 2006 and is almost complete now. We got to know of this and decided to visit one of the beneficiary villages and actually check it out. Madhugiri and Pavagada then just happened to be tourist spots – on the way - to witnessing and interacting with the beneficiaries and people who made it happen!

 A little background on Mr. Anand Srinivasa Rao. He is about 65 years old - a retired electrical engineer who studied in PES College of Engineering, Mandya and dared to go to Firozabad, a small town in Western UP to pursue a career. On passing Engineering, there were few openings then for Engineers – a recession (?). He got a reference for a job opening in a private Electrical Distribution Company called WESPO—acronym for Western Uttar Pradesh Electricity Supplying Company. This was in 1971. This young man did not know Hindi- the language of UP, but still chose to leave the comfort of his home, to venture out and see the world. Today he speaks chaste Hindi.

He worked for a decade in Firozabad, which then was a manufacturing hub for glass articles and artifacts like bangles, lamp shades, dining ware etc. I had an opportunity to see this place—pretty unhygienic with small children sweating it out in the hot hot foundries and glass furnaces, blowing and cooling glass as they gave shape to it in manual, unproductive, resentful work environments. Srinivasa helped transform the electrical and distribution losses by modernizing and legalizing the equipment and power supply, thereby lowering revenue leaks. This was a dauntless task. He was supported in this work by a faithful wife who hailed from Mumbai and who gave up a job in a leading bank to be a housewife- in true Indian tradition! Many a time, the couple debated on leaving the place and seeking a job in Karnataka or Mumbai…but a rumour that the private company would be taken over by the Government kept him glued to the job from a job security perspective – to support his growing family.

As his family grew, he managed to get a transfer to Agra , an educational hub where he stayed from 1981 to 1991 and later moved to Lucknow, the UP State Electricity Board’s Head quarters where he retired in 2002 at age 56. He returned to Bangalore to look after his mother and in 2006, he took up this job with a private contractor. His role was to oversee and execute an order of Rs. 24 Crore—that of electrifying 3000 hamlets – 26000 light points – free of cost – one each for a “below poverty line” family. (Material cost supplied by the electricity board constitutes Rs.22 Crore). His job required him to either settle in Tumkur or commute everyday for almost 6 hours from Bangalore to Tumkur and back and also travel almost another 100 km everyday into the interiors of the district to plan, implement, guide and execute the order. All six days a week! His transition from a Government to a private company job was an experience in itself and on top of it, he consciously chose to traverse some 150 to 300 km every single working day, the last three years. I think the mission excited him. Remember Shah Rukh Khan in Swades – a Hindi movie. Well, here is Srinivasa GIVING ACTUAL SHAPE to something that we city bred folks take for granted. Don’t we fret and fume when there are power cuts? Here are villages, just 200 km from where you and I stay, that don’t have basic electricity!

 It takes passion, courage and patience to give shape to dreams and schemes that are well meaning on paper but need tremendous application and grit to reach intended beneficiaries.

 And there I was in Devaragada, some 15 km from Pavagada, talking to local villagers in a tiny hamlet of just ten houses or so (six unoccupied). Srinivasa and his colleague Murthy take me around and show me the electrical poles, 25 KVA transformers, metering boxes, ceramic and strain insulators and the seven chord interwoven cable wires of Aluminium and steel. (Steel ones are referred to by names of animals and others like Aluminium by names of insects). These are stored and transported to sites over long distances and there are periodic inspections. Some of these schemes are misused and it is practically difficult to run a tight ship.

  Hats off to the courage , passion and tireless work of people like Anand Srinivasa Rao  who go out of the way, tirelessly to “light a lamp” in the dark naxalite infested lands…Making a difference!

 Now you know why I visited Madhugiri and Pavagada with my family on a hot day – a holiday when I could have just relaxed at home…The reason – to give a flip and recognize some good work that normally can go unnoticed- and the journey to Madhugiri and Pavagada was only incidental…