Railroad to literacy, and jobs with the government:
Gurajala Households: 125, Employees: 98.
Gurajala, a village in Maganur mandal of Mahbubnagar district, has a government employee in 90 per cent of its 125 households. Except for a few people, most of the population has been educated at least till Class X. All women from the self-help groups are literate.
Half-a-century ago, the number of literates in Gurajala, located on the banks of the Krishna near the Krishna railway station, was in the single digits. Due to a lack of connectivity, most children did not go to school. This changed after the commissioning of the Krishna railway station in 1970s. Soon the villagers started sending their children to schools in Karnataka’s Raichur or Gadwal in Mahbubnagar district.
As the children began finishing school, they began exploring government jobs. Those who secured employment with the state dedicated their free time to training and motivating juniors on how to what strive for securing a government job.
Today, 40 persons from the village are teachers and another 40 are working with the Karnataka Electricity department in Raichur. Eight have completed their engineering and settled in Telangana state or Karnataka as government engineers. Ten work with other government departments. A further 15 villagers have retired from the railways and 14 villagers who have completed their BEd. and DEd are preparing for TET and other exams.
Gurajala mandal parishad president Shiv Raj Patil told this newspaper about this remarkable transformation. “After getting railway connectivity, our literacy rate has increased every year. There are very few illiterates in the village and most of them are old,” he said.
Nearly 200 persons in the village are drivers, and 20 of them are with the RTC. 70 own lorries.
Hitting the road on wheels of fortune:
Pocharam Households: 211, Drivers: 200
Every home in Pocharam village in Ibrahimpatnam mandal of Ranga Reddy district has an individual employed as driver.
Nearly 200 persons in the village have taken up driving as a trade and of them 20 are with the Telangana State Road Transport Corpo-ration. The rest work as lorry and taxi drivers.
The story behind this started 40 years ago when sand in the village and at Ibrahimpatnam Pedda Cheruvu began to be transported out. The villagers used to work as cleaners with lorries transporting the sand. Later, they learned driving and motivated one another to upgrade skills.
The elders in the village, Mr Butti Shankaraiah, Mr Palle Srisailam, Mr Palle Narsimha and others encouraged the young to learn and take up driving.
Pocharam sarpanch K. Prabhakar said 90 per cent of the village’s drivers were literate. “Out of 200 drivers, 70 own lorries. Most of the drivers have studied up to at least Class 10,” he said.
He said that since last year, the drivers have not been having it so good.
“Recently, the traffic police in Hyderabad has imposed restrictions on lorry parking. Since four months, lorries are not being allowed to park at Cham-papet which is the place for sand selling,” he said.
Operating the earth-moving poclainer has become something of a local speciality.
Moving the earth isn’t so difficult:
Kachevarigudem Households: 380, Proclainer operators: 700
Kachevarigudem, a remote village in Nalgonda district under Garidepelle mandal has become the capital of proclainer operators in the state.
An astonishing 700 proclaimer drivers live in the village and each of the 380 households in the village has at least one operator.
Four decades ago, a few people from the village migrated to Vizag and worked in the Vizag Steel Plant as labourers on daily wage. In course of time they learned how to operate proclainers and cranes. This trade was progressively taken up by most of the men in the village.
Mr Dasaraju Ramu, a proclainer operator from Kachevarigudem, said that all the households had at least one proclaimer operator.
“Many of the proclaimer operators are graduates. During the summer, they are on the field at locations across the country. In the monsoon, all operators come back home to the village,” Mr Ramu said.
