RAMESWARAM: The late President Dr A P J Abdul Kalam was a passionate advocate of 'providing urban services in rural areas’- as captured in the acronym ‘PURA’ he himself had given for that initiative. But close to his ancestral home in Rameswaram, people of Vadakadu village, barely six-km from this pilgrim town, have been crying for basic civic amenities like a proper road, streetlights and drinking water, for the past 13 years. The local municipality, the Ramanathapuram district administration, local area MP and MLAs’ have all been petitioned by the helpless people for long years to give them the minimum infrastructure any village would need, but to no avail so far.
Vadakadu, a coastal fishing hamlet with about 150 families residing there, is close to Gandhamadhana Parvatham, which houses the famous ‘Ramar Paadam (believed to be Lord Ram’s footprints)’ to which many tourists and pilgrims throng during a visit to Rameswaram. This village now does not even have a ‘pucca’ appro-ach road, complain the villagers. After the 2004 Tsunami that left countless coastal roads battered, the Mandapam panchayat union helped in converting a ‘kutcha (mud) road’ to the village with a black-topped asphalt road at a cost of '23.75 lakh.
However, since then the only link road to the village has not seen even an inch of maintenance, leave alone black-topping, say villagers. Prawn farms have since mushroomed in the area and the road has had to take wear and tear at a more rapid pace, thanks to number of heavy vehicles plying that stretch for the new farms. A town bus service was also introduced to enable the children attend school, but all that is in a mess today with the road riddled with pot-holes and undulations, amid the recent rains adding to the people’s woes.
“Even for any medical emergency, the 108 Ambulance is not able to drive in to our village,” wails a local, adding, their village has no streetlights. A dependable source of potable water has also become a big question mark at Vadakadu. To air all these grievances, the villagers on Friday staged a “petition giving agitation” before the Municipality office here. An official of the local body assured that action will be soon taken on their long-pending demands, in a bid to get them to disperse peacefully. Nonetheless, “if by October 20, the authorities take no action, the entire village will join us to occupy the Municipal building for we have no other place to go,” said Ms. A Arokyanirmala, the taluk unit secretary of the CPI (M) affiliated AIDWA women’s organisation.
