The residents of a cluster of poverty stricken villages such as Tadmetla, Timapur, Morpalli, Neelampalli, Pulampad and Chimli in remote forested but Maoist stronghold Sukma district have every reason to believe that they are at the extreme receiving end of violence by insurgents which grabbed international headlines.
Though the people of Tadmetla area living in extreme poverty for decades as they are caught in cross between leftist insurgents and security forces since late 1980s, the area hit headlines across India on April 6, 2010 when 76 security men fell to the Maoist bullets in a deadly ambush. Within a year, the tribal residents were subjected to another another trauma as their 249 houses were burnt down in three villages including Tadmetla.
The spectre of poverty and neglect is palpable now in the six villages with no certanty of water and power supply which although never actually improved in the villages even before the two incidents which brought the villages in the global map. The villages now have desperate people remaining devoid of all basic amenities.
The water supply situation in the villages is grim with Tadmetla and Neelampalli villages having 95 per cent non operational hand pumps. At the worst end of the apathy chain, reports have it that the villagers are making small drains out of flowing nullahs to drink its water in desperation.
The villagers who had deposed before the TMTD Judicial Inquiry Commission and the CBI have told officials that water situation in the villages is extremely grave.
The administrative machinery seems to have collapsed completely in Tadmetla where villagers say they had exactly six handpumps for the village and not one is operational.
The Neelampalli panchayat has a cluster of five villages mainly—Timapur, Kistaram, Pulampad and Chimli with an estimated population between 500 to 1,700 people. The panchayat has five out of seven hand pumps non operational .
The Government did sent a team of Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) officials to repair the pumps in the villages but nothing is known about the status of the pumps in the villages.