On our road trip to witness the Kumbmela, we stopped at this dam on our second day of our trip covering from Hyderabad to Jabalpur. February was not a great month to travel. None of the rivers we have crossed till now had enough water to be considered as one. We decided to check this place since it was only 3 kilometer away from the National Highway and traveling in highways was too fast and took me too far away from the slow moving people.
We crossed the Godavari river and took a left to the smaller roads. The scene changed rapidly from the average scene you see on a highway. The place looked as if it was so much deep in poverty.
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| Small road side scenes in Telangana |
Its said that "Dams are the temples of the Modern India" and people who stayed just next to the temples were living in poverty. I am also from a village and I had seen huts like this during my childhood days. I was in the opinion that huts and gone for good these days. It felt like these people are left behind in the economical growth by at least 10 years.
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| We were welcomed by buffalos. |
We were welcomed by buffalos blocking our way. We had to wait till they clear the way to go ahead. Following Google maps, we reached a spot which was marked as View point to find nothing there.
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| The place marked as view point on Google Maps |
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| We stopped the car and walked up the bund. |
We stopped our car there and walked up the bund to witness the Dam. The dam was huge. Might be the biggest dam I have ever seen. I was expecting an empty dam, but was shocked to see water in it. I used to thing my village is poor because, we do not have enough water to do agriculture. But might be I was wrong. Even with enough water, agriculture is not going to increase the living standards of people.
It just makes me think, might be what Arundhati Roy says in
Walking with Comrades about Dams is true.
There was a time when believing that Big Dams were the ‘temples of Modern India’ was misguided, but perhaps understandable. But today, after all that has happened, and when we know all that we do, it has to be said that Big Dams are a crime against humanity.
