Residents of Vinoba Nagar, a labor colony in Kudremukh in Chikkamagalur, are repairing the road with their contributions. | Photo credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Long years of waiting for the road to be repaired are over as residents of Vinoba Nagar in Kudremukh, Chikkamagaluru have taken up the work themselves. The labor colony workers, who contributed materials out of their own pockets, laid the road on December 1, ending decades of suffering.
The last time the road — which is about 200 meters long and connects the labor colony to the village’s Aiyappa temple — was tarmacked more than 30 years ago, when the Kudremukh Iron Ore Company Ltd. (KIOCL) still active. The company shut down its operations following a Supreme Court order in 2005. This hit hard as most of the population in the colony were migrants from faraway places who came to work for the company on daily wages.
While the regular employees of the company were transferred to different units, the contract workers lost their source of income. They stayed in the colony and decided to take any job that came their way. Many of the 170 families in the colony worked on plantations and in construction. A few moved to nearby places to seek sustenance. They had no electricity supply for all these years.
Vikram Kudremukh, a documentary filmmaker and a native of Vinoba Nagar, told The Hindu that the residents of the colony decided to lay the road with their own money as repeated appeals to the elected representatives and officers yielded no response. “The work, involving 40 people, started on the morning of December 1 and continued till late at night. We laid the concrete road using 70 bags of cement and other materials. The total cost is over ₹ 1.5 million. This was made possible thanks to generous contributions from local people,” he said.
Residents recalled that they faced difficulties in getting autorickshaws to their colony all these years because of the disorderly road. Young people hesitated to carry older people as riders on the saw because the potholes posed a risk to them. It was also difficult to transport patients and pregnant women to hospitals.
A resident of Rajamma said the youth in the colony contributed from their pockets to improve the road. “They all work hard on the plantations. They have contributed to the journey. We are all happy with their gesture,” she said.
“We have no electricity supply, no proper road and no regular supply of drinking water. The elected representatives only want our votes but are not interested in providing us any services,” said a resident of Doreraju.
Here are links to previous stories on this issue:
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/pandemic-pushes-this-labour-colony-to-the-brink/article32165873.ece
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/lack-of-transport-basic-amenities-and-fear-of-displacement-still-bother-people-in-naxal-affected-areas/article68893810.ece
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/a-film-on-woes-of-a-labour-colony-by-a-resident/article24938671.ece
Published – 03 Dec 2025 20:11 IST
