India’s highway of death innovated a village for the widows. This village is known as Peddakunta, belonging to the Mahbubnagar district of Telangana, lying adjacent to the national highway 44 which connects Bengaluru and Hyderabad. In the village there are 35 huts with families but there is only one male adult. Other 37 died in a tragedy. The tragedy due to a small settlement. Some women lost their husband, children and dear ones. There are no men to look after their family. 80 Accidents were reported including people from other villages also.
The reason of death
The road was built in 2006. The village headquarters is on the other side of the highway and its 5 km far from the village. Every one has to cross it for any work . The villagers wanted to go to the other side of the bypass highway for all the thing such as panchayat office, community health center, school, and the nearest industrial area for employment etc. So all of them crossed the road – “but many did not return”. The shocking news was that last month a member of the nearby village went to the government office with a petition over the increasing number of death and that member died while returning. Dangerous potholed roads are the another cause of the accident. The villagers are waiting for a service route, so they could get safe passage.
Women are Unsafe
The bypass project was launched in the village by giving promise to the village members that they will construct a safe passage for the people of Peddakunta Thanda and nearby villages to the panchayat headquarters in Nandigama. The promise was never fulfilled. Each week there were 2 or 3 accidents happening in the highway. Villagers were forced to walk through the four lanes. Women were between the age of 25 and 38 so they were facing the other dangerous problems like walking alone, most of them were widows making them vulnerable to men from neighboring villages for taking sexual advantages from them. Poverty and the lack of income however pushed most of the women to prostitution. Villagers say that politicians and government members visit the village frequently but even after media attention there were no relief from the visit. The only relief they got was a half kilogram of rice for every family to eat . Non of them have any work or money and family.
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