Beyond the city: For these Satara villages, heavy rain means closed schools, shut roads
Bigger SUVs are needed to cross the streams on the road. For a 16 km round trip, it costs Rs 2,500. (Express photo by Pavan Khengre)
Deep in the Satara district, the only sounds audible in the otherwise quiet village of Navaja are of water gushing down from the Ozarde waterfall visible in the distance, and of the heavy rain lashing the rooftops. The village received 394 mm of rainfall on July 28, according to the Maharashtra’s Agriculture Ministry rainfall data. The village is used to high rainfall every year, but this was the highest rainfall it had received in 24 hours in the past two years at least. The primary school in the village remains closed for the whole month of July, as per local residents. Children go to nearby villages for secondary and higher secondary schooling.Just like the previous monsoon, the main road connecting the village with Koynanagar, a bigger village nearby, has caved in. This means that state transport buses cannot reach the village. Private vehicles manage to travel on an unpaved road. Ramchandra Jadhav, a retired Maharashtra State Electricity Board employee and a resident of Navaja, says, “There are only three jeeps in this region. One leaves at 7:30 in the morning, the next at 8:30, and the last one at 9:30. School kids have to travel by these jeeps. And only when the jeep fills with 10 people does it come back. We have to do all business in these trips.” “The road is our biggest issue. It has been closed for a month after it caved in. And because of the road, we don’t have ST bus service,” says Ranjana Shelar, member of the village’s group gram panchayat. Navaja got BSNL mobile network coverage just the previous year, Jadhav says. The village has 100-150 residents, he says, most of whom have moved to Pune or Mumbai for work. in Another village in Satara, Patherpunj, is in a worse state. Located on a mountain and famous for its extremely high rainfall, the village gets practically cut off from the rest of the world during the monsoon. Overflowing streams flow over the almost 8 km long kucha road leading up to the village, meaning regular cars cannot pass through. Bigger SUVs are needed to cross the streams on the road. For a 16 km round trip, it costs Rs 2,500.Story continues below this ad Officials at the local tehsil office warn to not embark towards Patherpunj during the monsoon citing danger. “There is no network atop the mountain. If you get stuck, you will not be able to inform anyone,” an official warns. Local MLA and Minister in the Maharashtra Cabinet Shambhuraj Desai has previously spoken about converting Patherpunj into a tourist destination. However, the reality on the ground seems far from it.
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