KASARAGOD: "I have given up. Now my children and youths have taken up the campaign. They are doing what I did. Plus, they have social media, too," said 69-year-old Kesava Bhat, a farmer at Khanderi, a village bordering Karnataka in Enmakaje panchayat of Kasaragod district.
In the past eight years, there is no door Bhat has not knocked to bring his village on the internet map. "For students and farmers of Khanderi, Digital India will always remain a distant dream," he said. Khanderi is 4 km from the Karnataka border. The nearest tower is at Aduksthala, 5 km from the village. The people on the Karnataka side of the border are serviced by a tower 3 km away.
Bhat has written to Kapil Sibal when he was the telecom minister, then to his successors Ravi Shankar Prasad and Manoj Sinha. "I have written to the President of India, to the Prime Minister's Office and the various officials of the Departments, up to the zonal manager in Kozhikode," he said.
His persistence has brought in only one change: the faces and names of officials and ministers he engages with. "They tell me the previous official has retired and I am new to the post," Bhat said. There are around 500 houses with 2,000 persons in a radius of 4km at Khanderi who are not on the 4G grid of India.
Places such as Mungalikana, Kayargadde, Piliangallu, Mayilakana, Balamule, Khanderi, and Seenthapadav are totally off the 4G grid. "We only have a weak 2G network in our village. We have to sit on top of hills to ensure there is no call drop," said 29-year-old Prashant N, nephew of Keshav Bhat. He is pursuing a chartered accountancy course in Bengaluru. Bhat walked around 100 metres from his house to speak to The New Indian Express.
Since the COVID pandemic hit the country, classes have gone online and office work is done from home. "We miss the internet connection the most now. I think I will lose this year," said Trisha Rai, a pre-university student in Karnataka's Puttur, which is 25 km from Khanderi. Trisha misses out on most of her classes and notes sent by her teachers.
Pradeep KP, a youth, runs a business in the village, employing eight persons. "I am not able to do basic activities such as mobile banking or paying bills online. The situation is crippling," he said.
The youths of the village are running a sustained campaign on social media such as Facebook and Twitter to get the attention of private players such as Airtel, Vodafone-Idea, and Reliance Jio. "We have contacted Jio. The executives have given us hope. Hope they solve our problem," said Shree Krishna Bhat of Batyamoole.
He was a primary school teacher in a government school at Odya in Dakshina Kannada. Ward member Malika Rai said very few people in the village had a landline phone and there is no mobile network. "Can people imagine a life without a mobile phone in today's world," she said.