Despite being sealed, villagers ensure uninterrupted milk trade

Penjahalli villagers learn to live with Coronavirus; do not depend on authorities for milk business

Hanagodu: As one enters Penjahalli village near Hanagodu in Hunsur which is sealed by the Mysuru District Administration, not a single person can be seen unnecessarily loitering even in the by-lanes. Two COVID-19 positive cases –a mother and her young daughter – has been reported from this village and the village has been sealed twice. 

Police personnel stand guard to ensure no one enters or exits the area. Barricades have been laid and streets are regularly fumigated as people look out from their small houses to witness the process. The entry and exit points of the village has been blocked with barricades and mounds of mud. 

Villagers, however, have learnt to live with Coronavirus and have devised ingenious means to carry on with their livelihood. The village has over 500 families and almost 75 to 110 of whom are in the milk trade. With no person from the village being allowed to go out and outsiders not being able to come in, the milk business — on which the villagers depend — had come to a grinding halt. 

The distraught villagers have now decided to help themselves in selling milk and procuring fodder for their cattle. Every day before the dawn breaks, villagers wake up and milk their cows and fill the milk in big cans. They then carry the cans till the village borders and keep them in an order so that the Milk Dairy vans come to the border and lift the cans. 

Earlier, the milk vans used to come to individual houses inside Penjahalli and used to collect milk. In front of each house, the milk is weighed and the record is entered in a book. Now as the milk vans do not come inside the village, villagers themselves weigh the milk and then deposit it in the cans after entering the quantity. Once the cans are emptied in the Dairy, they are returned to the village by afternoon so that the milk is filled the next day. 

“For us milk selling is a primary source of income and with complete sealing of the village, we are unable to do so. As a result, we were facing an existential crisis. Now we have solved the problem and ensured ways of maintaining an uninterrupted supply of milk,” said Ramegowda, a milk seller from the village.