Degree student helps parents in farm works in Warangal

The closure of the educational institutions due to COVID-19 is prompting many students from poor families to either help their parents or even work as farmhands in rural areas

Warangal: A degree final year student of a private college in Hanamkonda is helping her parents in the farm operations including the paddy transplantation at Pegadapally village which is located on the outskirts of the city abutting the campus of the Kakatiya University (KU) here.

When asked about her opinion on working as a farmhand, Sravani, daughter of Gandu Rama and Ravi Yadav, giggles and says that she was feeling happy to help her parents. “Working in the farm fields is not a thing to feel inferior. Moreover, the college is closed now,” she said adding that she was doing her final year B.Sc (BZC) in the Vaagdevi Degree College, Nayeem Nagar in Hanamkonda. Her father Ravi, who was a chairman of the Pegadapally government high school’s parents committee for two terms, said that both of his children, daughter and son, studied in the government school. “I was hospitalized for 10 days due to COVID-19. I was on oxygen support. By god’s grace, I could survive,” he said adding that he had taken some farmland on lease to eke out a living.

“The closure of the educational institutions due to COVID-19 is also prompting many students from poor families to either help their parents or even work as farmhands in many rural areas in the erstwhile district,” said Dr Bhukya Devender, an Asst Professor in the Department of Education, Kakatiya University (KU). The woman farmhands are paid Rs 400 to Rs 500 per day for paddy transplantation.

Meanwhile, 65 per cent of the cultivatable land of 14.04 lakh acres was cultivated in this Vaanakalam season in the erstwhile Warangal district. However, paddy translation is going on in full swing.