Chhattisgarh: The gruelling 5-hour trek to bring a school to a remote village deep inside former Maoist HQ

📌 Summary:

• Government education officials trekked five hours through hilly terrain and bridgeless streams to reach Karkebeda village in Chhattisgarh's Abujhmad — a region that was the de facto headquarters of the banned CPI (Maoist) leadership — to set up a primary school

• The village, 70 km from Narayanpur district HQ, has no road connectivity, does not appear on Google Maps and was outside the state education system until February 2026; a temporary shed school was set up with a blackboard and 20 children given textbooks, slates and pencils, with a local teacher appointed

• Three months on, the government has sanctioned a proper school building and a connecting subroad; the village earlier lost a nearby school in 2012 when Maoists shut it down fearing it would shelter security forces or produce informers

• The development follows intensified anti-Maoist operations since 2024 in which 100+ Maoists were killed (including CPI-Maoist general secretary Basavaraju) and top leaders surrendered with 269 cadres and 200+ weapons — reclaiming areas now being opened to roads and basic amenities

• Karkebeda's residents belong to the Abujhmadiya tribe, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG); a door-to-door survey of 22,364 households across 83 gram panchayats identified 2,965 out-of-school children

🎯 UPSC Relevance: GS2 — extending education and basic services to the last mile, governance penetration into former conflict zones, and the welfare of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups.

🔑 Key Term: Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) — a sub-category of Scheduled Tribes identified by the government as the most marginalised, marked by pre-agricultural technology, low literacy, stagnant or declining population and economic backwardness, requiring special protective measures.