Known to have played a significant role during the freedom struggle, today the village is more famous with each of its household having at least one teacher.
Though lack of resources and facilities for providing good education in rural regions continues to remain a pressing issue in India, the village of Alavandi in Koppal district of Karnataka stands out among the rest.
Known to have played a significant role during the freedom struggle, today the village is more famous with each of its household having at least one teacher.
According to Times of India, as many as 900 individuals are involved in the field across Karnataka. While agriculture continues to remain the primary source of livelihood, people in Alavandi have a great regard towards education.
It was post the struggle for independence that made the leaders focus on equipping the village with better educational opportunities.
“After achieving independence, freedom fighter, Shivamurthy Swami Alavandi realised the village was deprived of education. By then, it had a government lower primary school, which had classes till class 4. He floated the Karnataka Vidya Vardhaka Samiti and established a primary school till class 7 in 1955. Then, the Karnataka Vidyalaya High School came up in 1968, and the pre-university college was introduced in 1981,” said A T Kalmath, who is a retired lecturer.
Another teacher from the village, Gururaj Patil, who has been on the field for the past 23 years proudly mentioned that each household in Alavandi has two or three teachers.
Everyone has some sort of inspiration that leads them to the path they eventually build their lives around. For Devaraddi Dambarahalli, inspiration came in the form of his teachers, and today he teaches in a school in Koppal.
Known personalities from the village include Professor Tejaswi Kattimani, who is the vice-chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Tribal University in Madhya Pradesh and writer T V Magalad.
With the younger generation equally driven to pursue the noble profession of teaching, looks like the legacy of Alavandi as the village of teachers will continue to hold.
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