One February morning, a group of government officials, accompanied by several local residents, set out on a gruelling five-hour trek, navigating narrow paths through hilly terrain and crossing streams without a bridge or a boat. Their destination was a remote village in Chhattisgarh’s Abujhmad — a region that had been under Maoist control for years and acted as the de facto headquarters for the banned Maoist party’s leadership.
The officials, Block Education Officer, Block Resource Coordinator and Cluster Coordinator, were being taken by the village sarpanch and some residents to Karkebeda village, under Ghamandi Gram Panchayat, to set up a school there.
The village, 70 km from Narayanpur district headquarters, does not have road connectivity, doesn’t appear on Google Maps, and until February, was not linked to the state’s education system. The officials set up a primary school in a temporary shed equipped with a blackboard, and gave 20 children textbooks, slates and pencils. A local teacher, Runita Pawe, was appointed to run the school.
Three months later, the government has now sanctioned the construction of a proper building for the school as well as a subroad leading up to the building.
Until 2012, the people of Karkabeda had the option of sending their children to a primary school in Kongali village, four kilometres away. However, like many schools in the Bastar division, this one was also shut down under threats from the Maoists, who feared it would be used as a shelter by security forces and that the staff would act as police informers.
Abujhmad, where the village is located, is an unsurveyed area larger than the state of Goa. In intensified operations against Maoists since 2024, over 100 Maoists have been gunned down in the region or in its periphery, including the general secretary of the banned CPI (Maoist), Nambala Keshava Rao alias Basavaraju, last year. Following his death last year, two other top Maoist leaders based in Abujhmad, Politburo member Mallojula Venugopal and Central Committee member Takkallapalli Vasudev Rao alias Rupesh, surrendered along with 269 cadres and over 200 weapons.
With the killings and surrenders of Maoists in Abujhmad and the wider Bastar division leading to large areas being reclaimed from Maoist control, focus has since turned to bringing roads and other basic amenities to these areas as part of efforts to develop the region.
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Karkebeda village itself had seen its share of Maoist violence. Its adjoining village, Makur, was home to a known member of the Maoist cadre, Ajay Maha, said Narayanpur SP Robinson Guria. In 2024, five Maoists were killed in an encounter near Karkebeda, after which Maha surrendered. The new school also caters to children from Makur.
The trek
Block Education Officer Santu Ram Nuretti, who led the team that set up the school in February, explained the five-hour journey they undertook to the village from the Narayanpur district headquarters.
The first leg of the journey, between Naraynpur and Kachchapal, was comfortable — in a vehicle through proper roads. From Kachchapal, there were no more paved roads, but there was at least a motorable path that took them to Jatwar. It was from Jatwar that the five-hour trek on foot began for the officials.
“We left early in the morning. The paths are narrow and do not stay firm underfoot in stretches. There were river streams to cross without bridges, requiring the team to find the right points and wade through. There were streams with slippery beds, stretches of forest incline, and no markers other than the paths worn by villagers who make this journey daily out of necessity,” Nuretti said.
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Once they reached and set up the school, Nuretti said, the troubles of the journey were quickly forgotten. “When we reached there and saw the children, all our tiredness vanished. Seeing them with books stirs something deep inside,” he said.
The residents of the village belong to the Abujhmadiya tribes, categorised as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG).
Regarding the initiative, Narayanpur Collector Namrata Jain said a district-wide, door-to-door survey covering 22,364 households across 83 gram panchayats identified 2,965 out-of-school children — 1,360 who never enrolled and 1,605 who dropped out. For the first time, each child was individually mapped, the official said.
Jain said, “10 non-functional schools were reopened — Matwada (19 students), Gattakal (39), Nelangur (29), Padamkot (43), Toyameta (32), Diwalur (24), Vadapenda (10), Kongali (13), Balebeda (17), and Binagunda (24) — bringing 250 children back into formal schooling.”
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Simultaneously, 24 new primary schools were established in remote areas such as Kodenar (25 students), Ghamandi (26), Hingenar (20), Galegunrpara–Hitawada (29), Gundedkot (22), Kunjevada (26), and others. Across these schools, nearly 500 children accessed education for the first time, officials said. Together, these efforts ensured that over 800 children gained direct access to schooling.
