A couple of years back, the kaccha roads in Mukhra K village in Telangana would overflow with sewage causing mosquito menace, villagers still went out to defecate in the open and education was a distant luxury here.

Today, the same village has become a model for gram panchayats in the Adilabad district.

From local people responsibly segregating waste, helping maintain cleanliness around the property by utilising a soak pit to households becoming energy self-sufficient – the village has transformed in many facets.

Behind this huge village makeover is its sarpanch Gadge Meenakshi who was elected as the village head in 2019.

In her first step towards transformation, she focused on achieving an Open Defecation-Free (ODF) tag by constructing toilets in all the 210 households.

“In addition to this, we constructed soak pits in every house so that we could prevent water leakage on the roads to keep the mosquitoes at bay,” she says.

Interestingly, the village is also earning revenue by selling vermicompost fertiliser produced by adopting the waste management policies.

By selling compost made from waste, they earned Rs 10 lakh in the past 3-4 years.  The profits were used to install solar lights in the schools, anganwadis, roads, and gram panchayat.

“This has reduced monthly power bills expenses of Rs 15,000 for our gram panchayat. Now, we get zero power bill,” she informs.

She also promoted usage of eco-friendly cutlery in weddings, set up a digital library, and deployed a free school bus for children so that they are not forced to stop their higher studies.

“I grew up seeing the problems of this village. Now, at the age of 40, I have witnessed it getting transformed,” adds Meenakshi, who is now working on producing biogas at the village level.