The depleting water table, now below 300 feet, in the village was one of the primary reasons for the aggravated agrarian crisis in the village. \u201cWeren\u2019t we supposed to get more water and irrigation facilities as a Lohia gram? Why were we not given any water in the last five years?\u201d asks Devi.<\/p>\n
In the last few years, no new borewells or irrigation facilities have been added to the village. As a result, negligible crops could be sowed in the fields for lack of water. Only vast expanses of parched fields surround the village now. He says the tankers that were sent in last year\u2019s drought were personally used by the village\u00a0pradhan<\/em>, Pradyuman Singh. \u201cHe only works as an agent of the Block Development Officer. To show that the road is constructed under the Lohia gram scheme, he constructed a patch from the road to his house with cemented drains. Rest of the village doesn\u2019t have any of this. Who do we complain to about this corruption? We have never seen a government official visit us in these five years.\u201d he complains.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nAccording to the Lohia gram vikas scheme, one of the key projects is the electrification of the villages. But in this village it proved counterproductive. \u201cFirstly, the power supply per day is no more than two to four hours-just enough to charge mobile phones. Secondly, the bills that most villagers were receiving were as high as Rs 30,000. So most people surrendered their connections,\u201d says Maghai Ram.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
What about other schemes by the state government like Samajwadi pension and laptops to young students?<\/div>\n
Kishan Lal says, \u201cOnly two young men were given laptops in the village. One of them is my son. He watches cinema on it all day. Similarly, the samajwadi pension scheme which was supposed to be given to the poor and landless is only given to five people in the village. Forget the special schemes by the SP government, we do not even get access to basic ones.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
There are 32 disabled people in the village but only seven get pension from the government. Ram Bhaiya says, \u201cEven the Lohia Awaas scheme was allotted only to rich people who could pay bribe, not to the poor and the landless. There have been cases where the wife was allotted and Indira Awaas and the husband was allotted Lohia Awaas according to\u00a0
pradhan<\/em>\u2019s recommendation.\u201d<\/div>\nIndira Awaas Yojana, now known as Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana, is a social welfare flagship programme, created by the Indian Government, to provide housing for the rural poor in India while Lohia Awas Yojana is a similar program started by SP government at state level. \u201cForget construction of toilets even\u00a0
safai karmis<\/em>, who are supposed to regularly visit all Lohia grams, are nowhere to be seen,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nHas there been any kind of development in the village in the last five years? \u201cForget development, the officers do not even inform us about the government schemes to apply for. They think it is a\u00a0
tauheen<\/em>(insult) to come to our village,\u201d says Devi Singh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a><\/div>\n\n
What about the police? The closest police station is 30 km away. Kanta Prasad says, \u201cIf you push the police too much, they threaten you. It happened in Kali\u2019s case.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Kali is a 70-year-old Thakur woman who lives with her brother-in-law in the far end of the village. Raja Ram, her husband died ten years back. He had taken a loan of Rs 10,000 twenty years ago from Chotu Singh\u2019s father and mortgaged his 87
beeghas<\/em>\u00a0of land. Over the years, the interest accumulated and since no accounts were kept, Chotu Singh took over the land and paid Kali a mere Rs 15,000. \u201cWhen she tried to approach the police along with her sons, they threatened them with the\u00a0goonda<\/em>\u00a0Act. They left the village in fear and did not come back.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nKanta says, \u201cThere have been at least 50 incidents of crime in the village in the last year but not a single FIR was registered.\u201d<\/div>\n
When contacted, Pradyuman Singh, the\u00a0
pradhan<\/em> of the village said, \u201cI have been working for the village\u2019s development but the illiterate people of the village don\u2019t have the aptitude to notice. They are lying.\u201d Mahendra Singh, Block Development Officer, Naraini was unavailable for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nSo who will they vote for in the upcoming elections?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\u201cNeither did Modi think of us nor Akhilesh. We will vote for the one who does not make false promises, one who makes officers do their work.\u00a0
Jab pet na bhara ho toh vikaas ka kya karenge.\u00a0<\/em>(When our stomachs are empty, what will we do of development?)\u201d Kirpal Singh concludes.<\/div>\nPublished by TheWire.in on February 22, 2017 \nhttps:\/\/thewire.in\/agriculture\/bundelkhand-village-cry-food-not-development<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cHave you heard\u00a0of kangaali mein aata geela? That is our situation,\u201dsays Sugha Singh as he sits outside Balwan Singh\u2019s house along with other village men under the tree on a warm February afternoon. He is referring to an old Hindi idiom which means getting into more hardships one after another. They are mourning the death…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,112,118],"tags":[],"thb-sponsors":[],"yoast_head":"\n
In this Bundelkhand Village, a Cry for Food, not Development - Neha Dixit<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n