It takes two to three hours before their turn comes. Till a few days ago, they would do the chores at home before leaving for school at 11 a.m. They would be back in queue at the handpump at 5 p.m. Now during holidays, their afternoon is spent ensuring their cattle too get enough water. Rama’s village lies in the Shivpuri block, just 15 km from the town of Shivpuri. For the last 30 years her Lok Sabha constituency, with a five year break in 1984, has been represented by a Scindia—the Rajmata, Madhavrao and now Jyotiraditya. For the last six years Yashodhararaje Scindia has been Rama’s MLA.

But while the Scindias are important here they are not central to the elections. It is Rama who personalises a far more immediate and central issue. With development as its theme, the NDA manifesto boasts of a number of central schemes focused on bijli,sadak and paani. But as Rama could testify, she wouldn’t be facing a problem if prime minister Atal Bihari’s much touted ‘Swajaldhara’ Yojna had worked half as well as the NDA has been claiming it has. In fact, the problem may have not existed if the scheme had worked at all in drought-prone districts of MP such as Shivpuri, Sheopur and Bhind.

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It was towards the end of 2002 that news of this central scheme came to villages such as Rauda. Actually the scheme is best described in the introduction to the NDA manifesto under the head ‘Drinking water’: ‘‘More than Rs 40,000 crore have been invested in the rural water supply sector during the last five decades by the Central and State Governments. However, the results have not been commensurate with this investment, primarily because the schemes did not have an in-built mechanism for people’s participation, panchayat ownership, and bureaucratic accountability. The NDA Government removed this shortcoming by launching the Swajaldhara program in December 2002. Under this, 90 per cent of funds on capital cost would be given by the Centre directly to Panchayats. The remaining 10 per cent of the capital cost and full Operation and Maintenance (O&M) responsibility will be borne by the community.’’

In 2002 villages such as Rauda were reeling under the worst drought in decades. Over the next year several malnutrition deaths were reported in Shivpuri. So Badri Kushwah convinced seven other fellow villagers to sign up for the scheme. Together they pooled the Rs 5,000 required for ‘people’s participation’. Ram Bharosi Sharma was another person who had signed up with another 6 villagers. They say they were each promised a handpump within a month.

Badri and Ram Bharosi were not the only ones to sign up. R L More is the Shivpuri executive engineer of the Public Health Engineering Department. According to him, Rs 48 lakh were deposited under the scheme in Shivpuri alone. He had earlier been posted in Sheopur and knows Rs 12 lakh were deposited there. He puts the figure in the neighbouring districts of Bhind and Morena, both even worse hit than Shivpuri, at Rs 90 lakh each. Considering this as the community’s 10 per cent, with the Centre committed to providing the remaining 90 per cent, the amount should have provided for a 1,000 additional handpumps in the 1,251 villages of Shivpuri alone and another 3,000 handpumps in the remaining districts.

Not a single handpump has come up here under the scheme. Unfortunately of the over Rs 4 crore the Central scheme should have brought to Shivpuri not a single paisa has reached the district. Or the other districts which make up the Gwalior-Chambal region around the PM’s hometown. R L More adds that a paltry Rs 25 lakh has been remitted recently, but with the code of conduct in place even the little work this amount can pay for has not started. He admits that withdrawals have already started. In fact, in these districts with no sign of the centre coughing up the share, the administration is actively encouraging depositors to take their money back.

Jagdish Sharma is also a resident of Rauda, ‘‘More people would have signed up for the scheme but we were waiting to see what happened to the money Badri and Ram Bharosi had deposited. Here we do not worry about who or what the Maharaj (Jyotiraditya) is, we want a solution to our problem. No one has yet come to us during this campaign but when they come here we will tell them, promise us electricity and a handpump, and we will give you 350 votes.’’