At the sleepy office of the Bundelkhand Vikas Nigam in Jhansi, senior assistant O P Gupta, lone member of the staff apart from a chaprasi and the newly appointed chairman, is clearly unaccustomed to visitors. He recalls the time when the Nigam — revived by the Mayawati government a last month — was still a working institution. It oversaw sugar mills at Rath and Madhogarh, stone crushers at Bijoli, Khilli and Kabrai, and brick kilns in Jalaun, Hamirpur and Jhansi districts. That was till the Nigam, set up in 1971, closed down in 1992.

It reopened a decade and a half later in April 2008, remembers Gupta, when Mayawati appointed local businessman and BSP politician Ramesh Sharma as Nigam chairperson. It was around this time that Rahul Gandhi made his most high-profile visit to the region. And Bundelkhand, comprising some of the most dry and underdeveloped districts of UP and Madhya Pradesh, became the new political flashpoint between the Congress and the BSP.

Now that Sharma — who resigned to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, which he lost — has been re-appointed chairman, is Gupta hopeful that the abandoned office he opens and closes at appointed hours every day, will come back to life?

“There is still no scheme, and no funds”, hesays wearily.

In Jhansi, political nerve centre of the region and home to the first organised stirrings for a separate Bundelkhand state under the aegis of the Bundelkhand Mukti Morcha set up by Shankarlal Mehrotra in 1989, hazy memories survive of the time the Nigam last mattered as an institution meant to sensitise government plans to the region’s specific needs and funnel development funds for it.

... contd.