Bhanwra tera paani gazab kar jaaye; Gaghri na foote chahe khasam mar jaaye

(Bhanwra your evasive water is strange, let my pot not break even if my man dies)

If there is one boon that Bhola Yadav’s four sons may ask — if given a choice — from the politicians campaigning in their village, it is to get them married. They all know it won’t happen for it would involve solving their decades-old water woes, which is precisely why many are reluctant to marry their daughters in Gopipur village.

The story is the same in scores of water-starved villages under the Manikpur constituency. For the politicians here, water is a poll plank. But the villagers are sure the campaign promises will be broken.

Almost every family in this village of around 400 people has one eligible bachelor who is unable to marry because of acute water scarcity. The women have to trek for about 4-6 km daily, through the ravines in this rocky terrain, to fetch water. Most of the men work as migrant workers in far-flung Surat, Mumbai and Hyderabad . So, only the elderly, women and children remain. And all of them collect water for the entire day.

“Nobody wants their daughters to suffer in a water-scarce region. And nobody has any hope that our problem will ever be redressed in this corrupt system where the administration supports criminals and gives them a free run,” says an angry 70-something Baleshwar, who has just had his once-in-three-days bath from a fast-depleting water tank on the village outskirts. “We can’t afford the luxury of a daily bath,” he says.

... contd.