In Gujarat’s tribal belts, water, jobs on top of voters’ mind as BJP, INDIA scramble to woo them

Shobhli Rathwa, from the Bharkuwa village in Gujarat’s tribal Chhota Udepur district, walks to a well a kilometre from her mud-thatched home almost a dozen times a day to fetch water for her family of five and two cattle. Each time she lugs the water back home, she passes by the cemented water tap “installed” a year ago in her courtyard as part of the Centre’s ambitious ‘Nal Se Jal’ scheme.

“I have been looking at this water tap for over a year… The tap has been installed and a mini tank set up in the village but there is no network of connecting pipes and not a drop of water has come to my house through this tap,” Shobhli says.

Like Shobhli, others in the belt’s villages are waiting for their taps to provide water. “Tall promises were made when the taps were installed in our courtyards… We did not know that they were only showpieces to remind us we are not a population that deserves water from taps in our homes,” says Rami Rathwa in the Vanar village.

Stretching from the Banaskantha district in the north to Valsad in the south, the tribal region in Gujarat, which goes to polls on Monday, covers nine Lok Sabha constituencies. Many tribal women across these belts say the BJP campaign’s emphasis on the success of the Nal Se Jal scheme is “far from reality”.

Ashok Pateliya, an independent sarpanch of Dahod district’s Garbada, says the scheme has “failed”. “It is one of the major issues facing tribal areas of central Gujarat, where water schemes have been commissioned but seem to be implemented only on paper,” he said.

Last May, Gujarat Assembly Deputy Speaker Jetha Ahir said in a letter to Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel that the scheme had failed in his constituency, and demanded an inquiry into alleged “corruption”.

While