Gujarat Govt, You Promised Canal Water & Now Send Cops to Stop Us?

A castor seed farmer talks about Gujarat government’s unkept promises.  

(Photo: Rahul Nair/The Quint)

Video Editor: Mohd Irshad
Reporter: Rahul Nair

Six years ago, a minor canal was constructed at Nanagoria Village in Surendranagar district of Gujarat. Yet, in all these years, the government has hardly ever released any water into the canal. The canal connects to the main Narmada canal in the nearby Maliya town of Surendranagar.

In the last Assembly elections, the government had promised that the villages where the Narmada canal network has reached would receive water for irrigation. The government had even issued an advertisement for the same in the newspapers declaring that farmers who want to irrigate their farms through Narmada canal should fill up a form and submit it to them.

The villagers from Nanagoria followed the due process and submitted our forms at the government office at Viramgam. Still they never released water in the canal.

If that was not enough, the government doesn’t allow us to use water from the main canal that flows at Maliya. When we farmers set up our pumps and machines on the canals, the government deploys the State Reserve Police (SRP). The SRP personnel threaten us and damage our pumps if we don’t move them from the canal.

This is extremely infuriating for us. First the government promises to deliver water through canals, then it doesn’t follow its own words and to top it off they use SRP to ensure that we don’t irrigate our fields.

Now that the elections are here, we know that the government will run door-to-door for election campaign. But we won’t listen to their lies any more. We all will ask them – kya hua tera vaada?

Its not just about water scarcity. I have been living in Nanagoria since my birth and I am yet to see the village have bus services. How will poor farmers and labourers who cannot afford a personal vehicle travel to nearby towns and villages?

Further, as the women in the village have expressed, we don’t even have a rural health clinic. When our women are pregnant and need to deliver, we have to rush them to the nearest town which is 10-15 km away from Nanagoria. How is this vikas?

This election season we will not let the politicians talk us into voting for them. We are going to ask them for an account of all the promises made and delivered by them. Instead we would ask them again – kya hua tera vaada?

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