Waterlogged villages left high and dry even in poll season

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Gurdaspur, December 5

Residents of 90-odd villages, stretching across the assembly segments of Dinanagar, Qadian and Gurdaspur, are squarely blaming the SAD-BJP combine for being insensitive towards the problem of waterlogging.

Residents say they have to live on just one crop throughout the year which, in turn, is not sufficient to eke out a decent living.

Darshan Singh, former sarpanch of Chinna Bet village, claims to have petitioned the administration on several occasions to clean the drains which remain full of weeds throughout the year, but to no avail. “The problem can be solved to a certain extent if the drains are cleaned. This time when I took my combine to harvest my paddy crop it just got stuck in the fields because the earth was too soggy. The lack of funds plea given by officials is becoming more of a justification rather than an excuse,” he said.

Villages normally have different groups owning loyalties to different political parties. However, this year these harried residents have decided, cutting across political affiliations, to come on a single platform.

Dalbir Chand, Sarpanch of Pakhowal Kullian, yet another village whose ecological equilibrium has been disturbed by excess water, curses his destiny as he points towards his fields.

“For me an election serves no purpose. Politicians are people who have mastered the art of building a bridge where no rivers exists. During the 2007 and 2012 elections, we were promised that the problem will be solved. We waited for 10 years. Nothing happened. Now we will not be casting our vote in favour of SAD,” he said.

Every village has people like Dalbir struggling to make both ends meet.

Dinanagar MLA Aruna Chaudhury claims that earlier she used to discuss the matter regularly with the drainage officials. “Now I have stopped approaching the administration because nobody is keen to look into the problem. One crop a year means villagers have to take loans at exorbitant rates of interest from money lenders. Like excess water, extremely high interest rates too are stifling the lives of poor villagers,” she says.