Raebareli: There are broadly three types of people in Urwa gram panchayat of Uttar Pradesh’s Raebareli district—those who are angry about Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s absence over the last 10 years, those who try to justify it, and those who are unaware she ever ‘adopted’ it at all.
In Tiwaripur, one of Urwa’s nine villages, Bitoola and her husband Premal sit cross-legged in their cowshed, weaving white gunny bags by hand. Their family of seven, including Bitoola’s elderly mother and two young children, have to use the fields as a toilet because their home doesn’t have one.
“We go to the fields. It gets really tricky during the rains. My old mother also goes to the field. It causes a lot of problems but we don’t have any other option,” Bitoola says.
Premal and Bitoola are among those who are surprised to learn that in 2014, Urwa was adopted by Sonia Gandhi under the Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY), one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s most ambitious projects.
Launched on the birth anniversary of socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan in October 2014, the scheme was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of village self-governance. It aimed to have each MP adopt select villages within their constituencies and transform them into “adarsh gram” (model villages), with the hope of a positive spillover effect on surrounding areas.
Raebareli Lok Sabha constituency has long been a stronghold for the Congress, with the party winning it continuously since 1951, barring three elections. Sonia Gandhi served as its MP for four consecutive terms since 2004, before stepping down this year to run in the Rajya Sabha elections from Rajasthan.
This time around, the Congress is fielding Sonia’s son Rahul Gandhi from Raebareli, which goes to vote in Phase 5, on 20 May.
But in this corner of the Gandhi family pocket borough, where there are only about 2,900 voters according to Urwa gram panchayat pradhan Ramesh Mishra, a sense of neglect runs deep.
“Sonia Gandhi has only adopted us on paper,” said Mishra. “She never visited. Even her representative never visited us.”
ThePrint called and messaged UP Congress chief Ajay Rai for a comment. This report will be updated if a response is received.
‘Never showed her face’
As far as development goes, Urwa seems to be largely frozen in time, with not much changing since a baseline survey of the gram panchayat was conducted in January 2015. The gram panchayat’s minimal facilities, the survey said, served a total of 696 households, with 3,201 people.
Back then, as now, its only healthcare facility is a health sub-centre, staffed by an auxiliary nurse-midwife (ANM). And even now it doesn’t have a bank or ATM—facilities that villagers were expecting after Sonia adopted Urwa. The village has a post office, two primary schools, and a junior high school, but there’s no senior secondary school. After Class 8, students have to travel to Shankarpur 6 kilometres away.
Instead, the most noticeable change after the adoption was the influx of media personnel, villagers say.
Octogenarian Sadrunissa says she remembers the time well.
“Everyone was laughing and saying that Sonia Gandhi would send us a litre of milk each and everybody would drink it now that she’d adopted us,” she recalls. “But she never even showed her face here.”
Sadrunissa’s tone hardens as she pulls down the dupatta covering her head to reveal her grey hair. “I am old! Shouldn’t I be getting a pension? I spoke to so many people, went to them with all my papers. Now the papers have disappeared,” she exclaims. “There has been no vikas. I can say it to Sonia Gandhi’s face. Or to Rahul’s.”
While government data shows that the village has seen the construction of 135 homes under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin (PMAY-G), as well as 260 new washrooms, there are considerable deficiencies in the reach of government schemes.
For instance, not all homes have water taps under the Har Ghar Jal Jeevan Mission Nal Yojana and many residents still resort to open defecation. There is no water tank here either so people depend on handpumps. Around 1-20 households share a single handpump, claims resident Ganga Dayal Maurya, a relative of two former pradhans.
Mishra says that the lanes inside the village have been dug up for drains, and pipelines were laid by the Raebareli Jal Nigam about four years ago, but the people are yet to see the benefits.
“All the roads of the gram panchayat have been ruined, but a water tank hasn’t been made yet,” he tells ThePrint.
Some credit, but not to Sonia
Some residents in the village hesitate to criticise Sonia, offering up reasons for her failing to visit them.
“We had expectations when she adopted us… But we read in the paper that she has been unwell,” says Dinesh Kumar, who was a block development committee member in the village back in 2015.
Despite their reluctance to criticise, however, few give her credit for any developments. Kumar points out that the village has seen improvements like better roads over the past decade, but all his praise is directed toward pradhan Mishra.
“Our pradhan is doing whatever he is capable of. There are decent roads, he is getting interlocking done. But if money isn’t coming to the village, then what can he do?” Kumar asked.
According to the SAGY website, no “additional funding is deemed necessary” for the implementation of the scheme. Instead, MPs are expected to pool resources from various central and state programmes. The scheme also allows for the mobilisation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds—which have, for instance, facilitated many projects in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s adopted villages in Varanasi.
But in Urwa, there is little evidence of this stream of funding being used. Mishra defers credit to whatever work has been done here to the resourcefulness of Manoj Pandey, a three-term MLA from Raebareli’s Unchahar assembly seat, under which Urwa falls. Pandey was a cabinet minister in the previous Akhilesh Yadav government, but resigned as Samajwadi Party chief whip and cross-voted in favour of the BJP candidate in the Rajya Sabha polls in February.
“Because of him (Pandey), our water woes have been taken care of. He himself has put up a lot of taps in the village, and his blessing remains with us,” Mishra says. “Whatever development is happening in the village, it is because of him. Whether it is roads or interlocking or drains, everything is because of him.”
Also Read: ‘Izzat ghars’ to ATMs, Modi’s adopted villages have leaped into 21st-century India, with some bumps
‘Two taps, two lights’
A majestic old Shiva Temple greets visitors to Urwa, retaining its glory despite attempts at ‘renovation’ with white concrete structures. Villagers claim the family of 19th-century freedom fighter Rana Beni Madho built it.
Unlike many other SAGY villages, Urwa shows no outward signs of being Sonia’s adopted village. There are no signboards announcing its status or highlighting schemes implemented under her patronage.
According to Kumar, Sonia did allocate some of her Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) funds for a few taps and solar lights, but Mishra isn’t impressed.
“People connected to her get these put at all the places they think necessary,” Kumar says. But, Mishra adds: “She was an MP for us for 25 years. In 25 years, if she gave us two taps and two lights, it doesn’t really matter in such a huge gram panchayat.”
More than taps or solar lighting, villagers are concerned about the water supply and drainage.
“We have been borrowing water from our neighbours, or using the government hand pump. I thought maybe I should get a tap myself, but we don’t have drains—where will the water go?” asks Urwa resident Chandrawati.
Residents of this village have only heard of development reaching other villages.
Shail Kumari Mishra wistfully speaks about the better houses and roads in a nearby village called Bicchiya, claiming several Urwa residents have moved there now. “(Sonia) didn’t care about our village getting developed, that it should get a nice road,” she says.
In her view, the state and central governments are formulating schemes for the benefit of people, but these are yet to be implemented adequately.
She points to an open, mosquito-infested drain opposite her house. “Barely anybody ever comes to clean this. It’s a breeding ground for diseases,” she says.
Shail says she has no expectations from Sonia. “What do we expect from her? The government is now BJP’s,” she chuckles.
Elsewhere in the village, Sadrunissa proclaims that she doesn’t hold out hope from anybody.
“We don’t need anybody,” she says. “Whether it is the Modi government or Sonia, there are no listeners for our troubles.”
(Edited by Asavari Singh)