The much touted Basudha yojana, which aims at providing potable water to the rural Odisha, seems to have turned out to be a mere eyewash for the villagers in Dharmashala and Basudevpur.
While some alleged gross irregularities and corruption in the implementation of the scheme, others cited sheer apathy and negligence of the State government as the cause of their plight.
As the summer approaches, the locals of Kamagada Panchayat under Jajpur’s Dharmashala block fear the worst. Their wait for drinking water with parched lips is far from over even after installation of a drinking water project in their panchayat. The 80 odd families of Bharatpur in the panchayat still have to march more than one mile to bring water in the scorching heat.
Jayanti Kabi, a Bharatpur local said, “There is an overhead water tank in our village but we have never got water from it. The officials came to our village and collected our Aadhaar card copies assuring us to provide water, but we are yet to get any help.”
However, the government data, as per a reply to an RTI query, the villagers are getting uninterrupted drinking water at the tap points since March 2021.
An RTI activist, Sarbeswar Behura said, “The project is incomplete as there is no pipe connection to the village. But the papers say, 77 households are getting water through the project and the department is also remitting electricity bill each month.”
The villagers alleged that while there is a water tank installed spending crores of rupees, there is no pipe connecting the taps in the village. Locals also accused government officials of swindling public money on the pretext of electricity bill generated by the functioning of the pump.
Refuting the allegations, Sushanta Ghadei, the Superintendent Engineer of Rural Water Supply department claimed, “Pipes could not be connected to one or two households because they objected themselves for some reasons. Other houses are connected with pipes and already getting drinking water.”
Moreover, in Bhadrak's Basudevpur, locals of Binoba Bhave village can be seen reeling under scorching heat in front of a lone borewell despite a 1 lakh litre capacity overhead water tank built by spending Rs 88 lakh around 18 months back.
The project worked for 11 months after its inauguration. But it soon developed snags which could not be rectified since then, rued a local, adding that a big lock now dangles on the gate of the pump house leaving them high and dry.
Bakula Mondal, a local of Binoba Bhave village said at least 500 people gather at the lone borewell in our village to collect water. “Why did the government spend lakhs of rupees if it cannot provide drinking water to us,” asked Mondal.
When asked, the engineer in charge refuted to comment on the allegations citing health issues.
The Odisha government had launched Basudha scheme in November 2018 with an objective to provide adequate safe drinking water to rural people for drinking and domestic purposes on a sustainable basis.