The Hindu : Other States / Rajasthan News : Election-eve `false' promises led to water wars in Tonk

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Wednesday, Jun 22, 2005

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Election-eve `false' promises led to water wars in Tonk

Sunny Sebastian

Trouble-maker who instigated farmers identified, says Administration

TONK (RAJASTHAN): Water is the mirage that drives the farmers in Rajasthan. Surprisingly, it is not the demand for drinking water that had led to considerable bloodletting in the State of late. Even in districts like Tonk where groundwater is not potable due to the presence of excessive fluoride content, water wars are fought for the sake of irrigation.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party cannot escape the blame for raising hopes in the minds of farmers in Tonk on the water from Bisalpur project, which was devised as a drinking water scheme for the districts of Tonk, Ajmer and Jaipur at a cost of Rs.550 crores with the support of the Asian Development Bank.

Again the intense need to do cropping comes from the total absence of employment avenues other than in traditional agriculture. The leather tanning industry in the district is in doldrums with religious sentiments of a section taking precedence over livelihood of poor. The beedi industry, employing about 33,000 workers, too has reached a level of stagnation.

False promise

Even when it was known that Bisalpur project was solely for drinking water purposes, the BJP leaders, in the run up for the Assembly elections, spoke about providing water even to the areas where canals do not exist.

"Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje should be blamed for the controversy over the Bisalpur water which reached a flash point on June 13 with the police firing,'' Surendra Vyas, former MLA from Malpura pointed out. Sohela, Jheerana and Piplu from where most of the victims came on that fateful day fall in Malpura Assembly constituency. "During the Parivarthan Yatra, Ms. Raje herself had asked the people of Tonk to fight for their due share of water,'' he noted.

As in Sriganganagar district's Gharsana and Rawla where the farmers agitation had gone violent in 2004, the BJP leadership was quick to blame the Congress and other Opposition parties on the groundswell here. State BJP president Lalit Kishore Chaturvedi, while defending the police action said the Congress' unease at being out of power was making them to resort to such violent steps.

The administration, on the other hand, is said to be working on a theory that one Zakir Hussein, an engineer who reportedly worked abroad for sometime, is the trouble-maker who instigated the farmers. Hemant Kumar Gera, the newly posted District Collector at Tonk said the man had purchased large chunk of land in Piplu tehsil in the district.

Thereafter he could reportedly convince the villagers on the prospects of brining Bisalpur water up to Tordi Sagar in the area with the help of a lift scheme. Mr.Hussein, who is the president of the farmers' agitation committee has now gone underground.

BJP's discrimination

Perhaps the immediate cause of public resentment was the discrimination among the people of Tonk itself. "The BJP, which won all the five Assembly seats in the district after making promises on water from Bisalpur started discriminating among them,'' pointed out Akhtar Jung, the district secretary of the Communist Party of India(Marxist).

"The agitation started in a spontaneous manner some three months back when water from Bisalpur dam reached Uniara, the constituency of Prabulal Saini, Agriculture Minister. Even new canals were constructed,'' Mr.Jung pointed out. Malpura obviously failed to get its share as the BJP MLA, Jeetram Choudhary has been seemingly less effective.

Walking through the villages where the people are yet to come out of the shock of the police brutality of June 13 at Sohela, one got the impression that the locals also blame Bisalpur project for the water levels going down in the wells. "We are deprived of a share of water from Bisalpur while the root cause of our problem is the dam itself,'' the 24 year-old Hemraj Gujjar, just out of the district hospital after treating a gun shot wound on the calf of his left leg, explained.

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Election-eve `false' promises led to water wars in Tonk