On his second visit to Bundelkhand – exactly a year since he was sworn in as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh – Adityanath made a few heavy-duty promises. On a packed itinerary that saw him in Chitrakoot on April 12 and in Jalaun and Lalitpur the next day, the hinterland witnessed a mildly-altered head of state. Gone were the lamp-lighting rituals on the Ram Ghat – here, in its place, was a CM talking the talk that is the zeitgeist.Perhaps humbled by the by-polls results that saw a loss for him and his party in what is considered his math, the 45-year-old chief minister is now learning on the job.In Jhansi, he described Bundelkhand and Purvanchal as his government’s “key focus areas”, and stressed on newer avenues of employment. There was great emphasis on soon-to-be-established factories – in a zone notorious for migration, which has seen permanent shutting down of glass factories and sugar mills, this is no small promise.Amid all this buzz, the chief minister, however, ended up wreaking havoc on the section of the rural population that has not yet gone the mass exodus way – the Bundeli farmers.Here’s what happened: The UP chief minister expressed his desire to give water to the cows, to make them drink it from his own palms. The heat has, after all, already set in, and given the government’s focus on bovine matters, this wasn’t entirely unexpected.What did come as a surprise though – and an unpleasant one at that – was the resultant collateral damage of this request. Immediately, energy was spent in ensuring that there was flowing water in the streams where Adityanath was expected, thus stored water from dams was released into the streams in several places. This turned out to be horrible timing for the farmers of several villages, such as those in Kashai village of Chitrakoot, where the crops that had been harvested and recently-cut were ruined.“When we need the water, then there isn’t any. We have to do our farming under extreme circumstances also. And now that he (Adityanath) is on a visit here, they have to present a different on-ground picture, there is suddenly water to be released…” says Pintu Singh, an enraged farmer, adding: “It’s as if we don’t matter.”It’s a sentiment that found resonance all through Chitrakoot during the chief minister’s visit, who failed to hold janta darbars and managed to keep most of the local press at a distance. In fact, activists, lobbyists, citizens, were all barred from entering the spaces that Adityanath occupied and/or intended to.Shivam, of the Bundelkhand Azad Sena, an organization that lobbies for civil rights, made the trip to Karwi from Banda, and perhaps illustrates the cold-shoulder treatment best. Having spent a few hours waiting to meet the CM to discuss the best ways possible to make Bundelkhand corruption-free, “yeh kalank hataya jaaye yahaan se (it’s time to remove this stigma)”, he said he wasn’t too hopeful of meeting Yogiji in the flesh. While Ram Aasre Srivastav, who’d clocked in about two hours the same day waiting added, “Hamaari samasyaein yeh Yogi ji kya sunenge ya dekhenge? (He won’t bother listening to our distresses).”The Yogiji in question, meanwhile, ensured unprecedented preparation on the part of local BJP administration – which basically meant that we did not find too many officers on public duty during the last two weeks.Some more collateral damage of the visit was the owners of local shops that line the roads on which Adityanath’s entourage was meant to pass – they were dismantled overnight. In some districts, like in Banda, schools were suspended for two days.Unarguably though, the farmers whose crops were ruined overnight bore most of the brunt of this visit. Madhav Prasad Verma of Kashai village had gone to bed on the night of April 12 with plans of putting his wheat through the crusher the next day – which was the harvest festival Baisakhi. But the morning only brought him woe – there was no produce left to harvest. “Fasal toh chali gayi, ab kya? (My crops are ruined, now what?)” he asks stoically.Khabar Lahariyais a rural, video-first digital news organisation with an all-women network of reporters in eight districts of Uttar Pradesh.
