Indira colony, a Dalit settlement, is just a stone’s throw away from the ancestral house of Union Home Minister P Chidambaram in Karaikudi. But the 30 odd huts have no electricity connection.
“Our children study using kerosene lamps and we all sleep on the street,” say the women in the colony. Despite being part of the VIP constituency of Sivaganga, which has returned Chidambaram six times since 1984, and having the distinction of being inaugurated by the MP himself in 1992, there is no pucca road in the colony. Its only water tap is dry most of the time and the one hour of water supply on certain days does not fulfil the needs of the people.
That is not the only pocket of underdevelopment in Sivaganga constituency; the situation is the same in most villages, plagued by acute water scarcity — both for drinking and irrigation. In Thirupattur, people pay Rs 2.50 for a pot of drinking water.
The minister has also failed to deliver on his promise of developing industries and creating employment opportunities by utilizing the 5 lakh metric tonnes of graphite ore deposit in the 25 kilometre radius in Sivaganga district and establishing a full-fledged mining corporation similar to Neyveli Lignite Corporation Limited.
“In the 80s, Congress party members convinced us to sell our land at a minimum price of Rs 8 per cent, promising us jobs in the mining corporation, but the project still remains a dream,” said a daily wage labourer, K Muthusamy (57), of Komalipatti who, like thousands of others, sold his cultivable land for the project.
Despite Rajiv Gandhi’s assurance that the project would attract industries to the district, Chidambaram washed his hands off from the project stating that private companies were not coming forward to invest, said an agricultural labourer Manikam ( 45) of Sivaganga.