IT WAS IN the second week of October that we met Ratilal Patel, a 63-year-old farmer of Mandvi taluk in southern Kutch. He was waiting for us on a motorbike at Koday village. Motioning us to follow him, he took us to a spot in the village where people had danced in joy when Prime Minister Narendra Modi released Narmada water into the Kutch branch canal on August 28.
Patel did not dance. He did not even visit the site on inauguration day. He dismissed it as an election stunt, and regretted that he had showered colourful petals in the canal during a trial run in July.
The canal looked clean and fine, but there was no sign of water, except a few wet patches at the bottom.
Patel slid down the canal slopes and stood on the canal bed. “Water flowed here for television cameras for a day,” he said. “I haven’t seen the water after that.” Above the canal gate, a long hoarding with Modi’s image still looked fresh.
The Kutch branch canal stretches 357km from the main canal of the Sardar Sarovar Dam to Modh Kuba, which is 45km from Koday. It was built at a cost of around ₹6,500 crore over 15 years, raising huge expectations, and runs through the Rann of Kutch. While 200km of it was completed four years ago, the remaining part got over only recently.
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