Up elections 2017 poll promises have not changed in 15 years; here's why

UP elections 2017: Poll promises have not changed in 15 years; here's why

UP Elections 2017 - Pihani, Uttar Pradesh: For 16 years, Kailash Rai (not his real name), 49, has been commuting six hours every working day between his home in the state capital Lucknow and the government degree college where he teaches in Pihani, 135 km to the northwest.

A political-science lecturer, Rai cannot move with his family to Pihani, a cluster of over 100 villages (called a kasba) in Hardoi district, with less than 40,000 families as per Census 2011. When he started working there in 2000, it lacked the basic public facilities–regular power supply, good roads, public transport and good medical services.

Pihani remains an economic backwater. In the ongoing assembly elections, UP’s incumbent and contesting politicians are still promising the basic facilities they did 16 years ago: Electricity, buses and jobs, along with laptops and free data for poor youth.

A UP kasba: 100% rural, 83% farm workers A community development block in Hardoi district, north-west of Lucknow, Pihani is an agglomeration of over 100 small villages. This rural administrative division is called a

taluk or tehsil in other states. UP has 901 such blocks administered by a block development officer.

A third of Pihani’s population consists of people belonging to scheduled castes and tribes. Its literacy rate is 51%, and less than half its women (41%) are literate. Women in Pihani form about 14% of the workforce, nine percentage points less than the national average of 27% as IndiaSpend reported in April 2016.

Electricity still elusive: 53% of UP homes without power Only 47% of homes are electrified in UP’s villages. This puts the state fourth on the rural electrification list from across India–only Jharkhand (39%), Bihar (45%) and Nagaland (45%) are worse off, according to data from the power ministry.

State roads: 9% of national highways in UP, but few links to these Pihani’s nearest railway station is at the district headquarter in Hardoi, 28 km away.

And it takes a two-hour bus ride to get there with many short halts along the way. Often, you can see passengers making the dash from their home as the bus wait. (Read

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Article Source – Business Standard