Siura Gopalpur
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In three districts
As in 2024
Arvind Chauhan, May 4, 2024: The Times of India
Ballia : Siura Gopalpur is connected three ways but so “unconnected” that its village head calls himself and its residents “the nowhere people”.
The oddity of its location makes the UP hamlet locus classicus — a classic example. It is barely 5km from Mau district border and 20km from Mau town. But the village’s 1,600 voters press the button for Salempur Lok Sabha constituency, 50km away in Deoria district. To exacerbate matters, the village doesn’t officially belong to either Mau or Deoria — it is part of Ballia district.
The fast-flowing Ghaghara, the second largest tributary of the Ganga which runs nearby, has long kept the electors from the elected. Few here remember which MP or MLA visited them the last — a pity considering former PM Chandra Shekhar’s Ibrahimpatti village is close and his son Neeraj is a BJP Rajya Sabha MP. This time, he is BJP’s Ballia LS candidate.
“This is our dilemma,” village head Manoj Kumar says, justifying his scathing “nowhere people” remark about how Siura Gopalpur’s link to three districts through proximity, LS seat and administration has been a bane instead of a boon. Life for the residents of nearly 300 households is challenging. The village has power cables, but no power. “Connections were provided, only on paper, to people under Saubhagya Ujjwala on the basis of their Aadhaar cards in 2018. Mayhem followed when people later received power bills up to Rs 40,000. Villagers have stayed away from using power since then ,” said Kumar. Batteries are used to charge the few mobile phones people have.
The village had a road laid in 2007 under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana. It has since vanished. In the rainy season, villagers are cut off for days.
Healthcare is scarce, too. There is a primary health centre (PHC) 5km away in Kasaundar, but no doctor. “A compounder administers medical advice at the PHC. In case of serious illness, the patients need to be taken to the district govt hospital in Ballia town. There is no good private hospital within a radius of 30-40km,” said Rohan Singh, who lost his father a decade ago to complications arising out of typhoid and hepatitis that went undetected for days.
There is no employment and agriculture is unreliable due to poor connectivity. The mandis (grain markets) are too far off and brokers who visit the village soon after harvest are poor paymasters. “MPs and MLAs don’t visit our village even for election campaigns. We don’t exist, we don’t matter,” said Bahadur Singh (71), grandfather of six.
There is no piped water. Vishal Chauhan (28), who is preparing to become a teacher, said: “The groundwater has heavy metals, like iron, and arsenic. But villagers do not have a choice. We stop using water from hand pumps that give out coloured water and instead use those whose water seems cleaner. Nobody from the district administration has ever come to the village to see which hand pumps provide drinkable water.”
All those VIP connections and more are irrelevant for Siura Gopalpur — pretty much like the village itself that plunges into darkness soon after dusk. The nights here are longer. Some say never-ending.
