The young men of Sayla village face a unique problem: they cannot find women who will marry them. The reason: Sayla gets water only once a week, for less than an hour. Gujarat’s lifeline, the Sardar Sarovar dam, has made little difference in the Kathiawad region of Gujarat

The waters of the Narmada in Gujarat are likely to reach the border districts of Rajasthan by the end of the month. But its non-availability in Gujarat’s Kathiawad region is causing distress among the young men of Sayla village -- they are being rejected in the marriage market.

Gujarat’s lifeline, the Sardar Sarovar dam, has made no difference here: the region’s altitude prevents the canal’s water from reaching it. Seven years ago, the administration built a Rs 60 lakh pipeline from a borewell pump 25 km away, but it lies defunct thanks to faulty design.

Of Sayla’s 15 falias (neighbourhoods), Patel Falia alone is home to at least 75 bachelors. “They are not celibate by choice but by compulsion. None of the other 75 villages in this taluka will marry their daughters to anyone from Sayla,” says Rayabhai Rathod, former panchayat chief.

The reason: Sayla gets water once a week, for less than an hour, via a pipeline from the small Limdi Bhogao dam, 11 km away, that has almost run dry. The local borewell water, unlike that in the surrounding villages, is unfit for use.

Sarpanch Kanjulal Kachia says the problem became acute after the water scarcity worsened in the last 15 years. “Also, families (in the surrounding villages) have become more aware nowadays and don’t want their daughters to face hardship.”

Even the women of Sayla are married off elsewhere. Girls marry within the village only if the groom has a sister who can be given in marriage to the bride’s brother. Sayla has seen several such deals in the past five years.

Nanjibhai Patel, 35, is desperate for a bride but knows his chances are slim. “I have reconciled myself to spending my life alone,” he says. A 30-year-old man, also named Nanjibhai, hanged himself five years ago, unable to bear the serial rejections from girls’ families.

“Over the past 15 years, most of the better-off families have moved to nearby towns. The population of this village -- dominated by Patels, Jains and Brahmins -- has fallen from 16,000 to 14,000,” says Harijibhai Patel.

Kirit Shah, a well-off petrol station owner, was able to find a bride only after he left and settled in Surendranagar town, 35 km away. Dilip Shah, a cooperative bank employee, found a suitable girl too but when he turned down her repeated appeals to move to the town, she left him.

Most of the villagers are too poor and uneducated to make a living elsewhere. They are barely able to feed themselves by growing cotton, maize and groundnut on the black soil -- if there’s a good rainfall. Some of the men work in the stone quarries 8 km away. There are no industries here.

Local Congress MLA, Popatlal Jinzaria, says: “Being an Opposition member, I can’t do anything except raise the issue in the Assembly.” He claims the state government was planning to pipe Narmada water to Sayla but adds that it will take at least two years.

Meanwhile, Rajasthan Water Resources Minister Sanwarlal Jat announced in the Assembly recently that successful completion of the Narmada canal project would bring water from the river to Jalore and Barmer districts by the last week of March.

Jat said the state government would undertake water harvesting works at a cost of Rs 70 crore, to raise groundwater levels and initiate irrigation projects, at Dharia dam, Ambapura dam, Borband and Bhairon valley and Chiksana, at a cost of Rs 20 crore.

Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Limited (SSNNL) authorities in Gandhinagar said they had started releasing water in the 458 km-long Narmada Main Canal (NMC). “Construction work on a 101 km-long stretch from the Kadi Chainage in north Gujarat up to the Rajasthan border has just been completed, and we have already started releasing the waters in the NMC beyond the Kadi Chainage,” a top SSNNL official said.

Under the Narmada Tribunal Award, Rajasthan’s share of water is 0.5 million acre feet (MAF), while two other participatory states -- Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat -- have been allocated 18.25 MAF and nine MAF of water respectively.

The SSNNL official added that as far as Gujarat was concerned, the Narmada dam project would provide irrigation benefits to 17.92 lakh hectares of land spread over 75 talukas and 15 districts. There are also plans to provide water for domestic as well as industrial use to over 8,215 villages and 135 townships across the state. In fact, about 4,000 villages, mainly in Saurashtra-Kutch and parts of north and central Gujarat, have started receiving Narmada waters, the official said.

According to Socio-Economic Review 2007-08 prepared by the Gujarat Directorate of Economics and Statistics and tabled in the state Assembly early this month, the Irrigation Commission defines three-fourths of the command area as drought-prone.

It says that out of the 38 branch canals of the Narmada project, work on 24 has already been completed. While work on nine branch canals is in progress, work on the remaining five branch canals will be taken up in the current year.

Work on the Phase I distribution system has been completed in 3.41 lakh hectares out of a total of 4.46 lakh hectares of irrigable command, while tenders for sub-minors in 3.68 lakh hectares have been approved. Under the Phase II distribution system, out of a total of 14 lakh hectares of irrigable command, work on 1.65 lakh hectares is in progress, while work on the remaining irrigable command area will be taken up in a phased manner and is planned for completion by 2009-10.

The document adds that the revised estimated cost of the entire Narmada dam project at 1991-92 prices is Rs 13,180 crore, against which the cumulative expenditure of Rs 24,735.67 crore was incurred by the end of September 2007. “The project cost is likely to cross the Rs 40,000 crore mark when the entire Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) is fully executed,” said a senior SSNNL official.

In the 2008-09 budget, presented recently in the Assembly, the government made provision for Rs 3,255 crore, an increase of Rs 242 crore over the last year, for the multi-purpose project.

Meanwhile, the young men of Sayla are hoping that the SSNNL spends a portion of this money on addressing their unique problem. It may yet be some years before marriage proposals begin to flow in.

Source: The Telegraph, March 24, 2008
             The Hindu, March 17, 2008
            The Indian Express, March 2, 2008