Across Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s arid home district of Jodhpur, the same complaints are heard regarding the erratic electricity supply and lack of drinking water, with voters blaming both the BJP government at the Centre and the Congress government in the State for their woes. Jodhpur’s BJP MP Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, however, faces the greater share of the anger, as he is also the Union Minister for the Jal Shakti Ministry and voters directly connect the failure to provide clean drinking water to him.
However, it is not clear if this anger will translate into support for the Congress, which had managed to swing seven out of ten seats in Jodhpur in the 2018 Assembly election, giving it an edge to form the government in Jaipur.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi started this new department Jal Shakti which was primarily aimed at providing drinking water to every Indian. In the name of Jal Jeevan Mission, we have a few overhead tanks, but the supply has not reached us. In the summer we are still dependent on water tankers, which are costly,” explains Hukma Ram Godhara, a 44-year-old Jat farmer at Lohawat, about 120 km away from Jodhpur town.
