Delhi: At Rewla, residents demand basics — water, good schools

Kejriwal's pit stop in Rewla was part of a series of villages that the chief minister visited in Matiala and Najafgarh constituencies in a bid to “explain the advantages” of the LPP.

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(Source: Google maps)

There is a lone road that exits Rewla village towards what the residents call the “highway”, where a woman was molested two nights ago. There are no streetlights in sight and villagers say the woman, who was walking back alone, was accosted by a man on a motorbike. It is the same road that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal took on Thursday as he exited the village close to 7 pm after a very short speech on the land pooling policy (LPP) that his government recently notified.

The pit stop in Rewla was part of a series of villages that the chief minister visited in Matiala and Najafgarh constituencies in a bid to “explain the advantages” of the LPP. The AAP government gave the urban tag to 89 villages. “The land pooling policy had been pending for many years, and after a long struggle, we have finally passed it,” Kejriwal said. “Thik hai ji? Khush hain na?” he asked the crowd. “Please raise your hands and show me that we have done well.” Minutes later, AAP’s twitter handle tweeted photographs of Kejriwal flanked by Matiala MLA Gulab Singh and Transport minister Kailash Gahlot from the village.

The lack of streetlights, however, doesn’t even make it to the top five issues that villagers list as problems in Rewla, that is home to more than 5,000 people. Brijeshwar Kaushik, who is the acting Pradhan, starts with the “basics” — education. “Only one primary school was built here about 50 years ago and it has not been upgraded. Children have to travel as far as Palam for schooling,” he said. But the more worrying problem is water, much like it is in every other part of Delhi.

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“When the land pooling scheme was being formulated, the Delhi High Court had asked the Delhi government how it plans to make arrangements, when Delhi does not have water of its own,” he said. “The government had submitted an affidavit saying the water will come from Haryana. Here, in Rewla, pipelines were laid 35 years ago when the population was much smaller, and mud has clogged up most of these pipes,” he added.

Villagers pointed out that even the drinking water supplied to them by the government comes with a warning that it is “unfit for drinking”. But Kejriwal seemed hopeful about solving the villagers’ problems just by virtue of the fact that “their son” — Kailash Gahlot — was part of his cabinet. “This is a very big deal that a man from the rural belt is on the cabinet, the village’s problems will be resolved.”

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