The day Shivraj Singh Chauhan's cabinet decided to set up a Rs 20,000-crore aviation city in Madhya Pradesh for repair and maintenance of the aircraft and for providing such other facilities, the Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC), also controlled by Chauhan's own BJP, was debating whether to reduce the drinking water supply to only once in two days in Bhopal from the middle of this month. That does not mean that the entire population of the State capital receive drinking water supply every day now – it is the privilege of the localities where influential people live.

Bhopal, may be because it is the abode of ministers and top ranking bureaucrats and power brokers, is sill better off than Indore, Jabalpur, Gwalior, Dewas and the other 150-odd towns and small towns. Those living in the villages are destined to fetch water from shallow streams several kilometres away, or drink muddy water from the ponds and survive, if they can, the host of diseases like gastroenteritis and dysentery.

It will not be proper to say that the Congress and BJP leaders who ruled the State in the past five decades did not think of the drinking water problem of the rural population. They did, mostly at the election times and then at the time of allocating budgets. The Central government and foreign agencies provide huge funds. The poor people in the villages have received neither drinking water nor any funds.

More recently, the Congress party showed its deep concern for the drinking water problem of the rural poor while preparing for the 1993 Assembly elections. It promised through the party's election manifesto to provide clean drinking water in each village within five years. Five years later, it reiterated the promise in its 1998 election manifesto. In 2003, the Congress was humbled by the electorate and the BJP came to power with similar promises.

The BJP has always talked big, the world-class golf course, the world university, Rs 20,000-crore aviation city, Rs 87,000 crore investments, Rs one-lakh crore industries. One of the first tasks of Shivraj Singh Chauhan on becoming the chief minister was to invite Britain's biggest Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), with assets worth £ 8 billion (nearly Rs 75,000 crore), to begin its operations in Madhya Pradesh.

Even if a fraction of the promised investments had come to Madhya Pradesh, the shape, and destiny, of the State would have changed. Probably those making promises back out after they see not only a total lack of infrastructure but also a lack of interest in building it.

The BJP leaders have never bent enough to look on the ground where people need clean drinking water, education, medicines, reasonably priced houses, electricity and employment. The magnitude of corruption in the present BJP regime has greatly surpassed Digvijay Singh's ten years.

The water scarcity in Bhopal is only an iceberg of the massive corruption and mismanagement. Till some years ago, the residents of Bhopal were getting drinking water supply twice a day, then it became once a day and gradually the supply time was reduced to 30-40 minutes, and often the pressure was not enough to cater to the requirements of the households.

The Upper Lake (or Bada Talao) has for quite some time been the main source of drinking water supply to Bhopal (now the supply is being partly supplemented from another source also). The Upper Lake, once the pride of Bhopal, has shrunk to nearly one fourth of its original side because of the encroachments connived at by those in power over the years. Besides, nearly 100 sewers from the city were flowing into the Upper Lake or into the nearby Lower Lake.

In 1995, the State government chalked out a scheme to divert the sewers from the two Lakes and also to de-weed and de-silt the Lakes. It was given the name of Bhojwetland. For this the government received Japanese loan of Rs 247 crore. When the scheme was "completed" towards the end of the second term of Digvijay Singh, 27 sewers were still being discharged into the Upper Lake and 28 sewers into the Lower Lake.

The BJP government benefited from the advice of the same bureaucrats who had served as the instruments of corruption in Digvijay Singh's time and obtained a loan of Rs 179 crore from the Asian Development Bank for "streamlining" the drinking water supply in Bhopal. Not surprisingly, the drinking water supply in the State capital further deteriorated. Then the State government prepared a larger (in terms of money) scheme for four major cities of the State --- Bhopal, Indore, Jabalpur and Gwalior – and gave it the Sanskritised name of Project Uday. The expenditure on the Project Uday was estimated at Rs 1366 crore which was procured from the State and Central governments and some foreign agencies.

The Project Uday has been in operation for over a year. The drinking water supply situation in the four cities has only been worsening. Bhopal had started feeling the pinch even before the winter was out. Never before had the authorities started (official) rationing of drinking water supply in Bhopal as early as October.

The BJP-ruled BMC has made another innovation to help the bureaucrats and private tanker operators at the cost of the people. Earlier, if the drinking water supply was disrupted or there was not enough pressure for whatever reasons, the BMC would supply water through its own tankers on demand without any charge. Now the ruling party has decided to discontinue this practice and asked the people to purchase water from private tanker operators if and when the BMC fails in its responsibility to ensure water supply.

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has recently made the Madhya Pradesh High Court interested in the government's various drinking water supply schemes. A division bench of Chief Justice A.K.Patnaik and Justice Ajit Singh has asked the State government to furnish details on various projects undertaken to provide adequate supply of drinking water to different urban and rural areas in the State. It is to be seen if the court can force the government to part with the information. Those at the helm of affairs, the politicians and the IAS officers, know pretty well how to hide their misdeeds, or at least delay the exposure till eternity. The files on corruption-related matters are known to have become unavailable (lost/misplaced) when the department concerned is pushed a bit too far by a court or the State Information Commission.