Water vows: No bride for these villages

Men in some Jaisalmer and Barmer villages have been facing prolonged bachelorhood as they struggle to find prospective life partners due to scarcity of basic amenities.

Even after seven decades of independence, dozens of villages which come under the area of Desert National Park which is spread over about 3162 sq km have no basic amenities like electricity and water. People have to travel miles to get drinking water from wells.

People are turning down marriages proposals  for their daughters from young men of these villages because of hardships. This is the reason why  the number of bachelors in these areas is increasing continuously.

Due to lack of roads in many villages, even today, people are forced to travel on bullock carts and camels. Many villages are still completely cut off from other areas of the country in the field of telecommunications. In absence of these facilities, especially the Tejrava Gram Panchayat headquarters is not connected to the road. There is no sign of roads in many of the 36 village under this gram panchayat.

There is no right to khatedari (a system of tenure of land by rent) in the Desert Park area and no one can own tube well. They have attracted the attention of the government by raising these problems in the assembly many times and have also demanded that these villages should get special package.

Jugat Singh, resident of Ravtari village in the Desert National Park area, says that the situation is really grim. About 60-70 villages in this area have severe water scarcity. Sumer Singh, resident of Tejrava village, said that the women of the village have to walk miles to get water. Many villages around the park do not have the means of transport. In the delivery case of a pregnant woman, she is taken to the nearest health centre by camel cart.