Lok Sabha polls in Barmer 2009

The Lok Sabha poll was cononducted for barmer yesterday. interestingly, despite news of low poling throughout the country, the dstrict recorded nerly 53-54% polling when the summer heat was at its glory. The results would take some time to come out but this is an interesting and informative article i read in The Telegraph which i am pasting here for your reference. The article talks about the two main contestents from the district- harish Choudhary from congress and Manavendra Singh rom BJP.

Unusual eddy: minorities behind BJP nominee
CHARU SUDAN KASTURI IN BARMER

(Top) Children hold aloft BJP flags outside the election office of party candidate Manvendra Singh (above) in Barmer; Congress candidate Harish Choudhary (mike in hand, below) at a meeting in Bachrau
As the desert sand swept across National Highway 15, auto-rickshaw driver Taufiq Alam pulled over to one side and fished out a torn computer course certificate from a compartment under his seat.
“This is my brother’s certificate from his madarsa computer classes,” he said proudly, nodding in recognition at a passing SUV carrying the BJP flag. “That (the SUV) is a campaign vehicle for Manvendra Singh… it’s he who brought computers to madarsas,” Alam said.
Here in Barmer — made up of the two districts of Barmer and Jaisalmer and, at 55,074sqkm, India’s second-largest constituency by area — the Congress is fighting an unfamiliar battle.
It faces the challenge of eroding the Muslim vote bank of its opponent from the BJP, a party that usually succeeds in herding the minorities into the lap of the Congress elsewhere.
Manvendra, son of former NDA foreign minister Jaswant Singh who is contesting from Darjeeling, won a thumping victory in 2004 with 60 per cent of the votes, thanks to a role reversal.
He won 80 per cent of the votes from Muslim-dominated bastis (settlements) and villages, and the Congress was left licking its wounds in a constituency it had earlier lost just twice in 30 years.
This time, Manvendra’s fate may depend on how successfully the Congress can coax away his Muslim voters, veterans of both parties here say.
Muslims form the third-largest vote bank here with 1.98 lakh voters — 14 per cent of the constituency’s 14 lakh registered voters — after Dalits (2.36 lakh) and Jats (2.32 lakh).
Harish Choudhary, 38, a former Jodhpur University students’ union president, is the Congress candidate here. His supporters say he was nominated because of the popularity he had earned while working with victims of the freak floods that had turned this desert into a pool of death and disease three years ago.
Choudhary told The Telegraph that if he won, his priority would be to end caste-based politics — which he accused the BJP of promoting — in Barmer.
He and his supporters may be genuine in their convictions, but those in the Congress who pushed his candidature admit that it was his caste — Jat — that helped clinch the ticket for him.
After Dalits, Jats and Muslims, it is Rajputs — Manvendra’s clan — who are the largest group in this seat. But two key Assembly segments dominated by Rajputs have been de-linked from Barmer after delimitation and added to the Jodhpur constituency, where the Congress has fielded a Rajput.
“The transfer of the Rajput-dominated areas and the likely Jat vote for the Congress mean that the battle will really be over the Muslims,” a senior district BJP leader said.
Ashraf Ali, a local Muslim leader, said the Muslims had voted BJP in 2004 because they were angry with the Congress candidate, Colonel Sona Ram Choudhary. The colonel was perceived to have aided in the defeat of two Muslim candidates in the 2003 Assembly polls.
“This time, too, it is Manvendra who will win the Muslim votes, not the BJP, which is pariah for the community here as well,” Ali said.
Manvendra is claiming credit for the introduction of computers in madarsas, for the Thar Express which connects Munabao on India’s border with Kokhrapar in Pakistan, and for helping Muslims get Pakistani visas.
The Congress is trying to drill holes in these claims. “The Thar Express was started by the Manmohan Singh government. Why did the BJP not start it when Jaswant Singh was foreign minister?” asked Harish Choudhary.
In his sabhas in villages spread across the sparsely populated desert, Choudhary has repeatedly accused Manvendra of failing to raise a single question relating to Barmer’s needs and concerns in Parliament.
However, it is his call for votes “to end divisive politics along religious lines” at these sabhas that outlines the Congress’s desperation for Muslim votes.
Rajasthan votes on May 7
(taken from The Telegraph, Sunday, May 3rd)

A water wonder in the middle of a desert

Water remais sthe prime need for this drought prone desert district. Since centuries people of marwar have developed expertise in making different water ahrvesting structures to harvest and store drinking water. A new and innovative initiate has been taken to harvest rain water and produce quality drinking water by Jal Bhagirathi Foundation- a NGO based in Jodhpur. NAmed as water Pyramid teh plant has capacity to produce over 1000 liters of safe drinking water per day. Following article was published in The Hindu and is beautifully written by Sunny Senbastian. I hope this article would be informative. If successful the model would be a boon for the region.

A water wonder in the middle of a desert
Sunny Sebastian
The great Thar Desert of Rajasthan now has a pyramid that has no mummy inside but it churns out life-saving nectar -- potable water -- in this vast torrid terrain. The Water Pyramid has come up as a mountain of hope in the distant, desolate Roopji Raja Beri near Pachpadra in Barmer district.
Situated 125 km from Jodhpur, the village has a population of 1,000 who normally walk 4 km on an average per day to procure the precious commodity. Here men, out of sheer consideration for their women who walk miles to fetch water, normally never drink to their heart’s content.
The Water Pyramid, towering at a height of nine metres and with a diameter of 30 metres, produces distilled water inside using solar energy while its exterior is used to harvest rainwater during the monsoon. The rainwater is collected separately, purified, and stored in a large ground tank with a capacity of 6 lakh litres. Named “Shiv Jal Dhara” -- as it was launched on Mahashivratri day recently -- the pyramid is only the second of its kind to come up in India. The first one is in the water-scarce Kutch, in Gujarat.
The Water Pyramid, innovated by Martijn Nitzsche from The Netherlands, is patented and rewarded by the World Bank with the Development Marketplace Award-2006 for small-scale water innovations. It is a uniquely designed inflated foil structure which uses energy from the sun to evaporate brackish source water and condense it to high-quality drinking water. The concept is based on the solar still principle optimised for large areas.
Those behind the Good Samaritan act of providing water in the middle of the desert are the Jal Bhagirathi Foundation (JCF), the Aqua-Aero Water Systems BV, The Netherlands, and Acumen Fund of the US. “When JCF was searching for a village where people are ready to experiment on a pilot water pyramid, the community from this village came forward and expressed their willingness,” informs Prithviraj Singh, managing trustee of JCF, which has the former ruler of Jodhpur, Gaj Singh, as its chairman.
The main engagement for the women of Roopaji Raja Beri is to walk more than 4 km, spending around six hours a day to fetch water. Though there is a beri (well), after which the village is named, it has only saline water. The meagre agriculture practised in the area is dependent on the scanty rainfall. As there is no alternative source such as a talaab (pond) or baawdi (step-well), the sole source of water here is the monsoon. For any extra water beyond the collection made during the monsoon, they end up paying huge sums of money.
“We have no money to buy water. So most of the time we steal water from neighbouring villages,” confesses Prema Ram, the village Sarpanch, rather shamefacedly.
“We never take our fill of water as we are always afraid of finishing off with the stock, brought home with so much effort by our women,” he explains.
A “Jal Sabha”, consisting of the village community, is supposed to maintain the project. “We came across the concept at last year’s World Water Forum in Mexico,” observes Mr. Prithviraj Singh. It was after taking into account the local people’s enthusiasm and the extreme difficulty in accessing safe drinking water here that the JBF and the Jal Parishad decided to choose this village. The JBF contributed Rs.1.5 lakh while the local Jal Sabha provided land for installing the pyramid.
The plant has a capacity to produce 1,000 litres of safe drinking per day. The operational cost is minimal since direct sunlight is being used as the energy source. In this particular project the raw water with TDS in the range of 10,000 ppm is purified to ultra-pure distilled water. The State Public Health Engineering Department provides the raw water for the plant. There is a provision to manufacture salt also from the pyramid.

KiraduTemple at Barmer

Nearly 40 Km from Barmer town lies the temple of Kiradu. The temple is of great interest for the students of archaeology and tourists and inscriptions on teh temple date back to 11th Century AD. It is believed taht the temple was constructed in honour of Lord Shiva.

The small note below on Kiradu was written by Natasha Chanda. Hope it is of interest for some of you.

The buried township of Kiradu
About 43 kilometers west of Barmer, Rajasthan, lie the ruins of five temples in a picturesque amphitheatre of hills. These temples date back to circa 1000 A.D. and later. Though some people ascribe it to the Rastrakuta Dynasty, it is believed to belong to the Gurjara-Praihara School of temple building. The intricately sculpted walls and pillars and the complex toranas, also seem to be paving the way for the imminent Solanki vogue. Certain Gupta influences are also apparent, obviously arising from their proximity to Gupta territory. Kiradu was invaded, the enormous wealth looted and carted away. In search of the hidden treasures, the sanctums were dug up relentlessly and stones dislodged from its original place. In the absence of preservation the weather did further damage, sand corroded the walls. An observation of desert landscape would lead one to believe that the cause of the entire township now being buried under sand resulted from the sand deposits on the lee side of the three hills which forms the amphitheatre for the deserted township. Nature completed the ruin of Kiradu as an earthquake at the beginning of the 19th century with its epicenter in Kathiawar brought about unprecedented destruction. Kiradu today lies buried in a valley of barren hills. One can stay there for days without meeting another human soul, but it is an overwhelming experience, entirely different from the routine tourist places. To discover Kiradu is to discover a forgotten page from the glorious past of India.

-Natasha Chanda (Acharya)