Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls: In the trail of the Ganga Expressway

In the last of three-part series, Nitin Kumar looks at how jobs, education and health remain concerns even though locals are upbeat about UP’s infrastructure push 

It was an offer that Shiv Narayan Pandey of Pure Dayal village in the Pratapgarh district of Uttar Pradesh (UP), could not refuse. The promise that he would own a dhaba on the six-lane, state-of-the-art Ganga Expressway made him relinquish his six bighas of land that lay in the expressway’s path. 

“Who can say no to the government,” says Pandey, a construction contractor.

The prospect of realising his dhaba dream is not the only thing Pandey