UP Assembly polls: A long yearning for a story of infra development

In the second of a three-part series, Nitin Kumar travels through the villages along the Bundelkhand Expressway, where water scarcity and the lack of infrastructure are the key concerns of the people

Twenty-year-old Sarita Devi looks tired as she carries a 50-litre jerry can of water along the Banda-Mahoba highway, which connects to the Bundelkhand Expressway. “My grandmother carried water on a dirt track, my mother carried it on a two-lane road, and now I am carrying water on a four-lane highway. Many things have changed in the past 70 years, but for us, things have remained much the same,” says Devi, who has to fetch water from a well 3 km away from her village.

The Bundelkhand Expressway, which is slated to be completed by March-April 2022, and covers the districts of