“Paani ke liye scheme bahut aati hain, paani nahi aata.”
(Many schemes come for water, water never comes.)
These are not anomalies; after fifteen years of “special packages,” NGO sermons, election-time dramatics, and media’s drone-shot spectacles, this is the harsh reality across most of rural regions. Bundelkhand—those vast, weary stretches of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, where relentless heat, crippling droughts, forced migration, and grinding poverty are the only constants—was once a land proud of its courage, soil, and spine. Today, it resembles a museum of empty promises: government brochures gleam in air-conditioned offices while villages parched and hungry continue to suffer.
It now stands as a stark monument to the hollowness of development rhetoric, glossy government campaigns, and media-celebrated interventions that rarely translate into tangible change on the ground. Between 2020 and 2025, central and state governments together allocated a staggering five to nine thousand crore rupees for Bundelkhand. On paper, this vast sum was meant to transform water conservation, improve access to drinking water, create rural employment, provide housing, and foster social development. The reality, however, tells a far harsher story.
The funds were channelled through schemes such as the Jal Jeevan Mission and Har Ghar Jal for piped water, MGNREGA for rural employment and water-harvesting structures, PMAY for housing, the Bundelkhand Development Fund for district-level infrastructure, along with other state and central allocations. The official narrative painted a picture of sweeping, revolutionary transformation. The reality, however, is far grimmer, far more desolate. Recently, the Centre decided to halt the release of new funds under the Jal Jeevan Mission until states take action on ‘widespread corruption findings.’ Over 600 cases reportedly involve 621 officials, 969 contractors, and 153 third-party inspection agencies across states, flagged for irregularities. This move signals serious concerns about fund misuse and false reporting—directly undermining the official story of transparent, all-inclusive development.
Of this immense allocation, roughly 96 to 99 percent—approximately ₹4,700 to ₹8,800 crore—was spent directly by the government. NGOs and foreign-assisted projects received only a marginal slice, between ₹50 and 150 crore, barely 1 to 4 percent of total spending. This limited sum was largely confined to IEC campaigns, community mobilization, training workshops, and minor monitoring tasks—interventions that scarcely altered life on the ground. In other words, while the figures look impressive on paper, their practical impact on villages, farmers, and households has been minimal at best.
District-level realities expose this disconnect in stark relief. In Jhansi, for instance, despite ₹36 crore sanctioned in 2024–25 under district-level projects, canals lie broken, ponds remain parched, and water-conservation initiatives are fragmented and incomplete. Lalitpur and Banda reflect a similar pattern: MGNREGA-funded check-dams exist only as half-built structures, often eroded or silted up within months of construction, leaving the ground truth far removed from the glossy promises on paper.
In Mahoba and Chitrakoot, the Har Ghar Jal schemes promise piped drinking water, yet villagers continue to rely on distant hand pumps and intermittent water tankers because pipelines are often non-functional or still awaiting installation. Hamirpur and Tikamgarh present a tragic irony: multiple schemes run concurrently, yet the basic need for sustainable water storage remains unmet. In Chhatarpur, Panna, Damoh, and Sagar, the situation is no better—small ponds dry up within months, canals fail to reach farmlands, and check-dams designed to recharge groundwater lie abandoned. These realities starkly highlight the persistent failure to translate sanctioned budgets into tangible outcomes.
Despite the official tally of government spending, actual utilization and implementation remain consistently low. A large portion of funds has been trapped in bureaucratic bottlenecks, procedural delays, and, in some instances, outright corruption. Villagers recount materials being diverted, laborers paid partially or irregularly, and newly built structures collapsing within months due to substandard work. The so-called “success” of the Bundelkhand Development Fund, MGNREGA, and water schemes exists largely on paper—reports, spreadsheets, and media coverage. Those who bear the real consequences are the farmers, daily wage laborers, and rural households, grappling with crop failure, drinking water scarcity, and mounting debt with every passing summer.
The Jal Jeevan Mission and Har Ghar Jal, central to government narratives, have produced only partial and inconsistent results. Pipelines in several villages remain incomplete or non-functional; water quality often falls below safety standards, and many households still depend on traditional sources. While Har Ghar Jal promised household taps, in 400 villages water tankers remain the lifeline as pipelines fail due to voltage fluctuations in solar pumps. In Chhatarpur, ponds dry up in two to three months, and canals miss farmlands by kilometers, underscoring the ironic overlaps and inefficiencies of concurrent schemes.
Launched in 2019 with a national budget of ₹3.5 lakh crore, the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) set out to provide piped tap water to every rural household by 2024—though the deadline has now been extended. In Bundelkhand, the mission targeted 1.5 crore household connections across seven districts of Uttar Pradesh, with over ₹5,000 crore allocated by 2025. Yet, by mid-2025, actual coverage barely reaches 70–80% in key areas, while functional pipelines operate at a mere 40% due to erratic supply, contamination, and widespread non-functionality. In Mahoba’s villages, women continue to trek 5–10 km daily to fetch water from hand pumps as promised pipelines remain unlaid or leak-prone. A 2023–2025 audit found that 30% of installed taps were non-functional, victims of groundwater depletion and poor maintenance. In Jhansi, where PM Modi inaugurated the mission in 2020, official claims of 93% “progress” mask harsh realities: borewells dry up in summer, forcing households to rely on water tankers at ₹2,000–3,000 per load.
MGNREGA-funded water-harvesting structures and check-dams—intended as the backbone of rural resilience—remain half-built, poorly maintained, or abandoned shortly after completion. PMAY housing projects, while technically delivering roofs, often fail to provide access to sanitation, potable water, or electricity, leaving residents’ living conditions scarcely improved. Even district-level Bundelkhand Development Fund projects have rarely succeeded in creating sustainable infrastructure or generating lasting benefits. Between 2006 and 2025, ₹15,000 crore under MGNREGA funded 1.16 lakh water-harvesting structures, including check-dams and ponds meant to recharge groundwater. Yet a 2025 Down to Earth assessment found that 60–70% of these structures erode, silt up, or are abandoned within 6–12 months, leaving aquifers depleted in a region where 40% of pre-2015 structures are already defunct.
In Lalitpur’s Birdha block, half-built check-dams funded at ₹50–100 lakh each turned into silt traps after the 2024 monsoon, blocking fields instead of replenishing wells. Hamirpur’s “Pani Panchayat” pilot projects overlapped with these, creating wasted labor—workers earned wages but saw no lasting impact. In Tikamgarh, attempts to revive ancient Chandela-era ponds failed, while new MGNREGA structures mirrored the same neglect. Farmers’ migration surged by 25% in 2025, and cattle deaths from thirst increased, eroding livelihoods in a region already losing 20% of arable land to desertification.
The role of NGOs and foreign-assisted projects, often lauded in media narratives, has been minimal on the ground. Major international organizations—the World Bank, ADB, DFID UK, EU—did not run any significant projects exclusively targeting Bundelkhand during this period. NGOs, meanwhile, were largely confined to IEC campaigns, awareness programs, and community mobilization, reaching only a small fraction of villages. Over five years, total funding for NGOs and foreign-assisted projects amounted to just ₹50–150 crore—a mere sliver of government expenditure, far too small to produce visible change in a region as vast and needy as Bundelkhand.
The ₹7,266 crore special package (extended through 2025) funded canals, wells, and drought mitigation, yet groundwater stress persists in four districts—Jhansi, Mahoba, Panna, and Lalitpur—according to a 2024 assessment. By March 2025, only 191 MCM of water storage had been revived, far short of the 1,000+ MCM target. The cumulative effect is a landscape where old water sources have vanished, new water-conservation efforts remain incomplete, and rural distress continues unabated. Traditional ponds dry within weeks, canals fall into disrepair, and check-dams fail to recharge groundwater effectively. Neglect of traditional systems, such as Chandela-era tanks, in favor of modern but poorly maintained infrastructure, combined with unaccounted climate variability, has left the region highly vulnerable—a scenario forewarned by NITI Aayog, which predicts that 40% of the population could lack access to water by 2030.
Official data and field reports converge on one clear conclusion: while billions were allocated, and media campaigns celebrated “success,” the real beneficiaries often received nothing beyond cosmetic interventions. Flashy announcements, media-covered inaugurations, and colorful NGO campaigns have masked a sobering truth: development in Bundelkhand has been largely performative.
Five years of sustained government focus and funding reveal the stark reality: Bundelkhand’s development has been more rhetorical than real. The impact of government schemes on villages remains inconsistent and patchy. Between 2017 and 2019, under the Bundelkhand Special Package and Jal Shakti Abhiyan, hundreds of ponds were “renovated” in Mahoba, Banda, and Chitrakoot at a cost of several crores. The 22-acre Kharela pond in Mahoba, renovated in 2018 at ₹1.8 crore, was bone dry by 2021 because catchment channels were never desilted and the waste weir was built too high. Villagers told reporters bluntly: “Paani aaya hi nahi, photo khichwa ke chale gaye” (Water never came; they just clicked photos and left).
A 2022 CAG performance audit on water conservation in Uttar Pradesh found that 67% of structures created under MGNREGA and PMKSY in Bundelkhand districts were non-functional within 2–3 years. Similarly, a 2023 survey by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy in 40 Bundelkhand villages found that only 11% of PMAY houses had both functional toilets and water connections.
MGNREGA projects, designed to generate employment and secure water resources, often dissipate in layers of bureaucratic inefficiency. In Hamirpur district (2019–20), over 1,400 farm ponds were dug under MGNREGA. Yet a 2021 field study by People’s Action for People in Need (PAPN) found that 78% had collapsed or silted up, their linings either absent or constructed with substandard materials. Workers routinely reported 20–30% of wages being “cut” by middlemen, pradhans, and junior engineers, leaving payments delayed by six to ten months. The intended effect—reducing distress migration—was reversed: migration actually increased.
Across Jhansi, Lalitpur, and Jalaun, thousands of PMAY-G houses completed between 2017 and 2022 remain unoccupied or barely used. The reasons are stark: pipelines from the Jal Jeevan Mission reach the village boundary but not individual homes; toilets were built without septic tanks or soak pits, often converted into storerooms; and plumbing remains non-functional. These PMAY houses stand as mere shells—roofs without functional water or sanitation—while district-level initiatives, promoted as transformative, remain fragmented, incomplete, or mismanaged.
SRIJAN’s Bundelkhand Initiative for Water, Agriculture and Livelihood (BIWAL), launched in the early 2010s, aimed to desilt and protect thousands of traditional tanks (community ponds) across districts like Banda and Chitrakoot. These ponds, once central to local water storage, are now largely encroached upon, silted, or repurposed for non-water uses, worsening water scarcity. With an annual budget of under ₹5 crore (roughly $600,000) spread across multiple districts, the program could restore only a fraction of the estimated 100,000+ degraded tanks. By 2023, evaluations showed that only 20–30% of targeted sites retained water beyond a single monsoon season. The lack of follow-up maintenance led to recurring crop failures and intensified migration, with little measurable impact on economic opportunities, including agro-based livelihoods.
Farmers in Hamirpur reported that ponds might temporarily refill but dried again due to poor groundwater recharge, reflecting a broader 40% decline in rainfall over the past decade. Structural constraints, such as granite topography, impede natural seepage. Yet NGO interventions often prioritized quick-fix desilting over advocacy for long-term solutions, such as large-scale canal repairs or watershed management, leaving the region’s water insecurity largely unresolved.
In Bundelkhand, operating on a shoestring budget of ₹2–3 crore annually (roughly $240,000–$360,000), initiatives reached only 10–15% of the region’s seven million rural residents. Training sessions were largely one-off, with no sustained monitoring, resulting in 50–60% dropout rates as women reverted to old practices under economic pressures. By 2025, NITI Aayog reports highlighted persistent 94% water deficits in aspirational blocks, and women’s daily treks for water remained unchanged in 70% of program villages.
Economic opportunities remained elusive. Trained groups attempted micro-enterprises, such as spice processing, but without market linkages or reliable irrigation, household incomes stagnated below ₹50,000 ($600) annually. This perpetuated a cycle of debt and distress migration, with over 200,000 people leaving Bundelkhand each year for urban employment.
Networks like Jan Kendrit Vikas Manch—a coalition of 50+ NGOs—collaborated under the ₹7,000 crore ($840 million) Bundelkhand Special Package (2006–2020), which focused on drought-proofing via check dams and afforestation. High-profile launches and donor visibility, including backing from the Church’s Auxiliary for Social Action, promised integrated water management. Yet only 9% of funds went to watershed management and a mere 2% to local water-harvesting structures, while 57% was spent on ill-suited cemented infrastructure that quickly failed due to poor soil and monsoon variability. NGO coordination collapsed under these budgetary constraints: individual groups received less than 5% of allocations, leading to duplicated efforts and leaving 70% of projects non-functional by 2020. A 2024 ScienceDirect analysis noted that “limited understanding of regional realities” was the core issue, with NGOs unable to influence policy shifts effectively.
Many Bundelkhand NGOs rely on foreign contributions via FCRA licenses for 70–80% of their budgets, funding small-scale projects such as borewell recharges. Government crackdowns—over 20,600 license cancellations nationwide from 2014–2024, including 6,000 in 2022–2023—slashed funding by 50–80%, forcing staff reductions and halting projects. Local NGOs in Chitrakoot reported 95% funding scarcity as of 2025, leaving abandoned sites where half-built water-harvesting structures now leak and contaminate water rather than conserve it.
Local residents recount a slow, bitter awakening: flashy campaigns, colorful reports, and high-profile NGO initiatives rarely touch the realities of daily life. In villages like Banda, Mahoba, and Chitrakoot, communities continue to rely on distant water sources, walking kilometers each day for drinking water. Agricultural productivity remains low due to inadequate irrigation, and employment insecurity persists despite the promises of MGNREGA. Even minor interventions, such as small water-harvesting structures, often fall into neglect, leaving villagers to grapple with recurring climate stress and resource scarcity.
During the Bundelkhand drought package—a ₹7,266 crore special initiative announced in 2009—hundreds of check-dams, stop-dams, and percolation tanks were sanctioned. In Mahoba and Chitrakoot alone, over 800 structures were recorded as “completed” on paper. The ground reality, however, is starkly different.
Investigations by SANDRP, the People’s Science Institute, and several local journalists reveal that most check-dams were built at the wrong locations, often without even basic ridge-to-valley treatment. Silt traps were never dug, leaving the first monsoon to bury the structures in silt. Waste weirs were either too low or too high, resulting in dams that either never filled or breached during the first heavy rain.
In Kabrai (Mahoba) and Mau (Chitrakoot), villagers showed reporters brand-new dams that had already turned bone-dry by 2012, even as shiny plaques proclaimed: “Constructed under Bundelkhand Package – ₹28 lakh.” The collapse of the official narrative became undeniable by 2016, when a CAG audit confirmed that in UP’s Bundelkhand region, nearly 60–70% of these water-harvesting structures were either defunct or silt-choked—silent, expensive ruins scattered across a thirsty landscape.
Despite Bundelkhand’s perhaps highest demand for MGNREGA work anywhere in India, actual employment generated remains dismally low. Official data itself admits that most households receive only 18 to 35 days of work annually. On the ground, residents report predictable fraud: job cards of deceased individuals or families who migrated long ago still record a full 100 days of employment. In Markundi (Chitrakoot) and Girwan (Banda), villagers showed blank job cards while the online MIS recorded ₹22,000 as already disbursed. Much of the so-called “work” consists of earth-digging on the private fields of local strongmen, creating no durable assets for the community and leaving the majority of households trapped in the cycle of drought, debt, and neglect.
The mandatory 60:40 material-to-labour ratio is routinely manipulated; bills are raised for pipes, cement, and tractors that never reach the work site—ghost materials for ghost works. Amid these distortions, the human cost becomes painfully clear. A woman in Devra village (Mahoba) summed it up starkly: “Hum mazdoori karte hain, par mazdoori humein nahi milti. Sirf neta aur contractor ke jeb mein jaati hai.” (We do the labour, but the wages never come to us. Only the leaders and contractors pocket the money.)
Across Bundelkhand, the grand experiment of Jal Sanchay and farm-pond construction—under PMKSY, the Mukhya Mantri Jal Sanchay Yojana, and multiple NGO-led programmes such as RSA, Haritika, and WaterAid—produced thousands of ponds between 2016 and 2022. Yet the story in block after block was eerily identical. Most ponds were dug without linings, causing water to seep away within two to three weeks. With no catchment treatment, the first monsoon filled them not with water but with thick layers of silt. On paper, each pond measured a robust 100 × 100 × 10 ft; in reality, villagers found pits barely 60 × 60 × 6 ft—too shallow to store meaningful water. Many were inexplicably carved on upper slopes rather than lower contours, ensuring they never filled even in years of decent rainfall. In Para village (Mahoba), 22 ponds were excavated in 2018–19; by 2021, despite a good monsoon, 19 were already dry. With no water to store and no functional purpose, most have quietly been repurposed as dumping grounds for household garbage.
In Banda city, the historic Haldhar Talab, spread over more than 100 acres, was showcased as a flagship rejuvenation project under the AMRUT Yojana, with an allocation of ₹26 crore. The project began amid grand publicity—hoardings featuring the chief minister, announcements of a “model urban lake,” and promises of year-round water storage. By 2024, however, the reality was starkly different. Apart from a boundary wall and a walking track, little had been completed. Desilting work was left unfinished, machinery quietly removed, and the talab remained dry for most of the year. Residents allege that contractors selectively scooped out the richest soil and sold it in truckloads, turning a public rejuvenation project into a private extraction business—without any official intervention.
In 2017, a major corporate CSR initiative proudly declared Patha village in Chitrakoot a “Smart Village.” Solar street lights, an RO water plant, a toilet in every house, even a computer centre — all inaugurated amid television crews, ribbon-cuttings and grand speeches. But by 2024, the glitter had peeled away to reveal a different truth. The RO plant worked barely six months before shutting down because spare parts were “not available.” Most solar lights stand broken or have simply vanished. Toilets were indeed constructed, but without drainage or water connections; many have since been converted into storerooms or cattle sheds. And despite all the “smart” branding, villagers still walk nearly 2 km every day to fetch drinking water from a lone handpump — the only reliable source the project never touched.
Despite the torrent of announcements and colorful campaigns flooding media channels, real development in Bundelkhand remains fragmented, uneven, and largely performative. Roads crumble before the inaugural garlands wilt, irrigation projects exist only on plaques, and hospitals stand roofless while ministers pose for selfies. Every election brings a monsoon of promises; every term ends in the same scorched desert. The region is not being developed—it is being campaigned to death. In Bundelkhand, the only pipeline that never fails carries electoral dividends back to Delhi and Lucknow. Everything else—water, schools, hope—remains cracked, leaking, and bone-dry.