-By Dil Bhusan Pathak

KUNDAWA, Banke – During one of a rare visits by strangers to this backwater village, four hours walk away east of Nepalgunj, the villagers had expected a lot and seemed quite hopeful. A team of strangers led by a middle-aged grey-haired man had slipped into their otherwise forgotten village all of a sudden.

But no sooner than they finally knew that the team was that of a candidate contesting the May general elections, the villagers who were totally unaware of the elections looked disappointed. The reason: They were supposed to cross the nearby mighty Rapti River to cast their ballots in the May 3 parliamentary election.

Because the villagers of Gangapur VDC’s Kundawa – which lies in Banke-1 constituency – have been receiving “tall promises and unmaterializing assurances” from the politicians during countless previous elections, the assurances made by the team of this grey-haired gentleman was not something very promising.

Although hordes of loud speaker-installed tractors have been whisking about the nearby villages calling upon the village folks to cast their ballots on their parties’ election symbols, Kundawa was untouched by the election fever until last Friday. The village perched across the Rapati river which houses some 200 voters in its 70 houses were not approached by any candidates.

Following a devastating monsoon flood in Rapti river the villagers of Banke-2’s Holiya VDC were resettled in nearby open space across the Rapti river that falls in Banke-1 constituency. Though the villagers are now residents of Banke-1 constituency, they are enlisted as the voters of Constituency-2 by the Election Commission.

And, in an apparent bid to woo this mass of 200 voters, candidates have finally begun to make their way to Kundawa since late last week. Though the candidates have been delivering speeches about national politics and so on, the illiterate villagers seldom understand what all the high-sounding speeches really mean.

Among other basic things, the villagers are in desperate need of land to plough and work to live by. “Neither we have agricultural land nor work to do,” says 37-year-old Satgaur Murau. “We had plenty of land and a small house previously … but the floods swept away every thing we owned.”

“I am one of those mostly affected by Rapti,” laments 45-year-old Sukkha Murau. “Following the disastrous flood and subsequent re-settlement here, all I own is a small hut and five dhur (one fourth of a kattha) land” – that equals a piece of land enough to build an average Nepali house.

According to Bijay Yadav of Holiya VDC, except for two villagers in Kundawa, all the villagers own land less than two kathha.

Inhabited mostly by Yadavs and Muraus, the villagers are mostly involved in agriculture and labour based professions. As in the previous elections, the electoral issues put forth by the parties in many surrounding villages like this across the Rapti river, are construction of the Rapti bridge, link roads, irrigation canals, and electrification. The villages connected with India’s Uttar Pradesh include, Kutkuia, Laxmanpur, Narayanpur, Kalaphanta, Gangapur and Machhaiya.

Locals say, although the candidates contesting in previous elections too had vowed to look into the problems nothing has been done till date. “There is no data on how much damage the floods have caused,” says a farmer in Kundawa. “The floods have damaged river banks to such extent that it is difficult to trace the river’s edges.”

Those contesting the election from Banke-1 that covers most villages across the Rapti include, Gyanu KC of Nepali Congress, Dinesh Chandra Yadav of Communist Party of Nepal (UML) Krishna Raj Panta of CPN (ML), Prem Bahadur Bhandari of Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP)-Chand, Chet Bahadur Thapa of RPP and Independent candidate Thakur Singh Tharu.

The candidates have also planted their party flags in most of the houses of this constituency. Says a Tharu man whose house boasts of a total of four parties’ flags: “Although the political parties have neglected our needs we have not. “I have satisfied all of them,” he adds pointing at his little hut with flags of four different political parties fluttering to the gentle breeze.