Vidarbha Citizens Forced to Fill Government Gaps with Their Own Resources

thenewsdirt
9 hours ago
6 min read

Citizens across the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra have repeatedly found themselves compelled to undertake infrastructure and development work that should have been executed by government authorities using taxpayer funds.

From building bridges through crowdfunding to constructing schools with donated land, residents have stepped into roles traditionally held by municipal corporations and state departments when official channels failed to deliver essential services.

Between 2020 and 2025, numerous instances across Vidarbha districts have demonstrated how citizens, despite paying taxes for basic services, have been forced to fund and execute projects themselves. This pattern reveals a systematic breakdown in governance where taxpayers bear the dual burden of paying for services they don't receive while simultaneously financing solutions through their resources.

The most striking example occurred in January 2025 when frustrated residents of Manish Nagar in Nagpur took matters into their own hands. The newly constructed Somalwada Railway Under Bridge had been completed for months, but remained closed due to pending official inauguration formalities.

Despite being ready for vehicular movement, bureaucratic delays prevented its opening, forcing commuters to navigate through congested alternative routes. On January 6, 2025, fed up with the endless wait, residents collectively removed the barricades and began using the underpass. The action was repeated after authorities briefly shut it down again.

Community-Funded Infrastructure Projects Replace Government Inaction

The failure of government machinery to deliver basic infrastructure has prompted numerous community-driven initiatives across Vidarbha. In Yavatmal district, residents of Palsi village in Umarkhed tehsil demonstrated remarkable self-reliance by constructing a 70-foot-long bridge themselves after years of official neglect.

Tired of facing multiple problems in crossing the Painganga river, particularly during monsoon every year, and with elected representatives and officials turning a blind eye to their repeated representations, the villagers set an example by building the new bridge through crowdfunding.

Shiv Sena's member of Yavatmal Zilla Parishad Chitangrao Kadam, took the lead and collected Rs 16 lakh through crowdfunding. The villagers not just contributed money, but also offered their services as part of shramdaan, and also arranged construction material. Using RCC pipes as the base structure, the villagers, with the help of masons, completed the bridge in just 9 days.

The work started on November 20 and was completed on November 28, 2020. According to Kadam, the work that would have cost over Rs 1 crore as per the state government estimate was completed by spending only Rs 15.80 lakh.

Water conservation and management in Vidarbha has witnessed significant community involvement, particularly in reviving traditional water harvesting systems.

The region's historical Malguzari tanks, constructed by local Zamindars centuries ago, fell into disrepair when the state government took ownership after 1950 but failed to maintain them. In 2008, Shirish Apte, an Executive Engineer belonging to a Malguzaar family, initiated the process of rejuvenating these tanks with government monetary support. The first tank restored was the Janbhora Malguzari tank, located 35 km from Bhandara, where the community came together to de-silt the tank and strengthen its boundary walls.

The traditional water management systems in eastern Vidarbha showcase remarkable community participation.

These systems, which include thousands of tanks built by the Kohli community more than 400 years ago, demonstrate how local communities historically managed water resources. The Navegaon Bandh in Sakoli Taluka of Bhandara, one of the largest tanks with a catchment area of 23 sq. miles, originally irrigated about 2,250 acres of land.

Village communities actively participated in annual maintenance, with all beneficiaries taking part in cleaning the catchment area and de-silting operations.

The maintenance of these traditional systems relied heavily on community participation. Beneficiaries worked on de-silting the tanks, repairing the embankments and channels, with decisions regarding water sharing taken collectively.

A person known as 'Pankar' was responsible for unbiased water management and knew the region's hydrology. The system included fines for violations, with anyone breaking channels to get more water facing penalties.

In Palsi village, the same community that built the bridge also undertook water conservation work. The villagers contributed through shramdaan for various development projects, including water harvesting structures. Their self-reliance extended beyond bridge construction to encompass multiple infrastructure needs that the government failed to address.

The education sector in Vidarbha has seen numerous instances where communities stepped in to fill government gaps. The Pokhari village school expansion project represents a broader pattern where communities fund educational infrastructure development.

The project, which began in 2018, involved not just financial contributions but also land donation by community members. Four villagers donated more than one acre of land specifically for school expansion, demonstrating the extent of community commitment to educational development.

This pattern extends to other educational initiatives across Vidarbha. In the region's tribal areas, communities have contributed to the construction and maintenance of ashram shalas (residential schools) when government funding proved insufficient.

Despite official schemes like Samagra Shiksha providing infrastructure grants, communities often find themselves contributing additional resources to ensure functional educational facilities.

Healthcare infrastructure development has also witnessed community participation when government systems failed. While specific instances of community-funded hospital construction in Vidarbha during 2020-2025 were limited in the available data, the pattern of community contribution to public health initiatives is evident in various forms.

The implementation of public health programs often requires community participation beyond what government funding covers.

The traditional community-managed systems in Vidarbha extended to healthcare and social infrastructure. Historical evidence shows that communities took responsibility for maintaining various public facilities when official channels proved inadequate.

This tradition continued into modern times, with communities contributing to the construction and maintenance of community centres, though specific buffer zone restrictions have sometimes hindered such projects.

Systematic Failures Force Community Self-Reliance

The recurring pattern of community-funded infrastructure projects reveals systematic failures in government service delivery. The 2025 assessment of water conservation structures in Vidarbha showed that nearly 90 percent of such structures in Nagpur and Amravati districts had become non-functional.

A total of 10,000 structures, 6,500 in Amravati and 3,500 in Nagpur, deteriorated due to administrative neglect. These failures directly impacted communities, forcing them to seek alternative solutions through self-funding.

The irrigation sector demonstrated similar patterns. According to official submissions to the Bombay High Court in 2025, only 35 percent of proposed irrigation projects in Vidarbha had been completed. Former chief secretary Nitin Kareer confirmed that out of 131 planned projects, only 46 were finished. The Gosikhurd irrigation project, launched in 1983 for Rs 372 crore, remained incomplete more than four decades later, with costs escalating to an estimated Rs 18,000 crore.

The budgetary allocation pattern consistently favoured western Maharashtra over Vidarbha, forcing communities to rely on self-funding for essential infrastructure. The 2021 Maharashtra budget drew criticism from political leaders across party lines, with opposition leader Devendra Fadnavis noting that the budget favoured only two regions while neglecting the rest of Maharashtra.

Business and industry circles termed the budget disappointing, with the Vidarbha Rajya Andolan Samiti staging protests condemning the alleged discrimination.

The 2025 Union Budget continued this pattern of neglect. While Maharashtra received significant allocations for infrastructure projects, Vidarbha was largely overlooked, except for a Rs 295.64 crore grant for the Nag River Rejuvenation Project. No funding was allocated for the long-proposed Nagpur-Mumbai bullet train project, and irrigation projects in Vidarbha received no further enhancements.

These systematic budgetary failures have created a situation where communities must choose between waiting indefinitely for government action or taking matters into their own hands.

The Palsi village bridge construction exemplifies this dilemma. As Kadam noted, "Had the villagers kept waiting for the state to act, the bridge would have never been built. The state administration seemed unwilling to spend a single pie on any new project".

The cumulative effect of these failures has been that citizens are bearing dual burdens of paying taxes for services they don't receive and then funding solutions themselves. This double taxation effect has become particularly pronounced in Vidarbha, where regional development has lagged behind western Maharashtra for decades.

The pattern of community-funded infrastructure, while demonstrating remarkable civic spirit, highlights the fundamental breakdown in governance where taxpayer money fails to deliver promised services, forcing citizens to become their own service providers.