ABOUT 10 km short of Faridkot town in the heart of Punjab's Malwa belt is Guru ki Dhaab, a small village of hundred houses. Oblivious of the cars with fluttering election flags zipping past them on the busy highway nearby is a gaggle of women and children struggling to fill their containers with water from plastic pipe jutting out of the mud. The water is from the public health department's supply to a neighboring village, and runs only on alternate days. Hard to believe this is the parliamentary constituency of Punjab's deputy chief minister, Sukhbir Badal. As you approach Faridkot town, two canals bringing water from the Sutlej shimmer in the sun. They are also loaded with effluents from the industries of Ludhiana that have so polluted the ground water that it has been declared unpotable. Hundreds of handpumps have fallen into disuse. The tube wells discharge polluted water but farmers have no choice but to use it for irrigation. "Each of the four times Sukhbir Badal has contested from here, he has promised to make Faridkot India's California. We don't want so much. Just give us the basics, please," says Avtar Singh Gondara, a local advocate. Faridkot today is no one's baby. After delimitation, when this constituency was reserved, the Badal family immediately dumped it and shifted their attention to neighbouring Bhatinda, from where Sukhbir's wife is contesting. The feeling of being abandoned is a constant refrain. The Gidderbaha assembly segment, represented by Sukhbir's cousin and Punjab's finance minister Manpreet Badal, is the only area of this cancer-ravaged belt that is being lavished with care. Each of the 54 villages here has industrial capacity reverse osmosis units from which drinking water is provided at 10 paise per litre. Since the cancer prevalent in the region is being linked to polluted ground water, the water supply from these units is being extended to other assembly segments too. Sukhbir has utilised 93.89 per cent of his mplads fund for Faridkot, some of which was spent on repair of dharamsalas, village drains, streets and sports clubs and associations. But locals complain that the work done was little and most of the money found its way to bogus clubs of all kinds floated by Akali workers. ?