Kurnool, April 22: The first thing that catches the eye in Kurnool as one gets off National Highway 7 is the pitcher — not clay or bell metal ones, but plastic, in colours ranging from bright yellow to fluorescent green.

They are everywhere, in the marketplace, in queues before tube wells, even perched atop bamboo posts on bullock carts as villagers ride miles to fetch water.

The entire stretch wears an arid look; the absence of green on the two sides of the road tells the traveller that cultivation here is strictly seasonal. The river Tungabhadra, too, seems to question the existence of a bridge over it.

If the Telengana issue and Naxalite threat were the deciding factors on April 20, April 26 will be about the ground realities.

But in the Rayalseema region, where development has been uneven at best, it is not easy to list “election issues” which apply to all villages in all the districts.

Take the people of Gandhinagar village in the Kodumur Assembly constituency. Development has certainly passed them by on its way to other villages. Only one tube well has come up in this village in the last nine years, whereas the next village has four.

The nearest hospital is 3 km away and the villagers are not any better off with electricity as power goes off more than three times every day, each time for over two hours.

As Lachhmi, 67, and Soumyasri, 35, tell their tales of woe — the men have all gone out in the morning to work at construction sites — young girls gather around them. Do they go to school? No, not one of them. They have to work as domestic help and earn money.

They could still have juggled both work and school, had the school not charged tuition fees of Rs 20-40 every month, besides demanding Rs 5 for question papers during examinations. The only school in the village is a private one, run by the retired headmaster of a government school.

Water and rice are the two things that the people of Gandhinagar would not mind having a little more of.

Even if they manage to get water from a couple of kilometres away, they have no option but to depend for their rice on the fair price shops that turn them away every few weeks complaining of limited stocks.

Neither the panchayat, nor the political parties are of any help. While there is not much of a panchayat save a building, the “netas” are happy to offer them money before the elections rather than a solution to their problems.

Cut to Nandavaram, about 45 km from Kodumur near the Karnataka border.

Here, nearly every child goes to school, while their parents go over to Karnataka to sell milk, rice and chillies. Nandavaram has had electricity for the last 30 years, and now enjoys uninterrupted power supply. Three private hospitals and one government hospital take care of the health of the village of 2,500.

In a few weeks, the country will find out whether the Telugu Desam Party government has created more Gandhinagars or Nandavarams in Rayalseema.