The road named after former chief minister Lalu Prasad at Tilhawa village in Patna rural near Naubatpur. Pictures by Ashok Sinha

Visit Tilhawa village in rural Patna near Naubatpur if good roads in Bihar make you think of Nitish Kumar. Residents here associate quality pathways with Lalu Prasad’s tenure.

Good roads have been the USP of the Nitish Kumar government, but residents of Tilhawa, around 35km southwest of Patna, believe otherwise because it was Lalu who built the road connecting their village to the main road (NH-98), making their lives easier. It is another matter the road is now in a dilapidated condition with none to care for it.

Inaugurated and built by then chief minister Lalu Prasad in 1994, the 1.5-km stretch played an important role in transforming their lives.

Most Tilhawa residents are dairy farmers and the connector once helped them reach the national highway to sell their produce to a milk tanker that reached there early every morning.

Resident Sushil Ram remembers: “A delegation from our village had met Laluji and requested him to build the connector to the national highway. We used to face lot of problems because of the bad road condition, especially during monsoon. The stretch was then built with just brick and sand and was inconvenient for use by residents to reach the highway.”

He further said: “We are mostly dependent on dairy produce. We sold milk to Sudha Dairy. The milk tanker would arrive around 4am to collect the produce. But because of bad roads, we would often miss the milk tanker, which meant losing business. The road came up just 30 days after we approached Laluji. After that we did very good business.”

The road came to be rightfully named after Lalu. Shri Lalu Prasad Yadav Path, says a landmark there.

But that was years ago. With time nobody has bothered to maintain the road and it has fallen on bad days. The decline set in around 2004, a year before the Lalu-Rabri regime came to an end and the then JD(U)-BJP alliance came to power.

Kalawati Devi, another Tilhawa resident, said: “Ever since the road became dilapidated, our milk trade has been badly hit. My husband used to make a handsome Rs 10,000-15,000 every month but all that is a thing of the past now. The milk tanker does not bother to wait for us. They go away without collecting our produce even if we are late by just 10 minutes. Many a time, the milk spilt during the bumpy ride to the highway. We have had to look for other options to make a living.”

She further said: “The Nitish government has done nothing for us. He has left us at god’s mercy. How much would it take for him to get this road built? Let him come to ask us for votes next time. We will show him the door. How can the government be so ignorant? Lalu was far better than him as far as construction of roads is concerned.”

In this village of 450 residents, many have abandoned dairy farming solely because of the bad road conditions. Some of them took up jobs with private security agencies. Others took up masonry. Even Kalawati Devi’s husband, Ram Kishore Yadav, now works as a mason.

Most villagers here cycle or walk down this difficult stretch, their only link to the outside world. Few have bikes that they ride during emergencies. The roads, the rural works department’s responsibility, are so bad even tangawalas (horse-driven carts) avoid it, dropping off passengers at the highway.

Chandradev Thakur complained of how difficult it was to rush patients to the nearest primary health centre during emergencies.

Rural works minister Bhim Singh told The Telegraph: “The government has already decided to connect every village with the core network. I want to assure the residents of Tilhawa village that very soon the department will repair that road and they do not need to worry about it.”