Oil town blues: How greed, polls and politics keep a village on the edge

Sonia Gandhi's 2013 announcement for a multi-billion dollar refinery caused a money stampede, but Modi's 2018 promise has made villagers of Pachpadra suspicious

A year ago they say there was nothing but salt marshes amidst rugged terrain and a boundary wall. Now the salt pans are gone and the arid landscape as far as the eye can see has been pummelled and flattened. Heavy-duty Caterpillar machines are at work laying roads, spools of electrical cables lie basking in the hot sun alongside camel dung, trucks ferrying sand intermittently leave trails of dust in which a handful of workers are busy building a warehouse.

At the site of the proposed Rs 431-billion Pachpadra refinery in Rajasthan’s Barmer district, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) has set