Jai Singh, 40, rides his bicycle for an hour to cover a distance of 12 km to reach Ravindra Puri, a small locality in south Varanasi. This area adjoining Banaras Hindu University (BHU) has a VVIP address — the public relations office of Varanasi’s local MP and Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi . After hearing the news that the PM is visiting the city on September 22 and 23, Singh rushes to Varanasi’s “mini PMO”.“I had applied for a house under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana . I received a message saying there would be a survey now. I am eligible but nervous. I don’t want to take any risks,” says Singh, father of four children, staying at a rented accommodation in Ram Nagar area on the city’s outskirts. He walks up to the office in-charge Shiv Saran Pathak, a man with an RSS background and the one who telephones the high and the mighty in the state government to pursue matters of the PM’s constituents. What Singh is looking for is a mere assurance from the “PM’s man” that a home under the scheme is indeed coming his way. As Pathak tells ET Magazine later, there are many who come with a request to meet the PM; some come with complaints regarding land disputes, family discord, promotions, provident fund and gratuity claims.“We now have fewer visitors as we have formed our own government in Uttar Pradesh (six months ago). Four out of five MLAs in Varanasi parliamentary constituency belong to the BJP and one to Apna Dal, an ally. MLAs now solve most of the issues faced by ordinary citizens here,” says Pathak.The BJP’s simultaneous rule of Lucknow and Delhi notwithstanding, there is the baggage of the past. And, with Lok Sabha elections a year and a half away, voters are unlikely to be convinced by the earlier narrative, pinpointing failures of the previous Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati regimes.Can development then be the counter-narrative for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, which gave it 73 of 80 seats (including two of allies)?Development, indeed, may have topped the agenda when PM Modi okayed a two-day-long itinerary in the city of temples during the auspicious Navratri period when many Hindus, including the PM himself, go on a fast. In fact, the PM bundled all the big and small projects in one basket to make a no-holds-barred pitch for development. Of 23 projects — 17 were launched and foundation stones for six were laid — there were large ones like the Rs 253 crore trade facilitation centre for handicrafts, Rs 84.7 crore Samne Ghat bridge and the Rs 87.4 crore Balua Ghat bridge, both over the Ganga. There were sub-Rs 1 crore projects as well. For example, the cost of renovating the 200-year-old Gurudham temple is Rs 82 lakh.As the PM launched most of the projects via video conferencing in Varanasi, he could have possibly done the same from Delhi. But if he chose not to, it may have been mainly for political reasons. For one, this is Modi’s maiden visit to Varanasi after the BJP’s thumping majority in the UP assembly six months ago; in the run-up to that election, the PM had camped in Varanasi for three days and also participated in mega roadshows. This visit can be seen as thanksgiving, with a return gift in the form of a slew of projects. For another, the PM wants to underline that he cares for his constituency. And the timing of the introduction of the swanky Mahamana Express from Vadodara and Surat to Varanasi couldn’t have been better calibrated, with the Gujarat elections scheduled for the year-end.The PM’s agenda has been crafted with development at the core, with both time and place hallowed by religion. When the PM, for example, released the postage stamp on the Ramayana at Tulsi Manas temple, his followers began chanting "Jai Shree Ram". In his address, Modi mentioned how he had decided to release the stamp in Varanasi during the auspicious period of Navratri, and not in Delhi's Vigyan Bhawan or at his official residence. And, on Day 2, the PM chose to visit the cow farm that conserves Gangatiri, one of the 40 elite cow breeds.Ajai Rai of the Congress who unsuccessfully contested the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from Varanasi against Modi, argues how the PM's priorities are all wrong. "Unemployment has been the major problem in Varanasi.Couldn't the PM bring in one big industry that would have absorbed 50,000 educated unemployed in one day? Also, are the women in Banaras safe?" asks Rai, citing a recent molestation case on BHU campus that prompted university students to stage a dharna the day Modi landed in the city. Rai's other question: "Has the Ganga been cleaned as promised?"To be sure, there has been no tangible progress in the Clean Ganga programme, something that may have cost Uma Bharti her ministry. In the cabinet reshuffle undertaken early this month, Bharti was shunted out to the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, with Nitin Gadkari , who has so far steered the Ministry of Road Transport, Highways and Shipping, taking on additional charge of the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation. The Clean Ganga programme will clearly have a synergy with the waterways that Gadkari and his ministry have been pursuing for the last three years.At Ram Nagar in Varanasi, the progress of the Rs 170 crore Inland Water Transport Terminal ¡X a river port that will facilitate bulk transportation of commodities such as coal, vehicles, foodgrain, fertilisers and the like through the Ganga ¡X is tangible. According to the Inland Waterways Authority of India, the government agency that monitors the project, about 54% of the project was completed as on September 19, giving hope that the project will be completed by August 2018, well before the countdown to the 2019 general election kicks in. However, 16.3 out of 29.1 hectares of land have yet to be acquired, which raises the question whether the completion of construction work will have any meaning unless the adjoining area is acquired to connect the river port to the nearby roads. "Only one person who owns seven hectares is holding up the project.We are trying our best to make an amicable settlement by giving a compensation that is four times the existing circle rate, or roughly Rs 84 lakh per hectare; but, if the impasse continues, the state will have to forcefully acquire the land in the next couple of months under the land acquisition laws," says a Central government official privy to the matter.A slew of infrastructure projects is expected to be completed by the end of next year. "We will complete the 17-km-long phase one of the ring road by the end of this year. And 60% work is completed on the 22 km city road in Babatpur (where the airport is located) to Varanasi city road. Then, we are conceptualising a multi-modal hub (integrating rail, road and ferry services) that is likely to be executed in PPP mode," says Varanasi district magistrate Yogeshwar Ram Mishra.During his two-day visit, the PM's headline-making statement was: "We not only lay foundations but also inaugurate projects." The underlying message there is not just for the electorate but for those executing the projects.: Rs 170 crore: June 2016: Aug 2018: 54%*: Only 12.8 of 29.1 hectares acquired so far, leading to a situation where the terminal could be ready on schedule but without adjoining facilities like space for unloading and connecting roads.The road leading to the under-constructed Inland Water Transport Terminal in Varanasi’s Ramnagar area is barely motorable, with a mud stretch in it. But once you reach the site, there’s a buzz of activity amid giant machinery. There’s no electricity on the campus, but generators are powerful enough to keep the work going 24x7.As many as 240 workers, including 30 engineers from AFCONS Infrastructure, the company that won the contract, work in shifts round the clock to hand over the project by August next year, well ahead of the 2019 general elections. Of the 72 piles, as many as 63 are already placed on the Ganga; the part of the jetty where the ships will finally dock is ready. This will be one of the three multi-modal terminals on National Waterways 1 — the other two are being constructed in Haldia in West Bengal and in Sahebganj in Bihar. Once completed, the Ganga is expected to be the preferred route to roadways and railways for transporting bulk commodities like coal, vehicles, foodgrain and fertilisers.But there’s a hitch. The work may be progressing well within 5 hectares of construction site, but 16.3 of 29.1 hectares of land required for the entire project in its first phase (up to August 2018) have yet to be acquired; construction of the approach roads to the site hangs in the balance.Earlier this year, a group of World Bank officials visited the site and inspected the nearby areas. An engineer working at the site points out: “The World Bank officials suggested that a freight village could be built around the site where all logistics companies may have their own little offices, for better coordination.” The only problem? “But that requires land, again.”*According to Inland Waterways Authority of India, as on Sep 19, 2017: In 2015: Research in new materials — steel, plastics, nylon — for use in train wagons and passenger coaches COST: Rs 5 crore deposited in 2015; the centre is expected to run on the interest (Rs 25-30 lakh per year): Railways has not taken a call on IIT-BHU’s advice of manufacturing a prototype of a light-weight wagon for trialOn the sprawling 1,300 acre campus of Banaras Hindu University (BHU), it’s not easy to locate the office of Professor Rajiv Kumar Mandal, coordinator of the Malviya Chair for Railway Technology that was set up two years ago to undertake research in new materials such as steel, plastics and nylon for use in railway coaches and wagons. But once you locate his laboratory inside the department of metallurgical engineering of IIT-BHU, it’s a different world, with machines all around; one of them, the Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), costs over Rs 5 crore. The professor insists his lab should have a better machine called STEM that may cost about Rs 10 crore with superior capabilities for compositional analysis of new materials to be used in Indian trains.After some research, the IIT-BHU Centre recently made a suggestion to the Lucknowheadquartered rail agency — Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO) — about the need to use light alternative steel for railway coaches, apart from undertaking feasibility studies for the use of lightweight fibre for blower fans in coaches and new nylon bushes in trains. “Our idea is to find alternative materials for designing lightweight passenger coaches and wagons.Tata Steel has shown interest in developing a prototype of a railway wagon with lighter weight. But the Railway Board needs to take the final call,” says Mandal.A team of Tata Steel executives headed by D Bhattacharjee, vice-president, new material business, had a formal meeting with IIT-BHU experts on May 9. As Mandal tells this writer, the Tata Steel executives showed tremendous interest to invest in a prototype of a lightweight railway wagon for trial and, if accepted, they will be keen to participate in commercial production as well. But he knows that working on a shoestring annual budget of Rs 25-30 lakh means that “the big companies must take our ideas forward”.