Thirty-four-year-old Haidar Abbas muscled out two buckets from a hand-pump in his village and grimaced as he looked at the tepid, muddy water.
For him there is no sign of the "feel-good factor" that India's ruling party has been boasting about ahead of this month's general elections - just a bad taste in the mouth.
"This water tastes vile, but it's the best we've got. It makes me feel heavy and I can never drink a stomachful. We have all come to accept that this is how we must live," he said.
Three hand-pumps are the only sign of progress in this village in northern Uttar Pradesh state since India won independence from Britain 57 years ago.
India's blistering economic growth of more than eight percent has escaped this rural patch, where the men toil under the hot sun as labourers or head to Sultanpur, a town eight kilometers (five miles) away, to be rickshaw pullers.
A luxury is one full meal a day of bread and lentils and a kerosene lamp to see in the dark - not the mobile phones or motor scooters that are the status symbols in cities such as Lucknow, the state capital barely 150 kilometers (90 miles) away which is the constituency of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
For many of the some 700 million residents of rural India, the Vajpayee government's talk of a "feel-good" economy seems a world away.
"Feel good? Yes, we have heard about that. But where is it here, you tell me? We do see the big new cars on the roads and people talking on mobile phones. These are things not for us or our children," said Armaan Ali, 70.
A school in a nearby village offers classes for children up to age 10. But when the children of Balua return home, it is a daunting task to finish homework without electric lights. Ali said that even for those who finish school, the only jobs to be found were as rickshaw drivers or construction workers. Women try to boost the meagre income spinning ropes and selling them to visiting traders.
Every year, water from a nearby river spills over the banks and enters Balua, forcing the 300 villagers to leave their homes in boats to take shelter on higher lands for up to a month.
There is no tarred road, electricity or running water. Only the moonlight guides home villagers who work in nearby towns as they walk on a dusty path off the bumpy highway, which is dotted with political posters promising a new India.
"People have been bitten several times by snakes as they have stepped on them in the dark," said Abbas. "Sometimes these creatures are hiding under our tables and beds at homes and we get bitten."
"What is even worse is that when people fall sick, we have to carry them on stringed cots up to the highway and flag down a vehicle for a lift. Many of them die on their way to hospitals," he said.
But residents said their appeals to authorities for a road and electricity have fallen on deaf ears.
"Now that it is election time again, all the leaders will start making the rounds here. Once they are elected, they will not be seen within a mile of our village," Abbas said.
"It really is the same for us whichever party is in power".