Dhaval Chauhan, 22, son of a farmer and a freshly-minted
BTech graduate from Nirma University, decided to set up a firm in his village.
He offers electrical and automation solutions to nearby vil lages, makes Rs 6
lakh a year and finds “no good reason“ to move to a big city.
“My village is way smarter than your city,“ he says with
pride. We have no good argument to counter him either.For Chauhan is a resident
of Punsari, a `dream village' located about 90 km from Ahmedabad.
Having won national and state awards for the best gram
panchayat, Punsari could lead the way in showing hinterlands how to smarten up
for good.Why just villages, it could give a lesson or two even to the metros on
how to make optimum use of state and central schemes to improve the quality of
life.
“I do not need to visit the city to place an order for raw
material. I simply log in to my laptop and send emails. The entire village is
my office since I have access to WiFi,“ says Chauhan, as he shoots off a mail
to a vendor on his laptop.
Eight years, Rs 14 crore and a determined sarpanch is what
took Punsari to gift itself a stunning makeover. Today it boasts of beautiful
roads, closed-circuit television cameras, air-conditioned schools, WiFi network
and biometric attendance for office-bearers. Cut to the late 1990s, Punsari
grappled with power cuts, water crisis and bad roads. The miraculous
transformation can be credited to Himanshu Patel, 31, the village sarpanch. An
alumnus of North Gujarat University, he won the panchayat polls in 2006.And
then on Patel has been working overtime to make Punsari a model village. In the
past eight years, he has utilized funds from 12th finance commission, self-help
group yojana, district planning commission and others to develop Punsari as it
is today.
“To make India smart, we have to first make the
grassroots-level people smart since they constitute majority of the population.
Making a village techno-smart holds the key to its development,“ he reasons. In
2010, the village was made Wi-Fi enabled with only five connections, but today
WiFi is accessible across Punsari. What more, CCTV cams are installed at all
strategic points, there is AC in the schools, there are smart roadside
libraries besides live mobile feed application for panchayat meetings.
LOWEST DROPOUT RATE
Ravi Patel, 14, a class 9 student of SMT High School, looks
forward to going to school. Why? It has computers. “My father could not afford
one.But my own school has computers which makes it easier for me to access
multimedia lectures online and understand chapters better. I can also play
video games like my cousins in the cities do,“ he says.
His is just one of the five schools equipped with
air-conditioned classrooms and projectors for audiovisual presentations. The
principals and gram panchayat members keep a tab on the activities in the
schools. Parents are updated about their wards' attendance and performance through
an app installed on their cellphones.
LIVE FEED FROM CLASSROOMS
The app also provides live feed of the goings-on in the
classroom. “Any villager with a smartphone can see what is being taught in the
classroom and what their kids are doing,“ said Patel. With such innovations in
the schools, the student enrolment rate has gone up.
“Earlier, the dropout rate was 30 per cent, but since 2006,
it is zero. The enrolment has doubled in the past few years,“ said Patel.
ZERO CRIME RATE
Thanks to the CCTV cameras dotting the village, the crime
rate is almost zero here, thus making Punsari one of the safest villages in
Gujarat. But change is first met with resistance. So, when Patel mooted the
idea of installing CCTVs, there was stiff opposition at first. “The idea was to
ensure civic discipline and curb crime rate. It took us several months to
convince the villagers, but we have finally succeeded,“ says Patel.
“In the past three years, no FIR has been registered here.
Punsari is a model other villages should replicate,“ said M Nagarajan, district
development officer, Sabarkantha. “There is zero crime in this village because
of strict vigilance through CCTV cameras. Discipline has become a way of life,“
says Jyoti Patel, deputy superintendent of police, Sabarkantha.
NO MORE STANDING IN THE QUEUE
Villagers have learnt how to pay their bills and apply for
ration card and Aadhar card online. More techno-transformation is in the
offing. “We are trying to make optimum use of the WiFi facility.The plan is to
ensure that all transactions, right from grocery shopping to paying the milkman
are done through netbanking,“ said Bhargavi Dave, Ahmedabad DDO, formerly
director of District Development Authority, Sabarkantha.
The village also has smart roadside libraries to encourage
farmers to read. These libraries are fully airconditioned, equipped with CCTV,
and function round the clock. Bharat Makwana, a farmer, is a regular at these
libraries. “I do not miss any opportunity to pick up a book. Reading the works
of Hemchandracharya and Narsinh Mehta is my way of unwinding. About 10 years
ago, I never thought I would get to read them as I cannot afford expensive
books. I am glad I will die a little less ignorant,“ he says, laughing.
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