What's new

Inside India's model village Punsari

thesolar65

SENIOR MEMBER
Joined
Jul 3, 2012
Messages
4,922
Reaction score
-12
Country
India
Location
India
A typical Indian village conjures up images of mud houses, narrow potholed streets, with no drainage system and no running water.

Unless one is talking about Punsari - a village of 6,000 in Sabarkantha district, some 90km (56 miles) from the western city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat state.
1.jpg

Punsari has been dubbed a "model village" by the state government and its young headman, Himanshu Patel, proudly states that his village offers "the amenities of a city but the spirit of a village".

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sent officials to Punsari to study its development model and prepare a scheme for creating model villages all over the country. The village has also been visited by "more than 300 officials" from all over India who want "to learn how they can replicate our model in their states", Mr Patel says.

When I visited the village, I was impressed with what I saw. It has round-the-clock, uninterrupted water and electricity supplies - something that is rare in hundreds of thousands of Indian villages.

Dynamic, popular
Every home in the village has toilets, there are two primary schools, a primary health centre, street lights and a drainage system.

And that's not all. The entire village is wifi enabled, has CCTV cameras installed at strategic points and a public address system which covers the entire population with the help of about 140 loudspeakers installed all over the village.
2.jpg

The project to make Punsari a model village began in 2006 year Patel is dynamic and popular. A graduate, he is a technology and media savvy man who promotes his village like a corporate salesman - rattling off year-on-year data on its "bulging growth rate", its record of "no case of school dropouts" and the growing list of state and federal government officials who come from his village.

I met some young boys outside the village who prided themselves in being part of this development story - Punsari has been awarded the "best village in Gujarat" several times and it may very well be among India's most developed villages.

Mr Patel leads an 11-member committee which runs the village affairs. Of these, five are women.

The committee's headquarters look like a modern corporate office - on one side is a conference hall where the council holds its meetings, on the other is a glass screen on which one can see four windows of live pictures beamed from the CCTV cameras installed on key locations in the village.

'No school dropouts'
Mr Patel shows the same live CCTV footage on his iPhone screen - it displays a classroom. "It helps me monitor school activity," he says.
3.jpg

We visit the school, it is not far from his office - the children look tidy in their crisp uniforms; they eat their free lunch distributed through the central government's midday meals scheme. The headmistress, Bhagwati Behn Patel, says "there is a zero incident of school dropouts in my school". The school is also wifi-enabled and offers computer classes.

The project to make Punsari a model village began in 2006 when Mr Patel, then 23, was elected the village headman - then, it was like any other undeveloped Indian village.

The village school in Punsari is wifi-enabled and offers computer lessons too
"When I took over, there was nothing in the village," he says. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the state chief minister at the time and his idea was to ebb the flow of migration from villages to cities by creating city-like infrastructure."

Mr Patel says the village council has spent 140m rupees ($2.28m; £1.43m) on development schemes between 2006 and 2012.

If the idea was to stop migration out of the village, it has been a partial success - Mr Patel says 15-20 families have returned to the village from the cities like Mumbai in recent years.

Among them is taxi driver Naveen, whose family came back to the village after having lived in Mumbai for years.

"We were struggling in Mumbai to fulfil our daily needs. We decided to come back after we heard from our neighbours about the development in the village and prospects of jobs."

Naveen is yet to find a job but he is happy that he doesn't have to deal with traffic jams, pollution and other big city problems any more.

@Sidak @levina @SpArK @DRAY @jbgt90 and others
 
Did visit many villages in interior Gujarat. Very good infrastructure, but the days were tooooo hot. :)

The girl in the picture needs more rice. :)


Gujarat has some villages which has numbers of milliners. Their wealth will envy any one.
 
Another example is Ralegan Siddhi of model village in Maharashtra.
The village's biggest achievement is undoubtedly in the area of non-conventional energy. All the streets in the village are lit by solar lights, each with a separate panel. There are four large community biogas plants and one of them is fitted to the community toilet. There is a large windmill used for pumping water. A number of households have their own biogas plants. The village is self sufficient .

http://edugreen.teri.res.in/explore/renew/rallegan.htm
annahazare.org
 
we have alot of well built villages in GB too good infrastructure
 
Another example is Ralegan Siddhi of model village in Maharashtra.


A model Indian village- Ralegaon Siddhi
annahazare.org


I was amazed to see the pictures of Ralegan siddhi before and after the work of Anna. This dry desert like village turned into lush green village favorite for one day trip for holiday. They became the big producers of fruit. Anna deserves a salute. It is a shinning example of what an enlighten person can do with his determination.
 
Has the initiative of taking up villages by business groups taken off..

It would be a huge success if they compete in that field.
 
Very good if it is so. Do not compare. This article was not posted to show Pakistani villages inferior. We all should progress to gather. We can learn good thing from each other.
never did just sharing info
 
We hope to improve our villages a lot after Modi pop up the idea to adopt the village. Swami Ramdev has adopted one village from each from each district. This is originally his idea. The model village of swami ramdev will not only be a well developed and self sufficient but totally free from any sort of intoxication and free from Cigarette, tobacco consumption etc.
 
I never visited village in Pakistan but heard they are well developed anyway great effort done by your village.
 
I have been visiting Gujarat extensively for almost two yrs especially interior parts of it... As per my own observation overall Gujarat village have pretty good infra than any decent(in terms of infra n etc) indian village.... Recently I was in a village called Ena(some 40km from Surat) all roads inside village were concrete made, common park(Well maintained) n one marvellous building (For marriage n other functions) n lastly I was shocked when i saw Mercedes is parked infront of house....
This is the story almost same everywhere in Gujarat except few areas of tribals ..... I have even visited a village(don't remember the name near Bharuch) of Ahmed Patel(Muslim dominated) n found d same.....
I have also observed one more thing is almost every district has some industry to feed poor n low skilled labour (example is a place Gandhidham where nothing existed 10-12 yrs back but now its a different story altogether )....
 
Back
Top Bottom