The Sunday Story: When PM comes to village

A gate with a Modi photo welcomes visitors to the panchayat bhawan at the village square. (Source: Express Photos by Anand Singh)

Five months after Jayapur in Varanasi was adopted by Modi under Adarsh Gram Yojana, it has regular VIP visitors, many benefactors, solar lights, bio-toilets, new houses, revamped schools, and promise of ‘100 pc water supply’ soon. PRASHANT PANDEY reports:

Why Jayapur?
It’s a question that has been raised, given the village’s RSS links and its not-so-backward status.

Size: 26,268 hectares
Population (2011 Census): 3,205 (women outnumber men by a large margin)
SC numbers: 371
Literacy rate: 71.36 per cent (among men, 85.12 per cent; women, 52.27per cent)
Cultivable land: 268 hectares
Govt school: 1 (primary)

A blue-and-white shamiana flutters outside the panchayat bhawan in Jayapur’s village square. People crowd under it in the afternoon sun, sitting on plastic chairs arranged in neat rows. SUVs and Ambassadors drive in and out of the bhawan ground at regular intervals. As a couple of them with blue and red beacons speed past, people crane their necks to peek inside.

Durgawati Devi, who has been the sarpanch since 2008, sits on one of the front rows. Her brother-in-law and pratinidhi (representative), Narayan Patel, walks around, giving instructions.

This Saturday afternoon, Devi, Patel and the others are waiting for a special guest — Nripendra Misra, Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The previous weekend, a team from Banaras Hindu University was here telling farmers about an advance weather warning system.

Women receiving training to make daris under a Textile Ministry programme.

District Magistrate Pranjal Yadav visits at least once a month, while the lekhpal, tehsildar, BDO and others are regulars to the village.

The shamiana is hardly ever pulled down these days, laughs a local teacher, Devnath.

Five months after Modi “adopted” Jayapur under the Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY) to showcase it as a “model of development”, achche din are here at least in this village in his Varanasi constituency.

* Jayapur now has one more bank apart from Union Bank and Syndicate Bank. State Bank of India has opened a ‘Tiny Branch’, while Union Bank of India will soon move into a new building.

* The village doesn’t get regular power for more than 8-10 hours a day in the summer, and lesser in winter. But it now has more than 100 solar streetlights. At least 600 LED bulbs will be supplied soon.

* Eight bio-toilets have been installed while eight more are on the way.

*Jayapur’s Vanvasis, a tribal community that lives near forests, have been allotted one-room pucca houses and are set to move in. The settlement has been given the name ‘Atal Nagar’ .

* The village has got new benches with the PM’s name and slogans etched on them, installed at the main temple as well as around the panchayat bhawan.

* A new bus stop, sponsored by the Department of Posts, is under construction. Courtesy the Jalans, a famous business house in Varanasi, there is a bus to take villagers near the city.

* The abandoned primary school, dating back to 1941-42 and the only government school in the village, has got a fresh coat of bright paint. New classrooms have come up.

* The adjacent anganwadi centre, which used to operate from a room, also is newly painted, and has freshly tiled floors, and colourful plastic chair and table sets for children.

* On December 25, 2014, celebrated as Good Governance Day, the Textile Ministry started a programme to train women weavers in making daris.

* A 20,000-litre overhead water tank is being raised, and within six to eight months, every household has been promised a water connection.

Inside the renovated anganwadi centre, which has got new furniture for children.

Sukhram Vanvasi is among the 14 beneficiaries to have been allotted the one-room pucca houses, which have a kitchen, bathroom, latrine, wash-basin, solar lights and running water each. “Who could have thought we would live in such houses?” he says.

The Vanvasis traditionally made pattal, dona (plates, bowls) from Mahua and Palash leaves for a living. With the demand dwindling over the years, most of them now work in brick kilns.

Poonam Singh, who is learning to make daris or galeechas along with other women, expects the training to open many avenues for them. “After the four-month training, we will get work at home or will be provided work here,” she says.

Her daughter, who is in her early 20s, studies at Zakkhini Degree College, 3 km away. Villagers have been demanding a degree college for the village or better transport facilities, and that Zakkhini Degree College be made post-graduate. Misra promised to take their demands to the Centre.

Poonam explains in simple terms the difference of being in a “VIP” village. “At least for the last month I have been seeing roje kabo adhikari kabo media aawat rahalan (either officers or mediapersons come visiting everyday),” she says.

The one-room pucca houses constructed for the Vanvasi tribals.

Krishnawati giggles as she talks about her granddaughter’s birth on January 10. They had a big celebration, she says. “The pradhan came, many other village elders too. And there was this one big officer who kept coming till barhi (a ritual observed on the 12th day of the birth of the child),” she says.

Krishnawati and her husband Prabhu Shankar Gond, who live in a mud and khaprail house, are hoping to get pucca houses like the Vanvasis.

Chandrabali Verma, who runs a poultry business, is impressed at the cleaner roads. “Everytime I look outside my house, I feel so much is possible.” Verma even claims a fall in petty disputes since Modi, during a Mann ki Baat, talked about cutting down consumption of intoxicants.

Mamata Verma, in charge of the newly renovated anganwadi centre, says her students are proof that infrastructure does make a difference. She has around 30 students, and they would slip away when classes were earlier held in the open, she says.

One of the eight bio-toilets that have come up around Jayapur.

In this Jayapur revamp though, there is a curious Gujarat connection.

Apart from the banks and a couple of companies based in Mumbai and Kolkata, a host of firms from Surat are involved in the infrastructure efforts.

Rakesh Trivedi, senior vice-president of the BJP’s Kashi region unit, lauds the work by Rajesh Bhai, Munaf Bhai and Chandu Bhai Patel, all from Surat-based companies and “humanitarian agencies”.

In fact, while it is Modi who is the MP for Jayapur, it is Navsari (Gujarat) MP C R Patil who is referred to as “saansadji” by the people. Navsari falls within the Surat Metropolitan Area.

Patil has been to the village several times and regularly interacts with the pradhan and officials on the tasks to be taken up. This is his own initiative, Patel insists. “The PM has not asked me to go Jayapur. I want to learn for myself how development happens.”

Among those involved in building of the new Jayapur are Goldie Green (a Surat-based solar streetlight company), Gautam Solar (that has a tie-up with Union Bank of India for solar streetlights), Allanasons (a Mumbai-based food products company that is helping construct housing units for Vanvasis), and Prestar Kolkata (based in Kolkata, which is providing the bio-toilets).

Rajesh Dhariwal, Director, Prestar Kolkata, says, “We got the bio-toilets technology from DRDO only last year. Somebody I knew suggested it should be first put up in Modiji’s village. As we move forward, we will install more.”

Chandu Bhai too clarifies, “We are here of our own volition, for Modiji.”

Vivek Maurya, of Goldie Green, says they have installed 100 solar streetlights in Jayapur. “This is the biggest order for us. In Kanpur, we had installed 25, in Etawah 70, and 30 in Jaunpur. We will maintain the lights for two years.”

Fauzan Allavi, Director (Allanasons), which is building the Vanvasi homes, denies any “vested interest”. “We are making these units on an experimental basis. And the reason for choosing the PM’s village was that, if development isn’t sustainable in his village, it can’t be sustainable anywhere.”

Prosenjit C, the manager at Union Bank of India’s 100 per cent solar energy-run branch, says they have extended Rs 50 lakh worth of loans to villagers and have deposits worth Rs 80 lakh. “People’s expectations are huge. After all, this is the PM’s village,” he says.

It’s a quirk of fate that it came to be so, or so it appears.

Jayapur was one of the first villages of Varanasi that Modi apparently heard of after getting a ticket from there for the Lok Sabha elections of 2014. When he came to know that a high-tension wire had “electrocuted” five people in Jayapur on April 13, 2014, he decided to adopt it. Later, it turned out that nobody died but three had receiver mild burns. However, by then the matter had been sealed. It was on November 7, 2014, that the village was adopted by Modi.

Jayapur has never been a backward village in the traditional sense of the word. Its 3,500-odd population lives over 1,300 acres. Most of the houses are pucca, though few have toilets, and village roads are cobbled.

A large part of the village sustains itself on money sent by family members working in other cities, particularly Surat and Mumbai, and also the Gulf.

Farming is productive, says Dinesh Singh, who owns 10 bighas of land. “We produce sugarcane through the year. The villagers also know how to get dual crop off the land; they sow wheat and sugarcane or potato and sugarcane together. We also grow all kinds of vegetables.”

Around a decade ago, the Indian Institute of Vegetable Research (IIVR), Sahansapur, had adopted Jayapur for an improved variety of tomato. “The land holdings are not too large because of frequent divisions within the family. Therefore, it is a good choice for vegetables, which give better yield in small spaces,” says Director (IIVR), B Singh.

Farming though suffers at times due to lack of water. The village has around 55 handpumps and 30 wells on paper. However, as Narayan Patel admits, around 25 to 30 handpumps are out of order while many wells have dried up. In case of other wells, water has been declared unfit for human consumption.

Bhagwat Singh Patel, a national awardee for ‘progressive farming’, was among those who attended the seminar on advance weather warning held by BHU. “Would it not have been better for the PM to have chosen a really backward village?” he says. “Jayapur is prosperous.”

Incidentally, among those not too happy with how things are progressing is Vidya Sagar Singh, who was one of the three injured in the electrocuction episode. “Nobody comes here. We don’t know what happens at panchayat bhawan,” says Vidya Sagar.

Others in the colony of Thakurs are unhappy over the gradual rise of the Patels in the new Jayapur, with a corresponding fall in their influence.

Shiv Shankar Singh, himself a BJP leader, says, “The village used to have a gate with the name of my father Surya Prakash, who was the pradhan for years. In the name of Modi, Narayan Patel has now covered it up. We can’t oppose it.”Accusing the pradhan of favouring a caste, he adds, “There was a time when our village was actually on the path of being a model village. People sat and planned for betterment of the village together,” he says.

Accusing the pradhan of favouring a caste, he adds, “There was a time when our village was actually on the path of being a model village. People sat and planned for betterment of the village together,” he says.

The sentiment isn’t so different in the Harijan basti either, where there are not many BJP supporters.

Lal Mani Singh is a graduate but for lack of a proper job, works as a mason. The family is landless and his son works as a fitter in a steel plant near Mumbai. “If there was some source of permanent employment, some industry or business, I would call my son back,” he says.

Retired Armyman Ravindra Pratap Singh has complained against the pradhan, accusing her of being selective in extending benefits to the villagers.

His younger brother Sarvesh Singh says, “When you talk development, it should be distributed across the village. We can’t have one side fully developed, while the other remains deprived.”

The sarpanch’s supporters, in turn, accuse a committee formed by the BJP district president and led by RSS men to monitor works in the village as interfering in the works of an elected body.

Arvind Kumar Singh, who is from the RSS, defends their involvement. “Is it written somewhere that an RSS man cannot be part of a village committee? The village head and her representative are also members of the panel.”

Incidentally, long back in 2002, the RSS had also adopted Jayapur to develop under its “ideal village scheme”.

Chitrasen Singh, the Project Director of the District Rural Development Agency, has been to Jayapur at least six times. He side-steps a question on whether these are the most visits by him to a village over five months with a wry smile.

He assures villagers that all will benefit. “People feel the supplies will run out, that they will get nothing. They also have ego issues,” he says.

But District Congress president Praja Nath Sharma scoffs at the Jayapur “development story” as another Modi exaggeration. “I don’t understand how cavalcades of officials running to a village alone will bring development. If somebody installs solar lights or even brings a bank, is it enough? What about creating job opportunities?”

The Congress is planning to cover Jayapur during its land acquisition Bill agitation starting April 9.

Congress leader Satish Kumar Rai, who is Varanasi-based and heads the Political Science department at Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapeeth, says what is being seen in Jayapur is the PM’s “abha mandal (halo)”. “People do things to rise in his eyes. We know of many buildings and hospitals that were constructed because this or that leader was in power which are now languishing.” Any development can only be sustainable when people get jobs, he adds.

Rai also repeats the charge that Modi only selected Jayapur because of the RSS link and the fact that it did not have a single Muslim.

The local MLA of the region is the Samajwadi Party’s Surendra Kumar Patel. SP district chief Satish ‘Fauji’ says they are waiting for “things to happen on the ground”. “But I can definitely say that the PM, with all his might, developing one middle-sized village makes little sense, when the state government has already chosen over 40 villages under the Lohia Gram programme.”

One thing though stands uncontested. Three of the Lohia Grams ‘Fauji’ talks about, Mahgaon, Chandapur and Sinahi, are located near Jayapur. Since November 7, 2014, local officials chuckle, the pace of work in these villages has also picked up.

Source:: Indian Express