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Village that’s a model for self-helpThe Indian Express, It’s not what you would expect an Indian village to be. There are neither any dung heaps, nor garbage mounds. And any one defecating in the open is slapped with a Rs. 20 fine. You cannot dump garbage out side your house. And if all this sounds too wonderful to be true, there’s more. From being water deficient, Mahaluge. Village in Thane district, 80 kilometers from Mumbai, has managed to end its dependence on out side sources. Agriculture is back in fashion and migration has ebbed. All this hasn’t happened overnight. In fact, when about 500 villagers from Koyna were rehabilitated here in 1962 due to the construction of the Koyna dam, they were filled with despair. For the next 20 years, nothing changed. Things started moving after one Suresh More retired in 1987and settled in the village. “When I Started living here, I realized that the dirty surroundings were coming in the way of the development of the village. So I decided to get everyone together to clean it up,” recalls More, now 68. Today a huge arched cement gateway welcomes you to the village. When you walk on the clean red mud village road, you marvel at the dustbins hanging from green hedges on either side, every 25 meters, and boards with messages to keep the village clean on the trees around you. This has fetched the village awards. “Earlier we use to wait for some one from the Collectorate to come and clean our village and for politicians to get us water. When nothing happened, we decided to do it ourselves,” said More. It was not easy. The villagers were so used to defecating in the open and dumping garbage out side that they were reluctant to spend money on toilets. But when More and some other villagers started sweeping the village themselves, they were convinced. Recall Balkrishna More, 70, who supported Suresh More right from the beginning. “Slowly people started joining us in sweeping the village and collecting the garbage and the look of the village changed.” For those who couldn’t afford cement toilets, they devised a Rs- 500 toilet and also contributed for those who couldn’t afford. Today Mahaluge is swept on Tuesdays and there is a daily muster for garbage collection. Besides, 90- odd homes have their own toilets. Once the village witnessed how they could improve their quality of life, it was only a matter of time before they resolved to solve other problem similarly.
And also enable them to sell legally the wood cut from trees grown on their private farm lands. Narsinh Barot, a local primary teacher, says his loan papers would not have been processed promptly if the panchayat had not issued a nodues certificate to him. Similarly, college student Rahul Parmar recalled how he could promptly obtain a domicile certificate that was mandatory for him to appear in the recently held railway recruitment examination in Ahmedabad. Feeling empowered, the villagers are now experimenting. The Panchayat was recently able to cut down the power consumed by street lights by at least 55 per cent by replacing 95 % of the tube lights with 14 watt CFL bulbs fitted with reflectors made from galvanized sheets. “ The idea struck me when I was suffering a website on energy. This experiment is now being replicated by other villages in our region,” said panchayat chief Barot. His only regret is that the dial up system is slowing them down. State secretary (Science and technology) J. N. Singh says “Gujurat has the largest internet protocol (IP)- based IT infrastructure called GSWAN with multi service facility of voice, data and video, connecting more than 1,400 government offices in all the 25 districts and 225 talukas to the state capital. Now, other states are following us.” With the GSWAN connectivity having already been provided at the taluka level, the government has planned to cover all the 18,000 villages in the state. |
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