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Palahi Will Clap For Kharaudi
 But With A Tear In Eye

S P Singh

The thirty minutes which President APJ Kalam will be spending on March 23 at Kharaudi village of Hoshiarpur will be the most heart-breaking half an hour that residents of this Kapurthala village have ever spent, and virtually the entire village is ready to challenge Kharaudi for a development claims duel.  

Having become the mascot developed village in Punjab long years back, and sustaining that reputation with considerable funds, display of managerial skills and liberal cash injections by the community itself, Palahi had no doubt that it will be on the President's itinerary on March 23.  

"If the President wanted to see a developed village, one where the community has been the premier force and government only a marginal player, then Palahi did not have competition, but then it requires some luck too,'' rued Gurmit Singh Palahi, principal of Community Polytechnic at Palahi who would give his left arm for an opportunity to compare Palahi and Kharaudi publicly with Kalam among the audience.

And there isn't a soul that does not believe that Palahi would win such a contest hands down. The feeling is natural in this village where every house has an e-mail address and every individual access to the internet.  

Kharaudi, which is being hailed as a "super model village'' has among its achievements a cleaned village pond, sullage treatment plant, solar street lights, phones and a community library.  

By any standards, Palahi is light years ahead.   

And development ventures are conceived as part of a holistic community. So the village water pond is integrated with rain water collectors and the drained out water from local gurdwara pond, put through a cleansing process and then used for fishery which brings in money for other ventures.  

Village park rivals the slick ones in cities. The youth have their own blue-tiled swimming pool; any muscle-flexing is done only at the community gym and reading culture is encouraged by two libraries in the village, one dating back to PEPSU era and conserved with love, apart from resources.

In step with the times, village has a state-of-the-art airconditioned computer centre with over twenty computers and is affiliated to, hold your breath in this dusty Doaba heartland, Cambridge University, UK.

Representatives from Cambridge visit for conducting exams and students in Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Hoshiarpur etc are vying with local village youth to get admission.

"This is one of its kind rural oriented info-resource centre in Punjab," said Jagat Singh Palahi proudly. A local philanthropist who has collected crores on his regular visits abroad by goading immigrant village sons to donate for development back in their native place.  

"Our claim to fame is not the installed solar lights in village, but the fact that we supply locally-made solar lights, solar cookers, integrated solar energy systems. We too have treated our village pond, but our claim to fame is that we have undertaken similar venture at a dozen other villages. We have not just developed Palahi, but made sure that Palahi adopts a large number of villages for development," said Jagat Singh Palahi.

Community efforts at training youth from surrounding villages have churned out hundreds of electricians, radio and TV mechanics, scooter mechanics thus imparting skills for earning livlihood.  

"I am told President Kalam is adept at Power Point presentation. I wish we could show him one on Palahi, made in Palahi,'' said Gurmit Singh, adding that he does not grudge Kharaudi's fifteen minutes of fame but wanted thirty for Palahi too.■  

March 21, 2003

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