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Shahid Bhagat Singh Zindabad!
 We Want A Water Tap!!

S P Singh

Khatkar Kalan:

Seventy-one years after Bhagat Singh kissed the gallows and fifty-three years after the country attained Independence, villagers in this native village of the martyr have a very humble demand – they want drinking water supply.

"It is my dream to someday see a tap in my village which spews water when turned," said a village elder who has seen 80 summers and remembers a plethora of promises made by successive governments over the years. "Another dream I have is to see sewerage system in the village. Why do our daughters have to go to the fields to answer a call of nature? Why can't we have even a decent toilet so many years after Independence?"

The village with a population of around 3,000 seems stuck in a time-warp. Apart from its undeniable claim to fame as native place of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, it has little that can be the envy of neighbouring villages.

Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has rarely skipped attending the martyrdom day function at the village, and excited villagers are preparing for yet another opportunity to receive him.

Also, rarely has Badal skipped the opportunity to assure villagers that the dirty water pond which stands cheek-by-jowl to the ancestral house of the martyr would be filled and developed into a park. "We have been hearing this promise since 1978 when Badal had become chief minister for the first time. Hun ta mere vi kan pak gaye ne sun-sun ke par chappar uthe da uthe hai," said Bhagwant Kaur making cow-dung cakes near the pond.

The village had a veterinary dispensary. It was, however, a minor matter of detail that for years there has been no veterinary doctor and one wall and two doors of the dispensary did not exist. Now, Sarpanch Jaswinder Singh said, the panchayat was in the process of building a new dispensary, and has demolished the old one.

"We take our cattle to veterinary hospitals in nearby villages like Thandiyan. I have rarely seen even the pharmacist who sometimes visits the village," said Charan Singh. The Sarpanch admitted that there were virtually no medicines in the veterinary dispensary for months but said the panchayat got Rs One lakh for medicines nearly six months back. "We will buy medicines only when the new building comes up," he said.

Villagers also want that the subsidiary health centre be upgraded into a civil hospital, but so far the panchayat has not adopted the demand. In fact even demands for water supply, sewerage, civil hospital, upgraded veterinary facilities or bus service to the village are nowhere on the panchayat’s agenda.

What the panchayat, comprising Akali Dal loyalists, wants is, hold your breath, a sports stadium!

"I want to have something in my village that should make it number one village in not just Punjab but entire India. So we have decided to ask for a sports stadium," said Sarpanch Jaswinder Singh, who flunked matriculation exams and did not study any further. His right-hand man, Panch Kashmir Singh, a Nihang Sikh who never went to school , also finds it a wonderful idea.

"Je sports stadium ban gaya tan sada pind number ik pind ban jaooga sare Punjab vich," he said.

Most villagers found the idea of demanding a stadium funny, but said they would not oppose it "or we would be tarred as Congressmen."

Surprisingly, the village is full of schools. Apart from two separate primary schools for boys and girls, there is a middle school exclusively for girls, a government high school and an Adarsh School of senior secondary level.

"But even though we boast of five schools, none of us can recall even one doctor or engineer that the village has turned out. Only two of our girls rose to become primary school teachers," said a group of villagers. "You are forgetting the SDO who works at Kapurthala Coach factory," objected the Sarpanch, but was reminded by fellow villagers that he got the job because he was a good weight lifter.

Ironically for a village of the martyr who died shouting Bharat Mata Ki Jai, the only thing residents of Khatkar Kalan proudly tell anyone who is prepared to listen is that more than a hundred youth have gone abroad to Gulf countries, Canada and some European countries. "Bahute tan black de raste hee gaye ne, par gaye ne (Most have gone through illegal route, but they have nevertheless gone)," the Sarpanch said.

As The Indian Express team tried to assess Bhagat Singh’s popularity in his own village by asking village urchins why they would be coming to the functions on March 23, it seemed the martyr was pitted against a chopper. "We would come because it is a big mela. Besides, we may get to see the helicopter of Badal Sahib," was the chorused reply.

Times indeed have changed since Kishen Singh used to bring up his son on stories of freedom struggle, but Khatkar Kalan refuses to come out of the time-warp. Umpteen chopper landings notwithstanding!■

March 21, 2001

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