IT WAS A big, big step for Jayantibhai K. Patel. To give up a well-paying job he had for 20 years and embrace the forbidding uncertainties of entrepreneurship. He has vivid recollections of the day in year 2001, when he quit his job at the Reliance textile unit in Naroda, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, to start a milk supply business from his village Salal.It wasn’t going to be easy. Salal was 90 km and a three-plus-hours commute to prospective clients in Ahmedabad, down a narrow, potholed apology for a national highway (NH-8). He remembers disinterestedly taking in the Golden Quadrilateral signboards; it didn’t mean anything yet.Today, four years later, the potholed road has been converted into a wide four-lane highway, and driving time has reduced to a kilometre a minute. For Salal, this Patel-dominated village of 3,000 people, the new highway is a life-defining thing. Three years ago, Jayantibhai was a maverick in their midst, one of the very few who dared the daily commute. Today, Salal’s farmers supply vegetables, rice, groundnut, paddy to mills as far away as Bhiwandi, Vashi, Udaipar and Gurgaon. With delivery time dramatically reduced, transactions are done quickly and money changes hands within 24 hours. The farmers quote rates on their mobile phones and direct their trucks to markets and mills that offer the best rates for their produce. For cityfolk driving down the highway to the next town, the newly four-laned 200-odd kilometers, stretching from Chiloda (near Gandhinagar) to Palanpur (near the Rajasthan border), is just a mercifully smooth drive. For the residents of Salal, which not so long ago was a nondescript village you would pass by without even once turning your head, it’s more than just a stretch of smooth road. It means a livelihood, where none existed earlier. It means business—and profits—that used to be scarce. It means power, and the means to a better life.Salal today has morphed into a beehive of entrepreneurial activity. Many young people have taken loans to buy passenger jeeps, or taken these vehicles on lease from owners and started transport services for villagers, who now routinely commute to places like Ahmedabad or Himmatnagar. Others have bought Tata minitrucks, which are hired by farmers to take their crops to the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees (APMCs) in Jaipur, Udaipur, Bhiwandi, Vashi, and areas around Mumbai. “Today, if you were driving past Salal, you would think it was a small town; the village has developed so fast on both sides of the highway,” says village sarpanch Pankajbhai Patel. For cityfolk driving past Salal to the next town, the new highway is just an incredibly smooth passage of road. For the villagers, though, it is a life-defining thing. “Those who had land on the highway benefited the most as they sold off farm land to start highway eateries, PCOs or provisions stores. Business has really picked up,” says the sarpanch. “When the highway started taking shape, the price of land here shot up, and farmers have made handsome profits by selling non-productive farm land.” Salal is known for its paddy, but it never fetched a good price for farmers, who could not send their produce to mills and markets willing to pay more. Four years ago, these farmers couldn’t imagine going beyond Himmatnagar’s market 15 km away. Now they supply to mills in Mumbai and Gurgaon; goods are delivered in eight to 14 hours,” says Bharatbhai Patel, a commission agent who sends Salal’s produce to the mills.The sarpanch says incomes have grown four to five times due to this. Farmer Kalpeshbhai Ratilal concurs: “The highway has transformed our lives—it provides amazing connectivity to the city markets. Also, since the goods are delivered to Mumbai or Gurgaon in less than 13 hours, we receive payments the same day. This is excellent for business.”State transport continues to be poor, but for the enterprising lot in Salal that’s probably a boon in disguise. “The villagers own at least 100 jeeps and over 200 three-wheelers. We run regular services from Salal to Himmatnagar, Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad,” says Kalubhai Patel, who owns a jeep. “Even those who have taken jeeps on rent make good money… you pay the owner a fixed Rs 500 at the end of day, the rest is yours. With so many people now commuting, even at Rs 10 per head, there’s enough money to be made.” Naresh, who used to be a driver, has for long nurtured ambitions of owning a jeep, and has now saved enough to actually consider that purchase.“Looking at the improving economic fortunes of the village, banks are today happy to offer loans, which was not the case earlier. Now every other person has a car or tractor or jeep, and they repay their loans on time,” says Bholabhai Patel, chairman of the Salal Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee. “Won’t be long before we have large showrooms in this place,” he says, beaming with pride in Salal’s quick march to prosperity. The upgrade is palpable. Maruti Altos and Mahindra pick-ups line the streets. Nearly every house has a motorcycle outside its gates. By day, you can’t miss the din of tractors on the fields, the chatter of farmers negotiating rates on their cellphones, the constant drone of heavy trucks passing by on the highway… Nor will you miss the unmistakable sense of purpose in their stride, the lightness of optimism in the air, the good cheer of a people high on progress.
