This sarpanch can give Jyoti Basu a complex

"At a time when even senior polticians find it difficult to stay on their chairs it is admirable to see that Valvi has been a sarpanch for 42 years," said rural development minister R R Patil after felicitating Valvi today. He laughed it off when specifically asked whether his comment on Valvi’s political longevity was a take on the fragility of the state or Central government.

Valvi – who hails from a royal family which ruled over the Bhil princely state of Kanboli in Bharuch district, Gujarat -, says, "After the kingdom was over run by the British, whom our ancestors could not match with bows and arrows, they fled to Maharashtra and settled in Raisinghpur."

Born in 1932, this Class V school droput is now struggling to complete his education even as he consolidates his political career. "I wish I had pursued education. I am trying to make up by going to the adult education class run by an NGO in our village," he said. He wants to be matriculate at least.

It was on March 3, 1958 that Valvi was first elected sarpanch. The seven villages (population 4,500) which come under Raisinghpur gram panchayat were back then not even connected by road to the main taluka.

"I have myself carried sick people in makeshift stretchers made of blankets over the thickly forested 13-km path and lost an uncle and a sister-in-law," he recalls. Such personal incidents fired his zeal to improve accessibility to his village.

Now that the PWD has laid an all-season road, the state transport corporation has agreed to ply two buses daily. "People sang and danced on the road when the first bus came to the village," he remembers with joy.

Over the years, Valvi has also got a health sub-centre, ZP ashram school (till Std X), and pucca houses under the Indira Aawaas Yojana for the predominantly tribal (Bhil) population living in thatched huts that dot the villages under his jurisdiction.

But didn’t the stonewalling tactics of babudom ever dither him? "Earlier they thought it would be easy to simply fob me off but the strongest point about the Bhil is his perseverance and we had our way," he says, citing the example of the school building at Digiamba, one of the villages in the grampanchyat.

For the school, officials in the ZP kept making him run around in circles for over three months. "We then took a group of villagers and camped outside the Dhule (Nandurbar was carved out of Dhule in 1998) district education officer’s office for 15 days till he signed our file and got it moving," he recounts.

This technique of putting pressure on officials has given him quite a reputation. "The moment the sahebs see Raisinghpura written on the file they now ensure that it is moved quickly," he laughs.

His current team has 7 men and 5 women on it. None of the latter have accompanied him on the Mumbai trip. Dig him on that and he says, "they were unwilling to make the long trip to Mumbai."

Incidentally, Valvi has two wives and yes, hold your breath… ten children!! "Among our tribal community it is common for men to have two or more wives," he says coolly, "we need them since there is so much work in the fields."