YOUR VILLAGE AT YOUR DOORSTEP

A new portal, with database on 5,000 villages, helps people track down their ancestral villages

EIGHTY one-year-old NRI doctor in Buffalo donates $ 20 million to his village in Kerala, India’. As Ketanbhai Patel read this news item tucked away in a corner of Buffalo News, he sat down at his computer to look for Kukarvada village in Mehsana district, Gujarat, on the Net. He had left ‘home’ 10 years ago but now as he read the newspaper, he felt a pang of guilt —he had done nothing for his village. It’s never too late to start, he told himself. But the Net search didn’t help — the entries had a few blog spots and some unhelpful government sites. Exhausted, Patel gave up.

But unknown to Patel, in faraway Pune, Pradeep Lokhande was readying to launch his portal — a ready reckoner on some 5,000 villages across India. Lokhande’s Rural Relations, a rural consumer relations organisation spread across 28,000 villages in eight states, worked on the portal as part of its ‘non resident villager’ movement.

For the portal, which will be launched on Monday, Lokhande had to visit 4,000 villages, record their populations and study their markets and education models. Lokhande came up with the idea because, as he says, he felt strongly for his roots in Wai, a town near Mahabaleshwar.

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“Our target audience is people who want to contribute and do their bit for their ancestral villages,” says Lokhande.

As part of the project, Lokhande trained over 200 youngsters to become village developers, gave them computers to work on, and marketed the ‘non-resident village’ movement.

To start with, Lokhande filmed 1,000 villages in Maharashtra and will post them on his portal. Over the next few weeks, he plans to tour Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu till he reaches his target of 5,000 villages. “The future of our villages lies with its youngsters. Development is not just about providing electricity or roads,’’ he says.

He also enlisted women council members who are now shaping up as opinion makers. They work to improve the hygiene and sanitation of the village.

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“It was during our visits that I realised there was an urgent need for computer literacy and scientific temperament among rural children,” says Lokhande.

Having gone through the rigours of small-town life himself, Lokhande wants to bring about a change. “Why should a youngster in a village not avail of the same quality of life that is so easily available in metros,” he asks.

“We are only too willing to involve corporates who are keen on tapping the rural market,’’ says Lokhande. “But we are professionals and hence do not promote any product. Our philosophy is simple. Introduce subjects like oral care and hygiene and then bring in toothpastes and soaps,’’ he says.