Till a year ago, Ratanpar, a hamlet of about 1,300 souls in Bhavnagar district of Gujarat, was a typical Saurashtra village. In the best of times it got no more than eight hours of power supply. Village youths were moving in large numbers to the nearby town of Botad to work in diamond polishing units and earn Rs 3,000-4,000 a month. The 20-odd diamond polishing machines (DPM) in Ratanpar used to function on costly diesel most of the time due to scarce power.

PICTURE SPEAK

"We earn well now. For us, life couldn't have been so good." KANCHANBEN AND JAGDISH LAANIYA DIAMOND POLISHERS. They earn more working from home in Ratanpar than when Jagdish earlier worked in Botad.

Today Ratanpar is a thriving village economically and otherwise. The number of DPMs has multiplied and stands at 90. The number of diamond polishers has risen from 80 to 500 with housewives too joining in. Amongst these are about 50 boys who no longer need to work as polishers in Bhavnagar and other towns and have set up polishing units at their homes. Over 300 youths from nearby villages who used to earlier work in Bhavnagar and Botad now come to Ratanpar to work in newly opened polishing units.

Ratanpar is one of the 9,600 beneficiary villages of an ambitious scheme of the Narendra Modi Government called Jyotirgram Yojana which aims at bringing 24-hour, three-phase power supply to all the 18,000 villages of Gujarat by December 2005. This will be achieved by laying a second power feeder line in every village. Earlier only one feeder line supplied power to the village both for agricultural usage as well as domestic usage, which clubbed power used by both households and cottage-industry units. The consumption of power is always much more in agriculture where it is used for irrigation, especially in Gujarat where the groundwater level is receding. Power cuts aimed at farmers deprived the whole village of power. There would be frequent blackouts due to tripping of supply as farmers illicitly drew power from the feeder line because even the restricted, eight-hour supply was not assured. Now, while one feeder line will still provide eight hours of power for farming, the second one will bring a 24-hour supply for domestic use. This arrangement will bring down the losses due to tripping. The Government also ran a sustained campaign against power theft and brought down the transmission and distribution losses, thus saving power.

PICTURE SPEAK

"Three-phase, 24-hour power supply is a miracle for us." PREETIBEN DEVMORARI PREETIBEN DEVMORARI, HOUSEWIFE She no longer has to cull butter manually from buttermilk. The electric stimulator does the job for her.

Modi and Minister of State for Power Saurabh Patel took the initiative for the scheme and reversed the reservations of the power officialdom of the state after independent experts endorsed the project. The Jyotirgram scheme, which will cost Rs 1,300 crore, is unique in that it has improved power availability without any increase in generation. The better supply is just due to more effective power distribution and management. The magnitude of the exercise can be gauged by the fact that the number of kilometres of power lines that will be laid in two years under Jyotirgram-90,000 km-is equal to the figure notched up in the state since it was created in 1960. The pace of implementation is impressive-250 villages are being covered every week. The project is being partly funded by the grants of local MLAs. Each village has to bear 20 per cent of the cost of the new feeder line. Villages short of funds are bailed out by the Government but those willing to bear their share of the cost get preference in project implementation.

In villages where diamond polishing is the staple occupation-Gujarat is the world's biggest diamond polishing centre-Jyotirgram has made the people specially happy. The biggest asset to these villages is that housewives too have joined this business. Take the case of Jagdish and Kanchanben Laaniya of Ratanpar. Till Jyotirgram came to Ratanpar the couple used to live in a one-room house in Botad where Jagdish earned Rs 3,000 as a diamond polisher and paid Rs 600 as rent. Today the couple have set up a DPM as well as a lathe machine (which too is used for polishing diamonds) at their house in Ratanpar. Jagdish works on the DPM while Kanchanben works on the lathe. Together they earn over Rs 5,000 a month sitting at home.

PICTURE SPEAK

"Now the rural folk will be able to demonstrate their talents." VINESH NANDANI DIAMOND POLISHER With 24-hour power available in his village Ratanpar, he has set up a diamond polishing unit at his home.

However, not only diamond polishers but people across the rural economic spectrum have also benefited. A survey carried out by the Ahmedabad-based Centre for Environment and Planning (CEP) found heart warmingresults. Says Professor Shivanand Swamy, associate director, CEP: "At least 30 per cent of the village economy is based on the activities of non-agriculturalists, including blacksmiths, carpenters and cold storage and flour mill operators. This section is thriving with the 24-hour power supply. But it is a very small part of the accruing benefits. One of the most notable upshots of the scheme is that it is set to curb migration from villages to cities."

The case of Natubhai Panchal, a blacksmith of Kamliwad, a village in Patan district, illustrates this point. Due to irregular power supply, his small fabrication business never took off. His income barely crossed Rs 2,500 a month. He never thought of hiring helpers because there was no scope for expanding his business. Today he has four helpers in his small shop and earns more than Rs 5,000 a month after paying off the helpers. "It's a boon. I will never think of migrating to a city now," says Panchal.

In Mujpur, a very backward village in north Gujarat, 80 per cent houses have electricity connections today as against just 25 per cent till nine months ago when it started getting 24-hour power supply. The village got power once in three days before Jyotirgram. The income of a flour mill owner of the village has increased by 30 per cent while a tailor has replaced his manual tailoring machine with an electric-operated one. This has raised his output. And thanks to 24-hour electricity the households get two hours of assured water supply every morning.

Jyotirgram has improved diverse facets of rural Gujarat. In Valam, a village in Mehsana district, uninterrupted power supply has regularised the working of the local Industrial Training Institute. The blacksmiths and the carpenters in the village are making good money. Flour mill owners in the village no longer have queues at their outlets. Diamond polishers who commute to Ratanpar daily from neighbouring villages have made its economy zoom. Marketing men and vendors of different goods visit the village on a regular basis now. Says Prashant Patel, a research assistant who took part in the CEP's survey: "With 24-hour power supply to villages, the true potential of the rural people will come to the fore."

If Jyotirgram works, it seems there is a brighter future for rural Gujarat.

Index