Page 158 - SocialHarmony

162 Social Harmony

years. Many villagers tell me they will not mind a bad Chief
Minister, but they need a good talati (chief village officer). A
talati is effectively the Chief Minister of the village. But who
will be the talati’s Boss? So far that post was vacant, but now
the small box called computer has taken that place. The
computer is so powerful that it can help me to monitor the
activities of your talati even if I am sitting in my office. You will
be surprised to know that initially all the talatis opposed this
move. But I am thankful to them for reconsidering and accepting
this proposal. I thank them for understanding the need to make
Gujarat modern. Real progress is possible only when we
understand the requirements of changing times. Let me tell you
how many improvements can be brought about by this small
change. Recently, I saw your entire program in the panchayat
office and even gave a few suggestions. For example, we can
add a new folder that will maintain records of Timbi residents
who have shifted elsewhere, their addresses, whether they are
alive or not? If you want a groom for your daughter from your
community, you can request the panchayat office to provide you
with details of suitable boys from a particular community or
group of villages. The computer will also greatly benefit teachers
who are generally overburdened. They need not go from house
to house every time someone asks for details of handicapped
persons in the village – this information would already be
present in the panchayat office. Teachers will not need to do a
count of voters every three months. The computer will maintain
records of births and deaths in the village so that it is easy to
find out the list of eligible voters.

Children who have turned eighteen will automatically be
transferred to the voters list. Such systems can be established
to collect all types of required information. We can find out
which boy secured highest per cent marks in the 2003
examination, which girl scored the highest marks. We can collect
information spanning a hundred years too. Some people
understand that it is not too difficult to operate a computer; on
the contrary, it is more tedious to collect data by hand. You only
need to learn to press a few buttons and you can easily manage