Page 75 - SocialHarmony

A Harmonious Village: A Journey towards Belonging and Prosperity 79

towards this end. We have conceptualized a model where every
village will have its own structure of management and its own
small set of ministers. We will recruit five Gram-Mitras who will
basically act as the assistants to the Sarpanch and Talati of the
village. They will work in different areas such as farming,
healthcare, social welfare and will enable the completion of the
various government schemes. More than seventy thousand jobs
will be created under this model, which will enable each village
to solve its problems quickly.

The Tirth Gram Yojna, that we have introduced provides for
a reward of rupees one lakh for a village that has not witnessed
disputes or court cases in the last five years and declares such a
village as a Tirth Gram (place of pilgrimage). However, some
suggestions were to provide incentives before five years, as it is
a very long period. Hence, we came up with the Pavan Gram
(pure village) scheme. A village that sees three peaceful years
will be declared a Pavan Gam and be rewarded with ` 50,000
for its development. After spending two more peaceful years, it
will go on to become a Tirth Gram. Also, in this age of
information technology, when Gandhinagar is using modern
technology to the fullest, we have decided to arrange for
computers and IT connectivity for each village. This will ensure
that the Chief Minister of the state can engage in video-
conferencing not only at the district and taluka levels, but also
with each and every village of the state.

The Resolve of the Village Sarpanch
2007 was celebrated as the ‘Nirmal Gujarat’ (Clean Gujarat)

year. These days, even people from villages have started
travelling abroad. Even those who have never gone out of the
country have seen foreign lands on the television. The first thing
that strikes us when we visit foreign countries or see them on
TV is that the cities and even villages there are spotlessly clean.
And, on the other hand, our villages are full of piles of garbage
and dung. Who can bring a change in this situation? It has to be
us. If we resolve to do so, we can rid Gujarat of all its dirt in just
one day. If the five crores denizens of Gujarat decide to keep it