Kanwal Singh dreamt of putting his village on the map. And today, he has done it in style -- virtually.
Hansdehar village in Haryana is on the website, smartvillages.org, thanks to the IT-savvy villager, and is suddenly attracting greetings from netizens all over the world.
For Kanwal Singh, Hansdehar is just the first village he has put on the net, on www.smartvillages.org. And the website says as much: 'Still more villages to come'.
"I have spoken to the sarpanches of neighbouring Datasinghwala and Dhandoli villages," says Singh, an engineer who heads the e-governance division of the Haryana Electronics Corporation. He works through an NGO, Samanvay, run by wife Archana.
The website directs queries to Archana, who has formed a five-member team of educated young men from the village to take care of the website, respond to emails and help the villagers.
The website has been flooded with messages from all over the world ever since it was uploaded on June 26 this year.
Stuart and Helen from South America want to start water harvesting in the village, Ferdinand Tjombe of Namibia wants to emulate Singh and upload his village, Helena, on the web, International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance has proposed the first Indian pilot blue school project, and David Graham from New Zealand wants to extend his English literacy project to the village.
Through this, we can work together as a global community to address poverty and illiteracy, says a virtual tourist to the village.
A visitor from Australia has requested the villagers to put local recipes on the site. There are greetings from an NGO in Pakistan, someone from Mauritius wants to chat with the villagers while Muchineripi Shoniwa from Zimbabwe wants to make net pals from the village.
But Hansdehar, though on the web, is yet to get a net connection. "We will get a Hutch broadband connection soon," Singh says.
He says he has a chalked out a plan for the village's development and the website is a part of that. "I have collected the entire data about the village as the first step," he says.
With the data in place, he has segregated people on the basis of literacy levels. "My priority is education and employment generation. Then comes agriculture-based development," he says.
Nothing has taken off as yet but he has been doing the spade work, even while working in his office in Chandigarh, by collecting information on government schemes which can help the village.
On employment, he says ever since Samanvay started the website , many village youths have joined software and hardware courses. There is a sudden interest in IT, says Singh, who last week received the ICT development award of the Indian Telecentre Forum from Panchayati Raj Minister Mani Shankar Iyer.
There are no revenues yet, except what he saves from his salary. "Money could be a hindrance," he says.
Singh thinks the village could get a fillip from rural tourism. "Our village has links with mythological stories but even without that it is a place everyone will like to visit. The first jobs for the villagers could be tourism-related," he adds.
"The shops in the village could improve their business once this starts," Singh says.
Everything else will follow, he adds.
