Times of India; Parth Shastri; Apr 19, 2011,
AHMEDABAD: When villagers of Fulsar saw an electric lamp lit in front of them in March this year, it was no less than a film scene straight out of the movie Swades when villagers get a taste of new lifestyle thanks to electricity, not less than 22 years after the first electric poles were installed.
Fulsar near Dediapada is Narmada district is a sleepy village with a population of 700 on the Gujarat border with Madhya Pradesh. Nestled in the tribal belt around the Narmada, the village is cut off from the rest of civilization for five months when rains lash out the region. People are dependent on harvesting water for farming and many of the youth venture out to cities like Surat and Valsad to get employment.
In 2010, they saw the first ray of hope when a group of volunteers decided to change their fate. "I had got the fellowship from Child Rights and You (CRY) for social work. As I belong to this regi-on, I knew that if we had to prosper, we would need connectivity and electricity. I first took up the iss-ue with the local authorities who gave us a sympathetic ear but no action. I then tried right to information (RTI) about the electricity projects in the area and where it got stuck in January 2011 with the office of taluka development officer (TDO)," said Ishwar Pawar, a native of Dediapada.
He said that the problem was the jurisdiction of various government departments. Villagers were dependent on kerosene lamps, torches and wood in the monsoon when the village ran out of fuel. The beginning was not easy. "Everybody gets scared when their names are put on an official paper. Questions were also raised against me some thought that I was affiliated with a political party. I then asked them to give RTI a shot and took them through the success stories across the nation. The rest was easy. I also got support from nearby villages such as Duthar, Tekwada, Ghanpipar, and Sukhwal for the cause," said Pawar. In two mon-ths, the result was apparent. The electricity line was tested on March 12 when villagers got to see what rest of Gujarat considers a way of life. From April, Fulsar and four other nearby villages are getting electricity supply. Work has also started in nearby villages of Debar, Kanjal and Buri who learnt quickly from the success of Fulsar and filed an application for electrification of their villages.
What next ? Villagers have now decided to take upon their problems with persistence. "We are now pushing for a bridge to connect interiors of the area with rest of the state. As of today, two big bridges connecting over 20 villages have been authorized under the tribal sub-plan which would improve access to the village in the next two years. Kreeanne Rabadi, regional director, CRY, said, "The RTI Act has empowered people to hold their local government systems accountable for providing basic amenities granted to them as citizens. The success of this can be seen in villages like Fulsar where children are discovering the joys of electricity for the very first time, something that we in urban India take for granted.
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