Three NRIs spare money, villagers pool in effort

Monday, 28/01/2013

http://epaper.dailypostindia.com/Details.aspx?id=60992&boxid=58258&uid=&dat=2013-01-28

Chakar (Ludhiana) : The much-hyped project of cleaning of Buddha Nallah in Ludhiana through bio remediation method is yet to show results but three NRIs and the villagers of Chakar village have already proved how a pond can be converted into gravity-based natural sewerage treatment plants on eight-acre, 12-acre and 10-acre ponds in the village. The pond has been beautified and lake and island have been established where people walk.

Three Canadian NRIs from the village, Nirmal Singh Kingra and brothers Ajmer Singh and Baldev Singh were living a luxurious life in Canada but a desire to turn their village into a model one made them come back and work tirelessly to give the village a new look. The two brothers have spent around Rs 6 crore from their own pocket and projects worth Rs 2 crore are in the pipeline.

Rainwater ponds have also been constructed at all three locations where migratory birds come. Boating will be started soon and food outlets will be opened to attract people who were earlier hesitant to come. The village now has an 18-km sewer line built with NRI funds, which was supposed to be laid by the government. The people instrumental in establishing the sewer and water treatment plant project are engineers from Canada and engineer associated with Baba Balbir Singh Seechewal, who is known for cleaning the polluted historic Kali Bein.

Islands, crime-free village, passionate people, sports freak, drug free, disease control, gymnasium, lake, parks, community centre, solar lights, positive attitude and the development are the main agenda of model village Chakar, a village of 7,000 in Ludhiana district of Punjab. The socio-economic status of the villagers has been uplifted and land rates have been doubled that has made every villager a confident citizen and they proudly say “My Village My Pride”.

For greener environment, 4,000 saplings have been planted against a target of 8,000 saplings in village. Clean water is used for irrigation which improves yield of crops. Even the multi-utility vehicles designed by the villagers that are called jugaad give the message of clean and green village. The vehicle helps in transporting the construction material, saplings and in checking the sewerage plants.

The motivation level of the villagers can be witnessed when the development project started by one of the women in the village who worked as maid contributed Rs 500 for the development of the village and that was emotional moment for the three Canadian NRIs. Nirmal Singh Kingra, retired from a job in Canada, calls himself a migratory bird and is the person who looks after the developmental works of the village. He said they had turned a defunct village into a cooperative and agricultural society. The village did sales worth Rs 1 crore in just six months.

Advocating that energy should be used in positive things, teacher by profession and sports factory in himself, Balwant Singh Sandhu manages the world-class Sher-e-Punjab Sports Academy with solar lights. The academy provides training in boxing, football and athletics and has made the village proud by winning over 200 medals in the past six years in state and national championships. The private coaches train more than 150 kids from government schools in football, boxing and athletics, most of whom are poor.He said Rs 15 lakh is spent every year to run this academy which produces state and national level players like Sukhdeep Singh. Shavinder Kaur, a boxer at national level, is motivational force for many of the girls.