PARKASHPUR (HP): Next year India will be celebrating 75thcommemoration of Independence but still a number of villages in Himachal Pradesh are wallowing in poverty, ignorance, illiteracy, negligence and lack of essential civic amenities.
The ancient venerable villageof Chakmoh “Sidhgram” in Bijhari Block of BadsarAssembly Segment in district Hamirpur is one of such village despite bestowed with tremendous transnational patronage and hefty exchequer to the government due to presence of universally celebrated Lord Shiva’s incarnational child divinity Baba Balak Nath Shrine visited by lakhs of pilgrims across the globe for wellness and spiritual solace, yet has remained lost to local legislators for long. It also points to passivity of every successive government for otherwise heritage-rich village in all these years, deplored shrine’s successor Dr PC Sharma. He further averred that it also punched a perplexity on the procedure of adopting village by the Members of Parliament under SAGY.
Lack of enthusiasmon the part of elected legislative membersalso defeats the perception that ‘India’ can shine only if ‘Bharat’ doesas the peoples are stillscreaming for urban look with modern basic propensities and improve of quality of lifeand consequently the community’s elementary commitments has been subjected to dreadful dilapidation expounded Dr Sharma.
It is pertinent to propound that the Chakmoh civic body and concerned local luminaries had earlier also unanimously raised the matter of adoption of the village but to no avail for the reasons best known to our contemporary politicians. The village acquisition scheme of Union Government by the Members of Parliament although has the potential and pecuniary provision to revamp country’s rural economic landscape but contrast among villages after villages in the state is a rule rather than an exception. Problem includes hitherto absolute apathy and alienation of MPs in adoption of villages, moaned prominent provincial residents of the area.Besides, none of the consecutive parliamentarians have ever initiated to adopt the ancient village under Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojna, groaned Dr Vanshish Sankhyan, Director, JJJK Society.
Villagers here have also raised their voice why they have been remained on out-of-bounds of cardinal development since sovereignty. Having served and contributed in public and private sectors in various capacities for over three and half decades, Dr PC Sharma is presentlymotivating the movement for well-grounded workable evolutionary, infrastructural and institutional government funded projects in the area as no concerted efforts have ever been made earlier by an array of political representatives since time out of mind.
It is noteworthy that the Chakmoh villagers initially compelled to concertedly boycott the gram panchayat election over the issue of non-fulfillment of their longstanding demands mainly including making of multispecialty hospital at Chakmoh. Nonetheless, the byelection were conducted subsequently and civic body constituted after the intercession and assurances of the government. Nevertheless, nothing has materialized, inevitably prevailing a sense of suspicion and mistrust amongst the common masses towards government functioning. Had the hospital been made functional over these years, the virulent virus infected patients did not have to move here and there to redress medical exigencies, exclaimed local electorates and civic body members.
A passionate son of the soil and preeminent science man Dr P.C Sharma, attributed with abundant of administrative, organizational, technical, research, publication, socio-cultural and other multidisciplinary expertise and experience as director, chief consultant, chief advisor, nodal officer and chairman in public and private sectors for about forty years has elucidated that government has several programs and patronization for education, health care, employment, art and culture, archives, public library, publications, digitization, documentation, heritage museum, monuments, forts, sports, eco-tourism, agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, afforestation, biodiversity, animal husbandry and fishery, infrastructure, public housing, drinking water, watershed management, waste disposal mechanism and so on for rural areas. In view of his societal pursuits, Dr Sharma has envisioned several such schemes for Badsar assembly segment under the ambit of self-government .
The SAGY judiciously converges these all intendedly for making a model village. MPs may well adopt villages and use resources from these schemes to superstruct a model village if administered in letter and spirit. Albeit 25-30 per cent of the adopted villages become model, they can be replicated in the rest of the country, contemplated a celebrated strategist Dr Sharma. Here and now, without disregarding the historical and pecuniary paramountcy of the Sidhpeeth’s village of Chakmoh, yet again the proposal for adoption of the village under SAGY is being resumed with the local Member of Parliament and Union State Minister of Finance Anurag Thakur, considering the persistent petition of the populace, affirmed Dr PC Sharma.