Cleaning up: From Canada to Kharaudi

In 2003, President Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam visited a small village in Hoshiarpur district of Punjab. Kharaudi had done something he thought others could emulate. It had concrete roads, parks, a library, street lights running on solar cells and a septic tank to treat village's sewage - all thanks to rich Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) of the village who thought that this was the best way to pay back to their place of birth.

The project was first of its kind not only in Punjab but also in India. Soon, many NRIs from Punjab began emulating this example and adopted their villages. The President was so impressed with the developments that he narrated Kharaudi’s success story during many of his public addresses. 

Sadly, ten years down the line Kharaudi seems to have lost the plot. The treatment plant is defunct and the villagers don't want to pitch in for its maintenance. The independent committee, formed to manage the development work, lies defunct due to allegations of misappropriation of funds. The villagers are also at a loss when it comes to disposing off the treated wastewater coming out of the septic tank. Thankfully, Kharaudi inspired many villages and fortunately most of them have done better than the original model.

How it all began

It was in late 1990s that Dr Raghbir Singh Bassi and Dr Gurdev Singh Gill, born in Kharaudi but settled in Canada, decided to do something about the squalor and filth in their village. The habitat would turn into a cesspool during the monsoon with stagnant water, overflowing drains and waste piling up. The duo approached other NRIs from Kharaudi and sought donations.

Around Rs.50 lakh was collected of which around Rs. 20 lakh was donated by Dr Bassi and Dr Gill. The initiative moved the state government, who then decided to make a matching grant. So Kharaudi got a total of Rs 1 crore for development work. Villagers mainly contributed through voluntary labour and provided free transportation of construction material on their tractors.

Kharaudi develops

Four parks were developed, concrete roads laid and 22 solar lights installed. A cultural centre, guest house and a couple of computers for students were also added. Since insanitation was the biggest issue the NRIs wanted to deal with, two septic tanks, which could treat the village’s sewage, were constructed and sewerage lines laid. Open drains were covered and all the houses were connected through sewerage lines taking the wastewater through gravity to the septic tanks. Such a provision also motivated those defecating in the open to construct toilets in their homes. A Village Life Improvement Board (VLIB) was formed comprising elected panchayat members and other residents to oversee maintenance.

Kharaudi was hailed as a new participatory model of development. Dr Bassi and Dr Gill, who initiated the work, started Village Life Improvement Foundation (VLIF), which has till now helped around 10 villages script similar success stories while work is on at other five villages.

The state government also came up with the ‘Plan Scheme NRI’ to support such initiatives. Under this scheme, 25 per cent of estimated cost of development work is raised by the villagers and concerned NRIs of the village, while the state government pitches in with the remaining 75%. 

According to a comparative study done by the Panjab University researchers in 2006, it was found that in villages where work happened under this scheme, 90.6% families constructed toilets connected to sewer lines whereas in non-project villages, more than 50% families defecated in the open and around 48% flushed into a pit. The work also reduced diarrhoea morbidity by 70% as the project villages had the prevalence of disease at 0.8% as compared to 7.1% in non-project villages. The benefits also reached the marginalised. Around 25.6% of Dalit households lacked toilet facilities in project villages as compared 71.8% in non-project villages.

Kharaudi loses the plot

Ten years since the inauguration of its development plan, the treatment plant is lying defunct. The independent committee, formed to manage the development works falling beyond the purview of panchayat, also lies defunct due to allegations of misappropriation of funds. Villagers are also at a loss about disposing off the treated wastewater coming out of the septic tank. It is made to stand in a pond for ultraviolet treatment but they don’t have any use for this water as there are no fields nearby and good irrigation water is easily available.

Since the treatment plant is not functioning for the past few months, the pond is full of untreated wastewater now. Instead of getting the plant repaired, villagers are in favour of taking the sewage out of the village.  “We are more interested in dumping the sewage to some far off area because that seems to be a permanent solution,” says a villager Iqbal Singh. In fact, the residents have already identified a 5 kanal land worth Rs 8 lakh near the fields where the sewage can be dumped by laying more pipelines. 

However, instead of making things work among themselves, they are again looking for funds from NRIs and the state government. The initiators now feel they missed on an important component for development works. “I guess what we did wrong from the very start was not building community ownership of the work done. Since the NRIs and government pooled in the money, people remained just the users than participants. Some amount of usage fee should have been made mandatory so that maintenance is possible,” says Dr Bassi.  

Thankfully, some of the villages which followed Kharaudi did not make the same mistake.

The copycats make it work