Himanshubhai receiving an award in New Delhi

By Japan K Pathak, Ahmedabad, 28 April 2012

Punsri, a village of north Gujarat’s Sabarkantha district, that received an award of Gujarat’s best gram panchayat, has now won an award of the best gram panchayat of India. Punsri’s Sarpanch received this award from Panchayati raj minister Shri Jairam Ramesh in New Delhi last week.

Punsri was selected for this prestigious award after Central government teams visited the village more than once. Punsri got 93 marks out of 100 in centre’s assessment.

Sarpanch of Punsri Shri Himanshubai told DeshGujarat, “there are total 2,40,000 village panchayats, out of which Punsri was selected for an award, it’s a great achievement.”

Punsri has range of city-like facilities such as mineral water supply to each home, local bus service(a 35-seater bus owned by village panchayat), 120 loud speakers covering each street of the village(bhajans and important announcements are relayed), clean primary health center, schools, banking facility, toll free complain booth, RCC road, asthi bank, door-to-door garbage collection etc.

But what next? We ask Punsri Sarpanch and he replied, “we have five schools here, where now CCTV cameras are installed in each class room. Parents can come to Gram Panchayat office and can watch on LED screen, how their child is doing in the school.”

“Our next project is to make this entire village wi-fi. Procedure of setting up couple of towers is going on to achieve this goal. We want to install 150 computers with internet connection then-after in the village,” Himanshubhai further added.

The state government invites Himanshubhai to speak at every Samras sarpanch sammelan. Next one is in Gandhinagar where Himanshubhai will again give a talk on Punsri success. Whenever the sammelan ends, curious sarpanchs meet Himanshubhai and ask about the schemes utilized for development of Punsri.

“The core part of this development drive is that, there are plenty of government schemes available for funding, one just has to take benefit of such schemes in proper way,” Himanshubhai said.

Himanshubhai said, Punsri has become a place of ‘development tourism’ after it received state government’s award. Leaders of many villages visit often drop in at Punsri, and ask number of questions to satisfy their curiosities on scope of development in their village.

“The state government’s initiative to award the best gram panchayat has found great response. There are many villages that have started development drive with an aim to win the best gram panchayat award next year,” he said.

“A group of people from Mahrashtra’s Nandurbar visited Punsri in recent past, and to our surprise, they wrote letters to the Chief Minister and Punsri gram panchayat, that 17 villages of Nandurbar area of Maharashtra state would like to join Gujarat,” he said.

“In panchayat award function at New Delhi, the youngest sarpanch of India, Chavvi Rajawat, who is MBA met me and said it was easy to become MBA, but difficult to run a village panchayat. She wished to visit Punsri, and may come here in June,” he further said.

Why Punsri is selected as the best village panchayat in Gujarat?
Sarpanch’s Facebook page
Punsri gram panchayat website