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Where there is a will, there is a way. Hard work with smartness implanted into the same never goes into vein. These and many more sayings we are used to hear since childhood.
I came across a real life story (better to call a series of incidents) by an educated, willful lady who is honest to all her efforts, and I couldn’t stop myself from sharing the same with the readers of https://www.thinkerviews.com . It is a tale which may look filmy but its true. I sincerely believe that there could be a TV Serial (at least) prepared on such inspiration incidents like Udaan. Or it could be a serial which weave such nice and ispiration incidents and display it in the segment of episodes. It is defintely great idea to have such tales aired in order to inspire people to do good and much much better than having meaningless TV Soaps we are having such days.
Anyway, let’s come to the point. It is the story of Chhavi Rajawat who is an MBA Graduate. She is not incidentally but willfully Sarpanch of Soda, a village in Rajasthan. As with some other villages in some of the areas of India, this village was also having water problems. One such incident covered here, so not going into the details. This youngest sarpanch got inquisitive about the funds allocated to the village. She found that actually more fund spend then allocated. So she decided to raise fund on her own. She asked her family and friends to help in the matter and was able to raise around 20 lakh rupees fund. But this was not enough for the requirement of Rs. 3.5 Crores for the water reservoir.
She then got even more inquisitive about the funds sanctioned for his village and she found that the files showing the calculation about the funds allotted to her village in the district office at Tonk (to which her village belongs to) had calculation error. She then decided to go proactive about the matter and wanted to bring transparency and accountability about the stuff. Her passion about the same lead Soda to become the first IT-enabled village. She in association with a German company got the software(s) developed which are accessible to the people of Soda. Thus all these 10000 villagers could access the fund related information anytime. Grand daughter of Brig. (retd) Raghubir Singh (Mahaveer Chakra awarded), Chaavi studied in some of the most respected institutions of the country and she could have chosen the better career which could let her earn a handsome amount of money and a peaceful life too. Regarding her move from corporate sector to the social sector, she said “I didn’t have to think about it much because Soda is where I belong and it needs me. In fact, the villagers broke all barriers of caste, gender and religion to ensure my victory. In Soda, not even one per cent of the voters are from my own caste. They [the villagers] wanted to prove that development is the most important factor for which they can overlook all politically created differences“.
Chhavi’s educational journey went through Rishi Valley School (Andhra Pradesh), Mayo Girls College (Rajasthan) and Lady Shri Ram College (Delhi). Then she completed her MBA from Pune. She then worked with some of the respected companies like Airtel, Time Of India and others. Probably the first MBA sarpanch of the company, Chaavi, is not interested in career in politics at all. She says “I am just a village girl who has had an opportunity to study in some of the best institutions in the country and has only gone back home to work with and for her people. It’s as simple as that“. She continuous to work at Hotel Kailrugji in Jaipur which is run by her family in order to earn, as being a village sarpanch doesn’t pay her much. She conveys the following message to the youth of India “Don’t run away from your roots because that is your foundation and the nation’s foundation too. If you want to make a difference, you have got to start at the bottom. There is so much one can do“. Very true, indeed.
There’s also online postings of birth and death certificates, besides posting land records online.”A fire in Tonk had destroyed land records of many villages,” says Rajawat. “This ERP (enterprise resource planning) application will have an electronic database, and store all land records in servers.” All her efforts are taken note by media and articles about her written in Times Of Indian and other newspapers. CNN also took note of her. Chaavi represented India at a recent UN poverty summit.
You can get the updated status of Soda’s current projects at: http://villagesoda.org/others/index.htm
She could be reached at sarpanch@soda-india.in
Soda village website is available at: http://villagesoda.org/
