Sujata Minj holds the position of Mukhiya of Mahilong, an ordinary looking village situated on Ranchi-Purulia road, about 12 kilometres away from the State capital, but would not have thought ever to come on international platform when she and other about 150 women took out a rally against the liquor practice this Sunday. But their photographs are flashing on the own website of the village since Mahilong scored a first, to do so.
The village selected under ambitious Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojna, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, has managed to scale up the digital divide which not even Jayapur, the village adopted by the Prime Minister himself and hundreds of the rest chosen by MPs in other parts of the nation could do till now.
“I am very happy with the development. We organised the rally comprising women from the panchayat against the liquor consumption which is rampant here. It is very encouraging that the activity has been uploaded on the Adarsh village website which can now be viewed anywhere,” says the chuckling Mukhiya on Monday.
The website-mahilong.in-has been introduced on Monday itself and in near future with its formal inauguration with all required features, events, programmes and plans would be updated. There are sections under which information about the village adoption scheme, guidelines set for that, best practices in place, activities on roll etc would be put out into public domain.
“We want our activities to come before the others to follow. This way, not only our village would become famous but we would get greater exposure before the media and the Government. The activities here have gone up after it has been selected as Adarsh Gram,” adds Simon Gadi, the Gram Pradhan.
The village has been selected by Rajya Sabha member Mahesh Poddar, the new Member of Parliament from the State, not more than six months ago and is still chalking out village development plan and some entry level activities for it. “It is good to see the activities coming on the website. This would generate awareness among the villages. We all can also learn from each others’ best practices and experiences. I am also going to replicate this to the other adopted village Bajpur. We would put in place a dedicated team of professionals that would upload the plans and activities over there on regular basis,” said the member of the House of Elders from Delhi.
Apart from the website, the villagers also run a ‘whatsapp’ group to share information on the social media platform. “We have erected a whatsapp group naming ‘Mahilong Adarsh Gram Samiti’ to inform each other about meetings to take place, share issues and highlight areas like sanitation, open defecation etc relevant to the village,” said Rajiv Mahto, a resident.
Following the formal launch two years ago the scheme meant to all round development of the village handpicked by the MPs, as many as 33 villages of the State have been selected in two phases.