Chandrapura

When someone suggested to me that I should check out a village in Gujarat, I was more than ready to go. "But if you want to see poverty or tribals, Chandrapura in Panchmahal district is not the place," I was warned. It sounded strangely sarcastic. We city-slickers believe that the poor in India live in villages. Sure, there's a lot of poverty in rural India, but to believe that all villagers are poor is a stupid mistake.

I took heed of the warning. I visited Chandrapura after making a short trip to Kalol, which didn't seem any different from any small town anywhere in India. The HNG Glassworks factory announced my arrival at Chandrapura. Like all cities, towns and villages in Gujarat, Chandrapura too had a large gate at its entrance, which announced "Welcome to Chandrapura". I stopped the car at the gate and asked my driver Narendra to accompany me for a stroll down the village road - that was all that was there: a single road with a row of houses on either side.

There was the Samaj Ghar, the Gram Panchayat's office, the Shiva Temple and houses which didn't look remarkably different from those in Vadodara. (Had I come straight from Mumbai, I would have been pleasantly surprised by the dwellings, but not any more now.) Narendra said, "Bahut chhota gaon hai yeh. 700-800 log honge aur bas itne hi ghar. Par in Patel logon ke paas itna paisa hai ki inki ghar ek dum pucci hai." (This is a very small village with just 700-800 inhabitants who belong to the Patel community. The community is very rich. That's why you see a metalled road and concrete houses.)

I looked around. All the houses were shut and there was not a soul on the street. Lazy buffaloes chewed on fodder throwing us curious glances as I started taking pictures of them. We walked to the end of the street, which was also the edge of the village, and saw a woman sifting tuvar dal (the popular Gujarati sweet dal). I asked her if I could take her pictures, she shied away. It was only after I told her that I was from Mumbai and I was here to see a village did she agree to pose for the camera, though she would have preferred to get into her best saree.

Her companion, Narmada Ba (akin to Narmadaji), invited me to her place next door for a glass of water. I went inside as Narendra waited in the verandah. I looked around the modest living room. The signs of prosperity were pretty much confined to the external structure. But that was because she was a widow, she said. When her husband was around, their financial condition was much better. I couldn't grasp her chaste Gujarati so Narendra translated for me. She'd warmed to him as he hails from Gotri, where one of her sons works. "This house is over a 100 years old but we've got it renovated a couple of times. The houses here are all owned by Patels, who are farmers. The village has 700-800 residents out of which nearly 400 are tenants who work in the neighbouring General Motors plant and the HNG Glassworks factory," she said. Narmada Ba introduced me to Meeraben, her tenant, whose husband has been working at the GM plant for a year.

She talked about how people had made crores of rupees by selling an acre or two of land to CEAT for a new factory. The signs of prosperity are obvious. Every house in the village has two to three cars and/bikes in the garage. Most houses have been renovated over the last decade. Children no longer go to the Gujarati-medium primary school in the village but to the English-medium schools in nearby Halol. Most youngsters have moved to Vadodara and Ahmedabad for better education and jobs. Some have even gone abroad. She asked me what I did in Mumbai. I told her I used to work as a journalist with an English newspaper and I am now freelancing. Of course, she didn't know that The Times of India existed. I didn't push too much. I have figured from my travels in semi-urban India that people don't care too much about English newspapers. It's a language that can never voice their concerns.

I thanked Narmada Ba for her hospitality and told her I would be coming again when she offered me to stay on till dinner. I took her picture in front of her house as she wanted it and walked away towards my car.

I watched a girl wearing tight jeans and a sleeveless pink top sitting on a swing. That's progressive in terms of dressing, I had thought. As I walked towards the car, a voice from behind me said, "Aapne sab ka photo liya. Bas hamara nahin liya." I turned around and my eyes met Anil Patel's. Patel is a farmer. He owns around 10 acres of land and grows cotton. Patel told me he sold three acres of land to CEAT to make good money to send his son to California for further studies. "My other son is in Borivli, Mumbai," he volunteered. He said, "This is one of the richest villages in Gujarat. Everybody owns a car and everyone knows someone in the US. We live away from the crowd of the cities, yet have all the benefits at our doorstep." Now, that's development for sure: A place where people get all their amenities without having to go too far.

Why Chandrapura stands out:
1. The village is inhabited by people of just one community/caste i.e. Patels. In most Indian villages, you find a mix of people from different castes and religions.
2. Nearly half the residents of the village don't belong to the village but are tenants, which is more of an urban phenomenon.
3. The village is very clean, which contradicts the typical description of an Indian village.
4. The inhabitants are extremely prosperous thanks to the industrial development in the area.