There lies a road in the main bazaar chowk in the Soda village of Rajasthan. At first glance, it may seem like an ordinary village street, but the locals see it as a symbol of progress. As I get on a call with Ladu ji, a farmer in the area, the steady sound of trucks, cars, bullock carts, buses, and bicycles ploughing through the street eclipse most of his words. He shouts over the din, “Now trucks can drive on this road!”

Ladu ji goes on to explain why this is a miracle.

“There was a time when even two bicycles couldn’t pass simultaneously. What else can you expect from a two-foot-wide road?” he asks. I agree. So, naturally, watching the path accommodating trucks and lorries is amusing for the villagers. The farmer is quick to hail his ex-sarpanch (a decision-maker elected by the village) Chhavi Rajawat for this phenomenal work.

He stresses though that this isn’t the only transformation she has brought about. “Our village has water thanks to her.”

Before Rajawat took over as sarpanch in 2010 — at the time making headlines for being India’s first female sarpanch with an MBA degree — the village was experiencing one of its worst droughts. “Madam ensured a pipeline in every house and water in every pond,” Ladu ji says.

Home isn’t the only place where he has been witnessing the results of Rajawat’s work. His fields too have benefited. Promising to send me pictures of his thriving pulses, the farmer credits the steady supply of water for this. “Earlier my fields would dry up completely. But not anymore.”

It suffices to say that in the two terms that Rajawat headed the village as sarpanch, 2010-15 and 2015-20, she shaped, both, policies and dreams. As she points out, the victory is personal. After all, this is her native village.

While she was chasing corporate dreams — Rajawat worked for a slew of multinational companies after completing her MBA degree — one question continued to baffle her.

Despite government funding for rural development increasing over the years, why were villages not progressing? Why was development in retreat?

Conversations with the villagers led her to the answer. “I began to understand that responsibility and ownership were slowly regressing in rural landscapes,” she explains.

Rajawat’s stint as sarpanch witnessed 800 households getting pipelines, around 800 homes getting toilets, numerous ponds being revived, and 100 roads being built.

Just when the villagers assumed the spate of development had reached its peak, Rajawat revived a defunct college and is already planning for a digital literacy centre. “Miles to go,” she emphasises.

Knowledge does not discriminate

It is a Monday morning when I call Geeta (44). Her delayed response, as she explains, is because she is busy sketching out a curriculum for her Class 5 students. It’s been a year since Geeta has been working at this school. “I am the happiest I have ever been,” she smiles. After being unemployed for years, she is relieved to have a well-paying job.

Following Class 12, Geeta quit her studies for five years. Her father’s untimely demise and her in-laws’ unsupportive behaviour were the reasons. But, it was a friend who stepped in and motivated Geeta to take up studying once again; transferring Rs 3,000 into her bank account and asking her to channel the money towards her education.

Working at a construction site in Jaipur at the time, Geeta was forced to return to Soda in 2020. The dearth of work during the COVID lockdown made it impossible for her to continue. When she reached the village, news of a ‘new’ college taking in applicants reached her. One conversation with Rajawat later, Geeta was convinced this was the place for her.

“Chhavi ma’am encouraged me to pursue my D El Ed (Diploma in Elementary Education). Everyone around me was keen to see me study. I began noticing how the village mindset had evolved.” Geeta went on to complete the two-year course and secured a job at the village school.

While imparting education to 10-year-olds is her first priority, another goal is to dispel stereotypes that force women to sacrifice their dreams. Currently, there are 550 students at the college. They are engaged in one of the three courses offered here: BEd (Bachelor of Education), a D El Ed (Diploma in Elementary Education), and a BA (Bachelor of Arts) programme.

Watching these young girls echo Geeta’s enthusiasm to study further, is all the validation that Rajawat seeks. “In 2015, I noticed a complete mismanagement in the college. The head had run into a financial crunch and was on the verge of shutting it down. No one was too bothered by this since girl child education wasn’t a priority in the village.”

However, Rajawat was well aware of the odds against which the girls had enrolled in the college course. Returning home without a degree would only welcome taunts from their families.

“When we speak of development, it is very important for young women to have access to good education. Tomorrow, they will be mothers who will be impacting the next generation. If they set out to become teachers, imagine the responsibility on their shoulders,” she says.

With this in mind, Rajawat took over the college, working tirelessly with a team that was as passionate about the cause. The journey was anything but easy. “My staff did not have smartphones, so training and co-ordinating was tough. Doing it during the pandemic when access to resources was limited added to the challenge,” she adds.

To ensure that the students are getting a quality education, Rajawat employs teachers from Jaipur; organising a shuttle service that picks and drops them every day. In addition to this, she has also channelled funds towards setting up a computer lab.

The lab is one arm of Rajawat’s dream digital literacy centre. “Technology is changing globally, and we are diving into AI (artificial intelligence). But, at the same time, students in the villages are not familiar with using even a basic computer. It’s unfair.” She hypothesises that the digital platform will bridge the gaps that exist in literacy.

Another plan in the pipeline is an agriculture centre, where students can fine-tune their knowledge about climate change, quality of soil, irrigation practices and organic farming. Rajawat understood the importance of these factors when she attempted to bring water to the village more than a decade ago.

An oasis of hope

In 2010, Ladu ji’s routine involved waking up each morning and joining the hordes of villagers making their way to the village reservoir. Once at the site, a long day of digging and desilting awaited the group.

The monsoons that followed had them amazed as 12 acres of desilted land filled with water, lasting them for an entire year’s needs. “I still remember that day,” Ladu ji says.

Tracing back to how the water project took shape, Rajawat says it was the drought of 2009 that was the precursor. “It was one of the worst droughts the village had experienced. Our animals were dying, there was no fodder and people were consuming the groundwater, which had been declared unsafe for anything, even irrigation.”

“You can’t blame them. How else would they survive?” she argues.

It was a tense time. During this unimaginable hardship, Rajawat taking charge as sarpanch was a ray of hope for the villagers. She shares the ground map she put in place to alleviate the villagers’ woes.

“We have a main reservoir which spans 100 acres and several smaller ponds. The first step was to desilt the reservoir to ensure that we could harvest as much rainwater as possible from it as the surface water is used for all the village needs including irrigation.” Months of desilting led to success.

Rajawat’s operation had a dual vantage — the productivity of farmers increased to 75 percent, she shares, and the villagers’ belief in her was strengthened.

Here was a sarpanch who kept their word.

This was just the beginning of Rajawat’s good work. In 2010, she also spearheaded a sanitation campaign through which she began raising funds for the construction of toilets. Her strategy was bold and unique. “I knocked on the door of every home and told the beneficiaries that they had to contribute to the project. I added that if they did not have the money, they could contribute their time to dig the pits.”

Creating a sense of ownership went a long way. While Rajawat insists that these developments are tiny in the larger scheme of things, she emphasises, “The progress of a country is equal to the progress of each of its citizens.”

Edited by Pranita Bhat