Author: Ramesh Vinayak
Publication: India Today
Date: December 10, 2007
Introduction: After years of neglect, the
centenary year of Bhagat Singh's birth gives his village a reason to rejoice
Red-stone archway, concrete streets lit with
solar lamps and a tastefully-landscaped park with a coloured fountain-this
is no heritage resort but a humble village, with a history. Seventy-six years
after laying down his life for the country, a son of this soil has become
the harbinger of its prosperity. Khatkar Kalan, a village on the Chandigarh-Jalandhar
highway in Punjab's Doaba region, today typifies development not because of
affluent NRIs but because it is the birth place of Shaheed Bhagat Singh and
2007 happens to be the hundredth year of his birth. Both the Centre and the
state Government have chipped in to spruce up his native village to mark the
centenary celebrations.
While the Centre has sanctioned a grant of
Rs 1 crore for the maintenance of Singh's 150-year-old ancestral house and
beautification of the surrounding area, the state Government has given an
equal amount for other development works in the village. A library has been
built at the village square and also a 200-kW solar power plant to meet the
growing demands of energy in the village. Even though Khatkar Kalan boasts
of four government-run schools, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal recently
laid the foundation stone for another Adarsh School to provide quality education
to the poor and the needy. To attract tourists, a Rs 52-lakh fast food complex
is under construction near Shaheed Bhagat Singh Museum.
For years this village had been a venue for
politicians to pay lip service to the memory of the martyrs. A slew of promises
were announced every year on March 23-the day Singh and his companions Sukhdev
and Rajguru were hanged by the British rulers in 1931. A commemorative ritual,
these promises, involving a substantial and regular state funding, were never
fulfilled. Things started changing in 2003 with the visit of the then President
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who took a personal interest in promoting this neglected
village as a symbol of freedom struggle.
But not everybody is happy with this spit
and polish of just the outer façade. Village sarpanch Kewal Singh rues
that the development has bypassed the needs of the locals. "Instead of
being active participants, we are only at the receiving end of these lofty
schemes," he adds, pointing out that the village is yet to get a 100-bed
hospital and a sports stadium, the longpromised projects for which foundation
stones were laid years ago. Even the martyr's kin are not too enamoured with
this "imposed model" of development. "Instead of imbuing the
youth with Bhagat Singh's ideology, the emphasis is on creating infrastructure,"
laments Jagmohan Singh, Bhagat Singh's nephew. But a beginning has been made
and that should be reason enough to celebrate.
