Visiting Jayapur, the Uttar Pradesh village adopted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, is heartbreaking.

The welded, cast iron chairs in its newly inaugurated bus shelter, ironically designed to prevent vandalism, have been ripped off their joints and used as perches for gambling; toilets installed under Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan have been turned into de facto storage spaces for dried cow dung and fire wood, the doors are broken; batteries of solar lamps that provide light to a large swath of the village during night and a motor used for pumping water to 65 families have been stolen.

Less than two years after Modi took this village of 3,205 residents, located 30 kms off his Varnasi constituency, under his wings, his dream of turning it into a model village, appears to have hit a wall of public apathy and adminstrative neglect.

Rustic attitudes

Even the villagers Mail Today spoke to, including the village head, Narayan Patel, failed to offer any concrete suggestions to prevent vandalism or change rustic attitudes other than a meak defence that such destructive tendencies are common in villages across India. 'These things happen everywhere," Patel said. "I keep telling them not to do such things. They don't listen. Those who break and steal things don't do it in front of me. The problem is with the mentality," he said.

Mail Today got a glimpse of this when it spoke to some of the villagers who defended defecating in the open and blamed "poor welding" for the broken chairs inside the bus shelter.

Pucca toilets being used by locals as a storage space or dumpyard. Pucca toilets being used by locals as a storage space or dumpyard.

"Going out in the open feels better. You also need less water," said a villager when asked why the toilets are not used.

Though over 400 toilets including bio-toilets have been constructed in the village under Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan, only 20 per cent of them are being used by the villagers, according to Satyendra Kumar, a second year B.A. student at Sardar Patel Mahavidyalaya, Badhaini. Most of the toilet fittings including taps have been stolen.

Blame game

A group of village youth, whom Mail Today spotted sitting on broken chairs inside the bus shelter and gambling, claimed that the chairs were not welded properly and denied any culpability on their part. The claim, however, was promptly denied by Kumar, who said the village head had given up the idea of fixing the chairs as miscreants kept on breaking them each time they were repaired.

It was fear of miscreants that forced the local branch of the Union Bank of India to keep its Digital Knowledge Centre, a library cum computer centre, started as a part of its CSR initiatives, shut most of the time. Both the bank and the centre were opened around the time Modi adopted the village in 2014.

"Initially, we used to keep the centre open. Then we started losing books and magazines," said Prosanjit Sheel, Branch Head, Union Bank of India. The library subscribes to seven Hindi newspapers and news magazines apart from agricultuaral magazines.

"Now, we open it for two to three hours a day as per requirement and also make sure that someone is there to monitor. If you leave the library open for two days unattended, all its contents will be wiped clean," said Sheel. The bank too had provided 35 solar lamps, out of which eight batteries were stolen.

"It is quite depressing to see all this. But what can we do? We cannot go and sit behind them to find out if they are stealing batteries or not. If the local administration and police are strict they can prevent such things to a great extent," said Sheel.



Attitudinal change

Even he believes that bringing progress in the village is not possible without ushering in an attitudinal change in the minds of the people first.

"It is true that by adopting Jayapur, Modi has provided villagers with a lot of facilities," said Sheel. Some of them include good roads (the road that leads to Jayapur is surprisingly bump free), self-operated water pumps, a BNL tower, an under-construction, overhead water tank that is big enough to supply water to five nearby villages including Jayapur and an ATM accessed by more than 200 people every day. "But what eventually drives most of the villagers are parochial concerns about individual gains and benefits," said Sheel.

"When the bank was inaugurated, there was a heavy rush to open accounts. Villagers thought that since Modi had adopted the village, he will also put money into individual accounts," he said. "For them (villagers) what matters is 'I' and not 'We'," he said.