PM, sarpanch fail to e-connect

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 1

The much-hyped interaction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the sarpanch of Daria village through video-conferencing as part of the Digital India project today turned out to be a “chai-pakora” party.

Reason: The video-conferencing never took place as the high-speed Internet connection failed to work and the company, specially hired for the purpose, failed to fix the problem last night till 1 am. 

Excited over being selected for the golden opportunity to interact with the PM, the village panchayat spent Rs 60,000 over the past four days to make the interaction a success. Hi-tech equipment was installed at the venue of the function and the sarpanch was given training by an official from New Delhi on how to respond to the PM’s queries during the interaction.

Officials of the UT Administration were clueless about the cancellation till the “function was over” at 6 pm. They kept informing mediapersons that the interaction would took place at 4.30 pm. Special teams of the Electricity Department, comprising 15 staff members and equipped with two generators, were deployed at the venue to avoid any disruption during the interaction.

Sailing in the same boat were villagers who were unaware about the technical snag and turned up at the venue to witness Modi’s interaction with their sarpanch, for which around 100 officials were making arrangements at the gram panchayat office for the past four days.

In the middle of the programme, the sarpanch of Daria, Gurpreet Singh Happy, expressed disappointment over the “delay” in the interaction as villagers kept asking him when the event would start. He said last night at about 1 am, all officials, who had come from Delhi, left the venue as a serious technical snag developed.

After an hour, the sarpanch disclosed that there was no official communication from the authorities about the interaction with the Prime Minister, but Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) officials had informed him about it.  

BBNL Senior General Manager BM Sethia confirmed that they had received an official communication about this interaction. He said the system installed by the e-compass company, hired by the Centre, had failed to make the system operational in the village. 

English plays spoilsport for villagers

The use of English by speakers during the Digital India event played a spoilsport for the villagers, who left the venue, where LCDs were installed, in the middle of the programme as they failed to understand the language.

Villagers started coming  in at 3 pm

• Since Tuesday night, no Internet connection was operational in the village. 
• Villagers started coming to the venue at 3 pm in the hope of getting the front seat near the LCD thinking that Modi might watch them. 

Sarpanch had hope till end

Hoping for an interaction till the end, the sarpanch and a few panches kept sitting in the computer centre of the gram panchayat where an LCD was installed.

Villagers discuss problems

After losing interest in the event, villagers started discussing their problems and said the focus should be on village issues rather than such events, which were of little use to them. Women, who were earlier keen on listening to Modi, discussed the toilet programme and said the village had not yet made a provision for it. They alleged that even public toilets had been demolished. 

Young girls expressed concern over their safety in the village in the absence of streetlights. They said a number of requests had been sent to the authorities in this regard, but nothing came out of it.