Story I: 

Lumbru Ram ki Taxi
Standing outside his little provisions store in the heart if the SJVN township in Jhakri, Lumbru Ram, 64, is a satisfied man. He’s seen the idea called SJVN germinate, evolve and grow before his eyes as it were, and calls himself a living embodiment of its success. His story is representative of how the arrival of a corporation and of a hydro-electricity (hydel) project actually enriched life for the local populace.

For 11 of the 14 years between 1973 and 1987, Lumbru Ram was the up pradhan of Dhargora village, now the location of the SJVN project. He returned to the pradhan’s office in 1995 too, staying on for five years till, in 2000, the panchayat was trifurcated into the Gopalpur, Jhakri and Dhargora village panchayats. By then, it wasn’t just the political geography that had changed; so had a society and its economy.

Lumbru Ram was an early convert to the plan of building a hydel project in Dhargora and its environs. “I felt it could change our lives,” he remembers. A farmer who owned 48 bighas on which he grew “makki, wheat, plum” and who maintained “about 150 goats and cows”, Lumbru Ram had 46.5 bighas acquired by the SJVN authorities. He was, of course, paid a tidy sum for this – “It was about Rs 24,000 a bigha in 1991.” In all, SJVN spent Rs 12.3 crore compensating project affected families that had to part with their property.

He was also, as per the provisions of the rehabilitation package, eligible for further assistance by virtue of being declared “landless”. As per the compensation norms, any family that had been left with less than five bighas after the acquisition process would be officially treated as “landless”. Over and above the cash paid to it for its acquired property, the family would be given alternative land so as to, in the end, leave it with five bighas. It was also given a house, in case the original too had been acquired.

If that sounds too complicated, consider Lumbru Ram’s example. He was left with just 1.5 acres of his original 48. As such, the SJVN authorities had to buy him an additional 3.5 bighas to leave him with a final holding of five bighas. Of the 480 families of Dhargora and 21 other villages who had all or part of their land acquired by SJVN, 112 were eventually recognised as “landless”, and so came to derive an extra benefit.

It was on this land, these five bighas, that Lumbru Ram built his family home and also his provisions store, realising, in those early years itself, that when the township developed and families came to stay, there would be opportunities for a small retail business.

With the money he received for the 46.5 bighas that had been acquired, Lumbru Ram bought more agricultural holdings further afield. “There was cheap land available higher up, away from Jhakri,” he says, “I invested in it and today farmers grow wheat and fruit there, and pay me rent.”

The shop and the new farmlands weren’t all. Under a scheme that allowed employment for a limited number of rehabilitation-category families, the first of Lumbru Ram’s three sons became a clerk in SJVN. He is one of 61 people who come from project affected families and have been given permanent jobs by SJVN.

For his second son, Lumbru Ram spent Rs 5.3 lakh from the compensation money to buy a Bolero utility vehicle. This vehicle is rented out to SJVN – again under a scheme that encourages local taxi owners – and driven by Lumbru Ram’s middle son. The net income, the father says, is “Rs 15,000 a month”.

The third son is also part of the larger SJVN family. To contribute to its host society, SJVN is committed to positive discrimination in favour of projected affected families when offering small contracts – for building a wall or minor repaid work, for instance – of value less than Rs 3 lakh. Lumbru Ram’s youngest son is a humble contractor of this nature.

Having “settled” his children, as he puts it, graduated from a kuccha to a pukka house, and from a small agricultural society to a bustling urban-type community, Lumbru Ram can only marvel at the transformation he has witnessed. “Just so many people from the village are directly or indirectly employed by SJVN,” he points out, alluding to the larger economy triggered by the hydel project, “people have got jobs, opened shops and little businesses, got small contracts under Rs 3 lakh. Even the big contractors have employed locals and those from project affected families. It is easier than getting labour from outside.”

To attest to the change, Lumbru Ram points you down road from his shop, literally, to the resettlement colony SJVN has built for project affected families that were rendered “landless” and lost their homes, and needed a new place to live in. Of the 112 families that were entitled to houses, 21 have actually received the keys to new habitation. The remaining 89 families (Lumbru Ram’s among them) have taken the offer of Rs 45,000 in cash and made alternative arrangements, built bigger houses perhaps, by dipping into the compensation they received for their land.

The 21 houses, neatly spread over two rows, look no different from developed residential neighbourhoods in a big city. They have a kitchen and a bathroom each, and the residents have access to water. “Earlier,” says a resident, “there was no water coming right to our home. We had to use a common external source outside the village.” Those old verities seem so far away now. Some bathrooms have washing machines, the kitchens LPG cylinders and cooking stoves. The prosperity SJVN has wrought is evident in these little details. No wonder Lumbru Ram can’t stop smiling.

Learning with SJVN
Meeting members of the project affected families, one is struck by the number who point out that, more than what it has meant to them, the potential the Naptha-Jhakri enterprise, and its ancillary benefits, has of making their children’s lives better is what appeals to them. A mountainous terrain six to seven hours from Shimla by road is today, courtesy SJVN, home to some of the finest schooling facilities in Himachal Pradesh.

The Government Senior Secondary School in Jhakri, with its 700 pupils, used to be a small and somewhat nondescript building. After a grant of Rs 52 lakh from SJVN – a promise to the community at the time the project was conceived – the renovation of the school is unusually marked. A new hall, new blackboards and teaching aids, new foreground – this is one commitment SJVN has kept.

Even more spectactular is the Delhi Public School (Jhakri), which was a product almost entirely of SJVN’s initiative and persistence. With an impressive library, science laboratories that can be benchmarked against the best schools in the country and a happy, cheerful landscape, DPS (Jhakri) attracts pupils from even neighbouring towns such as Rampur.

It began in 1994. Tanu Bansal, now the principal of DPS (Jhakri), joined the following year. “We were 12 teachers and 200 children, from nursery to class VIII, then,” she says, “today there are 32 teachers and over 600 pupils.” There are actually 670 pupils – 60 per cent from the SJVN township and 40 per cent “outsiders”. Remarkably, 211 of the 670 come from project affected families.

The corporation subsidises the fees of the project affected families’ children. In class X , for example, pupils from the from the SJVN ambit – including those from project affected households – pay Rs 360 a month. Others pay Rs 650. SJVN put down Rs 2 crore for the initial construction of the school. Today, it provides an annual “grant-in-aid”. In the past year, this amounted to Rs 62 lakh.

The five acre DPS (Jhakri) campus is expansive and, from personal computers to spotless classrooms to an excellent auditorium, has better infrastructure than any school hitherto accessed by the community. It is also environmentally conscious. The large playground that so serves the school has made use of earth excavated while building the dam at Naptha. The muck was filled in to “make” the soil that lies at the base of the field.