Spitting's not fine in this village

RAJ SAMADHIYALA: If you were slapped with a fine for littering or for spitting on the road, you may not be in New York or Singapore, but here, in Raj Samadhiyala. This nondescript village, 25 km from Rajkot, has led the way in teaching our cities some hard lessons in sanitation and cleanliness.
The village, with a population of 1,800 and spread over 1,500 acres, was awarded the Nirmal Gram Puraskar by the Union ministry of rural development and is the only one in Gujarat that will be felicitated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on February 24.
"A team from the ministry visited the village to check our sanitation facilities. Our claim would have been rejected if even a single house or school was found below the standards fixed by them," says Raj Samadhiyala gram samiti chairman Hardevsinh Jadeja.
The samiti, formed in 1978 for the development of the village, has led a unique clean-up drive. If around Rs 30,000 was collected every year in fines from errant villagers in the early ''80s, the figure has nosedived to Rs 200 in the past five years, says gram panchayat member Virendra Bhatt.
Fines of Rs 51 to Rs 151 are slapped for offences ranging from selling gutkha to children to littering and spitting in public places to bursting crackers during wedding ceremonies.
"Addiction to gutkha has gone down considerably. The youngest addict we have is 35 at a time cities are grappling with the problem of addiction among schoolchildren," says Dhiru Chana, a villager.
"It''s a foolproof system. The decision to impose a fine is taken in the presence of a witness. So, if the offender commits the mistake again, the witness — who acts as a guarantor — is also fined. This way, we create conscience-keepers in the village," says Jadeja.
The move has not only got the village an award, it has also left its priest Gulab Giri Goswami a happy man. The money collected initially had helped him get a loan from the panchayat. "The fines not only kept us on the right track but helped raise the quality of life in the village," says Goswami.
"The gram panchayat has a fixed deposit of Rs 17 lakh, a big chunk of which has come in the form of collection of fines. This has made us self-sufficient as we do not have to wait for government funds to carry out the cleanliness drives," says sarpanch Devsinh Kakadia.