Punjab: Villagers clean pond after 30 years in Chunni Kalan

CHANDIGARH: The common pond of Chunni Kalan, a Punjab village in district Fatehgarh Sahib, just 28km from Chandigarh, has become a talking point not only for the locals but also for the neighboring villages. The villagers take pride in showing it off as their new prized possession to the relatives, friends and also to government officials who are visiting it these days. In last 30 years, as the cleaning of pond finished last month, the villagers avoided going near it. It would exude unbearable stench and had become highly polluted and contaminated.


Harkamal Jit Singh Bittu, sarpanch narrated, around 30 years ago, people began building toilets in the village which lacked any sewage disposal system, so they opted for the easiest way to divert their sewage into the pond, a practice adapted across all over in Punjab villages around the same time. However no one, neither the villages nor the government bodies took the responsibility to clean these badly neglected water bodies over the years. This resulted into their turning black with all sorts of contamination and turning into breeding ground for infectious diseases.

All credit goes to Bittu and his eight member team of village panchayat, they decided to undertake this seemingly impossible task of first de-watering and then cleaning the village pond. The 85-year-old village sage, Ramshree Das, who lives in a temple situated on the bank of pond , gave his blessings to Bittu when he went to him before starting the canvassing for his election, on one condition that he must clean the pond after his victory. Bittu galvanized the villagers on this one issue and won the election six months ago.

“It is for the first time that all the members of village panchayat are young men and women in their 30s and 40s. Half of them are NRI who have returned to their village. For instance, I worked in Italy for almost a decade and saw the way Italian treated their water bodies with great amount of respect. When I returned to my village, the idea was always lurking in my mind to give a new life to my village pond too. The other NRI members too thought on the same page," said Bittu adding that after getting direction from swamiji (village sage) and, consent from his spirited team and villagers, they deployed suction pipes into the pond by pooling a sum of some five lakhs rupees. They threw pond’s dirty water into the agrarian fields which were lying vacant after the harvest till last month. The marathon task took 40 days. The villagers worked day and night unitedly.

Coincidentally, their endeavors matched with the Punjab government’s ongoing initiative to clean and revive ponds in 6,750 out of total 13,154 villages of the state and, applying Seechewal model in five villages of every block to ensure purity of the water. Under this model, the water goes through three wells, around 5X5 ft size, via meshes to clear the impurities and drain into pond where it gets further cleaned by aerobic and bacterial activity.

Parvinder Singh, member of the panchayat said, “We contacted a couple of concerned government officials who were handling the project of ponds rejuvenation in Punjab. They visited us and, were impressed to see clean pond, where some fresh clean water of last few rainfalls too was collected.”

The director, Mission Tandarust Punjab, Kahan Singh Pannu who is handling the pond project in Punjab told TOI, “I recently visited four villages including Chunni Kalan of Punjab. People seemed happy and enthusiastic to see their ponds cleaned which were lifeline for these villagers some 30 years ago. They lamented for their turning into sites of filth and decay. I feel great amount of satisfaction to see people in different villages and government machinery participating at war foot level in this first ever initiative of the Punjab government.” He further added that this initiative will be repeated every year. “It is important to clear the pond once in a year to clean the silt at the bottom so that these ponds can also become medium to recharge the ground water, which is severely depleting in Punjab.”

He said that he has given approval to build pathways around the pond of Chunni Kalan village which will be laced with trees and flowering plants to enable the villagers to walk and socialise on these pathways. The open space near pond banks used to be meeting point for villagers for festivities and social occasions in the past.

Gurjit Kaur, local woman reminisced that people would earlier use the pond water for bath, washing clothes, irrigation as well as for their cattle. They would gather around it for weddings, funerals or religious functions held in the nearby temple.

Ramshree Das is excited to see the revamped pond and gushed, “There was a time when I used to take bath in the pond before my morning prayers in the temple. I could not do so even for once in last 30 years but now I can certainly take a dip in it. The villagers have done a miracle by cleaning it.”

Surinder Singh, local said that the village sewage has now been diverted into the fields through pipes, but some residue is now collecting over one acre land outside the fields. He said that the villagers have been assured by the government officials that this water would be lifted and recycled once the infrastructure as per Seechewal model gets ready this year. A park would be built on this one acre land with the fund generated by the state government.

He said, they have also been assured of reimbursement of around five lakh rupees, spent by villagers on de-watering and cleaning the pond, through the government’s related schemes such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guaranteed Act.