Smart Village No. 1, Jayapur

Welcome to Jayapur, the village PM Modi has picked—from roughly ten thousand in Varanasi—to make "Adarsh". Jayapur is a smorgasbord of underdevelopment: No roads, no piped water, little electricity, few phones (other than mobile phones), no cars, few motorbikes, no "proper" school, no toilets in homes or outside, too-few ration cards, no health centre, no drains to carry away rain water or slurry from homes. Women cook over wood fires, still draw water from wells and report daily squabbles with "the Thakurs" over where to do their toilet.

"In sixty eight years nothing happened here. Now we have a nationalist, committed, honest leader, Modi, who will transform Jayapur," says Srinarain Patel, Pradhan Durgawati's brother-in-law, who runs the show in this village of 3,000. He waves at a large grove of trees where a "sporting stadium" will be built. Contractors are already circling over it. New trees will be planted to replace the grove they will tear down.

A 100 metres away, a tiny row of houses is under construction. They are for Musahars, Jayapur's 80 poorest citizens, whose caste name reflects their dire straits. Said to live off eating mice, yet ironically, they don't even figure on the state BPL list. A Mumbai processed food company, Allana Sons, which also exports meat, paid Rs.1 crore for the Musahars' first home. There is speculation that Allana's owner wanted to contribute a crore to the PM's Relief Fund and was instead directed to Jayapur.

Sukhram, a daily-wage labourer, has moved with family into a tent behind the construction site. "It's Modi who told Allana to build these houses for us Musahars," he says. Janhit Solar, a U.P. company, has donated solar-powered street lights. "It's the Pradhan who is getting these lights for us. We don't mind living separately from others. These houses will be much better," says Ashok, another Musahar.

All morning, a neon-green Tata Nano has criss-crossed Jayapur, tooting its horn, reminding residents to show up the next morning at the inauguration of fifteen new bio-toilets. The Nano advertises BreatheEasy—an American brand of "natural remedy for asthma, stress, snoring…" which will be available at the event.

Back at the Pradhan's house, a clutch of visitors lies in wait. Hi-Tech Electropower, from Varanasi, is an authorised dealer for Tata Power Solar Systems. Anal Prakash Singh, its MD, says he wants to "help realise PM Modi's vision." Umanath Mishra, director of an Ahmedabad microfinance firm, ISMW, wants to tie up with Union Bank to "provide entrepreneurship training" to Jayapur women. Patel's phone rings incessantly through their tea-drinking session: More and more people want to visit Jayapur, to "invest" here. The inauguration of bio-toilets, constructed by Kolkata company Prestar Infrastructure, using DRDO technology, promises to be a grand affair. In a large clearing at the village's entrance, two toilets adorned with marigold garlands and photos of Mahatma Gandhi's spectacles await the dignitaries from Varanasi. The words clearly printed on either lens of Gandhi's specs: "Swachch" and "Bharat".

It is all a bit overwhelming for Jayapur's people, whose contact with the world was largely through menfolk who left to work in cities like Lucknow, Delhi or Surat. The women cut through the hype. Rajni says she would like a drainage system for the village more than anything else. "And as for toilets, who will clean them? If people think they can leave that to us, then its better everybody sits in the fields," she says. The government, say the women, should focus on "real" issues. "We have seen no change since the new government. We still work for Rs.70 daily, on Thakur farms. It's only when we get money will we be empowered, isn't it? Building a few public toilets—that too, so far from home, is just waste," says Babita.

A little later, at the village entrance, a Union Bank executive from Varanasi, RK Jaglan, and the microfinance director from Gujarat, Mishra, begin a discussion on smart banking with Patel. Patel later approaches with a whispered request: "Could you please ask these two men the meaning of 'smart banking' and then explain it to me?"

If not for the Prime Minister's SAGY, or Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojna, few outside Varanasi would have known Jayapur exists. Now, people call the Pradhan and her family members constantly. They want to know if the village needs water, electricity, pump-sets, seeds, fertilizer, factories, lozenges, quilts, and anything else that a village barely making ends meet might never want. With Modi as grand patriarch, Jayapur resident's imagination is fired by becoming a "model", an idea. "Adarsh", for many here, includes solar power, bank accounts, skill development, micro finance, swachchta and all the other buzz words that arrived on the scene with the BJP's Lok Sabha victory. Patel and Durgawati, the Pradhan, perpetually add to this list of fantastic, buzzing ideas—the women are to be sorted into self help groups and make papad and pickles. The men are to sell readymade clothes from Gujarat. A power loom is to be installed, a bio-gas plant, water harvesting, drip irrigation...The plans are endless.

As the top SAGY village, it's clear that Jayapur will not just be "adarsh" and complacent about it. It will be "adarsh" in a way that other villages are expected to, somehow, emulate. Just like its residents are aware of the possibilities—even of bio-toilets, though grudgingly—its neighbours are wary, and jealous. Like any grand plan, even the Prime Minister's brainwave can have a deadly weakness. Right next to Jayapur is equally squalid Pachai. There, they gossip about how Jayapur had already been "adopted" by the RSS, decades ago.

A Pachai resident, who identified himself as just Patel, says, "We also have ancient statues, of Hanuman. We keep finding statues buried in fields. Old utensils too. Nothing but active RSS workers ensured that Modi adopts Jayapur." Residents of Jayapur extol their village as the one that rebuffed Aurangzeb's angry advances. They also offer, contradictorily, prove that the Mughal Emperor "destroyed their temples".

Indeed, atop every second house in Jayapur flies the bhagwa dhwaj, the triangular saffron flag also associated with Hindu right-wing groups, particularly Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). At one point—in recorded history—RSS wanted, and demanded, the tricolor be replaced with the dhwaj. This remains the RSS' fond hope and expectation. In Patel-dominated Jayapur the dhwaj is ubiquitous, as if every other household is expecting a Hindu nationalist to come over for lunch and a spontaneous havan.

Some years ago Jayapur's Panchayat decided to fund a school with people's contributions. That school has now fallen on bad times: only a hand pump remains intact, and somebody's buffalo is tethered to it. Nothing else remains—the tile roof has caved, the yellow plaster is peeling, all doors and windows are missing. Jayapur just couldn't afford the upkeep. "Yahan abhi shakhaen hoti hain," says a little boy, as his friends collect around him, explaining what a "shakha" is.

Meanwhile, resentment over Jayapur's fame is heating up in Pachai—one big grouse: the line-up of Scorpios next door. "A bank has opened there. That village has started changing. They are getting toilets. We saw bags of fertiliser. Farmers got seeds and saplings. So many cars come there every day," says Magu, around 40, who works in the house of his "malik" in nearby Chandapur, and Pachai.

"Modi is such a big man. When Jayapur voted for Modi, didn't we do the same? Can't a few drops of his largesse fall on Pachai when we are right next door?" asks another Pachai resident, Mubarak.

Mubarak, a washerman, is chatting up a group of women in a far corner of Pachai. The street next to them is covered with dirty water, around which children are playing. "We also don't have a bank. And we have nowhere to take this water to," he says about the flooded street. "He [Modi] made big-big promises. He knows that he is the Malik of all the villages. Can't he also see the troubles of our village, right next to Jayapur?" asks Anita, another resident, whose husband works in Mumbai. Anita wants a main road for Pachai. "And a drain. Also, a hand pump—Jayapur has two now," she says.

Last November when the new Prime Minister paid a formal visit to Jayapur he told a large, enthusiastic crowd that theirs was the very first village he had heard of in Varanasi. By picking the first village he had heard of, Modi exposed himself to some criticism. It turned out that there are no Muslim families in Jayapur. (Varanasi is 18 per cent Muslim, the all-India proportion is15 per cent.) From across the field with the broken statues the muezzin's cry from Pachai can be heard, loud and clear, five times daily.