A typical Indian village conjures up images of mud houses, narrow potholed streets, with no drainage system and no running water. Unless one is talking about Punsari - a village of 6,000 in Sabarkantha district, some 90km (56 miles) from the western city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat state. Punsari has been dubbed a "model village" by the state government and its young headman, Himanshu Patel, proudly states that his village offers "the amenities of a city but the spirit of a village". Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sent officials to Punsari to study its development model and prepare a scheme for creating model villages all over the country. The village has also been visited by "more than 300 officials" from all over India who want "to learn how they can replicate our model in their states", Mr Patel says. When I visited the village, I was impressed with what I saw. It has round-theclock, uninterrupted water and electricity supplies - something that is rare in hundreds of thousands of Indian villages.
No school dropouts
Mr Patel shows the same live CCTV footage on his iPhone screen - it displays a classroom. "It helps me monitor school activity," he says. We visit the school, it is not far from his office - the children look tidy in their crisp uniforms; they eat their free lunch distributed through the central government's midday meals scheme. The headmistress, Bhagwati Behn Patel, says "there is a zero incident of school dropouts in my school". The school is also wifi-enabled and offers computer classes. The project to make Punsari a model village began in 2006 when Mr Patel, then 23, was elected the village headman - then, it was like any other undeveloped Indian village. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-29914208