All we want is..

Seventy-one years after Bhagat Singh went to the gallows and 53 years after the country attained Independence, villagers in this native village of the martyr have a very humble demand - they want drinking water.

"It is my dream to someday see a tap in my village which, when opened, gives me water," said a village elder who has seen 80 summers and remembers a plethora of promises made by successive governments over the years. "Another dream I have, is to see a sewerage system in the village. Why do our daughters have to go to the fields to answer a call of nature? Why can't we have even a decent toilet so many years after Independence?"

The village with a population of around 3,000 seems stuck in a time-warp. Apart from its undeniable claim to fame as the birthplace of Bhagat Singh, it has little that can be the envy of neighbouring villages.

"I feel ashamed to tell people that I hail from Bhagat Singh's village and that we have no water supply in the village," said Ajaib Khan who runs a phone PCO here.

Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has rarely skipped attending the martyrdom day function at the village, and excited villagers are preparing for yet another opportunity to receive him.

Also, rarely has Badal skipped the opportunity to assure villagers that the dirty water pond which stands cheek-by-jowl to the ancestral house of the martyr would be filled and developed into a park. At every single function he has attended, Badal promised that the pond, an ugly eyesore at the village entrance, would be filled up. It is still there, a cesspool acting as symbol of a politician's empty promises.

"We have been hearing this promise since 1978 when Badal had become chief minister for the first time. 'Hun ta mere vi kan pak gaye ne sun-sun ke par chappar uthe da uthe hai'," said Bhagwant Kaur making cow-dung cakes near the pond.

The village had a veterinary dispensary. It is, however, a minor matter that for years there has been no veterinary doctor and one wall and two doors of the dispensary do not exist. Now, Sarpanch Jaswinder Singh said, the panchayat was in the process of building a new dispensary, and has demolished the old one.

"We take our cattle to veterinary hospitals in nearby villages like Thandiyan. I have rarely seen even the pharmacist who sometimes visits the village," said Charan Singh. The Sarpanch admitted that there were virtually no medicines in the veterinary dispensary for months but said the panchayat got Rs 1 lakh for medicines nearly six months back. "We will buy medicines only when the new building comes up," he said.

Drinking water supply, however, remains on top of villagers' wish list, particularly since Kahma, a stone's throw away, has had water supply for decades now. Villagers also want the subsidiary health centre to be upgraded to a civil hospital.

All the demands sound pretty reasonable, but so far the panchayat has not adopted any of these, not even asking for a bus stop so that all buses halt here.

And what does the panchayat _ comprising Akali Dal loyalists _ want? A sports stadium. "I want to have something in my village that should make it the number one village in not just Punjab but entire India. So we have decided to ask for a sports stadium," said Sarpanch Jaswinder Singh, who flunked matriculation exams and did not study any further. His right-hand man, Panch Kashmir Singh, a Nihang Sikh who never went to school but is president of the managing committee of Adarsh Senior Secondary School, also finds it a wonderful idea.

"'Je sports stadium ban gaya tan sada pind number ik pind ban jaooga sare Punjab vich' (If we get the stadium, ours will become number one village in Punjab)," he said.

Surprisingly, the village is full of schools. Apart from two separate primary schools for boys and girls, there is a middle school exclusively for girls, a government high school and the senior secondary level Adarsh School.

"But even though we boast of five schools, none of us can recall even one doctor or engineer that the village has turned out. Only two of our girls rose to become primary school teachers," said a group of villagers. "You are forgetting the SDO who works at Kapurthala Coach factory," objected the Sarpanch, but was reminded by fellow villagers that he got the job because he was a good weightlifter.

Ironically, for a village of the martyr who died shouting 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai', the only thing residents of Khatkar Kalan proudly tell anyone who is prepared to listen is that more than a hundred youth have gone abroad to Gulf countries, Canada and some European countries. "'Bahute tan black de raste hee gaye ne, par gaye ne' (Most have gone through illegal route, but they have nevertheless gone)," the Sarpanch said in a very matter-of-fact way.

When village urchins were asked why they would be coming to the functions on March 23 (Martyrs' Day), it seemed the martyr was pitted against a chopper. "We will come because it is a big mela. Besides, we may get to see the helicopter of Badal Sahib," was the chorus reply.