Celebrating Chhat in Sonepat, Haryana
Sonepat: around 15 km from Sonipat town and located on national highway No 1, is a village called Badmalik which has made special arrangements for Chhath this year. The special arrangements for the festival include digging up a pond near the village, where women can perform puja and other rituals on Tuesday. The reason – the village has been home to a large number of migrants, who had already outnumbered local population in about two decades’ time.
The sarpanch is still from the local Jat community but nearly half the members of the 18-member panchayat are migrants. The sapranch, Poonam Sehrawat, told a reporter that since a large number of migrants are living in the village, the panchayat decided to construct a special pond for the convenience of devotees. She said the village has even invited local MLA Jai Teerath Dahiya for the inauguration of the pond and the puja. The migrants had outnumbered locals 3:1 in the village as out of a 12,000 population, locals constitute only about 3,000. Arrival of migrant labourers has changed the social and economic environment of the village according to the sarpanch.
Sehrawat said ‘Industrialization around the village had usurped agriculture land and now, renting out premises as accommodation to migrants is a major source of income for us. The migrants are engaged in manual labour and industrial work.’ It seems earlier, the migrants had to travel miles to perform puja in Yamuna. But this year, the panchayat has done well to dig a special pond for the devotees. A migrant told the reporter ‘I have been living in the village for the last 24 years and we are permanent residents of the village. It’s the duty of the panchayat to take care of our needs’ adding that they had started taking interest in local politics and 9 out of 18 members in the village panchayat now are migrants. Only a few families travel back to Bihar on this occasion as most families have settled here permanently, she said.
[Courtesy: The Times of India]