Rae Bareli’s Taudhakpur village becomes ‘SmartGaon’

RAE BARELI: It was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech to non-resident Indians (NRIs) in the USA that inspired a native of Taudhakpur village of Rae Bareli to do something for the development of his village.

Today, Taudhakpur has become a smart village and the credit for it goes to Rajnish Shanker Bajpai—a software engineer in California. His elder brother Kartikey Shanker Bajpai is the village head (pradhan) of Taudhakpur.

Rajnish came to his native village for a month and drew the development plan for the place.

He also developed an app ‘SmartGaon’ for villagers by which they can get all information on their mobile phones.

The PM heaped lavish praise on him for his app ‘SmartGaon’ in the 46th edition of his radio programme ‘Mann Ki Baat’ that was broadcast on Sunday (July 29).Taudhakpur village is located 35 kilometres from the city under Lalganj block. Its population is only 3500 and there are 1668 voters here. The village is also connected by Lucknow Lalganj road.

“I address the whole village from my control room situated in my house. Announcements are made on the public address system,” village pradhan Kartikey Shankar Bajpai told HT. As per Bajpai, the village is open defecation free and has 242 toilets.

“My village also has 54 government hand pumps, 16 CCTV cameras, 25 loud speakers for public address system and a primary school with 108 students,” he added.

Bajpai further said the village will have a garbage recycling system besides a computer learning centre.

He acknowledged that district magistrate Sanjay Kumar Khatri and former chief development officer Devendra Kumar Pande made assiduous efforts to ensure development of the village.