ballay_ballay@punjab_village.com
From the land of lassi and parantha, this tasty morsel:
In a little-known Punjab village, 72-year-old Mehnga Singh, who just returned from his field, casually places his spade in the corner of the local community polytechnic and removes his shoes. After washing his hands, he heads for a computer to check e-mail from his son in Dubai. His grandson is in the neighbouring swimming pool and his wife in an all-women gym.
This is Palahi, the village that gives Punjab’s other 12,500-plus villages a complex. Three kilometres off National Highway 1 near Phagwara, this 3,000-strong population village has a twinning IT arrangement with Cambridge University and has ensured that every resident has an e-mail address.
Gurdip Singh’s month-old baby, the village’s youngest resident, is the only one who does not have an e-mail address yet. “Actually, we still have to name him,” says Gurdip. “That’s not a very good excuse,” chides Gurmit Singh, engineer-turned-principal of the polytechnic.