Image by siam naulak from Pixabay
Gadag: The Hulkoti village of the Gadag district ranked first in the Mission Antyodaya Survey conducted by the Union government between October and December of 2020.
The Antyodaya Survey was conducted to check the standard of living in villages across the country. Two other villages from Karnataka – the Nandagad and Kulagod gram panchayats of the Belagavi district – also found themselves among the top 10.
In the survey, 141 questions on rural development were answered by the gram panchayat staff, along with relevant pictures. Hulkoti, which has 2733 families, received a score of 90 per cent for providing clean drinking water, good roads, having literacy of 82.23 per cent and a good drainage system.
Each of the families in the village receives clean drinking water and has 42 kms of underground drainage system. All the village roads are asphalted and the main roads are made of cement, and have many small trees. Additionally, the whole village is cleaned every day.
The villagers also have ample job opportunities under MGNREGA and other schemes and jobs are also created in private farms in and around the village.
A resident of the village, as per a report by The New Indian Express, said that the gram panchayat officials have been working towards providing job opportunities and maintaining cleanliness in the village. Outsiders who visit the village are delighted to see the roads. These are all fruits of the efforts of the gram panchayat officials with the cooperation of the villagers, he added.
Gadag MLA H K Patil said that his father K H Patil, who started the cooperative movement in the state, dreamt that such a day would come to pass. “This is a model village in the region. Two years ago, the village had bagged 5th place,” he added.