On the map, it is just a 1.5 km shift. But away from the heat and dust of Nandigram and Singur, the decision of villagers of Manoharpur in Birbhum district to willingly relocate marks a much larger change.

All the 82 families in the village, located about 40 km from Santiniketan, voluntarily decided to surrender their land and accept the compensation and re-location package offered by the West Bengal Power Development Corporation Ltd (WBPDCL), for expansion of the Japanese-funded Bakreswar Thermal Power Plant.

The relocation, which started sometime ago, was wrapped up last week. Post-Nandigram and Singur, Manoharpur is the only site where villagers have willingly given away their homes and land for a government project.

It is also unique in the way the whole exercise was planned, with care being taken to ensure that the “pattern” of the 200-year-old village was not disturbed.

Apart from retaining the old village name ‘Manoharpur’ at the new site, plots have been allotted so as to keep the relative position of the neighbours the same. Families living in adjacent houses in the old Manoharpur continue to do so in the new one. A pond for a pond, a school for a school and even a mosque for a mosque —- it’s as if the entire village has been lifted and placed at the new site.

Few can take umbrage at the few visible “changes” —- pucca houses now stand in place of mud ones. With the compensation money given by WBPDCL, villagers decided to construct pucca houses on the plots allotted to them. Some of the houses are still under construction. While they already had electricity lines, the new village has also been promised roads, parks and tubewells.

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