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.

The only structure that the villagers left behind in the old Manoharpur’s rubble was a small mazaar. While WBPDCL set aside Rs 2 lakh for construction of a mazaar at the new site, identical to the old one, the Imam refused to abandon the place. The villagers have now managed to extract a promise from the WBPDCL authorities that the structure will not be pulled down.

“Our families had been neighbours even before the times of our fathers-in-law. Our husbands had grown up together as brothers, so we are quite happy with this arrangement,” say two of the villagers, Rezina Bibi and Jyosna Bibi.

So is the district administration. “We have given importance to social capital. The idea was to recreate the old surroundings so that villagers don’t feel out of place,” says SDO Dipankar Mondal.

A little over 95 acres has been acquired for the new unit of the Bakreswar Thermal Power Plant, most of which comprised human habitats and only a very small percentage farmlands. WBPDCL has also promised to provide permanent jobs to members of families which see a substantial loss of income. While 26 villagers have already found employment as casual labour, the rest are waiting for future recruitments.

Sheikh Hossain, 26, is among those who has found a job. “I am looking forward to my Rs 4,000 salary. I am better off now as my lottery business did not do well,” says Hossain.

“We have faith in the administration,” adds Sheikh Rafiq. “Whatever we asked for — roads, power lines, tubewells, school buildings — we have got.” “Someone had to make the sacrifice for a greater good,” they add, pointing at the new thermal power plant unit.

THE PACKAGE

Total land acquired

for the thermal power plant

95.36 acres

Total compensation given by WBPDCL

Rs 2.25 crore

Land allotted for rehabilitation

10.67 acres

Number of families displaced

82, of which 13

belong to SC/ST category. The 13 SC/ST families have been provided

Rs 25,000 under the Centre’s Indira Awas Yojna