Pokharan/ Khetolai, May 10:On Sunday, when the country quietly marks 10 years of the nuclear tests that pushed it into the N-weapon nations club, the dusty town of Pokharan, where the journey began, will be praying for a Rs 5-lakh waiver to pull its “Shakti Sthal” out of debt.

At Khetolai village, just six kilometres from Ground Zero, children will be hoping that their school gets more teaching staff, especially for the senior section which has just one lecturer.

The five nuclear blasts that shook Pokharan town are at best a fading recollection. The only memorial dedicated to the event — a museum named “Shakti Sthal Shaurya Sanghralay” after Ground Zero which is actually 30 km away — has been turned into a garden restaurant in an effort to repay an accumulating bank loan.

The biggest worry for the Pokharan Khadigram Udyog Sanstha (PKUS) — under which Shakti Sthal was set up by the district administration and opened to the public last year — is the Rs 5-lakh loan it took from the cooperative bank to construct the museum.

At Khetolai, a small village of 250 households which boasts of 100 per cent literacy rate, the lone school has been struggling for over five years to get lecturers for English, Political Science, History and Sanskrit. At present, there are just six teachers and one lecturer for the 300-odd students. The actual allotment for the higher secondary school is 12 teachers and six lecturers.

Ironically, the village itself has close to 100 teachers, but all of them have been posted to other regions. “We try to teach the children on our own to make up for the shortage. A lot of us have asked for a posting to our village but government policy comes in the way,” says Mangilal Bishnoi, a post-graduate in English and Sanskrit who currently teaches at Jaisalmer.

There is not much to see in Pokharan’s Shakti Sthal — a burnt Pakistani tank, an Agni missile model, an underground war room, a memorial for both the 1998 and 1974 tests and a hall filled with photographs of freedom fighters and fighter aircraft. But the museum remains the only government effort to commemorate the nuclear tests.

A dusty arms gallery, strewn with Chinese toy guns, handmade models of weapons, a school laboratory depicting nuclear experimentation and photographs of martyred soldiers add to the experience. A small room has also been dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi, on the insistence of the Khadigram Udyog.

Since the time it opened in January last year, barely 7,000 visitors have bought the Rs 5 ticket to see the museum. After the initial euphoria and grand inauguration, the administration seemed to have lost interest.

The only “advertisements” are small signboards on the Jodhpur-Jaisalmer highway welcoming visitors to the “Shakti Sthal”. A newly-added line to the boards also mentions the garden restaurant. The place does not even figure in guide maps or tourist information centres of the government.

“When the museum opened, we had hoped that it would be promoted as a tourist destination. Now, we are trying to raise money through the restaurant. We talked to the local administration several times but there was no response on how to raise the money,” says a worried Omji Godh, PKUS secretary. The site is also being let out for marriages and public functions to generate funds.

The organisation is now hoping to get a decommissioned fighter aircraft, more tanks and old weapons from the central government to spruce up the museum and attract more visitors.

The common complaint in both Pokharan and Khetolai is that after the tests, nothing special has been done to bring development to the region. The local authorities agree. “There is a feeling that Pokharan is a special name but nothing has been done to create special infrastructure or facilities for the people. There should be a world-class defence museum here and special funds should be allocated for development,” says Sub-Divisional Magistrate O P Bishnoi.

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