Gujarat: Villagers praise road works, some ‘hired’ to work at statue site

‘It’s like a miracle... everything changed overnight’

Tri-coloured balloons near Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s Statue of Unity during its inauguration in Kevadia. (Express Photo by Bhupendra Rana)

Three kilometres from the river island of Sadhu Bet, Sattuben Tadvi has again set up a stall along the road in Navagaam village, hoping to profit from the heavy movement of cars headed to Sardar Patel’s statue. Her stall was removed last week from the road as it was raised and levelled ahead of the inauguration of the world’s tallest statue. A widow and mother to two children, Sattuben claims she made twice the revenue by afternoon from a crowd never “witnessed before”. “It feels like a miracle, an overnight change. Changes and developments happened within hours and we saw it all.”

A few metres from Sattuben’s home, Seetaben Tadvi (27) is happy to get a job after her house was partially demolished for construction of the road. She claims that she has been employed to clean the roads every day and will be paid Rs 7,500 per month for the job. She says that she doesn’t know her employer but claims that she has been working for the last three days.

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At Koriya village of 25 households in Garudeshwar taluka, 15 km from Sadhu Bet, villagers seem unaffected by the buzz of activity on the two-lane SH 63 adjacent to the hamlet and connected to it by a kutcha road.

“We can see the statue from across our farm, but its still far… I would want to go and visit it some day,” says Hemant Tadvi (72), who lives with his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren in a house partly constructed under the Indira Awas Yojana.

Also read | 200 Gujaratis from 20 states flock Statue of Unity site: ‘Wouldn’t have missed this moment’

However, he adds, “Look at the roads, they have made them so much better.”

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At Gabhana village near Koriya, Leelaben Tadvi’s 12-year-old daughter Lalita is not sure if the government school she is enrolled at will be closed for the occasion. “Our teacher said he didn’t know if we have a holiday today. So he had asked us to come, and if we have a holiday we will come back home,” Lalita says.

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