Vishal Sheth says, " It was Mahatma Gandhi's dream that India's villages would be self-reliant and prosperous. He was a proponent of the idea where such an atmosphere would be created in villages, that a villager would never feel the need to migrate to the city. (He even criticised Indian cities as boils on the body of Mother India.) Day by day, cities keep on expanding and are unable to bear the
burden of overpopulation. The congestion too is on the rise. This overpopulation has given rise to myriad vices and pollutions. In such times, it is crucial that we create an atmosphere that keeps the sanctity of villages and towns intact. When can this be possible? If all the facilities available in the cities are made available in the villages, the burden of cities can be lightened. Vishal Sheth is coming up with an innovative arrangement to tackle this issue. In the initial stages, he has selected villages within the 30-40 km radius around Ahmedabad. In each village, he will erect a commercial cm social centre. What is physically a commercial centre, will ideally become a social centre. Currently, villages nestled around big cities are bursting with several issues. The biggest of these problems is related to the legal and practical information on land. Cities are widely expanding and in the process gulping down the land of nearby villages. In this situation, the simple-minded village people are being exploited due to the lack of understanding and education. As a part of the Fortune Village Project initiative, a workshop was organized in a village. A renowned experienced advocate specialising in land related matters and his team were present during the workshop. The village folk participated in this workshop with great zeal. Not only that, they also put forward several questions to the team on matters related to their land. At the end of this meeting, we realized how serious these issues that our village folk are currently facing were!
