Joy’s Determination

Living a city life might not be the easiest thing but it isn’t the most difficult when compared to village life. The development level in cities was unmatched, leaving the villages way behind in terms of progress. When thinking about villages, A 24-year-old Joy Chatterjee, an employee at Microsoft Corporation. pictured something similar.

Joy’s life story was not easy, as he himself came from a rural background. Residing in Kolkata, Joy has learnt different things throughout his childhood, from different kinds of people. From working as a mechanic in a small garage for a living to being an employee at Microsoft Corporation, was a big deal for a person such as him. Even though his hard work is underappreciated, he continued to thrive for excellence.

After working as an ordinary employee at Microsoft for over 10 years, Joy finally got his much-awaited promotion and became Chairman of Microsoft, Kolkata. A proud moment for Joy’s family, as his hard work paid off.

The now 34-year-old Joy had a lot of plans in his mind for the development of the nation through one of the biggest industries, Microsoft. But, was there anything that needed improvement apart from cities. Joy thought hard, and realized that improving the structure of the villages in India was something he should really work on, but there was no possible plan for it.

Joy himself grew up in a village, and he did know the struggles and hardships that people go through in villages. His dad was a farmer, but illiterate like several others in his family. Being the only breadwinner, there needed to be some sort of system which could possibly increase his revenue, but there wasn’t. Well, that’s something Joy really thought about and hit him really hard as a young boy, was improving the education system in the villages. Joy Babu thought of different things of how villages were different from cities. And then he had the idea of what could be one of the biggest projects in the world, The Smart Villages.

We have all heard of smart cities, but why not smart villages. Joy Babu started working towards facilitating the villages in the same fashion as people did for cities. Joy left for a village near Kolkata, with a small bag, and a notebook to jot down all the problems of the village. The ride to the village lasted 3 hours, and Joy immediately started to interact with the people in the village about the issues they face.

After two tiring days of interacting with the village people, Joy set off for Kolkata, and assigned a ten-member committee to organize this project. The committee worked day and night to discuss all things required to create a smart village. After about four weeks of discussion and preparation, they set off for the village. Joy Babu and his assistant were the first ones to reach the village, followed by the ten-member committee assigned for the project. And soon after, nearly two hundred labourers arrived.

The experiment of creating a smart village lasted six months, with a million changes taking place. All buildings and properties were renovated, all free of cost for the villagers. The next thing they had worked upon was creating Wi-Fi networks all around the village. They constantly kept checking if the networks were working well, and if not, they switched to a better version.

There was no limit in the number of changes that took place in the village. They worked on the education structure, which turned out pretty well compared to other developments; there was improvement in water management, and people had access to water all day. People did not have to wait in lines to collect buckets of water, as Microsoft, with the help of several non- profitable organizations who worked for village welfare, changed this. Another interesting thing that they introduced was the Education for adults’ program. In this program, adults of the village who were illiterate, and wished to get educated, had the facility of a two-year course that would cover all subjects, and more importantly, free of cost. Over a hundred people enrolled for this program.

There were innumerable changes throughout the village, and most of them turned out pretty good, while some of them faltered. After six months of hard work by Microsoft, their Rural Development became a success. There were some flaws of course, but things worked out just fine.

Joy Babu’s dream of transforming a rural village into a Smart Village had come true. The village was renamed after him, Joy Nagar, which became the first ever Smart Village in India. On the other hand, Microsoft Corporation was awarded for their work in rural development in India, and were funded by the government to improve the development of rural villages in India. The project turned out to be a huge success as Microsoft launched this worldwide. This went down as one of the most selfless and non-profit acts in the history books, all thanks to Joy Babu.

It’s been 7 years since the inception of The Smart Villages project, and almost all village kids couldn’t be happier. The COVID times meant no physical school, but the introduction of technology allowed the students to have an academic year, which would’ve been almost impossible otherwise. It wasn’t a completely useless year.

A thing that Joy Babu never experienced while growing up, but imagined, had come out true. A rural area had now become one of the biggest developing projects in history, but was it good enough to be considered as a city? Most city men would preferably stay in cities and run things smoothly, but it was an absolute no for villages. This could possibly be the next major project Joy Babu handles, but what he did for villages was unarguably a masterclass.