Varpalਵਰਪਾਲ

Four panchayats in one village

Most Punjab villages answer to a single sarpanch. Varpal answers to four. The village in Amritsar II tehsil of Amritsar district, in the Majha region south-west of Amritsar city, is run by four gram panchayats: Varpal Kalan, Varpal Khurd, Gill Varpal and Baba Fouja Singh Wala. Their names map the village's own geography: the greater and the lesser Varpal, the quarter of the Gill clan, and a quarter that keeps the name of Baba Fouja Singh. The census record carries Varpal as village code 037580 across just 1,356 hectares, the tightest area of any village in this group, and counts 10,189 people in it, a density of 751 people per square kilometre that belongs more to a small town than to farmland. The village falls in the Attari block, though it lies on the city's south-western side, not on the Attari road, and it votes in the Amritsar West assembly seat and the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat. It grew from 9,072 people in 2001 to 10,189 in 2011.

Religious life of the four quarters

Varpal's worship is the local kind: each of its quarters keeps its gurdwara life, and the panchayat name Baba Fouja Singh Wala carries a local holy man's memory into the village's official geography. No shrine of wider fame is recorded inside the village, and none is invented here. For the great shrines, the village looks where all Majha looks, to Amritsar, some 15 kilometres away, whose Golden Temple is the spiritual centre of the Sikh world. Chabba, about 3 kilometres west, and Bala Chak to the south-west are the neighbouring villages.

People and work

The 2011 census counted 10,189 people in Varpal: 5,386 men and 4,803 women, in 1,915 households at about 5.3 people to a household. The sex ratio was 892 women for every 1,000 men. Children up to the age of six numbered 1,245, about 12 percent of the village. Scheduled Castes made up 3,574 people, about 35 percent of the population, and no Scheduled Tribe population was recorded. Literacy stood at 67.48 percent among residents aged seven and above, men at 71.43 percent and women at 63.09 percent, the strongest showing of the three villages in this group.

Work is where Varpal's position beside a great city shows most clearly. Only 3,346 residents, about 33 percent, were recorded as workers, the lowest share of this group. Of the 2,606 main workers, 1,620 were other workers in services, trade and transport, nearly twice the 852 cultivators, while main agricultural labourers numbered just 71. Counting marginal workers too, the village had 883 cultivators and 95 agricultural labourers: in Varpal, remarkably, almost nobody works another man's fields for a living. A further 740 people were marginal workers. The fields are fully farmed, but the village increasingly earns in the city.

Land and farming

Varpal's land is a pressured version of the Majha pattern. Of its 1,356 hectares, 1,190 hectares were net sown area in the 2011 record, and every sown hectare was irrigated, 1,085 hectares by canal and 105 hectares by wells and tube-wells, canal water doing most of the work in this canal-irrigated corner of Amritsar district. There was no forest and no culturable waste land, and 166 hectares, about 12 percent of the whole village area, lay under non-agricultural uses, a high share that shows the settlement and its roads pressing on the farmland. Farm power supply was recorded at 9 hours a day.

Schools, health and daily facilities

The 2011 directory recorded one government school at each level in Varpal: primary, middle, secondary and senior secondary. An anganwadi centre and an ASHA worker were also recorded.

Health care in the village rests on a community health centre and a primary health sub-centre, the freshly read 2011 Village Directory confirms; there was no primary health centre, no allopathic hospital and no dispensary, and, the mirror image of its neighbours, no veterinary hospital at all, so animals travel for care while people are treated at home. Treated tap water was available. The village had a sub post office, the main post office being 5 to 10 kilometres away, an internet common service centre, a PDS ration shop and mobile phone coverage. Banking ran through a commercial bank branch; the nearest cooperative bank was 5 to 10 kilometres away, and there was no ATM. Domestic electricity supply, at 18 hours a day, was the most generous in this group.

Getting there: its own railway station

Varpal's name travels on the railway map. Gohlwar Varpal, station code GRV, is a halt a few kilometres from the village on the Amritsar to Khem Karan branch line, served by the DEMU trains that run between Amritsar and Khem Karan. By road, the village is served by pucca roads and, the 2011 directory recorded, by both public and private bus services; the all-weather road standard was met within 5 kilometres. Amritsar, the district headquarters and the nearest statutory town, is about 16 kilometres away, and its airport is under 18 kilometres from the village.

What is the population of Varpal?

The population of Varpal was 10,189 at the 2011 census, living in 1,915 households in Amritsar II tehsil of Amritsar district, up from 9,072 in 2001.

Does Varpal have a railway station?

Yes, in effect: Gohlwar Varpal (GRV), a few kilometres from the village, is a halt on the Amritsar to Khem Karan branch line with DEMU services to Amritsar, Bhagtanwala and Khem Karan.