Ramsaraਰਾਮਸਰਾ

Where is Ramsara?

Ramsara is a village in Talwandi Sabo tehsil of Bathinda district, Punjab, in the Malwa region. On the ground it is the twin of Raman Mandi: the town begins barely 2 kilometres away, the two settlements share PIN code 151301, and daily life flows between them. Bathinda city is about 35 kilometres away and Talwandi Sabo, the tehsil headquarters, about 19 kilometres. In the census record Ramsara carries village code 035850 and covers just 576 hectares, a small area for what the census found living on it.

The census profile that breaks the pattern

Village census tables are usually predictable. Ramsara's is not. In 2011 the census counted 13,959 people on those 576 hectares, a density of about 2,423 people per square kilometre: city-like crowding. Of them, 12,311 were men and only 1,648 women, a sex ratio of 134 women per 1,000 men, among the most skewed figures recorded for any Punjab village. There were 4,030 households, averaging just 3.5 people each, and only 365 children under seven, about 3 per cent of the population, where a normal village counts 11 or 12 per cent.

The work figures complete the picture. The census recorded 12,148 workers, 87 per cent of everyone in the village. Of the 7,638 main workers, 6,005 were other workers in trade, transport, construction and services, against only 1,028 cultivators and 466 agricultural labourers, and another 4,510 people were marginal workers. Read together, this is not the profile of a farming village at all. It is the profile of a workforce camp that happens to be a village.

Counted in the middle of the refinery build

The timing explains it. A few kilometres from Ramsara, at Phulokhari village outside Raman, HPCL-Mittal Energy was then building the Guru Gobind Singh Refinery, a 9 million tonne, 4 billion dollar plant that was the largest single investment in Punjab's history. Construction had run since 2008 and thousands of project workers lived around Raman through the build; the census was counted in February 2011, close to the construction peak. The refinery was inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 28 April 2012. Ramsara, pressed against Raman's edge, absorbed a large share of that temporary workforce, and its census page froze the moment. The refinery, and the Ramanmandi to Bathinda products pipeline commissioned in 2011, have since made the Raman pocket a small industrial island in the cotton belt, and Ramsara still houses workers for the mandi, transport and plant economy.

The Raman market yard, two kilometres away, is where the belt sells its produce: mandi price lists for Raman cover cotton, paddy, wheat and kinnow, and in the cotton season the yard and the roads around Ramsara fill with tractor-trolleys of narma. Between the mandi, the refinery's contractor economy and the transport trade, Ramsara's working day starts earlier and runs later than a farming village's, and rooms rented to workers are part of its economy.

Land and farming

Farming is squeezed into what land the settlement leaves. Of Ramsara's 576 hectares, 358 hectares were net sown in 2011, and every sown hectare was irrigated by canal. A remarkable 218 hectares, over a third of the village, was under non-agricultural use: houses, roads, yards and works. The census counted 1,377 cultivators and 587 agricultural labourers. The surrounding Raman belt grows cotton, wheat and paddy, and Raman's regulated market yard trades the area's cotton and grain.

Religious life and Damdama Sahib

Ramsara's own gurdwaras and temples serve its neighbourhoods, but the village has no shrine of national fame. Its tehsil, though, holds one of Sikhism's five Takhts: Takht Sri Damdama Sahib at Talwandi Sabo, about 19 kilometres away, where Guru Gobind Singh rested after the battles of 1705 and compiled the final text of Guru Granth Sahib, and where Mai Bhago, the warrior of Jhabal Kalan, stayed with the Guru after Muktsar. Pilgrims bound for Talwandi Sabo pass within a few kilometres of Ramsara, and the village shares the takht town's calendar of gurpurabs and fairs.

Schools and facilities

The village has government schools at every level, primary, middle, secondary and senior secondary, and the Census 2011 Village Directory also recorded an anganwadi centre and an ASHA worker, treated tap water, a PDS ration shop, mobile coverage, an internet common service centre and a commercial bank branch. The directory recorded a dispensary inside the village in 2011, and Raman's shops, clinics and services are effectively next door.

Getting there

Ramsara is reached by pucca roads and has a private bus service. The nearest railway station, at Raman, is within five kilometres. Talwandi Sabo is the tehsil headquarters and Bathinda the district headquarters. Neighbouring villages include Tarkhanwala, Kanakwal Urf Rattangarh, Bagha and Phulo Khari.

Why does Ramsara have so many more men than women?

Because of when it was counted. The 2011 census was taken in February 2011, while the Guru Gobind Singh Refinery was under construction at Phulokhari, just outside neighbouring Raman. Thousands of mostly male project workers were living in and around Ramsara at the time, which is why the census recorded 12,311 men against 1,648 women and an 87 per cent worker share.

What is the population of Ramsara?

Ramsara had 13,959 people at the 2011 census, in 4,030 households in Talwandi Sabo tehsil of Bathinda district, on the edge of Raman Mandi town.