Budhlada Ruralਬੁਢਲਾਡਾ ਰੂਰਲ

Where is Budhlada Rural?

Budhlada Rural is a village in Budhlada tehsil of Mansa district, Punjab, in the Malwa region. It is, in truth, the rural half of the Budhlada settlement: a single revenue village of 2,012 hectares and 13,389 people wrapped around a municipal council town of 26,172, so that together they form one settlement of nearly 40,000. In the census record the village carries code 036059, the town is recorded just one kilometre away, and where the town is run by its municipal council, the rural unit has the Budhlada gram panchayat. Everything in this settlement, its railway station, its mandi, its schools and its history, is shared across that one-kilometre line.

Sugar, soldiers and the Praja movement: the settlement's past

Budhlada was once part of the princely state of Kaithal. After its people failed to help the British during the 1857 uprising, the territory was annexed and later merged with Karnal district. It grew into a noted market town, reputed across the region for military recruitment, second only to Rohtak. Its sweetest fame was boora khand, a superfine sugar made at a large factory near the railway station in the 1930s and 1940s and dispatched by rail to Lahore and Karachi, until the Partition of 1947 cut the town off from those markets and ended the trade. Budhlada was also a centre of the Riyasat Praja Mandal movement: after the death of its president Sewa Singh Thikriwala, local residents joined the agitation in growing numbers, and the Budhlada police arrested Kishan Maur, brother of Jeona Maur, the folk hero of the Maur country.

Religious life

The rural unit shares its worship with the town one kilometre away. The town's named places of worship include Gurdwara Shri Guru Teg Bahadur Sahib, the Krishna Mandir, the Shiva Mandir and the Hanuman Mandir, which between them serve the whole settlement, rural and urban alike. The tehsil's best-known shrine stands about ten kilometres out at Dodra village: Gurdwara Braham Bunga Sahib, where three great sangams, religious gatherings, are held every year in March, September and December, drawing the sangat from far beyond Mansa district.

Population and households

The 2011 census counted 13,389 people in Budhlada Rural: 6,980 men and 6,409 women, in 2,761 households, an average of about 4.8 people per household and a density of about 665 people per square kilometre. The sex ratio was 918 women for every 1,000 men. Children up to six numbered 1,490, about 11 per cent. Scheduled Castes made up 6,865 people, 51 per cent of the village, more than half, and no Scheduled Tribe population was recorded. On literacy the rural unit trails its own town: 64.91 per cent here (men 70.55 per cent, women 58.81 per cent) against 80.2 per cent in the municipal town.

Work and land

Budhlada Rural's economy is the town's economy. Of 4,737 workers in 2011, 3,893 were main workers, and 2,836 of them, nearly three in four, were other workers in trade, transport and services, against only 411 cultivators farming their own land and 538 agricultural labourers, with 844 more people in marginal work. No fewer than 455 hectares of the village are under non-agricultural use, the footprint of the settlement, its roads and the railway. Of the rest, 1,552 hectares were net sown and 1,523 hectares irrigated, and of the irrigated land 1,463 hectares drew on canals, the water that feeds this dry southern Malwa tract, with just 60 hectares on tube-wells.

Schools and services

The village has its own government schools at every level, one primary, one middle, one secondary and one senior secondary, with an anganwadi centre and an ASHA worker. The 2011 directory recorded the village's own post office, a PDS ration shop, mobile coverage and an internet common service centre, and banking inside the village itself, a commercial bank branch, a cooperative bank branch and an ATM. It recorded no health facility inside the village in 2011; hospitals, Guru Nanak College, the ITI and the rest of the town's services stand one kilometre away in Budhlada town.

Sons of Budhlada

The settlement has produced names the whole of Punjab is proud of. Dr M. L. Singla, the scientist who headed India's Chandrayaan moon programme and is remembered as the moon man of Punjab, comes from Budhlada. So does Captain K. K. Gaur, the soldier-martyr whose name the town's girls school carries, and Babu Hitabhilashi, the social reformer whose work is still recalled in the town.

Getting there

Budhlada stands on the Delhi to Ferozepur main railway line. Its station, code BLZ, was established in 1895 under the Southern Punjab Railway, and the census directory records a railway station in the village itself; long-distance trains connect it with Delhi, Mumbai, Guwahati and Kolkata. Bus services run in the village, the town stands on National Highway 148B and State Highway 21, and Mansa, the district headquarters, is about 22 kilometres away by road. Neighbouring villages include Rali, Kalehri, Ranghrial and Hassanpur.

What is Budhlada Rural known for?

Budhlada Rural is the village half of Budhlada, the settlement once famous for its boora khand superfine sugar, shipped to Lahore and Karachi before Partition, and for its 1895 railway station on the Delhi to Ferozepur line.

What is the population of Budhlada Rural?

Budhlada Rural had 13,389 people at the 2011 census, living in 2,761 households in Budhlada tehsil of Mansa district. The municipal town beside it held another 26,172 people.