In a Higher Space

Happiness delivery: Hasudi Ausanpur in Uttar Pradesh's impoverished Siddharthnagar district ticks all the boxes of a smart village, bagging seven national awards

- ASHISH MISRA

Aastha, a Class 3 student at the Government Upper Primary School in Hasudi Ausanpur village in the Siddharthnagar district of Uttar Pradesh, had heard from her grandparents that an old lady on the moon runs a mill there. Then, she saw the moon through the telescope of the space lab set up in her school. Excited, Aastha now tells her friends that there are only potholes on the earth's natural satellite. She can also tell them about aeroplanes, drones and the solar system besides all the satellites to be launched in the country by the year 2030 and what they will do. Not just Aastha, but students from more than 100 other government schools have found out whether all the stories they have heard about outer space are actually true, all thanks to the unique lab designed and set up by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in 2022.

Why Hasudi Ausanpur, you may ask. The remote village is part of Siddharthnagar, which found itself in the NITI Aayog's list of 112 most underdeveloped districts in the country in 2018. But the village has fast distanced itself from that disrepute, winning seven national and two state awards in the past few years under the dynamic leadership of its 44-year-old pradhan, Dilip Kumar Tripathi, who has made it his mission to make the village 'smart'.