Laljibhai Patel

Under the presidency of Laljibhai, Samast Patidar Samaj[10] has planned Maha Laddu Beti Bachao Abhiyan. To encourage people to participate with empathy in this movement, handful of grains and a glass of water were collected from 235,000 households to create a gigantic bundi laddu of 300,000 kg (660,000 lb) with a diameter of 65 ft (20 m) and 35 ft (11 m) of height. Moreover, with an appeal to stop female foeticide and cultivate the attitude of equality towards girl child, 170,000 six-page informative booklets were distributed throughout the state. On 1 January 2006, Surat witnessed a massive gathering of 1.2 million people from throughout Gujarat who took an oath that we will never do female foeticide and prevent others doing the same. Limca Book of Records has proudly acknowledged this program.[11]

This vast movement helped improve gender ratio in Gujarat at 890 girls to 1000 boys in contrast to 761 girls in year 2006 and has created psychological change, people start believing that girls are in no way less than boys. The discrimination is reduced to the level that people started celebrating birth of girl child as same as they do for the birth of boy child.

Growing up as a farmer's son, Laljibhai has always been concerned about rainwater conservation. He knew how uncertain rain affect annual crop yield. To resolve this, water conservation at very large capacity was necessary. To start in that direction, in his native village Ugamedi in Botad district of Gujarat, he dug three ponds of 3.5 km (2.2 mi) in length, up to 45 ft (14 m) deep and 400 ft (120 m) wide that can store nearly 25,000 L (5,500 imp gal; 6,600 U.S. gal) of fresh water, making them largest artificial ponds in Gujarat. The village river Sonal supposed to fill these ponds, however during following weak monsoon it was seen that these huge ponds could not be filled with river Sonal alone. After pondering over the condition he analyzed that there is another river Keri 2.5 km (1.6 mi) away from village. He diverted water from river Keri that was flowing away to the ocean to river Sonal by RCC pipeline of three feet (0.91 m) diameter to fill three huge ponds.[12]

In this way, first time in India, he paid tribute to Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee for his vision of interlinking rivers. This project aims to provide resolution to the perennial problem of the water scarcity and 90 percent funded by Laljibhai on his own.[13]