Rankhandi

Rankhandi is a village in Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh, located 7 kilometers from Deoband. It served as a research site for the Cornell University researchers in Anthropology / Sociology. Cornell maintains research documents on the Rankhandi project in its archives. [ [http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/fa/hitchcock.pdf Inventory to the Papers of John T. Hitchcock] ]

The village is largely inhabited by the Pundir Rajputs and has been a major centre of education in the area for many years. Its intermediate level school is the Thakur Phool Singh Memorial Intercollege (formerly Kissan Vidalya).

Cornell also helped establish a hostel, named Cornell Hostel, for the Thakur Phool Singh school. The school served as the education centre for the students from many nearby villages and has earned a good reputation.Fact|date=January 2007 One of the best-known principals of the school was Kripal Singh Tanwar.

Among the prominent people from this village was Jaipal Singh, who served in the state civil services after graduating from Agra University. He died of cancer at a very young age of 27. His eldest son, Pradeep Kumar Jaisingh, earned an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and was a Chevening Scholar at Leeds University, United Kingdom. He was selected as the "Best Young Manager of India" by the All India Management Association and was awarded the Samarpan Foundation trophy.

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