Orissa The train entered Khunda Rd. Station early this morning. The platform was deserted except for a pair of eunuchs at the far end, and a few dogs. The yatris were still on the train. Fog narrowed our horizons. It still hasn’t become as cold as we are prepared for, but the mercury can only drop further from now on. As we grabbed breakfast and piled into buses, for we had a long way to go, I saw our breakfast trays piled on the ground waiting to be cleared up. A pack of dogs had made their way to the food and were lapping it up hungrily. A sole puppy tried to find its point of entry. A pair of kids followed soon after, looking longingly at the food left over on the trays. The Bus Ride Today was really all about travelling. For us at the TATA Media Combine, looking out means looking through two layers of glass. My colleagues often seek out a more natural experience by heading out to the other compartments, open to the air outside, but I stay cloistered in my compartment. The bus ride forced me to engage with the outside world. Initially it was truly too cold to keep the windows open. The wind screamed in and pierced through all my layers of clothing. After a point, braving it was just tempting illness. But in that window period I saw fields on fields, and some real hills on the horizon, instead of the mounds and gently rolling hillocks we had seen so far. Sometimes the evenness of farms partitioned by bushes was broken by a stark tree. In the distance were clumps and coppices; sometimes whole forests seemed to appear as I gazed. We had been up before dawn, and several yatris were catching up on sleep. The bus ride seemed interminable. We had anticipated four hours, but ended up being on the road for more than five. After several days on the train, this was, in a sense, a different experience. There seemed to be more exertion on the bus, even though the path we took was smooth and pretty much on the straight and narrow. Gram Vikas We reached Gram Vikas just before lunch time to meet renowned rural activist Joe Madiath. A hero to many working in the social sector, Joe wore a kurta and cut an imposing figure with kindly eyes. Taking up the mike, he began to tell us about his personal journey in a slow, near-rustic drawl. Joe Madiath led the Loyola College and University of Madras student bodies at a turbulent time in world history. The Vietnam war was on, apartheid raged in South Africa and most South American countries was ruled by belligerent dictators. At the same time, the Beatles were a worldwide range and Woodstock ’69 had just marked the crescendo of the counterculture movement. Joe thought that the energy of the youth could be harnessed in a more positive way, and set up Young Students’ Movement for Development (YSMD). YSMD recognized that while urban areas had enough people attracted to them because of creature comforts and amenities, rural India was largely neglected. They chose a team of people who were willing to work in rural areas to go ahead and do the ground work, and brought in others who would support rural initiatives from the cities. Soon enough, YSMD found their cause as well: the 1971 war brought hordes of refugees from Bangladesh, and Joe and a team of 400 students went to work in relief camps. However, soon after, in October 1971, a devastating cyclone hit Orissa. Recognizing that the government was preoccupied with the situation on the border, Joe and 40 YSMD volunteers relocated to Orissa to run relief and rehabilitation camps there. As the consequences of the crisis abated, most students returned to Chennai to pursue their careers. But Joe seemed to have found his calling. “I could work in Tamil Nadu, but there were a lot of brilliant people working there already”, he told us later. So he decided to focus on helping rural populations in Orissa. Learning On the Go Joe did not have any concrete background in developmental studies, so he tried solving problems as he became aware of them. “It has taken us a lot of time to mature into the organization we are today, with the aims we have today” he said. The first thing that hit him was the situation of the land. Much of the land was parched, irrigation facilities were non-existent. So Joe started working on Drip Irrigation projects. However, as the project grew, he realized it was helping the wealthy farmers far more than it was helping the poor farmers. This lack of equity disturbed him. So he looked around for a new project. He hit upon a plan of setting up dairy co-operatives. However, the villagers insisted the milk of the cow was for the calf, and for no one else. That project failed to take off because of a firm mindset on the part of the population. Soon after, Joe realized that forests were being depleted quickly for the sake of fuel. This made him think of developing Biogas as a good way to help reduce deforestation. Lucky Coincidences Joe had hit upon the right plan at the right time. Soon after he started working on Biogas, both Indira Gandhi and later Rajiv Gandhi made Biogas a national developmental priority. Government agencies, suddenly asked to develop Biogas projects all over the country, were at sea. The national promotion of Biogas had to be facilitated by people who had the technical know-how and experience in the field. Soon enough, enterprising government officials came to Gram Vikas to learn how to promote biogas all across the country. “We had always been told NGOs are good only as isolated islands of excellence”, Joe said, “it was impossible for an NGO to be a large-scale success. We decided that this statement had to be accepted as true or nailed as false. So we were the first guinea pigs in this respect.” Taking up the challenge, Gram Vikas decided to find out if they could have a large scale impact on the ground. Over the next ten years, they had constructed more than 54,000 plants at a cost much lower than what the government had anticipated. Their success was phenomenal. However, once they met with success, they dropped the projects. They let their workers take the project forward and earn money for themselves. “600 workers left us to work on the field, with the option of returning if things didn’t work out within 6 months. Only 6 people returned to us.” “From Bullshit to Full shit” Now Joe had to look for a new area of working, and this time he did not want to make any compromise on inclusiveness. Gram Vikas found out that more than 80% of fatalities were because of impure water, and this was primarily because human waste in its raw form found its way into all the watering holes around settlements. “Sanitation was a need that cut across all classes and castes, so we focused on sanitation”, Joe said. The other guiding principle for Gram Vikas was quality solutions. “So far, it was an unwritten rule that poor people deserved poor solutions. We didn’t want to give the villagers anything we wouldn’t use ourselves.” The government’s hole in the ground toilets were no solution and were not used by villagers. As a result of this focus, villagers in Gram Vikas’s target villages got a toilet, a bath house, and three taps with 24 hours running water. Gram Vikas is unflagging in its commitment to 100% coverage. It decides not to work with villages if they do not agree to its all-inclusive programme. This is why, in each of the 522 villages Gram Vikas has worked in, the sanitation facilities are both completed and used regularly by villagers. This is because Gram Vikas only subsidizes 25-30% of the total cost of constructing bathrooms and toilets. The rest of the cost is borne by villagers only if they completely agree with the whole project. A corpus is created whose interest pays for the subsidization of more bathrooms and toilets in case new households are added to the village. “This is how we are sure to always have 100% coverage.” Even the water that is used is from fully rechargeable sources. Reducing the burden of women Until Gram Vikas came on the scene, women in Oriya villages had to walk anywhere between 3 and 7 hours to fetch water for household purposes. “Women’s empowerment will only take place when the burden of women is reduced”, Joe said. So three taps were provided: one for bathing, one for the toilet, and one for the kitchen. “In our villages, no woman has to walk more than 10 feet to get running water.” The other issue was the fact that women had to bathe in the open thus far. Bath houses gave them privacy. This is why bath houses were constructed in the first place. Each household had its own toilet and bath house. In this way, Gram Vikas hoped to bring the real burden of women down, giving them opportunities of leisure, which could then be used for their own development by themselves. Report Card Joe is the first to admit that progress has been slow, as many, many more villages are still to be covered. The main reason for this is Gram Vikas’s unflagging standards of 100% coverage. This principle may slow progress, but when it is made, it is consolidated. “We are changing twenty lives per day forever, and this gives us immense satisfaction.” Just before we headed to the villages, Joe reminded us of a quote by Mahatma Gandhi. “The man who fought for our independence and won it for us said in 1942, “India needs sanitation more than it needs independence.” Impressions Several yatris were quite floored by Joe, though the impact would probably have been far more had they not been so dazed from the bus ride. Suchitra, a yatri, wanted to know what sacrifices the people of Gram Vikas had to make, as Joe had started working in the field at the ripe old age of 22, a figure that falls squarely in the middle of our 18-25 demographic group. Joe thrilled by answering “I am a man who does not believe in sacrifices.” He went on to speak of how much satisfaction he drew from the whole experience, clearly saying his alternative careers – in MNCs or in the Government – would not have been nearly as rewarding. Interestingly, many Gram Vikas volunteers now use the organization as a stepping stone to more lucrative careers. Visits to Villages After the talk, we were hauled into our buses and got to travel to the villages themselves. The cleanliness and quality of life surprised even city dwellers. Houses were orderly and clean. The farms were productive. For several yatris who grew up in farms and now study in cities, it was an experience to cherish. Ashish, who now studies in TISS and grew up near Rae Bareilly, scaled stacks of paddy in response to loud challenges. For city folk, it was a photo op that’d put intrepid tourists to shame. They posed, nervously, next to cows, triumphantly on bullock carts, and melodramatically before hay stacks. Some even joined into the village cricket contest. Several thronged the local shop and tasted local entrepreneurship for themselves: local aerated drinks, churans, fryums, sauces and pastes were sampled by waiting yatris. Back to the Train After a long, hard day, most people just dozed on the bus ride home. It ate up more time than even our ride to Gram Vikas. After we’d had dinner and piled on to the train, we heard of a new development that’d make the following night the first night of its kind on the yatra. Gouri will fill all of you in on that soon! - Partho PC
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