THE UNDESIRABLE OUTCOMES !

I have had the opportunities of visiting several villages and meeting several people on my field visits. Meeting children was very special, though. It was always a great delight to meet with children and interact with them. Their enthusiasm was infectious, their views were forthright. Talking to them invariably provided deep insights on the lives of people in these villages and the difference that development projects were making. It was indeed very encouraging to hear from them how their lives had changed for the better because of these projects – better drinking water and sanitation facilities, better schooling, improved health, more sources of income, higher level of awareness etc. But it was from the children that we also heard of some of the undesirable outcomes of our programmes.

We once visited a village in a district in south India, which received poor rainfall. The project there focussed on supporting agricultural developments. It meant improving farm lands, conserving water, providing credit for seeds and fertilisers and training on improved agricultural practices, all of which would mean more acres of productive land and higher incomes.

One of the children we met was Senthil. He was about 14 and was working on a piece of land owned by his family. He met us with a broad grin. He and his father had been toiling since morning. It was all worth it, he felt. The vegetable crop was good. They had also planted some coconut trees which were growing steadily. Things had certainly looked up over the past 2 years. For the first time ever since he could remember, they were cultivating the land all year round, thanks to an irrigation tank which conserved enough water to meet the needs of the farmers whose farms were located in the vicinity.

“Do you go to school”? I asked Senthil. He looked up to his father, as if seeking permission to reply. “How can he go?”, his father, Murugappan asked. “There is so much work on this farm. If he goes, who will help me? His mother has to look after the home and attend to household chores. She also works in the local anganwadi (a government-run centre for pre-school age children) as a helper to make some extra income.” We looked at Senthil. Probably sensing what our next question would be, he said, “I did go to school. I have completed standard 6 and I was reasonably good in studies. I was interested to continue. But then it is my duty to help my father. So when he asked me to discontinue studying, I did. There was no option”, he said nonchalantly. I could trace a tinge of bitterness, of regret, in his voice. Having gone to school and having been a good student, he was probably aware of the consequences of a choice he had to forego. Well, this is not what we hoped would happen with a project meant to raise incomes!

On another occasion, travelling through a drought prone region in south India, we met up with many people, trying to understand how the drought was affecting the local population. Most people had to depend on casual work as agricultural labourers to survive. Women and men worked side by side wherever they got an opportunity to work. A road construction, a pond renovation, a school building construction, well just about any work was welcome. Evenings were time to relax for the men. They would sit in the school verandah or under the banyan tree or in front of the temple, smoking bidis, exchanging notes for the day. Some extra bucks during the day also meant assembling at the local arrack shop to have a few intoxicating swigs.

For the women though, evenings meant phase two of their working day. Cooking their evening meal, collecting water, washing clothes, milking the cows and feeding them……..their work never seemed to end. But then, they were also involved in something else. Every week, on a specific day, they would meet in groups of 10 or 15 or 20 at the most. They called themselves ‘self-help groups’. Each group had a different name. Each meeting would last for about an hour. Money was collected towards their individual savings which was managed collectively, loans were disbursed and the weekly repayments were transacted.

We attended one such meeting on a warm April evening. As usual, there was a group of curious children who had seated themselves a little away, watching intensely the activities of their mothers. Most of them were girls. The boys were busy playing at a distance. Most of the girls had a younger child on her hips or in her lap or clutching her hand. As the women dispersed and walked towards their homes, we went closer to the girls. On seeing us come towards them, they laughed nervously, moving closer to their mothers. Some of them even ran away. But with Anita (my colleague from Plan) beside us, we managed to hold back a smaller group of girls, most of whom were between 10-14 years of age.

“Do you know what your mothers were doing”? Anita asked. “Yes, they are collecting savings and giving loans”. “Do you know why are doing so”? she asked. “Yes”, one of them said. “So that we won’t be dependent on the local moneylender for money and so that we can meet our needs better”. Good, we thought. Here was the next generation of self-help group members.

We were just about to move on. “But I don’t like what they are doing”, one of girls said. We turned around in surprise. This 14-year old was Nirmala. She said, “It’s all fine that we don’t have to depend on a moneylender or even a bank for loans. But I don’t like it”. On being asked why she didn’t like it, she said, “Our mothers have lot of work to do. They work in the fields or construction sites all day long. When they come home, they have lot of work. Our fathers don’t help us. They while away their time talking or playing cards or drinking country liquor. So invariably, we end up doing a lot of work as our brothers too would not do household work. We need to fetch water, collect fuel wood, take care of our younger siblings, help in cooking……well, help in everything that our mothers do. Now they have even less time. They spend time in meetings, maintaining records, going to the bank, attending trainings or other meetings. This takes them to the block headquarters, 10 kms away. So while we think it is good for the family and the village, I think it is not good for the girls as they face additional burden - which means that some of us had also to drop out of school. I could not continue beyond standard 6. I know of other girls in the village too who have had similar problems. But girls normally don’t speak out as it is anyway considered enough for girls to be educated till standard 5”.

We listened to Nirmala in rapt attention. The other girls too listened carefully and seemed to agree with what she was saying. Nirmala had just explained to us the other side of a micro-credit programme that till then, we were unaware of. Probably their mothers (leave alone their fathers) too were unaware of this. Or even if they were aware, the benefits that this programme brought in as perceived by them probably was more substantial that what they perceived girls’ education could do. Senthil and Nirmala had just made us aware of what we normally tend to overlook beyond the normal ‘project outputs’.

TRAINING - WITH A DIFFERENCE

In spite of our conviction about the need for children to be heard, we were not sure about Lalitha’s idea of a capacity building programme for children. Lalitha Iyer, our colleague, was a keen champion of children’s right to participate in decision making. She had developed a module that would enable children develop their confidence to understand local issues and present it articulately to the adults in their community. But she was so clear about her ideas that we eventually invited her to conduct this programme in Myrada’s (a Bangalore based NGO) project area in Mysore that we were associated with.

It was a 2-week schedule, sometime in mid-2000. I accompanied Lalitha to Mysore and was there on the first day. It was a day of familiarisation. The children were there, about 20 of them from different villages. They seemed excited about this programme when they heard what it was about.

I then met the group on the last day of the programme. The group had been completely transformed. The very same children who had been so reluctant and diffident on the first day were now ready to make a presentation to a group of adults including their parents. They huddled into groups and busied themselves for a presentation. They were also to present their visions for their village. There was also the usual song, dance and drama played out, as normally happens during such occasions, but it was with a difference. They were around social issues that were of concern to them – discrimination against the girl child, lack of education opportunities, working children, drug abuse, alcoholism, poor sanitation conditions and even on the indifference of government officials to their problems, all of which had been conceived, scripted, directed and presented by these children!

The parents who had assembled there could not believe that it was their children who were articulating on issues that they themselves did not have the confidence to. They swelled with pride. It was evident on their faces, in their smiles. They knew their families and their communities would never be the same again. A slow but sure process of transformation had started.

Sure enough, in less than 6 months time, some of the children who had participated in the programme successfully negotiated with a local landlord with whom three children of the village worked as bonded labour and got them released, a feat that the adults had never managed to achieve down the generations!

WHY CHILDREN'S PARTICIPATION ?

I remember the first time I was part of a discussion on “children’s participation”. This was when I had joined Plan International in 1998. Participation? For what? How? Children are children and hence they should be spending time in studying and playing, most people would feel. This was a session where we were being persuaded to integrate children’s perspectives in everything we did to enhance the quality of our programmes.

It was then that a series of trainings were planned to help us understand the concept better. We went to Kundapur in southern Karnataka, where The Concerned for Working Children (CWC), an organisation working on children’s issues and their rights, was based. They had several years of experience of organising children and had been successful in getting adults around to accepting children as ‘stakeholders’.

It was indeed amazing. Over a period of one week, we interacted with a group of children, all of whom were working children and hence had missed out largely on formal education opportunities. They were obviously from poor families. But one thing that was common among them was the courage and confidence with which they had organised themselves, articulating their views and concerns and more importantly, determined to identify more and more such children into groups. These children would then regularly interact with adults in panchayats (local government), schools, at places of work, with parents – to ensure that children were heard. Some of them had even shared the dais with ministers, bureaucrats, film stars and other influential people to voice their concerns. Some of them were members of task forces and working groups at various levels to provide their inputs on major policy documents that would influence the lives of children. And some even had the opportunity to travel abroad and represent the concerns of working children in India. One of the important areas of their work was to work closely with the panchayats to ensure that these panchayats are child labour free - no mean achievement in a country where there are reportedly 100 million working children, according to some estimates !

It was the same enthusiasm that I saw among the children of Sangam Vihar, a slum settlement in New Delhi, where CASP, an NGO had been working for years. Over a period of time, they had decided to be more proactive and not depend upon their parents and other adults alone to move ahead in life. They stared managing community libraries, spread health awareness messages, ensured that children who had dropped out of school returned and even raised sensitive issues such as drug abuse, discrimination against girl children and HIV/AIDS. They had organised themselves into bal panchayats (an informal forum for children, modelled on local government). They took pride in organising their annual child rights workshops where their counterparts from over 10 states would assemble in Delhi. They then had interactions with individuals from various walks of life who listened to their presentations and were asked to respond on specific issues.

I was once asked to be a respondent on one of the panels and let me assure you, it was quite an unnerving experience for me ( I am sure the children noticed the discomfort and were pretty amused about it !). The issues they raised ranged from reservation policy of the government to the inadequacy of government resources in promoting elementary education! And these were children who lived in settlements that were deprived of even the most basic facilities and belonged to families with very insecure livelihoods. Many of them were not even sure if they would continue their education because of economic compulsions on them to go out and earn to complement their families’ income. But they had certainly arrived as thinking citizens !

I remember the time we asked the Samuha (one of the NGOs that Plan International partnered with) staff team to hold a consultation with children when they were planning a watershed programme in some villages of Raichur district in Karnataka. They were not convinced at all in the first place. Children? And watersheds? It was a ‘technical’ programme, some said. “We work closely with the local community in planning any such programme, so why do we need to consult separately with children”? some others queried. “After all, wouldn’t the adults be able to easily represent the views of children”?

But on our continued persuasion, they yielded and decided to give it an honest try. They met with small groups of children, for which, they got help from teachers, village workers and just about anyone who could help with this process. This went on for a few weeks. It did take some time for the children to warm up. After all, whoever did ever ask them for their views ? They were only told what to do and how, and rarely explained why ! The Samuha team also took some time to lose their inhibitions and communicate with children at their level. Gradually, they began seeing the results. “The men in our village would ask for timber trees, so that they can sell the wood and make money. The women in our village will ask for fodder trees and trees that can yield fuel. But as children, we want fruit trees. We barely get to eat fruits and we know some fruits can grow very well in our soil”, they asserted strongly. They even seemed willing to do the work of planting fruit trees and tending them.

This then became an integral part of the programme. The local government school headmaster also agreed to allow fruit trees to be planted on the school grounds, which was otherwise hardly put to any use. Moreover, it was part of the area that constituted a 'watershed' under the programme. It took only some time for the Samuha team to recognise and appreciate the children’s enthusiasm for the programme. They used to hold regular meetings, assign responsibilities amongst themselves and monitor progress. This became such an enthusing example that ‘bal aranyas’ or children’s forests became an regular part of Samuha’s watershed development programme.

SUPERMAN'S MESS ! We all called in 'Subramani’s Mess'. No, it was not a mess he created. It was what the staff canteen was known as, a rather colloquial expression - the place where you got the most delicious food made with loving care by Subramani. He was about 15 when he came to RTU, sometime in 1986. He was an orphan. His mother was his father’s second wife. They lived near Kodaikanal, in the hills. They barely eked out a living from a small plot of land which they cultivated. When Subramani’s father died, his elder step brother, who was then in his early twenties, drove away Subramani and his mother. He was barely a couple of years old – or so he believes. His mother came down to Batlagundu, a small town on the foothills of the Kodai hills and took up odd jobs to keep themselves alive. There, she befriended a Muslim family, who helped her from time to time when she did not find work. Eventually, they became very attached to the family. When Subramani was just about four, his mother too died, possibly, of tuberculosis. Years passed by. While the kind Muslim family fed him, Subramani took up small jobs, sometimes in a shop, sometimes in a restaurant. One fine day, someone who claimed to be his uncle, came from Kodaikanal, looking for him. He took Subramani with him, who went along happily on finding someone from his own family. But his delight was short lived. The so-called uncle did not send Subramani to school as promised. Instead, he asked Subramani to work on his farm, tend his cattle and generally, provide cheap labour. All he got in return was some measly food, and that too very inadequate, and a place to sleep. One day, he decided enough was enough. He got on to a truck that was coming down to Vathalagundu ( small town, about 50 kms from the famed temple town, Madurai, in Tamil Nadu), paying Rs. 2 to the driver. That was all the money he had. He had heard of a village for orphaned boys from someone who came to visit his so-called uncle. He didn’t find the orphanage. Instead, he landed up, tired, hungry and malnourished, at the Leonard Hospital a hospital run by the sisters of the Presentation Convent (a Catholic order 0f missionaries), who in turn, asked him to meet Bro. Kimpton in Kallupatti, 10 kms away. He spent the night on the verandah of the hospital. Fortunately, the sisters there fed him a simple meal. The next day, early in the morning, he reached Kallupatti. The medical clinic had not yet opened. He was the first to reach there. Tired as he was and nervous, he lay on one of the benches in front of the clinic. He could barely sit up. The long hours of work, the travel, the hunger and the mental stress had all taken a toll on him. He looked pale and was very weak Soon, the medical clinic staff came and on hearing his story, he was taken to meet Bro. Kimpton. “Feed him first, get him a decent set of clothes and then we will see”, Bro. Kimpton instructed. Since he was about 14 then, he was too old for the foster homes. He seemed too old for the boys’ hostel too and moreover, he was a non-school going child. But then that’s where Bro. Kimpton decided to put him. Meanwhile, Sister Sandra who supervised the clinic, took a personal interest in nursing him back, treating him like her own brother. Since Subramani could not go to school, he spent most of his time in the clinic. In a short period, he had befriended the clinic staff and even some of the regular patients. He was always there to help around with various errands – making paper envelopes for medicines, bandages for the poor patients, serving meals to the old aged in their homes, cleaning the clinic after working hours and even taking care of the plants which Sister Sandra had fondly planted behind the clinic. Almost a year passed. Subramani regained his health and became a popular person around - with his infectiously dazzling smile and positive attitude. It was at that time that a need for an assistant cook was felt since there were more staff using the staff 'mess'. Subramani was delighted when he was asked if he could assist the cook in the mess, because it meant learning new skills (he was always interested in cooking) and also a princely salary of Rs. 150 with free food ! As a fifteen year old, he was a quick learner and a very hard worker. He scrubbed the vessels, cleaned the floors and set the meal in the mess. Initially, he started with less important tasks like cutting and cleaning vegetables. Soon, he had graduated to making fish fry and chicken curry – and didn’t he do it well ? Even before Subramani had turned 18, he had become The Cook. It was a delight going to Subramani’s mess. It used to be spotlessly clean. Each person was greeted with a warm smile and a naughty comment. “Check you waistline, annai (elder brother in Tamil)” ! he would shout out to Manoba and Philip, the two rotund brothers with an insatiable apetite, who worked in RTU and who always bullied Subramani, in a good-natured way, to let them taste his delightful food and that too, without paying for it ! Subramani would shoo them away and guard his 'mess' fiercely. Only those who paid and was eligible to eat in his mess as per RTU's criteria, would be served - and Manoba and Philip obviously did not qualify! But he never forgot his own past. As and when new children, mostly orphans, were admitted to RTU’s foster homes, Subramani would go and meet them, make friends with the new children and assure them that they would be happy in their new homes. He was extremely caring, going out to meet people who were unwell or in needed help. On days when visitors were expected, he felt doubly responsible to maintain high degree of hospitality. The food that day would be doubly delicious ! One of his fond recollections was about the time when a BBC team came visiting from London in 1990. The team of about 6 journalists and technicians who had come down to make a film on Bro. Kimpton’s work were so touched by Subramani’s hospitality that each day after their shoot, they would come and spend a few minutes with him, asking him questions which of course, he could not understand well. All that he understood was that they had named him ‘Superman’, partly because he worked so hard and partly because it was difficult for them to pronounce his name ! And that name came to stay for a long time. He was ‘Superman’ to many of his friends on the campus from then on. But life moved on. Subramani, as was his nature, wanted to learn yet another skill. Three years in the mess and he was moved to the batik section where he learnt how to make lovely batik printed wall hangings and bed linen. He was even more delighted, for now, he had a provident fund account, was eligible to staff loan and was a member of the workers’ association. But all these days, in spite of his heavy work load, he had taken time out in the evenings to go to Raghavan, a school teacher, who had agreed to make him functionally literate. By the time Subramani moved to the batik unit, he had learnt basic reading and writing. He would try to read the newspaper headlines and even some simple story books and magazines. He had opened a bank account and was keen on savings. When he had saved enough, he bought 3 cents (100 cents make an acre) of land and with RTU’s support, he built a small, one-bedroom house. The little Subramani, just stepping into his twenties now, was a proud home-owner and had taken his first step onto the property ladder ! It was indeed a proud day for him when most of his friends, staff of RTU, came for his housewarming. A couple of months later, he was married to Mallika, one of the children from the foster homes (her mother was a foster mother). Subramani had come up in life with his hard work and was often quoted as an example, especially to the boys in the boys’ hostel, on how one needed to learn to face up to life’s challenges. Subramani and Mallika now have a son, Mohan. And after all that Subramani has been through, one can be rest assured that life for Mohan will be very very different - and compared to that of his father, he will have a very privileged life, full of love, care and support !

OVERCOMING DISABILITIES

That was the same determination I saw in Husaina Banu. Daughter of a local Muslim trader, she was afflicated by polio at a very young age. She was almost immobile. Several sessions in the local physiotherapy centre of RTU which her father ensured she never missed, had ensured that she could at least start walking slowly and with difficulty, with the help of callipers and crutches. It was indeed a heart warming sight. In an area notorious for female infanticide where it was also not uncommon for girl children to be abandoned or ignored, Husaina Banu’s father was truly inspiring, thanks to whose motivation, many other children with physical disability were also brought out of their homes, the charming Selvi being one of them. One should have seen the delight on her face when, slowly, but surely, she took her first steps, on her own, with a pair of crutches and callipers, almost 6 years after she was born!

Over a period of time, I saw Husaina and Selvi also carrying their own school bags, politely refusing help from their schoolmates, confident that they had overcome a major hurdle in their lives. Husaina excelled in studies, Selvi in drawing and artwork. Husaina was a good singer too. Her mellifluous voice wafted through the morning school assemblies. Invariably, she lead the other children in reciting the morning prayers in school. Shahbuddin’s pride in the recognition that his daughter had gained, was perceptible as he would lean against one of the school pillars, beaming, to hear his daughter beautiful voice over the school’s public address system. And Selvi’s father Murugan never stopped smiling each time he saw Selvi making her way to school, on her own, confident that she could be quite independent.

And then, there was Saravanan. How could one ever forget him ? He was about 7 when I first met him in 1989 during my stint with RTU. Hailing from a poor dalit family, I had got used to his peeping through my office window in the morning while he was on his way to school. His bright eyes and his toothy smile lit up his dark, handsome face as he would shout out a ‘Good morning saaaar (sir)’ ! to me each morning. Saravanan, like Husaina Banu and Selvi, was a regular at the physiotherapy centre. Dutifully, he would arrive in the morning, on his father’s old bicycle. For those who worked in the unit too, it was a routine for them to be greeted by his loud ‘Good morning acca (elder sister in Tamil)’ and ‘Good morning anne (brother in Tamil)’ greetings, after which he would get down to his exercises and the oil massages. His was a very serious case of locomotor disability. At home, he would be moving, crawling about, on all fours. No disability could ever dent his enthusiasm for mischief though!

One day, he was taken to a nearby hospital, where a generous orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. Karuppaiah, known for his philanthropy, performed a crucial hip operation. It took several weeks of recuperation. One fine day, it was Saravanan’s D-day. For the first time in his life, he would not be carried to school.

He allowed his father to bring him on his old bicycle only till the campus gate. Gingerly, he got off the bicycle with his father’s help and started walking – his first steps ever since he was born. His hips, fresh from the operation, ached, and he grimaced. The callipers felt as if it weighed a ton, but Saravanan’s determination was clearly visible on this face. It seemed he needed all his strength to move the crutches, first the right, then the left – all of which yielded the one result he wanted….the step forward, the first one, on his own! He grimaced again, but you could not miss the grit and determination on his face. He waved cheerfully at those in the physiotherapy unit which was nearest to the campus gate. It was a good 200 meters’ walk to his school, straight down from the campus gate. His father had ensured that they come in early enough so that Saravanan could tread this long distance to be in time for the morning assembly.

As he passed the office blocks, the handloom weaving unit, the batik unit on his way to the school, all work seemed to come to a standstill. All eyes were on Saravanan, popular as he was, but more than that, for them to witness a big day in his life……for each wanted to witness that great moment in Saravanan’s life. Finally, he was almost there. A final right turn near a handpump on the campus that would take him to the school ground where children would have assembled for their morning prayers. It had taken him almost half-an-hour for him to cover the distance of a mere 200 meters - but which, for him, seemed a monumental effort that day, with just an occasional support from his father, who accompanied him, happiness and pride very visible on his face as he witnessed his son walking……for the first time !

It was quiet on the ground where about 250 children had assembled solemnly for their prayers, unaware of this great moment in Saravanan’s life. Suddenly, a group of children who formed the rear rows of the assembly, sighted Saravanan inching towards them, with his father right behind, holding his school bag. “Hey, look here! Saravanan has started walking”, one of them shouted excitedly, even while the teachers were trying to quieten the assembly for the morning prayers. Heads turned. Saravanan’s smile widened to see his school mates, who were undoubtedly astonished! And it happened all of a sudden …….they broke into an impromptu applause. It was like a standing ovation. Children and teachers, and some parents who had escorted their children to school applauded. It was a mixture of joy, surprise and relief. By now, Saravanan was tired. His legs were giving way. His hands were stiff. But the sudden applause seemed to rejuvenate him. He looked up, proud and happy. His smile widened, his dark face brightened. He knew he had achieved something. There were many moist eyes....... !

Saravanan’s determination, and that of Husaina Banu and Selvi, did not go unnoticed. The children of their school were witness to these determined children overcoming their physical disabilities and seemed, in a way, to send out a clear message. The children too were empathetic. They were there to help when required, but in a very unobtrusive and non-patronising way.

Sita (name changed) was different. What struck one about her was her cheerfulness and her big bright eyes. But she was different. She was abandoned and found in a bus stop by some villagers because of her severe disability. Her head was disproportionately large. She did not seem to have much control over her body, and especially the limbs - clearly, it would have been very difficult for her to walk even when she grew up. Her speech was incoherent and her gaze unsteady. But she had a sharp mind. Initially, there was some concern about how she could be taken care of and if any of the foster mothers would be able to take care of. That’s when Parvati, one of the foster mothers, volunteered to be Sita’s foster mother. She was confident she could provide all the love and care that was required to develop Sita’s capabilities.

Sita started visiting the physiotherapy centre for her exercises and massage that could strengthen her limbs. She was only two then. Gradually, as she became more comfortable in her new surroundings, and as she picked up new words, she became talkative. Initially, it sounded like meaningless chatter as the words got twisted as she started speaking. Slowly, it became clearer. She started recognising people by name. She would shout out aloud to Ramesh as he did the rounds of the foster homes for regular maintenance work. Ramesh mama (uncle) was her favourite mama. He always had time for her - for Ramesh, Sita was very special ! She would climb on his back, ruffle his hair, put both her arms lovingly around him and keep pleading with him not to go. I made it a point to visit her as frequently as possible, largely because I loved meeting her and listening to her latest chatter, and partly to escape being admonished by her. “You did not come to see me”, she would say if she didn’t see me for a couple of days.

I met Sita after a gap of five years, in 1998. “Do you know me”? I asked. She came close to me. I did seem familiar to her. She put her hand on my shoulder, kept gazing at me for a few minutes. She then looked at my wife. And then back to me. “Girish mama !”, she exclaimed, “and Sandhya aththai (aunty)” ! She was delighted. And then she started talking, excitedly as ever. “Where were you? Why didn’t you come to see me? I am going to school now………” I was not surprised that I felt a lump in my throat ! We always knew she was sharp .... and smart !

GENDER-BASED DISCRIMINATION - AS PERCEIVED BY CHILDREN

Children have an amazing sense of articulation, which is not often understood or recognised. And it has nothing to do with their educational background.

Anita, a friend and colleague of mine during my Plan days, was discussing the issue of gender discrimination with a group of men and women, boys and girls separately. This was in Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu, where the practice of female infanticide was common (as also in Salem and Madurai districts). Anita was trying to understand the perspective of the local community on the why, what and how of discrimination against girl children. She met initially with a group of men and women. The men stoutly denied any form of discrimination against girls. They fed them well, treated them well, provided them with all the opportunities that they would provide a girl child, they said. The women were defensive and even rationalised the forms of discrimination. Ultimately she has to go to another house, so why educate her more? It will be difficult to find a match later. Moreover, as a woman, she must learn to give priority to her husband’s needs and hence, must eat last, even eat less if there isn’t enough, they said.

The girls however refuted and contested what their mothers said. “We are strongly being discriminated against”, they said. “Our brothers get more clothes. They always get a priority in case of education. Many of us are not allowed to continue due to economic reasons or on reaching puberty. But the boys have no such hassles. Even if they are not interested in studies and don’t do well, they continue to be sent to school. They hardly do any work at home. We have to take care of our younger siblings too if our mothers are busy”, they narrated.

We expected this view to be contested by the boys who may even justify the preferential treatment they got. But we were in for a surprise. “We know the girls get a raw deal”, they said. “They eat less, get fewer clothes, do not enjoy the leisure that we have. We know it is wrong, very wrong. But we don’t know what to do about it. If we try to do some work that the girls are supposed to, our parents scold us and friends deride us. And ultimately, we get to do only what our adults want us to do, isn’t it? How do you expect us to change the existing situation if the adults don’t want us to change”?

There was a similar response, this time from the girls. I was travelling through Chengalpettu district in Tamil Nadu. Most men and boys were huddled around the lone black and white TV set, watching a day and night India – Zimbabwe one day cricket match. So engrossed were they that they barely turned their heads around to see us alighting from a jeep, something which is not a very common sight. “Good relief”, we thought, as otherwise, our interactions with village communities are normally dominated by the men, barely allowing their women to have a word through, unless, of course when asked to shut up !

The women and the girls were busy with their household chores – cooking dinner, milking the cow, washing utensils, bringing back head loads of dry fuel wood. Out of curiosity, I asked some of the girls, “Wouldn’t you also like to see the cricket match”? The girls broke out into helpless giggles as if I had said something ridiculous. “How can they watch TV? Why should they ? They don’t understand the bat and ball game”, said one of the women. “Why? Why not”? I asked. “Oh, they don’t understand and they are not interested. Moreover, who will help us cook our dinner and attend to other household chores”? they queried.

But this time, it was the girls who responded. “We want to watch the TV and we want to see cricket. If we don’t get to see, how will we know what this game of cricket is all about? But we can’t. Our elders, our mothers say we can’t. You see, if we don’t help them, the household work won’t get over and our fathers will get very angry. The boys always get away by doing nothing. They while away their time, watch TV, pick up fights, yet no one admonishes them”, they said. No, they were not complaining. They were just narrating to us a reality they faced and a discrimination that they experienced, day in and day out, being denied the privileges that their brothers could avail and they could not, for no fault of theirs – just because they were girls and this is how they were destined to live ! Which incidentally they had come to accept, with a great degree of bitterness though…..and will probably perpetrate, unknowingly, when they grow up and become mothers too!

Similar stories and incidents kept surfacing in several parts of the country I visited. In one village in Karnataka, girls stopped going to school because they were constantly teased, not just by the older boys, but even some adults from their own communities. “Do you think you are going to become a Collector”, they would ask derisively, followed by loud guffaws. But this was only the mildest form of harassment. Many girls had worse forms of harassment to narrate, abused by older boys in their schools, and sometimes, even by their male teachers!

In a village in Betul district of Madhya Pradesh, girls were stopped from continuing their studies beyond standard 5 as their parents thought it would be difficult then to get a suitable groom for them. Children in a small Orissa village in Kashipur district of Orissa preferred not to go to school, a few kilometres away, fearing wild animals. And the adults did not consider it worthwhile to escort these children, especially if they were girls – for what use was education to a girl child in a small tribal village in Orissa?

The situation in the relatively more developed Tamil Nadu, and that too, in Chennai, was equally distressing. In a high school in Chennai, right in the backyard of its famed film industry, girl children stopped going to school just because there were no toilets, something which they found it difficult to manage without, especially on attaining puberty. It was in a government girls’ school named after a Marwari businessman who had donated some money for the school to be named after him. For relieving themselves, the girls had to use a stretch of land right next to the railway track, a little distance from their school – which obviously they found it difficult with the frequency of trains passing by.

It was amidst such dismal adversities that we met Lakshmi in a small remote village of Chamrajnagar district in Karnataka. We were in a village on a dark, rainy day, well past 8 p.m. with no electricity supply in the entire village. Her own house did not have an electricity connection, but the streetlight was always helpful. As the only child of her parents, her parents had given top priority to educating her. Her parents’ determination to see through her education was indeed remarkable, not commonly seen. She had to walk to the middle school, 6 kilometres away. Each day, she walked for more than an hour to go to school and an hour to get back. There were only 3 children including Lakshmi who went to the middle school, mainly because of the distance. All the others had dropped out. 2 were boys. Lakshmi, the only girl, normally found herself walking alone since the boys were not too keen on escorting her. But these difficulties did not bother Lakshmi. She was determined to be educated, qualify as a teacher, and come back to teach children in her village.

THE BOYS' HOSTEL

One of the challenges for me, but also a delightful task, was of managing a boys’ hostel right next to my house. Though not very keen on discipline myself, I had to ensure a semblance of discipline among a bunch of boisterous boys, 15 of them, in the age group of 6 to 16 ! Most were either orphans or had lost a parent. All were from very poor families who stay and schooling was being supported. (Names of the children have been changed).

There was the rebel, Palanivel. A tough and muscular guy, he was a bully, deft with his fingers, rather adventurous, trouble maker at times, but always willing to put in as much physical labour as one would want. The guy had stamina. Thangaraj was a complete contrast. Tall and frail, oldest among the lot, he was mature, responsible, cared for the younger boys and was keen to take on teaching as a career. Muthu, whose father had abandoned his mother and the children, was an eternal cynic, partly from his background and partly because of his chronic asthama. His poor health meant that he always carried around medicines with him. Most of it was self medication though. He was an artist. The only thing that interested him was painting and crafts. He was nicknamed ‘Medicine’ by the boys because of the amount of medicines he took. But he was lazy to the core.

Karthikeyan, Joseph and Raman, all about 13, vied for my and Sandhya’s (my wife) attention, wanting to be allotted small errands to be in our good books, so that they could get away with a little bit of bullying the younger children and a little bit of defying ! Then there was Arunan, who was about 14. Strong and wiry like Palanivel, but quiet and responsible like Thangaraj. He was not into studies, but was a sincere student, keen to pursue vocational skills and support his family. The quietest of the lot though was 13-year old Sakthivel. Abandoned by his step mother after the death of his father and also by his own elder brother after he got married, Sakthivel had a severe physical handicap because of which he could not walk properly. The other kids called him ‘Dancer’, rather unkindly, but he never bothered about that. He had overcome several more adversities in his short life !

The youngest among them was Karthik and Murali, delightful 6 year olds who always fought with each other, would weep each time their mothers came to meet them and returned, would invariably get bullied by the older boys, have their special ration of boiled eggs snatched away, but were generally popular. Murali did not last there for long. After staying on for a year, he made two unsuccessful attempts to run away, but was always brought back. After his third attempt, he never returned. I think he had a rather interesting summer break when he made friends with some boys back home. We were told that he spent the entire summer vacation wandering with the other boys, bathing in the village pond, doing odd errands and making small money, which they then spent on movies in the local theatre. For some reason, he missed them terribly and his heart was not in the hostel. We missed him too.

Some of them are doing very well. Thangaraj had started working with RTU as a drawing teacher, even while I left RTU in 1993, after having completed his diploma and while continuing to pursue more academic pursuits. Meanwhile, he also arranged for a good match for his sister, whom he also supported with a vocational training course. Karthikeyan works in Tiruppur in one of the hosiery units. He once telephoned me, almost five years after I had last seen him in 1993. He said he was earning Rs. 4,000 a month and that he was also taking care of his widowed mother and his younger brother, who lived with him. He was keen that his younger brother got a proper education. I knew Karthikeyan had a good heart, even if he was a bully and a rather smooth operator, who was smart at breaking the hostel rules ! Arunan must have completed his polytechnic course. I used to meet him once a month when he came to our office to collect his monthly scholarship we had offered him for his course. He seemed to be doing well and I hope he is well employed now.

Karthik and Raman are in some odd occupations. I believe Raman is working in the same stationery shop in Madurai where his father worked. Well, he used to work there even in the summer vacations when he went back to his father, partly because his step mother didn’t want him around the house. I am not sure if he was able to continue with his studies. Karthik was a bright, lively kid, though he never did well in studies. I had hoped he would join some vocational training course on the campus, but then, he too left the campus to live with his widowed mother in Madurai for reasons I am not clear about. I heard that he was working in a cycle repair shop, something that I was not happy about. He could have done much better.

I have no news of Palanivel, except that he had fallen in love with a girl from his village and eventually got married to her. Muthu is married now and has a daughter. Sakthivel unfortunately committed suicide while in his early twenties due to huge debts that he had incurred, leading a directionless life, once he quit the hostel. It was also partly due to depression because his brother, the only relative with whom he had some contact, disowned him over a family dispute !

Being in close contact with these boys who came from very deprived backgrounds was indeed an unforgettable experience. Each one had a story to tell, often an unhappy one, which they often tried to forget while they were together, engaging in the daily routine of their studies, playing, keeping the hostel clean and a bit of gardening. A visit from one of their relatives, or a visit home would bring them back to the ‘real’ world that they eventually had to live in. Often I would see one of the children sitting in a dark, unlit corner of the verandah, reminiscing about something that he held dear, or worrying about something that they were not keen to share. Once in a while, they would come and talk to me, just to unburden and not looking for solutions. I am not in touch with most of them. Looking back, I just hope that the life in the hostel provided them with an environment that made them stronger, more determined to face the challenges of life, and prepare them for meeting these head on. What else could an institution do ?

BRO. KIMPTON'S FOSTER CHILDREN


Foster children are very special and dear to Bro. JK and RTU’s staff. They came from very difficult backgrounds and I often wondered how these children could still be so cheerful and determined after going through so much so early in their lives. Most of them were girls, some of them having been rescued from being killed by their own parents as they did not want daughters. Some were dumped because they were illegitimate. Some were orphaned because one or both their parents were dead, some in violent situations that they were unfortunately witness to. Some were severely disabled. But one thing that each one of them found in great abundance was love and care. They all were welcome. No child in need was turned away. The children too had an amazing way of welcoming a new child in their midst and making them comfortable in their new environs. I got to know some of these children very well and was always struck by how they managed to overcome their adversities. I wish to write about some of them. (Names of these children have been changed).

One of the first children I got to know and made friends with was Belinda, who was then less than 10. Ajit used to support her education and was particularly attached to her. A bright smile, a warm greeting and the spirit to overcome her physical disability was what one remembers of her very vividly. She was one of the 120 foster children being cared for by RTU. Then there were the two sisters – Priya and Preeti, both very bright, pretty and naughty, very unlike the other girls on the campus. One could hardly imagine that their father would have ever even thought of abandoning his wife and two vivacious daughters to get married to another woman. The more unfortunate case was that of Jaya. Her father had her mother soon after she was born, in spite of promising her repeatedly to marry her. Being an illegitimate child meant overcoming several adversities. Her mother, meanwhile, had fallen in love with a decently employed youth, who agreed to marry her if she got ‘rid’ of her child. Wanting her daughter to grow in a safe environment, Jaya was brought to Kallupatti. She rarely saw her mother. You could see it in her eyes – the longing for her ‘own’ mother, though of course, she was well taken care of in her adopted home. She bloomed there, good in studies and excelling in dancing. Her handwork was exquisite, her cooking fantastic.

Nandini did not know where she came from. She was cared for Valliammal for many years, till her foster mother grew too old to care for her. She then moved with a family who adopted her. She excelled academically. She was an excellent, expressive dancer. Her lisp was endearing and so was her smile. It’s difficult to imagine now, but she is a doctor now, having recently completed her MBBS. She is very clear that she would like to give back to society something of what she got from it – caring. She plans to work with a local NGO and provide health care to the poor.

The boys, as I said, were fewer, but were quite a visible, voluble lot. There was Peter and Thomas, two brothers, aged 10 and 7 when I first met them. Both were dark skinned, had bright eyes shining with mischief, and always wore a dazzling smile, blinding enough to hide the pain they had undergone of seeing their mother being killed by their father in a fit of rage. Their father was serving a prison sentence. And there was Vishwa, quiet and mature, unlike most boys of his age. He had been abandoned by his parents for unknown reasons. Short and round faced, he was extremely bright, fared well academically, was his teachers’ favourite and wanted to grow up to be a doctor. His academic achievements set benchmarks for the other children and he was generally popular, except with his foster-brothers whose rather poor academic performance was often compared with Vishwa’s.

THE CHILDREN OF KALLUPATTI

It was September 1988. Ajit Mani and I were on our way from Bangalore to Madurai to G. Kallupatti, where Reaching the Unreached (RTU) was based. “This place is full of children”, Ajit had mentioned. An organisation supported by Actionaid, I was being considered for being deputed to RTU to assist Bro. Kimpton. Ajit was then the Field Director for South India with Actionaid. “And if you like children, you will fall in love with RTU, and ofcourse, you will be in the good books of Brother James Kimpton”, he said.

Bro. JK was a British missionary of the De La Salle order, who had been working in Madurai since the sixties, setting up homes for children, schools for poor children and vocational training centres, having worked for a couple of decades before in Sri Lanka (or Ceylon, then). It was pretty quiet when we reached Kallupatti, late in the evening, not a bit like what Ajit was preparing me for. “Don’t get deceived” cautioned Ajit. “They will all be here peering through the windows in the morning”. He was referring to the children, most of them orphaned and destitute who lived in neatly built small one-bedroom cottages, being cared for by a woman who was a ‘foster’ mother for the children. And true enough, they were all there when I went to the verandah to have my morning tea.

Initially, they were a bit shy – girls and boys of varying ages. But they all had a bright, welcoming smile. And in a matter of minutes, they had managed to perch themselves at the edge of the verandah, probably realising that we were harmless. “Mama, unga paer enna” (uncle, what is your name ?), they asked in Tamil, trying to become more familiar. That innocuous question and the answer to it literally lifted the sluice valve for questions to flow in. They were no more in ones and twos. The questions were in chorus. And in Tamil, a language I barely understood then. Obviously, the answer to most of the questions was a smile, a smile and more smiles !

That was the beginning of my orientation to the famed children of RTU. There was the day care centre, the balwadis (pre-primary centres), the full time primary schools, the supplementary schools (for those studying in the poorly managed local government schools), the vocational training centres, the foster homes. In all, about 2000 children with whom RTU directly worked with, not to mention the thousands of children the RTU team regularly in contact with through their other programmes !

It was mandatory for Bro. JK to take an afternoon walk through the village. Pied Piper like, he would be followed by umpteen children greeted with lusty shouts of “Thatha, vanakkam” (greetings, grandfather) all along. He was a familiar sight, yet the children would reach out to him, to hold his hand, pull him to their houses for a cup of tea. Often, in the evenings, Bro JK would sit outside his little office room to greet the children as they went back home from school and he would indulge them with boiled candies.

When I eventually joined RTU, I had an office room right next to Bro. JK’s. It was always a delight to see the children walk by, run by, shout along as they made their way to their school or home, often peeping through my window to check out what I was doing, sometimes, coming in up to my table for a quick chat. Holidays in schools and vacations were truly boring times on the campus (remember that popular Tamil film song ‘April – May-elay, pasumay yen illae, kaanj poch da’…….why is there no greenery in April and May, everything looks so dry ?). Though that song was sung in a different context by a bunch of boys in college, ruing about the absence of girls on college campuses in the summer vacation, I found myself humming that song in April and May, when children were a rare sight on the RTU campus.

CHANDRELIA'S JEEVAN AND MALLA

A few months after we met Magan, we met another boy of a similar age but from a totally different background. Jeevan was the son of Merubhai, the Koli (a 'backward class' Hindu community) village headman of Chandrelia. A small time contractor, Merubhai was relatively prosperous, owning a tractor and a reasonable patch of agriculture land. A small time politician to the core, he spent substantial time bowing to the powers-that-be, which included the local politicians, the bureaucrats, the influential village elders…..well, just about anyone who could ensure that a small contract comes his way. So much so that he had perennially got into the habit with his head half-bowed, hands folded respectfully and a rather indulgent type of hospitality – none of which went down well with our colleague, Shashi, (or 'Havsibhai' as he was referred to in the villages - known for his direct, no-nonsense approach who was responsible for overseeing work in a cluster of villages that included Chandrelia), who found Merubhai’s sycophancy disgusting, difficult to handle and always was suspicious of him. Infact, the very sight of Meru irked Shashi, almost to the point of angering him.

Jeevan was quite a contrast, and that is what attracted us to him. A boy quite tall for his age, he would be eager to come and chat with us, look at our writing pads, play around with our pen, question us about our work with an ease and confidence that did not go quite well with his father who felt that he was taking too much of liberty with the ‘Aga Khan saheb-log (officers)’ !. It used to be quite a strange sight at times – Merubhai, sitting on the floor in front of us, shoulders bent, respectfully, refusing to sit beside us on the cot he would have laid out, while Jeevan sitting right next to us and interacting with us without any inhibition.

As a teenager and that too, from a relatively better off family in a small village of about 40 households, Jeevan commanded the respect of his peers and the kids younger than him. They looked up to him because he could write, utter a few words in English, felt free to put his arm around our shoulders like a friend would. He could also read and write (which few other children could), rode a bicycle and even knew how to ride a tractor ! And Jeevan befriending us meant that the other kids (well, boys only, ofcourse !) also became our friends.

Soon, we started having regular meetings with the group of boys under Jeevan’s ‘leadership’. It was so refreshingly different from dealing with difficult adults ! Talking to them about anything under the sun was great fun. They also wanted to do some work to ‘develop’ their village. That was the time our colleague, Depinder, was engaged in the social forestry project on public wastelands. We hence talked to the kids about planting fruit trees in front of their homes and caring for them, an idea they jumped on ! The seedlings were given to Jeevan who then took personal responsibility to not just distribute these equally, but also to monitor its growth. He would proudly show us a notebook which he referred to as his ‘register’ and with great importance, towel wrapped around his neck, his ink stained fingers holding a pen, would walk around the village, checking each sapling and marking a tick against the name of the child who was responsible for that tree. And all that the children got in return was an approving nod from their ‘leader’ !

In spite of us being a fairly common sight in the village, not many children were comfortable talking to us on a one-to-one basis, unless prompted by Jeevan or an adult. But one of them, Malla, came out of his shell eventually.

A 11-year old, he belonged to the Vanjara community (traditional nomadic group, who were gradually settling down in permanent habitations). His family was headed by his widowed mother, Buriben, a young, articulate woman, with a great degree of self-confidence and self-esteem, who had decided to bring up Malla and his younger sister by herself, working on her small farm, without depending on anyone else. Malla was constantly beside her, helping her with the ploughing, weeding, grazing and everything else than a young man from a farming community would be expected to do. Naturally, he could not go to school, having had to drop out soon after his father’s untimely death. Kana, the head of the Vanjaras and a close pal of Meru, and the rest of his community were also not too helpful to Buriben and her children, though they were one of the poorest families in the village.

Fortunately, Buriben was noticed in one of the meetings which was held to identify those who would raise a nursery of seedlings for the social forestry project. While Buriben went around raising one of the best nurseries that year with ruthless efficiency, it was the pride on Malla’s face that was truly worth noticing. We just had to visit the nursery each time we went there, for Malla had put in immense amount of work alongside his mother. In addition, Malla was also part of Jeevan’s gang and one of the keenest kids in raising fruit trees on his homestead. Malla also provided us interesting insights into the small politics in the village as he understood – the rivalry between the Kolis and Vanjaras (in spite of the friendship between their respective leaders, which was obviously to protect their own personal interests), the way his mother was uncared for because of being a widow and many more…..But these adversities were not demanding enough to wipe out Malla’s smile or his enthusiasm. His dream ? He wanted to own a good patch of irrigated land where he could grow enough crops and trees to feed the family and meet their needs.

Jeevan must be 37 now and Malla must be 33. I keep wondering about the paths they may have chosen. Would they now be leaders or role models for the youth of their respective communities of their villages ? Would they have left the village and taken up work in a city nearby ? I don’t know. But what I do feel is that they must be doing pretty well in life. Both had shown a great deal of enthusiasm to what was happening in their village. Both were part of a process of change at a very impressionable age in their lives. Both must have imbibed some valuable principles and lessons in their lives, learning from what they saw happening with such keenness. Or would they ?

MAGAN OF SAPAR

It was in March 1986 that the work of renovating the Sapar (Surendranagar district, Gujarat) percolation tank started. I was working with the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India), an NGO, that worked on developing natural resources for improving the livelihoods of the poor. Surendranagar was on of the 3 districts chosen, as it was perennially affected by droughts, sometimes for 3-4 consecutive years.

The renovation of the Sapar tank was part of a drought relief programme that AKRSP had taken up largely with government funding. There was a series of meetings with the people of Sapar and Brahmapuri villages who were to work on this site. We kept insisting that it should and would be different from the government sponsored works in the sense that their rights as workers would be respected and that they would be encouraged to take responsibility of ensuring equitable access to employment opportunities.

These were, as readers may recall, the early days of participatory development and various NGOs at that time were experimenting with their own understanding of ‘participation’. Most of the meetings were in the late evenings. Children invariably outnumbered adults (read, men) in these meetings, but were often shooed away with “This is none of your business, go away” type of remarks. Not the ones to be deterred, they would faithfully reassemble, a little away from the adults, curious, huddled in groups, trying to understand what was happening.

The boys were expectedly more boisterous, trying to imitate their adults by tying a towel around their heads like a turban, leaning carelessly against the wall, and in turn, shooing off the girls with a similar “This is none of your business…” type of statements. The girls, not to be left behind would still reassemble, a little more away from the boys, whispering excitedly, pulling their odhnis (a colourful length of fabric that the girls started wearing from their adolescence which was loosely wrapped round their shoulders and with which they would cover their heads).

It was in one such meeting that the inauguration of the work was announced for the following day. Eight in the morning was the time decided. About 30 people – 20 from Sapar and 10 from Brahmapuri were to come and start working. The wages were announced (which was as per the wage rates announced by the government for drought relief works) and other related conditions of employment on the site were explained. A local committee agreed to make a list of those eligible for the first round of employment.

It was one of the first major projects the AKRSP staff team was undertaking since they set up their Surendranagar office in April 1985. While great enthusiasm, the entire team made their way to the site with coconuts and agarbattis (incence sticks) being more conspicuous than measure tapes and technical maps. By 8 am, the team was there (which was rather unusual), with a beaming Bharatbhai, the big built engineer with a booming voice (who was on deputation from the state government), proceeding to the place where the work was to start. But strange enough, not a soul was in sight. None of the committee members, none of the supposedly identified ‘first round workers’ were in sight.

We climbed on to the tank bund (the earthen wall of the tank) to look at Sapar on the right and Brahmapuri on the left to see if we could see anyone coming. There was no one in sight. As we got down and decided to wait, we saw someone climbing over the bund and heading in our direction. We could distinctly make out the spade and a tagara (used for carrying loose earth). “Finally, one of the workers” we said, delighted. The bright yellow shirt and the brown trousers were also distinctly visible, and so was the pink towel wrapped around his head like a turban. It did not take us long to realise that it was Magan, one of the most enthusiastic of the Koli Patel kids, a 15 year old from a poor family that could not afford to send him to school.

Life as a daily wage labourer had toughened him. He had started working earlier on in life. His palms were hard with years of working with the spade and the plough. His frame though lean, was tough and muscular. He had often expressed his desire, rather ruefully, to go to school, but it had never happened. It was rare to see him idle. If it was not work on the farm or a construction site, it was grazing the cows or fetching water – but always someone who welcomed us with a bright smile, ready to run around to muster the adults for a village meeting whenever required.

“ Bharatbhai, I am ready. Can I start work”? he asked with his usual cheerful smile. On being asked about the others, he simply said “They will come, but can I start ? Because you are going to pay me piece rate wages. The more I work, the more I’ll earn. And I can work faster, earlier in the day”. We were in a bit of dilemma about engaging a ‘child labourer’. We were new on this job and hence did not know what to do. “The government rules prohibit anyone under 14. He is 15, so it is ok”, announced Bharatbhai. The decision was made. Magan started work by hitting the spade on the ground at a place he was allotted and put the earth into the tagara, amidst applause from all of us. He was delighted.

That was the beginning of our friendship. The work on the site went on regularly for almost 4 months. At its peak, there were 550 people working on the site at a time. But on each of my visits to the site, it was pleasure to look out for him, to be greeted by him and occasionally, accompany him back to the village, while he narrated the events of the day. He was one of the most regular workers on the site and took back a tidy sum each week. He was an example in dedication for all those on the site. Someone even nicknamed him ‘engineer saheb (sir)’, since he was seen assisting the site superviser often out of his own interest and curiousity in taking measurements of the work done and even supervising the work with the site superviser, walking along the 2 kms earthen bund.

I kept in touch with him till 1988. He must have now grown up into a responsible, caring and a strong young man, and I hope, with as high a commitment to his family and village, as he had demonstrated at such a young age !

MY CHOSEN PATH

I always wanted a make a career in marketing. And so, I wanted to join one of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) – which I could not. The only reason I chose to join the Institute of Rural Management (IRMA) over the other management institute in Ahmedabad was because of the thrill of living in a hostel. Inspite of the ‘rural’ prefix to the management diploma, I was confident of getting around to selling soaps & shampoos or tractors or computers ! Little did I realise then that joining IRMA would change the course of my life. It nearly didn’t. I ensured that I took up marketing projects during my study and I also got into a marketing job for selling oil, ghee and assorted waste extracts.

But it lasted only till I visited my friend and batchmate Shankar a couple of months later, to see the work he was doing with an NGO (non-governmental organisation). I remember it was with great disbelief and a bit of scepticism that I received the news of my best friend joining the gang of ‘jhola-wallas’ ! But what I thought would be a pleasure trip to Netrang (in South Gujarat where Shankar worked), turned out to be a turning point in my career and life. “Get into IRMA, become a rural manager, and see how much of respect you will get and how satisfying your work will be” was what Ramu (my friend during college days) told me while coaxing me to seriously consider applying for admission to IRMA. I remember my close friend, Sanju and I smirking at Ramu's 'wisdom'. Seeing Shankar in the field made Ramu’s words ring true. I don’t know about the 'respect' part, but he certainly was immensely happy, for he could see how he was able to change the life of village communities so early on in his life. My mind was made. Five months later, Anil Shah or Anilbhai as he was popularly known (the former Secretary – Rural Development, Government of Gujarat, who became the first Chief Executive of the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme - AKRSP, India) offered me a position in AKRSP.

I have never looked back since then. My work in the social development sector has taken me to different parts of the country, many remote locations. “I love this job since it pays you to see the country”, said Ajit (Chau), a friend and colleague of mine, in a lighter vein. He was very true though. Well, our job did pay us not just to see the country, but to understand the country, its people, its culture, its traditions. Each day brought in new challenges, each day brought with it new learnings. 24 years hence, it still is true ! New learnings, new challenges and always, the excitement of Change - that change can happen, that change is happening.....for the better !

It was in 1983 during my first field visit to a village in Kheda that I first ventured into the countryside (well, I had been to villages in Kerala before, but then, they are so different and relatively more urbane than those in other parts of the country). Later the same year, five of us from IRMA (Shankar, Ashutosh, Apoorva, Sudhir), spent 2 months in the rural areas of Raipur district, (in Madhya Pradesh state then, now in the state of Chattisgarh). Those 2 months were both fascinating and inspiring - and I remember vaguely we discussing plans of setting up our own NGO at some point in time !

The countryside still fascinates me, not in a development tourist sense, but in the way it has subtly but clearly shown me what the not-so-often recognised ‘resilience’ of Indian people is, in addition to of course being treated to the best of Indian hospitality and warmth. I have had the opportunity of experiencing the various adversities (though in a limited way) of the communities living in different parts of the country, adding to the various other disadvantages they have had to cope with – of being orphaned, destitute, landless, illiterate, outcasts, bonded, disabled, being women…..! But all through, what came out was their strong will to overcome these in their own ways, with little hope in store for them. In many cases though, they did manage to overcome these disadvantages with the support of local NGOs and even some sympathetic government functionaries. It has made me realise ever so often how they provide the backbone to the Indian economy. It has made me realise how much better endowed people like me are, and yet, we seem to be little prepared to face the relatively smaller challenges in our lives !

Later on, in my career, I also had the advantage of visiting many other countries in Asia and Africa. The contexts may be very different, but the underlying issues are often, and depressingly so, very common - the same form of socio-political institutional apathy, discrimination, victimisation, denial of basic entitlements, all of which contribute to growing inequalities in the countries and globally. But yet, community after community also comes up with amazing resilience, of undying spirit to overcome the various challenges - much of which is inspiring and motivating ! It is not only in villages.......my work has taken me to various urban settlements of very poor and disadvantaged people. Wanting to escape the hopelessness in their villages, many of them come to cities, attracted by its glitter and promise, but only to lead an even more miserable existence. And one can only be amazed by their resilience and spirit to continue to live on in squalour, leading inhuman lives - and perhaps a bit surprised at the apathy of millions of much better endowed people who mill around them all the time, but completely ignore them or deny their existence !

I do not wish to romanticise or trivialise these issues. What I’d like to do is to dig into my memories of the past two decades and bring to the fore positive, eventful incidents that make me feel how fortunate I have been in doing what I am and bringing to the fore interesting anecdotes that made my work and times exciting, rewarding and memorable. Possibly, this will paint a picture which is bright and colourful, inspite of the several adversities that confront the people I met, but who have taken on these challenges as a way of their life and who, in their own way, have enriched lives of occasional visitors like me ! And therein lies hope and optimism - that these myriad challenges can be overcome with that spirit and courage, backed with a little external support, by millions of disadvantaged people around the world. There are no path breaking revelations, nor do I propose to break any new ground on development thinking. This is, simply put, my recollection of experiencing life the way I did as a social development professional – straight from the heart !

I have equally been very fortunate to meet and work with so many inspiring colleagues and friends, whose guidance and motivation was so immensely valuable. The charistmatic Anilbhai of AKRSP was my first development guru. Bro. James Kimpton, the British missionary, who chose to spend his life in Sri Lanka and India, showed me what commitment and dedication meant. Salil Shetty was and continues to be my source of inspiration, with his amazing enthusiasm for change and his vision of a more equal world. And ofcourse, Shankar Narayanan, who, in addition to being my best friend, is a strong moral supporter and peer, always motivating and encouraging me.

There are scores of colleagues with whom I worked in AKRSP, RTU, Actionaid, Plan International, DFID and now WaterAid, and many other organisations we partnered with, whose friendship and association I deeply value and who made (and continue to make) my work so enriching and motivating.

Shankar, Apoorva, Sudhir and Shashidharan have been my peers for over two-and-half decade now - and I have always valued their support and advice, and respected their insights. Ashutosh (Ashu), who was with me in IRMA moved into civil service, but has been keenly following our work. While in AKRSP, I enjoyed working with Joel Sumithra, (the late) Sonal Shah, Devjibhai, Pankaj Dave, Leela Nair, Koshy, Shiney Varghese, Manjul Bajaj, Ranjit Ambastha, Meera Kaul and Parmesh Shah - and ofcourse with my close friends Shankar, Shashi and Apoorva were there too.

Ajit Mani and Ravi Narayanan gave me my first 'break' in an international organisation when I joined ActionAid, deputed to work with RTU. I got married while I was just completing a year with RTU. Kallupatti (a village in Madurai district) became the first marital house for Sandhya and myself. I was there for little over 4 years. In RTU, Ilango, Manoba, Fatima, Susairaj, James, Ramesh, Paneerselvam, Poonkodi, Latha, Gnanambal, Arockiaraj and others made it a very enjoyable, enriching and a valuable learning experience. I gained immensely from guidance from RTU Board members and advisers like John Dalton, D.K. Oza, Vasimalai and Shivakumar. And since my ActionAid days, colleagues and seniors like Salil Shetty, Rammohan, Tom Thomas, Vinay Raj, Nagarajan, Sathyabalan, Sukhwinder Arora, Prabhakar Varma, Pravin Mahajan, Dhruv Mankad, Dr. Daniel, Ajit Chaudhari, Shankar Venkateswaran, Amitava Mukherjee, Thyagarajan, Binu Thomas, Sukhatirtha, Ashish Sen, Ravi Pratap Singh, Sandeep Chachra, Bijay Kumar, Biraj Patnaik, Rosemary Sebastian, Parmeshwari, Sandhya Sharma, Naaz Khair, Girish Bharadwaj, Nupur Kukrety, Vasumathi, Vinod Krishnan and many others made my ActionAid days very memorable - and that was a full 10 years of immense learning and development for me, during which I gained immense confidence and much deeper understanding of social development issues in India and around the world. A special mention of Meenu Vadhera, Geeta Unnikrishnan, Bhuvana and Gouthami who formed the strong 'gender brigade' and helped us understand and appreciate gender issues with immense sensitivity and impressive persuasion skills. 3 of my 10 years with ActionAid was spent in Bhopal. Notorious for the Bhopal Gas disaster, this lovely city became very special for us, since our twin sons were born in Bhopal in 1996. The support that we received from my colleagues Prahlad Vishwakarma, Kishor Patnaik, Dr. Vaseer, Sundar and others was great !

In Plan, it was a pleasure working with Roger Braden, Minty Pande, Deepali Khanna, Ranganathan, Suresh Raghavan, Manuel, Chandra Kannapiran, George Fernandez, Vibhuti Pandey, Sastry, Avni Malhotra, Sandhya Nair, Jayanta Bora, Seshagiri, Arti Sinha, Boopalan, Sivasubrmaniam, Ramesh, Sabita, Akhil Jugran and many others. And as part of the Bangalore team in Plan, colleagues like George and Anita Kumar helped me understand what being 'child-centred' actually meant, with Lalitha Iyer being my unquestionable guru in that area ! How can I forget her training on 'Child-Pro' ?

DFID was an entirely different experience in an intellectual sense. Dr. Dennis Pain, Rosalind Eyben, Vijay Pillai, Sudipto Mukherjee, Moutushi Sengupta, Shouvik Datta, Mahesh Mishra, Sarojini Thakur, Geeta Unnikrishnan, Vikram Menon, Ashim Chawla, Sonali Chib, Sheeja Nair, Judith Kent, Kevin Crockford, Lakshmi Menon, Amarjeet Sinha, Ranjana Kumar, Sidharthan, Raghavendra Rao, Shan Mitra, Debashish Sircar, Ken Desouoza, Dinesh Nair, Sean Doolan, Peter Smith, Ian Curtis, Sandeepa Sahay, Sangeeta Mehta, Aditi Rajyalaxmi, Debbie Menezes, Felix Anton, Loga Gnanasambandan, Mihir Joshi and others made it a very enriching experience, helping me understand the macro level policy issues and the more political dimensions of social development - and of course, what it meant to work in a bilateral organisation. Colleagues like Rajesh Krishnan, Sudha Menon, Jayashree Das, Srilatha Iyer, Debbie Roscoe were a great support and it was fun working with them.

Happily, that process of continuous learning and enrichment continues with WaterAid. I joined when Ravi Narayanan was the global head and it was great getting in touch again. Soon after, Barbara Frost took over as the Chief Executive in late 2005 -it has been a very inspiring and delightful experience working with her, and senior colleagues like Paula Laird, Rachel Westcott, Andrew Cook, Patricia Dandonoli, Margaret Batty and Peter Dwan. Colleagues in my department at WaterAid (International Operations) have been a strong pillar of support and motivation for me - Idrissa Doucoure, John Kandulu, Tom Palakudiyil, Lydia Zigomo, Mariame Dem, Jerry Adams, Robert Kampala, Erik Harvey, Rosie Wheen, David Shaw, Samantha French, Therese Mahon, Louisa Gosling, Papa Diouf and Jane Scobie among them -and so also, colleagues like Mark Lomas, Henry Northover, John Lockett, Tom Slaymaker and Ann Cropper from other departments. In our country and regional programmes, current and former colleagues like Helen Pankhurst, Khairul Islam, Rokeya Ahmed, Pamela Rodrigues, Ishaprasad Bhagwat, Indira Khurana, Oliver Jones, , Jonathan Burton, Nash, Fatoumata Haidara, Sarina Prabasi, Viv Abbott, Lucky Lowe, Lovy, Yerefolo Malle, Yunia, Nelson Gomonda, Dominic de Waal, Chandra Ganapathy, Joe Lambongang, Teferi Abebe, Rosaria Mabica, Paul Obura, Bethleman Mengistu  and many, many more colleagues have been a great support from whom I have learnt a lot and gained clearer insights on a range of African and Asian development issues. I'd especially mention former colleagues Simon Trace, Stephen Turner, Belinda Calaguas and Alan Etherington from whose encouragement and advice I deeply valued especially when I was new to WaterAid, and James Wicken, whose youthful dynamism and sharp intellect has deeply impressed me. Other associates like Joe Gomme, Maggie Pankhurst, Peter Ackland, Ken Caplan, Barbara Evans, Michael Anderson, Penny Lawrence, David Thomson, John Plaistow provided very insightful advice and guidance.

A number of WaterAid trustees, current and past, have been a source of encouragement and inspiration for their passion and commitment for human development, working tirelessly and voluntarily.....Vic Cocker, Karen Morgan, John Isherwood, Nigel Reader, Myra Green, Jeremy Pelczer, Greg Hodkinson, Tony Kelly, Pamela Taylor, Ashoke Chatterjee, Sandy Cairncross and many others. As a member of the board of Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP), I have been impressed by the dynamism and enthusiasm of Will Day, Sam Parker, Richard Aylard, Dave Tickner, Bill Peacock and Raja Jarrah. I am also on the board of Reaching the Unreached in the UK - Martin and Margaret Henry, Mike Jellicoe, David and Jo Cassidy are some of the very inspiring individuals who have worked very hard to raise resources in their voluntary capacity for RTU India, with a missionary zeal !

There are many, many colleagues from our partner organisations who inspired me immensely, especially John Samuel of National Centre for Advocacy Studies (and now Regional Director of ActionAid - Asia), Seema and Sadiq Agwan of Prayas and S.K. Singh of Sambhav, Gopalbhai of Akhil Bharatiya Samaj Sevi Sansthan, Shumita Ghosh and Ganga of Urmul, Madhavan of Urmul (and now Chirag), Yogesh Kumar of Samarthan, Ilina Sen of Rupantar, (the late) Viji Srinivasan of Aditi, T. Pradeep of Samuha, Aloysius Fernandes of Myrada, Munira Sen of Madhyam, Prabhakaran of Malarchi from India, Netsanet of Zemasef - Ethiopia, Umesh Pandey of Newah - Nepal, Arif Hassan and (the late) Parveen Rahman of Orangi Pilot Project - Pakistan Patrick Aboyo of Coniwas - Ghana, Santos of Estamos - Mozambique and several others.

Long time friends like Bina Rani, Lakshmi Rani,Vivek Warrier, Sanjeev Gupta, Mathew Cherian, Ranu and Teji Bhogal, Renuka and Indu Prakash Singh, Sangeeta Singh, Makarand Sahasrabuddhe, Rekha and Rajkumar are among scores of friends with whom I did not work directly, but have been a source of huge encouragement over the past 2 decades. Many of my friends have inspired me with their writing skills - Daman Singh and Manjul Bajaj are now recognised authors, Gouthami and Ashim Chawla had enviable journalistic traits and Ajit Chaudhari with his regular monthly 2-pagers which also now appears on his blog, have hugely inspired me to write (so what if it is not upto the Salman Rushdie or Arundhati Roy standards ???).

Much of what I managed to experience, largely through my travels, would not have happened but for the support of my wife, Sandhya, who was tasked with the responsibility of taking care of our twin sons while I was away on her own, with little external support. And one of the motivating factors for me to write this came from my sons Anurag (Raga) and Anirudh (Ridhu) who always wanted to know about what happened during my travels - and while the stories there were more keen were on flights and hotels, I hope they will find these anecdotes interesting as well. My sister Rajany and her husband Akhil have always been keen to know more about my work, and so also some of my cousins - Roshan (Tinku), Rajesh (Denny), Regit (Minnu), Seema, Subhir, Sheeja, Sudhir (Sabu) and Suraj (Kuttimon), my brother-in-law Santhosh and his wife Sheeja. And more recently, Rajany's daughter and my niece Radhika. I hope they are able to recollect some of my earlier stories through these narrations. Last, but not the least, a word of acknowledgement for all the efforts my mother and father put in to raise me and educate me, that made it possible for me to go through these vivid experiences, and their continued blessings !

I hope I will continue to have the energy and enthusiasm to write about some of my experiences, which I initially started writing in 2002...........! And while writing these down, it is like reliving those experiences, times with some valuable colleagues and friends, and very importantly, the lessons that one learns all the time, lessons from ordinary people making an extra-ordinary difference to bring change, and make this world a much better place to live in !

WELCOME TO MY BLOG - YOUR MINSTREL !

The name 'Your Minstrel' is a reflection of my love for singing. And while I do not intend to sing on the blog - no definitely not, it is very much in the form of a narration. Narration of the small stories, indicidents and anecdotes that made my life and work in the field of social development so valuable, enriching and memorable.

Narrating this, for me, has been very nostalgic (as nostalgic as singing some of my favourite decades-old Bollywood songs !). It has brought to life some of those experience that I'd like to cherish forever - and it was like reliving those moments in my virtual space, remembering those days and times, those people and and through whom, I began understanding incrementally, the various dimensions of life and society.

Much of this refers to my experiences in India, dating back to 1985 - something which I started writing down since 2002. Since then, I have had several opportunities of going through a similar experience during my various travels to a number of Asian and African countries, which too, I will be posting on this blog......someday !

I do hope you enjoy reading these - and I would very much appreciate your comments, which will be a source of encouragement and inspiration for me.