We get into "social work" (either as volunteers or full-time) with the idea that we should "help" and "contribute". We are used to spending years "learning" (in school or college) before we can get into "productive activity". But this notion does not directly translate to "social work". Somehow, we feel that social work needs no learning, we already know what is to be known about society, how it functions and what needs to be changed and how. Since we know what has to be changed, and how, there is no need to learn. The time we have to spend reading, learning, questioning and understanding new viewpoints is therefore seen as delaying our work and contribution. We therefore have no patience with such things and so don't do it well. We are unable to see ideas, theory and research contributing to social work as they do in Physics or Engineering. Therefore, we underestimate the time required in learning and usefulness and importance of such learning.
It is easy to accept what I have said so far. Once it is pointed out, many will accept that social work also requires substantial learning. But this acceptance is very abstract. Somewhere deep within the idea that social work is about doing and not about learning. Learning is useful, but must quickly lead to doing. That doing should take up more time than learning is something we believe in deep inside. The degree to which knowledge helps and the time learning takes; most people are unable to accept. And their actions show this.
One sensitive individual with a good practical understanding of the problem can make a lot more difference than hundreds of committed people with little understanding of the problem. This is something I have now seen many times. A sensitive and perceptive person with a good understanding of the problem like Sundar, Ramanujam or Kalpana visiting a block even once in several months can really make more difference than hordes of volunteers visiting every week. The difference lies in their ability to listen to the problems being faced by the local volunteers, understanding it accurately and critically and advising solutions which can actually be implemented and which the volunteers see as such. Of course, this ability does not grow out of vacuum, it is something that comes out of practical learning and experience and therefore hundreds of visits to villages. But the point is to recognise this and to actively try to learn and assimilate knowledge (from all sources) and to develop acritical view of what we see, observe, feel and hear. Without this, just visiting village after village will not help very much.
That is why sensitising more and more people to issues and to motivate them to critically look at their own understanding is more important than just getting more and more people to volunteer for work. But one also hopes that with a larger volunteer group, it will be easier to identify people willing to look at things critically.
Understanding the above is very important for the rest of this report. One may otherwise wonder why I am focussing so much on learning, rather than doing work.
How much difference a programme makes and how far it spreads, depends more on the ideas that have gone into the model and less on the push we have given or mobilisation we have done. That is why developing a better model for health or education or literacy intervention is critical. Why, one may ask? Because all our work is fundamentally educational (advising, counselling, and training) - whether it is in the area of health, enterprises, agriculture or school education. We communicate ideas to people. People use these ideas and that makes a difference in their lives. A better idea, a more complete understanding of the situation, which takes into account various factors, is more effective, and therefore more useful.
An aside: We can take a sentence from the second paragraph and critically analyse it to get a feel for our education system and society. The sentence is:
We are used to spending years "learning" (in school or college) before we can get into "productive activity". But this notion does not directly translate to "social work".
Now, why is this the case? How is it that there is something we practice all our lives and yet do not apply it to a "new" case? What does this point out?
I see this as an example of how our society and particularly our education system divides and compartmentalises knowledge and therefore our lives. "What you learn in physics, don't apply to chemistry" is the most harmless manifestation of this phenomenon. "What you learn in science, don't apply to life" is the most dangerous. That's why you have doctors, engineers and scientists who practice "science" in their profession but are so unscientific in their daily lives. Knowledge cannot be partitioned like that and by doing it we transform a living subject into a dead mass of material to be remembered and reproduced. By violently coming down on people who use ideas learnt in one area in another, this system destroys our creativity and alienate us from what we learn. What we learn this way becomes unreal and therefore un-usable except in the form prescribed. Knowledge instead of freeing enslaves us. It does not tell us anything about ourselves or about the world we live in. It becomes a way to measure and maintain status and hierarchy. We do not even think of applying this knowledge learnt this way to other aspects of life.
On the other hand, we also lead lives where learning is not compartmentalised. At play, or in our interaction with friends, we plan and do things and in the process learn many things. These things and ideas we learn in one context, we use freely in other places. Our knowledge about society is something we learn this way. Our ideas about social work also belong here. These ideas flow freely from one area to another and form our perception. We keep it separate from "school-knowledge". Unfortunately, reading, data-analysis, probability etc is taught in school. We therefore do not think about and do not know how to apply it to our self-taught ideas. The whole argument I had made earlier makes sense only within this overall context. The division between learning and doing ideally does not exist. But the divisions introduced in school affect our understanding and our patience for "learning" in social work.
After this introductory pontificating, let me get to the actual report...
The first few months, I was trying to find out what I should do. Quite aimlessly, I travelled and met people from different NGOs - BCT, Karunai Illam, TNSF, Udavum Karangal, Seed, Maharishi Sambamurthy Institute, Katha, etc. Earlier I had visited other NGOs like Swanirvar etc. The idea with which I had come to India was to learn from these various NGOs and to develop some sort of model development effort in a few villages based on which we could think of future plans. All the organisations I saw were middle class led, small model sort of efforts. TNSF was different - the scale (thousands of villages and lakhs of volunteers) was clearly unique, the lack of one charismatic leader was also different. But I had met only Ramanujam and a few others. So I still could not get a feel for all the work that was going on. And Ramanujam was certainly not one to push people into work. He took time explaining and discussing things with me and waited for me to make the next move - which I didnot. So without recognising what was so close to me, I travelled here and there, visiting NGO after NGO hoping for some sort of clarity on what I should do and where.
Visiting villages and NGOs helps us appreciate things done but does not tell us how to do it ourselves. After a while, this began to irritate me - I wanted to stay in a village and try out some ideas myself - to see how difficult it was to do things. I had got hold of a few "how-to-do-literacy" guidebooks (that TNSF had published) and I wanted to start literacy effort in one village based on these ideas. The other idea was to also start with game clubs for children and youth and use this as a way to mobilise volunteers in the village. Then using this volunteer group, the idea was to get into health, education, savings groups etc. How to do any of these I did not know - but could not be very difficult was the general impression. Though some of these ideas can still be salvaged, as such they are naïve and doomed to fail, but luckily it could not even take off and failed even before that! I was planning to use Karunai Illam in Nilakottai as a base for this plan. But for various reasons that did not work out and driven out of there, I went to a few other places and then came back to Madras disappointed. When I look back on this today - I am happy that things turned out this way.
While all this was going on, I had visited BITS Pilani and met the volunteers there and discussed with them ideas which would involve their going to villages and interacting with the village women for literacy and education. A few of the volunteers - Smitha, Poornima, Sridhar, Mahesh etc - did take me seriously and tried these out. After that I have been in touch with them on and off. This is a motivated group worth following up on. But several reasons (particularly lack of linkages with good local movements) prevent it from becoming a strong active group.
Around the same time, I (with Ramani and Dilip's help) was trying to form a group in IIT-Madras. We had some initial meetings and then got volunteers to start tuition centres in Taramani. I went to different hostels, called students for an on-the-spot meeting, talked to them and tried to mobilise volunteers to help with the classes in Taramani. Many people volunteered. We would then take the students along with us to Taramani. Most students never turned up again! But after sometime a few of the students began to show more interest and slowly a small group started emerging. But even this group was affected by exams and test schedules.
I had started going to Taramani because I wanted to start something in IIT. The IIT group was very slow in forming, but the welcome and response in Taramani was quick and amazing. The first time I set foot in Taramani searching for children to teach and place to tech them in and Ganesh and gang met us. They told us they would mobilise the children and we could start classes the next day in the temple. I went in the next day and started the classes. Whether or not other volunteers from IIT would come, I began to go regularly. The children began to like me a lot and vice versa. Also I began reading John Holt's "Why children fail" and "How children learn" around this time. The experience with the children in Taramani gave a lot of opportunity to test out the ideas set in the book. And this combination of theory and practice was a wonderful experience. This gave me a lot of confidence in working with children and predicting and explaining their behaviour (and also adults to some extent). Slowly the children and I would spend time discussing various things; we went for picnics, organised skits and cultural programmes in Taramani, etc. I also got to know their parents very well.
After coming back from the Karunai Illam trip, I met Ramanujam again. He explained to me what the TNSF was doing in full - its Health programme, its Education intervention, Rural Development, Savings Groups etc and how all this was in some vague sense trying to work with panchayats and decentralise power and development. I began to see how the literacy campaign was only a start up point and that the volunteers mobilised in villagers were actually doing and leading various programmes. This was what I had wanted to do all along. More discussions with Ramanujam followed and I told him that I was interested in the health programme. He asked me meet Sundararaman in Pondicherry and warned me that unlike himself, Sundar would immediately give me a hundred things to do and set a deadline by which to complete it!
One call and four hours of bus ride. I was in Pondicherry to meet another man who talks like Ramanujam -of large movements and the small details that go into them, of lakhs of people and of initiating campaigns to mobilise them. He gave me a number of books to read. He asked my background and decided electronics and communications was close enough to information technology. He handed me a project proposal on some software development for rural areas. I asked him about the health programme. He told me about the health programme, gave me "Between Living and Surviving" to read, fed me, put me up in a hotel room, and asked me to read the proposal on Computer Applications for Village Information Centre. I read the health book, tried reading the proposal and fell asleep. Next day more discussions. I had some prior knowledge of community health programmes and their philosophy (through Swanirvar etc). But here was a programme happening in 120 villages without a doctor and claiming tobe run by villagers entirely. Apart from the health programme, we discussed many other things - about the various people involved in the movement, its history and how people from different backgrounds contribute. He also described the many different organisations that come under the All India People's Science Network and the Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samithi. After a lot of mind juggling flow-charts and names, I was all set to visit and see the health programme. How to reach this Nemeli?
"Contact Anbazhagi or Damodaran at Kamaraj Memorial near the Bus Stop. Nemeli is close to some place starting with "O". You can take bus from Arakkonam to Vellore it will pass through Nemeli. But be careful, a village is not a romantic or nice place. It can be very nasty. You need to stay in a village long enough to know what is possible and what is not. But your contribution will come from staying in a city and working here and going to villages for intervention, not by staying there and doing what a villager can do better."
Travelling in Madras was difficult without a vehicle and so I had purchased a motorbike. The map seemed to say that Nemeli was quite close to Madras and so I decided to go there in my motorbike. I went to Nemeli all right, but there was no Kamaraj Memorial! After some difficult moments, I found it was a different Nemeli (there are 3 Nemeli within a radius of 50-100 kms). Then continued the journey and about 4 hours later reached the correct Nemeli. Asked around for Damodar and Anabazhagi and found them in one village just finishing up their TB camp. After initial introductions, they took me to another village and showed me the health programme and the activist etc. I was more curious about them, than the programme! What was their background? Why are they volunteering like this? What motivates them?
It was a pleasant surprise to see so many village volunteers - Viji, Koki, Anbu, Alice, Damu, Kanadasan, Neelamegham, etc - from financially poor backgrounds, planning and making the decisions. Their confidence and ability can easily disturb our notions of village and villagers. The next few weeks were spent in trying to understand the structure, how things worked and what motivated the volunteers. The answer was right in front of me from the beginning but I had difficulty in accepting it. They were volunteering just the way I was and for the same reasons - social change, thrill of being a part of a mass movement, contribution to society, a clear conscience. The reason this has not happened in other NGOs is because they are often led by middle class leaders. The voice that the village volunteers really have in decision making is very small (even in cases where technically they have a voice). They are not allowed the space and freedom to try out their own ideas. Their ideas strangled, they do not feel the organisation belongs to them and become isolated from it. By ensuring a democratic set up, with the village volunteers actually possessing the power to reject ideas suggested by the state and district leadership, the TNSF has managed to develop a large cadre of village volunteers. There are also other reasons (monetary and non-monetary incentives) by which volunteers are drawn and retained. But these reasons are not primary - they build on the two reasons mentioned earlier.
Anyway, the next two months were spent studying the health programme in Nemeli, reading some articles on it, and working with the Taramani and IIT groups. I was still looking at the overall picture and could not get into any details. I worked on the TB programme but not for long enough. With Sundar, we had a visit to Ramanathapuram where we have a similar programme and that was useful in understanding the different components of the programme. Sundar had asked me to computerise the health data, which I tried to do. It wasn't very successful, except for teaching me how to use the data for analysis and the importance of weaning foods at the right age and what a big problem it was. Sundar and I also had a lot of discussions about the organisational aspects of the TNSF and the other programmes that TNSF is involved in. Though I was learning a lot, I was not able to see how I was contributing to the programme. I had not yet realised the importance of learning. Spending time with both Ramanujam and Sundar was quite interesting - they would point out so many interesting things to observe and reasons for them. Just being with them seemed like education - particularly for someone like me with no social science background, even the existence of certain ideas and ways of thinking was news.
I began to see the various aspects of TNSF very clearly. Different blocks and districts were trying out different ideas and approaches. What we term networking of NGOs and exchange of ideas was already being done to a large degree. Not just that, here was a group extending this idea to the government and using the government machinery and scientific institutions, as far as possible. Voluntary effort on a very large scale was also available here for everyone to see. They had seen a wonderful past with large mobilisations and still had fresh vision for what they wanted to do. Almost all the things I wanted to do, I was seeing being done. What is more, the organisation was democratic enough to allow new volunteers like me to try out my own ideas. Of course all within the general democratic norm that "one has the right to say one will do something, but not that this must be done by others".
I had come to India with the idea that I would find volunteers for AID both in cities and villages and form volunteer-groups, which can take up various projects and issues. At that time, my understanding of TNSF was quite limited - to me it was like another NGO. And most NGOs seemed to lack this volunteer base which I felt we could mobilise. It only after coming in touch with TNSF and recognising that people's movements like TNSF, NBA, Dalit movements, etc did possess a large volunteer base, did I realise that there was nothing new AID could provide in this direction. With this recognition, in my mind the need for separate AID volunteers and distinct AID intervention in villages vanished. The effort we would have put into developing a new organisation would be better utilised in strengthening the base that already exists. There are so many village volunteers who are looking for something to do, what is the point in going and starting something anew? Maybe in other states and districts in TN where TNSF was not strong, there was a case for direct AID effort. But certainly it made no sense to try and form alternate volunteer base and group in the places where TNSF was working. This was clear in my mind.
The scale of things one is speaking about blows the mind. Many people to whom I have described this have not really understood the actual scale of operations. I am at a loss to explain how the idea that TNSF (which works in tens of thousands of villages and has so many volunteers from different backgrounds) is classified along with 10 other NGOs (who work in 2-3 villages each with often lesser effectiveness than TNSF), sounds so foolish. When people tell me that I should not be closed or should work with or learn from other NGOs, I don't know how to react - it is not a question of counter-arguments, it is a total blindness to the scale of things. It is the way government officials laugh at us when we do 'one model school' (putting in a lot of money, resources, people-power and highly 'educated' volunteers) and claim it as a model for other government schools (which number is tens of thousands and which have access to none of these resources). When people tell me to learn fromNGOs, I am at a loss again to explain that NGOs are all pretty much the same - one NGO does something, all will soon follow suit. We don't need networking of NGOs (telling one NGO that another exits and does x,y,z). That already exists to a very large degree, even to more than desirable levels. One cannot learn very much from most other NGOs. Yes, from some of them one can learn - that too at the initial stages, after which nothing much to learn. Learning happens by doing and trying to question what we and others are doing and doing it differently. There is in fact a lot more that NGOs can learn from government programmes and from scientific institutions than from other NGOs.
I particularly land in problems with volunteers who suggest NGO projects in TN. I am also finding fault with the project and recommending rejection !! But what else to do ? NGO X working in 3 villages in Dharmapuri, NGO Y working in 7 villages in Thanjavur. Is TNSF working there? Maybe not right now - maybe we have not taken a block in Dharmapuri yet. But that is not because the base there is weak. It is because our 'state resource person' capacity to go and train is limited, it is because we still would like to test the programme further before expanding. It won't take long to go into a new block and start a programme in 30 village or 100 villages. The local contacts can easily identify the village volunteers - the point is to develop the capacity to handle the programme and do a good job of it. The NGO's project is not as good as what we are doing or can do in the new block. Its reach is also not very large. We will be going in there in the next step. So what is the point ofhurrying? Why not focus more efforts are learning the current programme and improving on it? Again the problem is the inability to understand the scale of operation, the inability to understand that when one is working in 1000 villages already, adding one more is not difficult - it is meaningless. Anyway, such an appreciation takes time and will need people to travel and meet volunteers from different blocks and to see the work in various blocks and districts.
Anyway to get back, efforts like in Taramani and in IITM, which were so far distinct efforts, I tried to link up with the TNSF. New efforts in TN that I would initiate would be integrally part of the TNSF. Of course while theoretically this was easy to say, there were two distinct organisations I was working in - and the volunteers of one did not know the other and were separated by large distances. So through different means - emails and reports, involving AID volunteers in helping TNSF work, procuring computers, education toys, books, etc - I have been trying to bridge the gap. Not very successfully I should say except for the AID-Madras group!
Based on these ideas and the experience of working with two similar organisations at the same time, I later wrote a note "Need based networking and nice based growth". If someone wants to see it, I can send it.
I had promised an NGO in Bihar, Samuday, that I would visit them and also the BITS Pilani students. A large of January went off in this. But this visit to Samuday, I could see was different. I had been involved in a community health programme implementation in the TNSF. Samuday has a programme like that. When I was studying their programme I was asking very detailed questions. I was looking at the differences between our programme in Nemeli and theirs. I was trying to see if there was something we could learn and incorporate. Without a taste of the practical difficulties of such a programme, this would have been impossible. Unfortunately, those who work on the field seldom get to review projects and those who review projects seldom get to work on the field. In BITS, I discuss the health programme we are doing. The students there had tried out the literacy classes and Smitha was going very regularly to the village to conduct classes for girls. She had become quite popular and we now had some trustworthy contacts. (Rather contacts who trusted us!) We tried to start some sort of health programme there. I was still "a man in a hurry". I wanted to do a lot of things and did not have the patience to wait. How would the training of volunteers happen? How would it be sustained? Was it possible to sustain this in one village? I knew these questions existed. But I brushed them aside. Somehow if the motivation can be generated, this programme could be implemented - was the feeling. And if this programme worked, the volunteers would be motivated enough to work harder on this and other ideas. I had under-estimated the need for trained resource persons, the need to convince people about the approach, the time and depth of training required. The only saving grace was that I had only seen this programme after it had been started, I had not yet seen how it was to be initiated in a new place, which was what I was trying.
All this while I was out of touch with AID volunteers in the US. I sent a few reports, but did not access emails regularly. I wanted to do something solid before contacting them. Within me there were a lot of questions and doubts and I wanted to answer some of them at least before writing reports.
Meanwhile Ravi had come to India and had come to Madras to meet me. After I returned from the Bihar-Rajasthan trip, I met him and we had a long discussion and he saw the efforts in Taramani and Nemeli. He also met a number of the volunteers at IIT-Madras. I had promised our volunteers in the US that I would come back after six months to meet them and if they needed stay on for sometime. This was the condition under which I was allowed to go to India in August 1997. The six months were up and I went back to the US.
The AID I saw after 6 months was very different from the one I had left behind - new volunteers, smooth systems, setting targets and systematically achieving them, different teams attending to different tasks - wow! The AID I had left behind had always wanted all this, but always ended up being disorganised. Now somehow things had changed. And I had thought only I had changed so much. Still the volunteers had not changed. We had a lot of discussions, a lot of fights for not keeping in touch, etc. These were the pleasant parts. Then we also had the "fellowship proposal" - I was feeling a bit queasy in the beginning about the whole thing. There was clearly a need for something like this, but I was a "beneficiary" here and it was being discussed with me in the room, with me on the email list etc and what's more I was expected to argue and defend the proposal! After sometime I got used to it. There were a number of other unpleasant arguments and friction between different volunteers and groups. The fellowship proposal brought out these tensions and after some mud-slinging, things cooled down. The Princeton chapter split from the rest of AID. But after a pause, they have joined Asha, which is very similar to AID, and so nothing much has been lost. I have since learnt that such arguments and fights are a natural part of growing up of an organisation, especially when it takes difficult and new decisions.
I travelled to about 18 chapters and "gave talks". This was quite interesting. I talked primarily about the TNSF and its work (or rather the parts I was involved in and knew) and Taramani. We also discussed a lot of development philosophy, the philosophy of education, health, etc. I sold a number of copies of "Between Living and Surviving". I had purchased a lot of books from the BGVS in Delhi which I asked people to read. I had met M.P.Parameswaran in Delhi and he had given me his contact number. He was coming to the US in April. I arranged his talk at a few AID chapters. Meeting him and discussing his ideas and particularly the KSSP experiment in decentralisation was a treat.
One good idea that developed when I was in the US this time was that of non-monetary support from the US volunteers. The TNSF would not accept monetary help from the US. But there were other things more useful which AID volunteers could provide. They were not as easy to provide as money, and so needed some push and a system had to be developed for these things. Particularly books, computers, software, science experiments, etc. Apart from shipping these volunteers could be involved in developing software for village needs, in developing new science experiments, writing articles for children's magazines, technology development and of course visiting and interning for sometime. Many of these ideas are still in the cold storage. Some ideas like shipping stuff (comps and Science toys) have worked. But other things have not.
Another suggestion that came up was related to sensitisation of volunteers in the US. Reading books, discussing ideas of development etc were suggested. A few people did take these up seriously, but no system or systematic effort towards this has begun - except the regular arranging of talks and video screenings.
I received a message from Sundar to come back to India for a meeting in Pondicherry on May 15th. (As Ramanujam had told me right at the start, Sundar is quite a persistent man!) After an aborted attempt to file the Income Tax forms for AID-US, I left for India on May 13th.
It does not make much sense to make the rest of the report chronological. All these things happened at the same time and continuity will be lost if I try to relate it in the order of happening. Instead, the focus will be the work and what has happened within one set of connected activities - particularly, what I have learnt from the experience.
By the time I had come back some of the volunteers at IIT had tried to organise a clean up campaign and some innovative learning classes at Taramani. Both ideas did not work out. Some of the volunteers had arranged funds for individual children's tuition. This later led to a problem - particularly of sustaining it and demand from other kids for a similar thing. Right at the start, I insisted that this should not be done for others. Later, when Ganesan and other volunteers from Taramani saw the problems it led to even in the few cases where we had tried it, they agreed it was a good strategy. Such individual child support makes sense when it is done by some unknown individual and in a very limited and silent way. It should not be done by organisations, particularly by organisations working in the area on other things. Anything free doled out can upset all other dynamics and local volunteerism. That does not mean, there cannot be any subsidy - but the subsidy should be such thatit does not de-emphasise local contribution. I have arranged loans for study, but very silently and through individuals - so it is clear that this cannot be done on a larger scale.
The tuition centers had stopped functioning because of the vacations. We tried to revive that, but knew it's potential was limited. I tried instead to focus on getting the Taramani kids to form into a group and organise the children into classes and make use of the NSS volunteers. We got notebooks and tried to see if something systematic could be worked out. I was quite busy with the other activities and could not devote sufficient time to this idea - anyway this also did not take off very well, though it did help to some degree. But we had in the meantime started a library at Ganesan's house and he was excited by the whole idea. Also I asked him to form a local association of volunteers. They called it Gandhinagar Munnetra Sangam (GMS). This worked out well. They mobilised a lot of young people in the area. They took up things like making petitions to the corporation, organising functions in the area, putting name boards, starting karate classes for girls, holding health camps, eye testing camps and providing free specs (donated by some local trust), tuition centers, running the library, etc. About 15-20 core volunteers began to develop in the area and they had weekly meetings to discuss and plan out things. I was generally keeping in touch with what was happening without actually intervening in anything. Since this was entirely their effort and within their perception and world view, they had much more motivation for this than for anything else I have seen.
Occasionally there would be problems within the group and they would discuss it with me. Also their vision and scope became limited t things they could see and do within Taramani. It was becoming clear that if they were limited to Taramani, they would not be able to develop their ideology or understanding further. Also seeing more people from their background do similar things would make them feel at ease and also motivate them further. The best thing for this would be for them to become part of the TNSF network - "TNSF-Taramani branch". I suggested this and asked them to discuss it. After sometime, they decided to form this and met the TNSF-Chenani district people, held an inaugural function and started it. Of course the name they have given it, GMS, is still used by them, but slowly the TNSF identity and a feeling of linkage with other TNSF activities is building.
This whole experience strengthened my conviction in what Ramanujam had told me earlier - that village or slum level efforts are best done by the local volunteers. They should do it not only because that is the only way it makes it participatory but also this the only way one can expect regular sustainable activity. Outside volunteers should only work through such groups. It may require a lot of convincing and discussion, but this time is worth spending.
The initial volunteer base at IIT we had built before I left for the US had grown much stronger while I was away. Apart from Mrudula, Ramani, Chandrika, new volunteers like Mashood and Pushpa were becoming quite active. But by the time I returned, the old volunteers had all left - Mrudula and Chandrika left IIT and Ramani left for Bangalore. I felt let down for sometime but not for long. Mashood and Pushpa seemed quite committed and soon we were together trying to build a new team all over again. We roped in a few more volunteers - particularly Venkat, Ramnath, etc. We also tried to make it hostel-based - each hostel to have a team which meets every week. I went to several hostels and we had meetings there. But this did not take off. After a few meetings like this, we decided that using IIT volunteers for Taramani tuition centers was both sub-optimal and impractical. Without these students, the Taramani work would not happen. (GMS and local efforts had just begun). And the IITstudents (or working volunteers) had very crazy schedules - they would drop all work during exams or heavy work-pressure. Anything that was regular would not suit something like this. Also, their ability and skills at teaching left a lot to be desired - their impact was therefore minimal. This both (the volunteers and the children) could see. If they could spend the time to read, learn, and stick on - they could have improved. But the patience required for this was also lacking. So I felt that it was best for them to support existing efforts by NGOs (or TNSF blocks) where they could make a contribution, but where the show would go on irrespective of their coming or not coming. Basically they were to act as NGO support service providers.
All volunteers (whether local or non-local) need to see success before they can proceed further. They can maintain their enthusiasm for some time without this, but not for long. Most field level programmes take at least 6-8 months before even a small degree of success can be seen. Most volunteers from villages or from slums have the patience to wait this long. Volunteers from well-off families in cities seem to lack this. They want to see results fast. Maybe this difference is caused by different speeds of life that they are used to. At any rate, one way they can see success or feel useful is by helping groups that are doing fieldwork rather than their doing it themselves.
All these ideas prompted us to change gear - instead of focussing on Taramani and initiating and running tuition centers ourselves, we would try to see how we could support existing groups and efforts. All this was fine, but what about more volunteers? We decided to host a movie - "When Women Unite". After deciding this, I made a list of all my contacts in Madras and called them up. We sent out emails to contacts in different companies, on the IITM film club list, made notices and put it up in all hostels etc. This movie was just after the NSS meeting. I talked to NSS students (80-100) about AID and TNSF and how they could help. After this was the movie - 75-80 people attended the screening - half from IIT and half outside. Most people liked the movie. It was very late, but after the movie we had a meeting for volunteers and quite a few stayed back for it - Saurabh and Prasanna I remember most clearly. This was on September 18th.
Then began regular weekly meetings and the plan of going to Nemeli every week. We organised a trip to Kandhili on October 2nd. Around this time in Bangalore, Ramani had contacted a few volunteers and they had formed a group. On the October 2nd trip many of them accompanied us, along with Kalpana, Mashood, Prasanna, Malini, Deepa etc from Madras. The main theme for the groups in Madras and Bangalore now became "support for the TNSF block teams in Nemeli and Kandhili". Prasanna particularly made very regular visits to Nemeli. Meanwhile we had also started a computer education center there and Prasanna and the AID-Madras volunteer could make a decent contribution there. There was more excitement for this programme than we had seen for the tuition centers. We also organised a large trip from Madras visiting on 25th October to Nemeli and did a survey of all the 30 villages. Volunteers from Madras and Bangalore collected cycles for Nemeli and Kandhili (the Madras ones were not verygood though), repaired weighing machines, tried to help with accounts, donation collection, computer training and repairs, hardware training course, etc. In some of these, they were able to help decently. But they could not fully grasp the details of the health or savings programme and so could not help with reviews and improvement in the programme itself. I tried to get them to understand the health programme better by discussing it and by giving them material to read. But reading just did not happen. Without a full grasp of what the programme should do and what it has actually achieved, they could not contribute towards improving it. Also because of the same reason, data collection and analysis work based on their visits was incomplete and not very useful. Expect Prasanna, others lost interest in this aspect after some initial enthusiasm - particularly because they could not see themselves as making any significant contribution to it. Though they did not leave completely - lack of time and other excuses became more common. Saurabh, Mashood
students and call meetings. Prasanna, Krishnakanth and many others left Madras and it was almost back to square one. Except that this time we had some more experience, a small core group within IIT and a set of activities with which we could start, and a lot of contacts and goodwill and visibility within IIT.
When I look back, this idea of college students working with a block close by, visiting it regularly and supporting a local team there, still makes sense. We should have carried the arguments, which led us to this conclusion, a little further. If the students have no patience with field programmes, then the same will hold true for any other thing that requires them to study and learn before they can help. Therefore they can only help with things which they already know and are familiar with. Asking them to help with computers (which they knew something about) worked well. Asking them to learn about health and then help did not. We are now trying to focus on individual talents and interests and match them to programme needs. This is difficult thing and needs a lot of time from some of us, but hopefully it will work well. At the same time, learning about programmes and issues is important - otherwise the volunteers will not grow and their usefulness will be limited. But the learning has to make sense by itself - not for helping a programme. Say, doing a project study for a report, making a presentation in a conference or preparing for a debate - primarily an intellectual exercise with some field study.
I should mention in all this the silent role that Dilip Veeraraghavan (a professor at IIT) played. Apart from getting us access to IIT facilities - CLT, rooms, etc - he also tried to rope in volunteers and gave the whole effort a degree of legitimacy that helped it grow. He also kept pushing us on to newer ideas, particularly sensitisation of students to various social issues. Whenever I felt a bit down, I would go and discuss with him. Apart from this, providing us access to the NSS students, to different social workers like Palaniswamy etc, helped quite a bit.
While all this was going on, there were people (Kalpana particularly) who asked me to defend the work AID and AID-type efforts were doing. Their argument was:
"AID is mobilising students and professionals. Most of them come from Brahmin (or near Brahmin) upper middle class families, work in MNCs and big corporations. Traditionally, this section has been the oppressor. The views that this section holds are generally anti-poor and anti-women. Views like:
The people who come and join your efforts come from this background and have internalised these ideas very strongly. Through our efforts, we are actually trying to undo this cultural damage and mobilise people against exploitation and oppressive ideas. The people who join you, come because they want to "help" others. They don't see their own views and ideas as problems. Without a change in their perception, their "help" will do more harm than good. How are they going to be useful for the movement? Won't they just come and reinforce these dominant ideas of poverty and do some charity and go back? With the resources at hand (power) - money and status etc - they will be able to easily take control of the work the villagers are doing and misdirect the agenda. This leads to the politics behind funding agencies and donors. By making 'large' donations they feel they have done their part - often ignoring the fact that they are able to make this donation, precisely because they have exploited the poor (directly or indirectly). The charity and 'help' that they do tries to hide this exploitative relationship under the cover of generosity. Such help therefore generates only dependence and never empowers people to fight for their rights and against exploitation."
My response to this was/is: "I agree with the basic argument you put forward. But you and I come from this section also. We have been able to fight our perceptions to some extent. I agree that this is difficult to do for the entire section. But those people, whom we are able to sensitise, come with the confidence and resources (hopefully not arrogance) that their privileged background bestows on them. Once sensitised, they will be able to use this access to resources, talents and contacts (therefore power), to help the movement against exploitation. To prevent people from misusing this power we can limit our activities to those in which the village and block volunteers' decisions are final and all work done by these "intellect-workers" are done through them. Also, we will not take large donations from a few rich individuals and corporations, and instead focus on tapping the small resources that large number of people can contribute. Such a change in perception and understanding will not happen by itself - it has to be developed. This has not so far been our focus, but can become. In fact, even simply for the sake of effectiveness, it is becoming important that our volunteers have an ideological understanding of poverty, its causes and how it can be fought. A consensus on this and developing such an ideology will itself involve a lot of sensitisation to various issues and to the exploitative reality of our world. Through study projects, awareness campaigns on issues, debates and reading groups, we can try to achieve this in part. Also, there is a need to do this - if more and more people from this 'elite' section are sensitised, they can soften the opposition to movements for social change from the elite sections and also increase access to resources that otherwise remains closed for the poor."
A number of such discussions helped me place this work of mobilising students and professionals on an ideologically stronger footing. I began to see that the main task ahead was changing social consciousness - whether we were working amongst the poor or the well to do. Our projects, efforts and activities (though meaningful and important in themselves) should be tools and techniques to achieve this. Even earlier, I had found that volunteers with an egalitarian outlook were able to help much more than volunteers who tried to dominate or 'tell villagers what to do'. Being conscious of our unjustly privileged background and recognising how our ideas, values, beliefs and worldview are formed will make us more egalitarian, and therefore better suited for a movement for social change.
After this, I tried to discuss this with the rest of the volunteers - unsuccessfully, except with a few individuals. But we then hosted a movie 'In the name of Ram', which took on the issue of communalism head-on. This created a furore in IIT. Many people began to say that 'AID was becoming political' and asked 'why AID should take such stands'. Our volunteers did a good job arguing with different people. The whole exercise generated a lot of healthy debate on communalism. The point is that one cannot claim to be working for the poor, help a little and support ideas that harm democracy and the poor much more. One effect of this was AID became well known throughout IIT. Some people who had so far not expressed interest wanted to join. But the most important effect was on our volunteers and their own understanding of communalism. Dilip again played a silent but important role in this. After this, exams intervened and we could not proceed with our usual activities - we tried a survey to enlist volunteers during the vacations, but it was at too short a notice and did not succeed. Only thing we could actually organise before the vacations, was a hardware course that Saurabh offered, which was quite useful. After the long vacation gap, when we met again, many volunteers had left Madras.
The above experiences (and other general organisational principles) slowly drove home a few other important points about organising college students (maybe true more generally for the city based intellect worker section). (For more details, see my notes on the students for social change college programme - Appendix).
We have started this effort with all seriousness in Madras. I am right now fully involved in this work and have slowly withdrawn from other activities so that more time can be devoted to this experiment. One of the important things started, as part of this effort is the Encounters Conference. Here college students do projects with the help of a 'guide' on various social issues and present their study in the conference to be held on Feb 5th and 6th, 2000. Other activities (some started, some starting) can be seen in Appendix. Of course all this involves a lot of organisational work - going to colleges and talking to students, calling up, developing a core team to work within a college, developing the teams capacity to take initiative, etc. We have a small team shaping up here in Madras, which is taking on all these activities.
Getting people from cities to go to villages has been easy - but to gt them to go regularly and on their own initiative has been the main problem. It is so many months since Prasanna left for Germany. But even now the Nemeli volunteers still speak of 'the days when Prasanna used to come every week and help and how useful it was.' Everytime I hear this, I get reinspired to work on this idea and make it a reality. Ultimately, real learning will happen only on the field by regular sustained visits. There is no other way one can realize how brutal malnutrition can be, except by seeing over and over again in every household 'normal-looking 6 year olds' who are actually 10-12 years old. There is just no other way one can internalize and recognize how prevalant Cerelac is (used in small quantities as if it is a tonic) and how bad it is for the poor child's health. There is no other way one can see that supplementary feeding by the 4th month is such a big problem. Learninng and reading do help and can make one very effective - but it is complementary, not a substitute for actual sustained field visits and work.
The organisational details of the TNSF and my introductory work with it etc, I have related earlier in the report. The friendship (almost like a large family) and egalitarian outlook within the organisation also I have discussed earlier. But these alone do not constitute a movement. A strong ideological basis for change is necessary - a critical understanding of society, its problems and how they can be addressed. To this we now come. In a large movement, one cannot expect everyone to have the same understanding of what we are upto. I am writing below some of the main points of the TNSF ideology (at least for aspects I am involved with) as I see it:
How are we going to operationalize these ideas? The 50 block plan that a lot of people in the TNSF are working on today is one attempt to do this.
(There are other attempts within the organization to do this in different ways. But my work has been primarily with this 50 block plan and so I will describe it in more detail.)
The 50 block plan has the following goals:
I have been involved with some parts of the plan - particularly the health, savings and library programmes and also to some extent with the village information centers, computer education centers and to a lesser degree with the agriculture and education programmes. The next section instead of focussing on ideas, plans and ideologies, will describe the work done in different areas.
One thing we are clear about - People who think health for all can be achieved without social justice, equality, and addressing poverty don't know what they are talking about. But this does not mean nothing can be done till then. This is our starting point. Our health programme therefore looks at helping people address their basic health needs as far as they can. At the same time, it tries to discuss the critique of current health systems and services and the changes needed in them. It also tries to use this chance to mobilize and train people for local development planning (on health).
So what exactly is this programme ?
Basically - in each village there is a health volunteer who is trained on basic health care - preventive, promotive and curative aspects. She maintains a register of all the people in the village (or about 200 houses), all the children, and also all pregnant women, marriages, births and deaths that happen in the village. She visits the children and talks to their mothers about nutrition, diseases etc and how within her constraints she can improve her child's health. She also talks to preganant women, newly married couples, and also provides medical (curative) advice for simple ailments. She also focuses on women's health issues. Apart from these services - which don't require anyone else apart from herself and maybe to some degree the Village Health Nurse, ICDS (nutrition mix) ayya, and a bit of local support team - she also provides referral services (for cases she is unable to handle). Apart from these, she helps organize camps for detecting TB, Leprosy patients in the village and follows up their treatment strategy. She is trained to (though not yet started work on) look into village water and sanitation requirements. She with the help of a 10 village programme coordinator also takes classes on women's health and women's rights to adoloscent girls (in schools primarily).
Apart from all these activities, she also organizes a health committee in the village - a bunch of local volunteers and particularly women whom she trains on these basic health aspects and whose help she takes to do the work described above.
But health is not the result of just medical or nutrition advice. Health is closely related to other feelings of well-being. So things like income, savings, social support, literacy and equity are also needed for health (apart from the fact that they are anyway needed). So, the activist organizes savings groups for women to save and get emergency loans when they need it. The savings groups meet weekly and also discuss inividual and community problems, read books and newsletters and try to form a support center for a number of activities. The health activist also tries to coordinate a local library with a numbre of empowerment oriented books (and also story books).
The block volunteers provide support to the village activist, visit her regularly and train her. They also run a support center for women victims of violence, organize quiz programmes for children, try to form volunteer branches in different villages, organize mass programmes for women and on particular issues. They also raise funds to support the programme. (A computer center, tuition centers, etc may be other activities that the block volunteer could be doing - as a means of raising support).
Of course what I have forgotten to mention is that, the health activist is not paid even one paise. She does this work voluntarily on a part time basis. The point is if she spends 2-3 hours every 2-3 days, but regularly, she will be able to actually make the difference we are hoping for.
All this is a lot of work - and this is the most ideal situation. In most cases only a few of these activities happen, though we are trying to slowly get all the things in all the villages. But at any rate, the question can arise that many other community health programmes do all these or at least a part of it. So what is new here?
I won't bother to highlight the differences between this programme and the other camp based approaches etc. The difference is obvious even for a casual observer. There is an ideological difference between this kind of a community based programme and usual camp-programmes. Here the belief is that people can handle their own health. Doctor is not necessary. The idea is to change the commonly held notions of health care. It is also a demand to restructure the medical profession. The usual programmes on the other hand see a mass of people with bad habits, who need charity and education. They see a doctor as 'knowing' what to do and invite him/her to come identify the problem and provide solutions. We see that doctors have a lot of problems, wrong ideas and knowledge and need 'education' themselves. They particularly know very little about the patients background and don't know how to advice cheaply and effectively.
But there are a number of community health programmes with local activists, who have pretty much the same philosophy. Having come later, our programme has learnt a lot from many such programmes. But there are differences:
My work in this programme :
I primarily worked with the Nemeli, Kandhili blocks in Vellore district and with volunteers in Ramanathapuram district. These are the old experimental blocks where the programme was on even before I joined TNSF. After that the programme was initiated in 7 other blocks + a few blocks in Kanyakumari - I have been involved with them from the start.
After my initial longer stay period in Nemeli block, I did not stay in any one block for long. I would often go to help with some part of the programme and then travel to another block, etc. The main tasks I was involved with was:
The only way to set direction in programmes that are conceived of by outsiders, and implemented by local village volunteers, is a combination of training and review - this is something one will see in TNSF work again and again. But this, though useful, is often not necessary when the village or block volunteers initiate and implement the programme. this is because the tools to judge the programme they already have.
In Nemeli, Kandhili and Ramnad, I conducted a number of reviews. Whether the volunteers benefitted or not, I learnt a lot. Also, I found that even if the volunteers did not take my suggestion, or it failed, they did appreciate the fact that someone was taking an interest in their programme, and trying to help. I also tried to develop certain format by which they could do the review themselves - but it did not catch on. Maybe because it was not as useful as an external (to block) review.
But finally, real sustenence will come only when something regular can be set up. We thought of a way to raise sustained donations in the form of monthly pledges within the block and outside. This was tried out and many people did pledge, but the inability to organize systematic collection made it a problem to continue this. There is also a feeling that fund-raising should itself be meaningful. So 'selling books' and raising funds is seen as more useful than just collecting donations. Selling 'sattu maavu', 'organizing slide shows in schools', etc are all seen as work giving money and therefore sustainable and useful. No one has seen money actually being raised systematically by regular monthly donations and so it is seen as improbable and if possible as draining away a lot of volunteer time from more useful activities. Anyway, all these factors together prevented the idea from coming to fruit.
Since it is a matter of funds, the question arises 'why cannot AID/Asha etc or Bangalore/Madras volunteers group' support the programme indefinitely?
Of course the simple reason is that TNSF does not generally accept foreign funds. The question of how sutainable is AID funding, arises. And also the question of how many places can this actually happen comes up. And finally the question is whether this will enable the group to function independently or will they become dependent?
But these are less important points. There is a more fundamental reason which is recognized by the leadership even if not voiced so clearly. TNSF is not trying to build a paid-staff-doing-some-work kind of organization. The idea is to create a base of really committed volunteers, willing to make larger and larger 'sacrifices' in the struggle for social change. The money a project brings may not be much - say Rs. 750-Rs.1000/month. Only committed people will come to work at this salary. But the work is hard, and after two years, there is a lot of slacking. Some volunteers lose the committment and drive to work and often run into problems with others.
The 'programme-funds-are-ending' situation offers a chance to restructure the entire programme. New people with interest can be inducted in, old people who want to leave have an excuse (no money - have to raise it yourself), new structures can be developed. Now that the volunteers are trained and know what to do, the programme can be structured such that they get money from their work (instead of a fixed income). The more they work, better is the income - like an incentive, but again the amounts are so small that these terms misconvey the real sense. Only the really motivated continue under such conditions. And with them we can make a fresh start - with new motivation continue the programme and thereby actually produce good results. The others help as part-time volunteers. Such is the general sense of the argument for local fund-raising.
More on it cannot be written - it is a complex argument with a lot of room for counter arguments. But it is true that self-sustenence will require the volunteers to not only work hard, but work smart and to involve others in the programme, and to convince the people in the block that this is a useful programme - so forces them to interact with more and more people (at the block and district level) and draw them into the programme. And of course the motivation and fearless independence this generates should not be underestimated.
Whether it is possible is yet to be seen. It has survived one year in this haphazard manner. One idea which is seriously being tried out in these blocks is the linkage with savings group. The MALAR model for savings groups where half the interest generated by the loans from the savings groups goes towards supporting the expenses of running the programme is being used in these 'health' blocks. Each full time activist (coordinating 10 villages) is expected to start a number of savings groups in addition to her health work - she can then draw some income from the savings groups. Of course the SSG are required for more effective programme and money comes from good running of the group and therefore visibly from one's own work. This is an added incentive for better running of the programme. The problem is of course that not all districts are able to pull themselves together to organize the SSG network and give it a push. Also, in the initial stages the money does not come in as easily. And it is never so high that other programmes can easily ride on its back.
I had a suggestion which is being considered and if approved will be sent to AID. If the SSG network at the ditrict level is given an outside loan of Rs. 4-5 lakhs (at 6-10% interest), that will generate an income of Rs.4-5 thousand a month which is good enough to run an additional programme. This satisfies the constraints placed earlier - the salaries come from work (because it is the interest which is generated only if the group meets and functions well), it is sustainable and can be replicated on a large scale.
(This amount is in addition to the regular interest on the loans from the savings of the women. This loan can be got from a bank or from a group like AID or Asha. For AID/Asha also this will be a useful project - self-sustaining by definition and the prinicipal is never lost, forget misused. Others (particularly Franco and Sundar) had made this suggestion of an AID-Bank at the AID-India conference in Chennai, Jan 1999.)
Of course all this does not mean that outside donations are totally out. On the contrary, if a local (Indian city) group in a college or some professionals in a company can raise money and support one block with funds, and other means of support(cycles, material help, regular volunteer visits, review, etc), that will really make a lot of difference. It is a lot easier for the college group to raise the funds and it can support the programme in a variety of ways. This is something I have been trying, so far unsuccessfully. Even the group at IIT-Madras (or Bangalore), for all their talk about helping Nemeli (or Kandhili) and raising funds being easy etc - have not been able to actually do it.
To put the record straight - some of them like Prasanna did actually go very regularly and was perceived as being useful. Somethings we tried and learnt the hard way - particularly 'data collection' by college students. Being so new to the programme, this idea totally failed and produced junk! But some ideas did work - getting cycles to Nemeli and Kandhili, helping with hardware and software support, slide projector to Kandhili, visit by Kandhili activists to Bangalore, etc. We are trying - we are hoping that each city-college group will ultimately support one block team and work with them on several fronts. But this is still only a part support - local resources are a must in any case for effectiveness and actual sustainability. Once they start something like that, then we have to look at ways to sensitize them on issues, to get them to read and understand the programme and how they can help much better.
Of course, we did not take into account cash flow problems, problems of due collections and time management involved in that, we also did not take into account the bad selling capacities of the activists. Anyway, we did not even have to come to these problems - the idea just did not take off. The volunteers tried to sell very unsystematically and also did not collect dues. The profit calculations for things aactually sold did work out as expected, but not much was sold, and the effort was quite a bit!! Anyway, I had got Anbu home to get trained in soap making, phenol making, surf making etc from my grandmother. At this time my other grandmother died. Anbu helped with some things needed then and went with my grandmother to learrn these things. I also gave a loan of Rs.2500 from AID-India for purchase of raw-material and to overcome initial cash problems. 7 volunteers had already started the sattu maavu preparation by putting in Rs.100 each. This money added to the exiting Rs.700 pool. But anyway, it did not work out very well. The idea is still worth trying, but with serious modifications.
As Sundar had pointed out, profits in these enterprises cannot be very much. As it is a lot of people are trying many things within the economy. To make profit, something like this needs a special niche. Why will this work? Why haven't other thought of this? What new resources or tehnology are we bring in to this enterprise, that is not locally available. Almost invariably, local optimisation has been done by the local people - there are so many of them and they have had such a long time before us and are much more familiar with the area and are all the time thinking about ways to earn a living. If we can still come up with new ideas which they have not come up with - then they must be idiots. Since we start with the belief that people are smart, this cannot be.
New technologies, hard to access resources, etc can be good advantages - but without such advantages (or macro-economic planning), it is difficult to get enterprises off the ground. Niche markets and enterprises are possible - selling bags because it is a good cause, access to a person to carry books and material to the US free, donations of computers, or access to 30 village volunteers in different villages and a system of regular meetings, free training that is otherwise difficult to get locally - all this can be a niche, but something like this is needed. This point is something we all need to learn when we deal with enterprise projects - they are very tricky. Loan and training ARE NOT THE PROBLEMS. Ideas and discipline are. Even more, niche market and value addition are important. Without these the enterprise will not succeed. Even with these it may still fail.
Later, Kalpana came and helped start a number of groups. I envied her ability to actually translate ideas and programmes into reality - to conduct long, systematic, (loud) and detailed training programmes without missing one point that needs to be conveyed, to tirelessly go from village to village, to drill procedures and steps into people's heads, to argue and argue a point till the women are completely convinced, to communicate and emphasize key aspects and to stick to a job until it is actually done. And apart from these, the way she could relate to our volunteers, chat with them, make friends, find out and remember all family details and develop a closeness with them, also made me feel a bit jealous. Unfortunately for me, today, I still envy her for all these qualities :-( And what's worse, she came into the health programme much later than me, but quickly read up a lot more on it from the programme books as well as a lot of other books and material. And what she has absorbed, she remembers and uses in all her trainings, making the training very effective and informative. This is also the reason she has been able to introduce new aspects into the programme effectively. The willingness and drive to learn all the details tirelessly (and new ones as well), the confidence that the ideas will actually work and the ability to focus until they produce results - I guess these are qualities that make a successful and effective person. The lack of such people is the main limiting factor in expanding the programme or starting new programmes. But, sometimes it leaves me wondering, how can a person go on like this? Doesn't she ever feel unsure of herself or doubtful? Surely, she must - she has always raised questions about everything, doubted it, looked at it from different angles - also it is part of her training as a social scientist at JNU. So doubts she must certainly have. How does she manage to continue with the same spirit inspite of these doubts? How come they don't cripple her action?
Even as I am writing this report, I am very conscious of a large number of failed ideas and attempts. Tried this - failed. Tried that - did not work out... Sometimes I wonder whether it is because I am unable to focus on a topic for long enough to get it going. Maybe. Or possibly, it is because I am jumping into action, without putting in sufficient thought, or learning from others experience. I think both are true to some extent. One task for me for the future is to learn to stick to a job for long enough, though other tasks seem very inviting and useful.
The other activities in the area of health that I was seriously involved in were:
Right now, the programme is on in 7 blocks of 60 villages each (with UNICEF funds), 3 blocks informal in Kanyakumari (non funded - some support from these 7 blocks provided to it), 30 villages each in Nemeli and Kandhili (old), and in about 50-60 villages in Ramnad. In all, about 700-1000 villages are being affected by the programme so far.
My role has primarily been helping with some of the training and planning. Kalpana has been travelling to all the blocks along with other state resource persons to provide block level training. I have accompanied her on some of these training rounds. Accounts maintanence has been my main work here, and some small organizational details, preparing some register material, organizing a poster workshop, etc. We also contacted a doctor Rakhal Gaikonde for our college programme, and he is getting involved in this programme very seriously.
The savings movement alone (without the health component) is happening in many other districts - since it is a non-funded activity.
Apart from these, the programme has been running in Bihar (120 villages) and in UP. In about 23 blocks in UP and 11 blocks in Bihar the programme is just being initiated. I am not doing anything on these fronts - but just added this point to give an overall perspective.
Through these 700-1000 villages, we reach about 2-4% of the TN population (the poorest sections). We initially started with 0.2% of the population. If this new stage works out successfully, we will expand to about 20% of the population of TN and simultaneously to about 2% over the rest of the country. At 20%, we will have enough strength to initiate policy level changes and seriously bargain with the state.
These libraries are also planned as information centers linked to the block level information centers (see the section on village information centers below).
Panchayat decentralization of power alone is enough is the argument of some with which we do not agree. Village volunteer teams deciding action plans (not just at the block level) are definitely something we must graduate to. There is no doubt about this. We cannot be focussing our effort at the village level and have block level planning. Only a village team doing village work can be sustainable in the real sense. But this is easier said. Such decentralization has many components - decentrlization of knowledge is one pre-requiste for effective decentralization of planning and power. Through the block level programmes we are doing this in part - we have to work at the next level simultaneously to make sure this can be done at the village level. Clearly decentralization is needed, but not sufficient by itself - there are local power struggles and locally powerful will take control. There is a need to develop structures at the local level also which stands in opposition to the local power interests and then use it as a base to decentralize. Without all this, decentralization will not yield the changes desired.
Pune - We had a health training for Science Forum Teams in a number of northern states - Maharastra, Rajasthan, Haryana, etc. It was a 4 day workshop and Sundar conducted it. A number of other resources came and helped. I got the chance to see the big shots in community health - Ananth Phadke, FRCH people, someone working on Drug Policy, etc. Also met a number of other NGOs and activists in Pune area - Joy and Suhas, Kulkarni, BAIF, Deshpande, etc. It was my first camp and felt really good. After that I left for Bombay to meet Ravi and Aravinda and Kaduchiwadi village visit - discussed later.
Jaipur (with Geeta) - I went to Jaipur for A DST presentation of the health programme. This idea of an annual all projects review - where all the NGOs get together and hear each other's work and comment on it - is really good. Lots of things can be learnt and real networking happens. Anyway, the presentation went off well - I also submitted two projects (unfortunately, both did not get approved). After the presentation, we went to BITS Pilani. About this written later. Also went to Delhi and we had a lot of meeting with officials and 'experts' - met the DST people and discussed some of the projects, followed up on some funds, installments, etc. Met the DOE people. Met Ajit Singh (a real expert on handpumps) - he gave a us lot of material for our information center.
Delhi (with Kalpana and Kanchipuram Viji) - Kalpana and Viji presented the model health programme (for developing modules on women's health and intergrated medical kit and for a module on violence against women and mental illnesses) for Kanyakumari and Kanchipuram. Very unfairly, the proposals were rejected because we wanted to 'work on developing a strong women's movement' and because 'health cannot be done by village volunteers - it has to be done by doctors'.
CERD (Center for Ecology and Rural Development) is the R&D wing of the TNSF - particularly for health, rural development, enterprises, etc. Apart from the health interventions described above CERD has been focussing a lot on agriculture, water and land management, enterprises and village information services, energy - technology innovations and adaptations to make it people centered, ecologically friendly and rural based.
I will describe the different activities in brief and then get into some details of the work I was involved in.
Agriculture - Land, Soil, Crop and Water management
Agricultural intevention is basically an integrated combination of several interventions - in soil fertility, land use pattern, water and crop management.
The aims of our agricultural intervention are :
Finally, agriculture as primary production alone will not bring in higher incomes to the poor farmer. The farmer has to get involved in value addition activities - technologies to use existing and new bio-mass for energy, building material, secondary production and manufacturing sector is therefore an important goal. This value addition should be possible locally and in a decentralized manner and with little investment costs. The technology should take into account appropriate crop and tree choices and sutainability issues for the local context. Such technologies can make good use of otherwise 'useless weeds' and also fat growing, low water consuming, tough trees.
Benefitting the poor and small farmer, landless labourer and women through this intervention is the key issue. If all the above happen and only the rich farmer benefits or it increases inequality, it would be bad!
A number of inteventions in this area - organic and natural farming methods - have been done by many groups. But beyond these "subsidized" efforts, the ideas do not spread. The problem is not one of technique alone. The reason I say 'subsidized', is because either the method requires a long loss-period (what will the farmer do till then?), or it requires a lot of investment, a lot of technical know-how and support, etc. It is not something a simple farmer can easily learn and do. Chemical agriculture is "external-inputs-intensive", but organic or natural farming is very science-intensive. There are so many aspects and factors that need to be considered - crop choice, soil condition, plant growth process, local conditions, water availability, external inputs, etc. At each stage there are many options and the optimum choice requires a lot of knowledge and understanding. Structuring this knowledge in such a way that a farmer can learn it in stages (and can improve on it by his/her experience) is certainly possible - but has to be done. This is one requirement of a model agriculture intervention programme.
Also in many of these 'model' efforts, there is an initial loss - which a poor farmer cannot bear. If alternate approaches can be developed which structure the knowledge required and also develop a combination of techniques so that the farmer sees continuous profit from the beginning without a long loss-period, the possibility of spreading these ideas defintely exists. This is exactly our attempt.
A number of lab level and some field level testing of various soil fertility approaches have been tried out. What happens when we use different quantities of bio-fertilizers, if we use different quantities of chemical fertilizers, combinations of these, which bio-fertilizers work well, in what soil, under what rainfall and irrigation conditions, etc were studied. How does the soil composition and fertility change with changing the input conditions ? What about use of worms, insects etc to break up leaf and bio-mass into organic matter for the soil ? These have been studied under test conditions. This has also led us to intereact with different academic institutions, scientists and researchers who have worked on such things. Then came the step of testing this on a real farm plot - with farmers. How far are we able to convince them ? What are the economic problems they face? Do they end up in a loss for sometime using these new approaches? All this has led to the formation of afarmer-experimenter-network called "Kalanjiyam". The farmers who are willing to try out these ideas in their fields use this platform to discuss issues affecting them and to share experiences. Though many farmers are part of this, this network and experience is still in its formative stages.
A proposal is now on to form a soil fertility testing center. Any farmer can come here with his/her soil to test its composition and to get advice on various options (bio-fertilizers, organic manure, compost, etc) to enhance its fertility. The idea is to also manufacture and market bio-fertilizers as a viable enterprise, making alternative soil input feasible.
Water, Crop and Land Management
Ideas for these have been developed by various people with whom we are working - Bernard De. Clerk of Auroville, K.R.Datye, Joy and Suhas, etc. The problems are most pronounced in areas which are considered "waste land" - very little water, bad soil and no trees or plants. In such places the following ideas can be attempted:
There will have to be an external input of funds but the idea is to keep it minimal and for investment costs which can be recovered through long term bio-mass production (trees). Also, the work is labour intensive and so landless women's groups can be organized to take this up. Landed farmers will not find it attractive for the effort involved. But the women work not for wages but for a share of the trees and produce. It may begin with 50% share for the women and 50% for the farmer (whose land is taken). Then, new techniques are used to improve the women's share of trees. They bargain with the farmers for additional shares for doing the same to his share of trees. This slowly brings in more and more share of income to the working women labourers who otherwise being landless often get cheated of their share.
We are trying to develop various components of these ideas in different places. In Ramnad and Pondicherry the work is on better management of the existing tank irrgation systems and to reduce siltation. In Kallal and Sedapatti, the work is to try out model plots where women can develop 'waste lands' in the way described earlier. In Kallal, there is also a study to look at the factors leading to large scale environmental degradation. In Sedapatti, the idea is to demonstrate various enterprise models (agriculture being one of them) and then to get bank loans and provide training support to set up these enterprises. The idea in Sedapatti is to do this on a very large scale - impacting all families in the block who live below poverty line.
My work in this whole area of agriculture has been almost zero. I wrote up proposals for water systems management project in Ramnad (submitted to DST) and nursery and horticulture for Kallal (for AID - not submitted due to various factors). I also went to Auroville once to see their work, and then to Kallal to see the situation there. I met Joy and Suhas and also Datye a few times to discuss the integrated agriculture intervention in Sedapatti and Kallal. Just understanding the scope of activities took a long time. I also travelled with him for a few days to look at these areas and see what ideas for intervention were possible. That was a wonderful learning experience. But it is too detailed to discuss here and my own understanding has not developed well enough for me to be able to present the main highlights. Maybe after more reading and experience in this area, and a survey of work done by others, I will be able to present the ideas in a concise manner. What I found most interesting was the way one could use these techniques to bargain and argue with the farmers (making sense to them all the time) to share the produce, buy water, etc. Also I found the structuring of the technology in steps to make it economically viable and also to wriggle out more and more profits for the landless women, very interesting. But the integration of various available resources and technologies - for water harvesting, crop choice, soil and crop improvement techniques, etc - with the human organization is the most important lesson.
CERD has been involved in training and running model enterprises (in situ) in various areas - silk reeling, Poultry, Palgova making, Sattu Maavu, etc. These have primarily involved some technology intervention combined with training and running an enterprise to see if it works. In most cases, breaking even has been possible, but not making profit. One place where we get stuck is the ability to bear losses for 3 years. Three years seems to be the time it requires for the enterprise to mature, for us to learn the ropes, learn where cheaper alternatives are available, to capture the market and consolidate good ideas. But the cash flow problems till then often kills the enterprise. The ability to keep one's interest and stick on till then is also an issue. Another enterprise CERD has worked on are Animal Husbandary (in Ramnad). 1000 cows were given to 500 women in Ramnad by the district government and the women were formed into milk co-operative. The attempt has many failures andCERD studied the details of the enterprise - where and how it failed. 4 small neo-literate booklets were written based on this experience.
Ganini - Computer Education Centers
I wasn't involved in any of the above programmes. The one enterprise programme that I was/am seriously involved in are the computer centers (Ganini). The idea is to start block (30-100 village clusters)level computer education centers. These centers also act as vocational training and information service centers. The fees are reasonable and the programme is run in an enterprise mode providing some income to 3-4 people. But it also provides good quality computer training and other related services. The additional advantage is that profits from this can support block health, savings and other intervention programmes (apart from giving us free office space, visibility, computer access, and a place to host information services). I have been primarily involved in procuring computers from the US, asssembling them, installing it in the centers and providing some level of software and hardware support including organizing some training programmes in hardware (training done by Saurabh). This has taken up quite a bit of my time, though I did not expect it to initially. First, for a long time I was interacting with US volunteers to send us the computers - but the customs problems poured cold water on their enthusiasm. But at this end, the customs issues could not be sorted unless they sent the material. I met several people - one of my old friends from IIT, Siddique who is now the Deputy Secretary of Finance in the TN govt, the Dept of Electronics Finance in charge, etc. But it was not easy to get things going without concrete shipment from there. So a lie that the customs was ok and that volunteers should start collecting and shipping became necessary and it broke the catch 22 situation. I met Sundar (from AID-Boston) and discussed this issue with him and he began to work on collecting and shipping computers through people visiting. This became a simple and useful route and so far quite a few computers have been shipped this way. We are simulataneously working on getting the customs clearance for large shipments. But since ome organizing. With Saurabh's help, I learnt some of the basic things required and started purchasing parts needed to complete the assembly and assembled the computers myself. But it is taking quite a toll on my time - we have to work on developing some of sort of system here by which people will contact the shipment, or person bringing the computer, register the parts, find out more parts needed, purchase it (or ask for it through the next shipment) and assemble the computer. The opportunities here are many. The advantage we have here which the market does not is the large contact base both in India and the US, and the willingness of people to donate as well as carry computers/parts when they come to India. We should make use of these advantages and ensure a large and regular load of computers comes in for socially useful purposes - for schools in rural areas, for rural computer education centers, for information centers in villages, for easy networking and communication between villages, etc. Training and mobilizing a bunch of volunteers who can provide this sort of support, as well as on field support and training of village volunteers and computer education center teachers is the key work ahead in this area. I had initially started off on this work assuming this was easy and the IIT students will be able to help and organize this - but that seems more difficult that I thought.
Funds is also a problem in this area - we need money to assemble and buy the parts, monitors, etc. Even setting up the computer centers with just local money is difficult - an investment loan for at least a year is necessary and also a full time coordinator and technically qualified trainer (hardware and software) is necessary to train the teachers, provide maintanence services, etc. Maybe, if we systematise this whole effort, we could gt funds from AID for these purposes also.
Closely linked to the above Computer education centers is the concept of the village information center. I was put as the coordinator for this programme for one year starting May 1998 - April 1999. In May 1999, I opted out of this role, but continued supporting it in a secondary role.
The idea is bascially - restructuring information technology such that the poor can use it. The starting point is a philosophy of technology:
Technology per se cannot be not good. It is technology combined with its usage and the power it confers and on whom that can make it useful. Many new technologies favour centralization and control and are commisioned by the rich. These technologies take away the little control that the poor have over their lives. For example, genetically modified terminator seeds, or chemical fertilizers, or large factories, and huge dams. These technologies can be easily controlled by a few and therefore are. Information technology allows a lot of decentralization - but that does not make it immune to centralizing influence. Even today, a lot of the IT world is controlled by a few gaints - Microsoft, Intel,IBM, etc. Even the net gives only a semblence of decentralization. Left to itself the market will be controlled by the already rich players and they will develop more and more tools to control the industry. For example patent and IPR rules which are favourable to them, buying up successfulinitiatives and monopolizing the market, ability to introduce new improvements in steps to draw out more profits, capturing new markets by making them invest in such a way that they become slaves linked to future company policies, etc. How MNC supported forces lobby for important policy changes and concessions in the WTO, Patent rules and IPR, GATT, etc show how money power dictates poor countries to surrender their independence. For example, grant or often loan giving organizations - World Bank, IMF, USAID etc force countries to change their policies. The structural adjustment policy for example as a precondition for investment loans. These loan/grant conditions are not all that innocent - they are policies pushed by large MNCs and finance capital. The loan amount itself may be only a small fraction of the total input from the government (as in the case of the health budget in India), but they are able to use it to bargain for large changes in the entire structure and approach. For example, the National Telecom Policy allows only very large companies. Obviously the only source for such investment are rich MNCs - these MNCs offer the loan/investment under conditions which force the local company to buy costlier MNC products when equally good and lot cheaper Indian alternatives exist. Threfore the MNC benefits twice - sale of its products and a large investment loan and network under its control. The Telecom companies of course have to break even and need to have the maximum usage an rich customers and still there was a crisis which the government subsidises. Why should the poor pay for the rich? Why should only huge investment foreign technology be allowed by the national policy when cheaper Indian alternatives like the Wireless Local Loop exist? Why not allow small scale telecom entrepreneurs? This calls for a change in policy and also simulataneous focus on restructuring technology. This is the need in all areas. In the area of Information and Communication Technologies, there are several aspects - at the policy level, at the connectivity and hardware level and at the software/content level. We are interacting with people working at the first two levels - but the investment and expertise are far too mucch for us to directly get involved in (except on a test basis). But the software/content level is our main focus.
Today the internet has a lot of information - but nothing really relevant for the poor. Information relevance is not something that can be developed out of context. The web is relevant to different peope using it today, because the information relevant to them was put in there (by them or their representatives who worked with them) and they modified it according to their needs. The poor farmer or a village woman is today unable to access the net and even if she does will find it useless. The language is not hers, the content does not talk about what she needs to know, the information is not useful or relevant.
The market is busy with other people - it has no time to worry about these poor people who cannot pay for these information services. But we feel that such services can enhance quality of life, enable newer opportunities to reach them, allow them to compete better with the urban and richer sections. Since the market will not find this lucrative, it is our business to make this a market - to identify useful information sources and to develop software useful for different sections of villagers.
What information ? Two category of information:
Both kinds of information services have to be continuously upgraded as they are being used - only then will they become more and more relevant, usable and fresh. A system to note queries which cannot be answered and to update it, is required.
The idea is to develop these information packages (already a number of thse have been developed), and to put them on a block level computer (which will be a computer education center as well). People an come and access the information from the block center. Forms detailing the questions that can be asked have been distributed in some villages and will be done all over the block. Particular information users - school teachers, farmers, women's groups, entrepreneurs, etc will be identified and brought to the computer center to provide an introduction to the services offered. Some services are free and others are payed for. As the system develops, we also expect to keep developing more areas of information - one package developed can be easily modified to suit other areas as well and easily replicated therefore. Hopefully, this will generate sufficient interest for the market to enter - of course they will do a much better job, but there mayy still be new areas and newer sectionsof populations which need our help to develop information packages. A state resource center for this purpose can be envisoned at some time in the near future. Each information center should sustain on its own - with the income from computer education, information sale and also from other services like internet connectivity, email, software an DTP work, etc.
The question immediately arising is that a lot of this information can be put in book form - why use a computer? Yes, this is the immediate case for most information (not all) and will be done, but on a longer term, computers make more sense - in terms of replicability, searching for information, updating, communication, email and web access, building new information, multi-media, to make it marketable, etc. We are planning to put books produced through this information package producing exercise into village libraries (described earlier) nd these village libraries are also places to network the Block level information centers with the villagers.
My role in this: I am quite bad at software. But most people get confused when I say 'PhD in Electronics and Communications'. To them somehow electronics, communications, computers are all the same. Anyway that confusion and the lack of other alternate well qualified people willing to work on this programme, landed me this job! After the initial round of meetings and discussions, I began working on the health software. With some help from Sudhakar and Manoj (AID-MD) who developed some basic tables etc, I began to slowly learn th database package and simultaneously build the health software. A lot of field trials and travels to Ramnad to train the village volunteers there to use the software and to enter the data and produce the reports, etc things seemed to come to an end. It took almost 6 months to an year (of intermittent work). Meanwhile, I wrked with Dhanakarthiga, Murugan and Sundar on the Animal Husbandry package. I taught Murugan how to make html pages and Access database and he picked it up very fast and started doing most of the work. I also worked on developing some science education software, pest management (a small role in that), savings software (still incomplete), etc. With Sundar's help, I made some initial forms to test the software in Ramnad. I also met Ajit Singh to get the data for the handpump software. Meanwhile, I had to meet several people from the Dept of Electronics, Govt of India, which funded the project. We made several presentations to them and they linked the programme a lot and wanted to expand the scope of the programme all over the country. They also visited the field site a few times and I took them around.
But slowly I began to feel that I was not using my time properly in this programme. I was not able to put in my best, and that was delaying the work. Also I was unable to focus on the effort for long enough and did not like the work very much. I certainly did not like my primary focus being this programme. Somehow, I began to feel very distressed, and suffocated by this programme. In May 1999, I withdrew from the programme as a coordinator. Anyway, my main work on the health software was almost complete. I worked on that for some more time to finish it and helped with other information packages. The GIS based land and water management packages (much more complex software develpment) slated for the 2nd and 3rd years was anyway Raghu's work, and so my dropping out did not cause much trouble. I still help out now and then with some of the work in this area - but not as much as before. For example, to discuss some of the issues, to take the DOE people for the field visit, going toBhopal to discuss the Ganini education centers and also information centers or to make presentations, etc. I am also trying to read up and learn more about the policy issues in this area. I have given talks on this at several places - particularly on the history of IT and patent laws. I also tried to get the GIS software free from some of our volunteers in the US, but that did not quite work out well though we came close. We should still proceed and try to get it done.
On a personal note, this phase when I was moving away from the VIC programme was very disturbing. It was almost the first time I was saying a definite NO to a programme benefitting the poor. I had to learn to say no and it wasn't easy. We also had a number of discussions focussed around what was the most effective way one could contribute.
The other important area of intervention is energy. Traditional energy sources are non-renewable (including hydro power which is falsely claimed to be renewable). Nuclear power has a lot of dangers. Also all these are centralized power sources - it does not generate employment by itself, it also can be controlled easily by the govt and bueraucracy. Decentralized energy can provide more jobs, more energy to rural and remote areas, provide energy to poorer sections and also generate more employment opportunities and make rural decentralized enterprises viable and more profitable.
For this, solar power is important - but solar panels and storage etc is quite energy consuming itself and also a lot of investment. But nature has provided us with a way of tapping this energy - biomass. Can we use bio-mass (fast growing, naturally growing plants and trees) to genrate energy?
Such agro based energy is already being generated by local village enterprises - charcoal making from the naturally growing prosopis (thorny plant) for example. But can this be made more efficient? Can we in the process also empower the women who make this charcoal in Ramnad district and remove them from the clutches of money lenders and middlemen? This question needs a lot of work - technology identification, development and training. This is one area we can work on if there are people to help out.
One other project in this area is the Ipomea based power generation programme. Cauvery delta has a large number of Ipomea plants growing in the river. This blocks the river water flow. The govt is planing to use chemical weed killers to destroy these plants. But that will also destroy the ecology and the local people's livelihood. We have an alternate proposal. A Ipomea based electricity generator has been developed. We feel that 300 such 1 Mega Watt units can be established in the basin. Local people can be employed to cut the plants and feed the generators. byt the time they finish cutting their plot, a new bunch of Ipomea plants would have grown and they can start all over again from the start. At any given time, half the river will be clear and the water can flow easily. Therefore this will provide continuous employment and also continuous power suppy. These 1 MW plants will be decentralized, and can initiate and sustain a large number of small scale enterprises - making them viable and profitable. 300 MW is a huge power source - 1/10 of TN's power supply. And that too decentralized, renewable, giving jobs to a large number of people ! That will be a mini revolution in itself. More money to research such opportunities, instead of financing huge dams can then be lobbied for.
Is this possible? Will enterprises to buy the power open up? Is there really so much Ipomea? How fast does the plant grow? How efficient is the power plant? Can it run well for long periods of time? What is the maintnence cost? In short - a feasibility study needs to be done. This is what we are upto now. We are hoping a few AID volunteers interested in Technology development and adaptation will join this effort. Once the feasibility is proved, we can get state finance and bank loans to start the power plants and also kick start the local industrial base and opportunities.
My work in Education took a back seat during this period. There were lots of things going on in the TNSF in this area, primarily led by Ramanujam - but I was not involved with most of it.
A few things I was involved in were:
One of the main aims of many TNSF programmes is to ultimately change state policy so that large scale sustainable changes happen. Two areas of policy interventions I was involved in are:
The TNSF has a lot of people who work on science communication - primarily bringing out popular books on science and selling them. At one level, one can see all of TNSF's work as science communication - health, savings, enterprise or education. But the particular Science Communication work I am referring to is basically bringing out books, science magazines for children (Thulir in Tamil and Jantar Mantar in English) and selling them. Other activities in this area are slide show lectures, Science melas and hall meetings on science topics.
My main job in this area was getting subscriptions for Jantar Mantar and finding a few people to help with editing JM and also finding people to write articles for it.
I got onto various committees in the TNSF and also into the Executive Committee and samam, health, and development subcommittee. During this phase - first couple of months of 1999 - there were so many organizational meetings that we attended, I cannot even remember. It was a continuous meeting to meeting phase. But I guess the process is useful to meet people from all districts, to get to know others and also to reconstitute the main working committees for the new phase of the organization.
Meanwhile, right from the start I was trying to get new volunteers to join the TNSF. Most of these attempts were unsuccessful, as i always the case in such things. But a few people did join - Mr. C.S.Vekateswaran started helping with the TNSF office work very regularly. Prasanna to a good extent and Asha Rani, Saurabh and Mashood to some extent also got involved. There were a few stark failures on this count also - people who seemed to be very promising but who later had ideological problems and quit leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouths.
There were other odds and ends kind of work that I was involved in - Sale of books against Nuclear weapons, talks, discussions and protest marches, exhibitions, etc. Attending some of the Samam meetings, talks on education, on information technology, CERD planning meetings, etc were other activities. Each has some purpose, but all of them do not fit into a pattern, except that they provide an opportunity to get together and plan together. There were of course things like heping with software problems, accounting softwares, etc.
Since I was working with two groups, invariably linking up would arise. I had several rounds of discussions on how AID and TNSF can work together with Sundar, Ramanujam, Franco, TVV, Kalpana, etc on one side and with Ravi, Kiran, Sudhakar, Murali, Prasad etc on the other.
One set of activities was helping in non-financial ways - computers, books, toys and science experiments, software development, interns, volunteers, etc - all these required AID to develop systems (or 'modules') to be able to get and send or develop these things. I sent some general emails on these, and a lot more specific requests and ideas. Though not a large section within AID, a significant number responded well - many chapters took up these issues seriously and started organizing themselves to send computers, books, science experiments, translation support, etc. Some things like books, computers and science experiments have worked fairly well. Of course it is not yet very systematic - but this is a new direction and will need more time and doing.
The other linakge was volunteers - AID volunteers coming and working with the TNSF fulltime or significantly part-time. This I have been trying, without great success (except in the case of Prasanna). But even if a few come and join, it will be very very useful. So I will keep trying.
Finally, the opening up of the financial linakges is also important - for both AID and for TNSF. Both sides need to know about the other. This gap I hav tried to bridge. On the TNSF side, there are many who see AID as a friendly organization, not something which is trying to take over, or dictate the agenda. They see its current strengths and weaknesses, and also its potential. The same with AID side - many know see that TNSF is very much like what AID wants to do.
One thing that is still in the process is the 50 Block Plan or the broader 100 Block Development plan. The 50 block plan was initially conceived of for TN. But more generally it seems likely that we would like to do this on a larger scale all over the country - starting with at least a 100 blocks. A note on this is given in the Appendix. What the All India People's Science Network has to decide is whether the TNSF and other State Science Forum's can accept funds for this plan from AID and similar organizations. I feel that the close linkages that have been built by the exchange of information has been one of the factors leading upto this.
Ideological and Awareness Work
Goofs: There was one particular good from which got me into a lot of trouble - this was the interview I had given in Dinamani. I had talked about TNSF's work and also mentioned AID when the interviewer wanted me to tell him about it. Before leaving I told him very clearly that I have talked about two different organization and he should not confuse them. I also told him to focus on the organization as the work was not done by me, but by others. But the next saturday, this newspaper (Dinamani) carries a huge piece with me on the magazine page cover - completely telecoping AID and TNSF work - and since AID sounds so glamourous ascribes all work to AID. This created a big misundertanding in the TNSF circles - and it was only slowly much later that people forgot the incident. But I also understood how journalists are conditioned to think on certain lines - their constraints of making "news stories" and notions of what makes "news" colors their writing. Very casually (sometimes knowingly) they mis-write versions to make them more 'catchy'. I confirmed this through a few other instances of interactions with journalists. They are particularly prone to focus on individuals, instead of issues and organizaations.
I got the Auditing and Accounting done for AID-India twice in this period. Also the IT Exemption and Tax ID were other legal things done. The registration renewal for 1998-99 was also done and some changes in the by-laws required for the IT dept was also done. For getting some funds for AID-India, we tried to collect some donations. But that is not enough. So, I sent some books to the US to sell - so that the rofit from that could come here to be used in some of the projects we are working on. After a lot of questions, the project is grounded and the books stuck somewhere in the US.
On the AID-US organizational side, I have been trying to focus efforts on three aspects -
The other AID-US activities were meeting volunteers coming to India and arranging village vists for them. Working on the WHO videos (not very much so far except on email). Lots of email work both about activities there and activities needed for TNSF. I also visited and/or met several NGOs that volunteers wanted me to - PITON, Vijaya Didi, Sandeep Pandey, Green India Foundation, Vanavasi Ashram Trust, BCT, NBA, Kaduchidawadi, etc. Apart from these I have been reviewing a few projects that were received by some of the chapters. All these meetings take up quite a bit of time.
I was involved in organizing the AID India Conference and in printing its proceedings and also distributing its sales (though most of it is being coordinated by Ravi and Aravinda).
To help with some of my work in Madras and also to help Ganesan (Taramani) develop his interest in social-work, we employed him as a full time assitant for AID-India for a couple of months. During this time he learnt a few of the tasks and also started coming out and travelling. After some time, I found that an office space for him was necessary and also regular work hours became essential. Otherwise I would be travelling out and he was generally unemployed. At this time the UNICEF programme came up and needed a person in Madras. So I asked him to switch to that job as his focus. Developing his skills and making him a very capable person is one agenda for the future. He is quite committed and can work hard. Also he is interested in this kind of work and mingles well with our volunteers from different blocks. If he develops skills in various organizational areas, he will become indispensable.
Other activities, travels, visits and people met
A few other people/organizations I met or came in touch with at different times and in different contexts are Anita Rampal(Ekalavya), Ananth Phadke(Medico Friend's Circle), N.Ram (Frontline), Girish(BAIF), Kulkarni(Economist working on rural enterprise applications of IT), Joy, Suhas and Datye(water, land and biomass productivity), Mohan Deshpande(Adoloscent health - Pune), Vinay Kulkarni(Skin diseases), Krishna Ananth(The Hindu), Sandeep Pandey(Asha), MAYA (Bangalore), Vijaya Ramachandran(Jagriti), Shubamoorthy and Kalpana(Samuday), Home for the Handicapped (along with Srinivasan Krishnan), Gandhi Gram (in Dindigul), Center for Science for Villages(Wardha), Praful Bidwai(Jounalist), P.Sainath(Jounalist), M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation(for VIC programme in Pondicherry), P.Chandrasekaran (Tamil Nadu Foundation), M.S.Udayamurthy and Parthasarathy(Makkal Sakthi Iyakkam, Prakash(TN IT Secretary), Gowrishankar(TN Education Secretary), Allaudin(TN Health Special Secretary), Siddique(TN Deputy Finance Secretary - an old friend from college), Anandakrishnan(Former VC of Anna Univ), Vasanthi Devi(Formar VC of Manonmanium Sundaranar Univ), Sheela Rani Chunkath(Former Collector of Pudukottai, Director of TN MCH programme), some ministers, UNICE representatives, and other people. Of course, I also met a lot of volunteers from AID and Asha. In many of these cases, our interaction has been quite short, in some it has been longer. But either way, it is difficult to write in detail about each person and what we did, so I will skip it. Basically, if we need to contact some of these people for help, it might be possible.
For AID-US, I also visited or was visited by some people/NGOs and reviewed their projects - Katha (Gita Dharmarajan), BCT, Green India Foundation, SRI, Vanavasi Ashram Trust (Wynad), etc. I went to BCT a couple of times and met Dr. Parameswara Rao, Suresh, Gayatri, etc. I then helped organize his visit to the US (where he was instrumental in starting RIM - that I do not agree with the RIM agenda is a different thing). At one of the BCT meetings to discuss India's problems and chalk out a plan for Rejuvanation, I met Alka Parikh. We came back to Madras together. Alka has worked in various NGOs and reviewed a lot of projects. She is also a fun person to interact with. In a very short time, we became good friends. Whenever I got to Bangalore, I try to meet her. She has been involved in environmental issues and organizing people for quite sometime and has worked in Sewa. We had a lot of lively discussions. The total time we would ahve spent together is not much - but sometimes this is enough to strike a long and deep friendship. Anyway for me, meeting Alka was the most productive part of the BCT visit.
I also went to BITS-Pilani several times and met the volunteers when they came to India. The group there (particularly Smitha, Poornima, Sridhar and Mahesh) is really good and committed - unfortunately it is so far away and so I have been unable to put in the time required. But again these volunteers remain in my mind all the time, although my actual interaction with them has been short.
After one round visit to one of the villages near Madurai, I got hold of a few silk sarees woven by the villagers. I was trying to sell them through teachers networks in Madras. But I could not organize this well - though there was interest, people wanted more choices and also flexibility of payment in installments. Maybe if someone can focus on this, it may work out as a good option. This is also a good volunteer task for some middle class women-teacher-volunteers.
I have already written about the Dinamani goof up - but as a result of that a lot of people contacted me and met me. At one stage, I was flooded with Tamil letters I could not read and was meeting people from morning to evening. With one of the people, Pagutharivu, I went to Law College to meet students there. Even now, some people call me. This is a good lesson in how 'individual-heros' are created and become 'popular'. The media is willing to only project such 'heros' making 'sacrifices' and changing society and people buy that line easily. It is far more difficult to get journalists to write about issues, problems, ordinary people's struggles which actually make real changes. By praising 'hero-individuals', the focus shifts from the systemic questions and a false image of 'heros will change things' is projected. Anyway, after the Dinamani goof, I had an AIR interview (where I was much more careful) and also another interview by a student, Sunalini, which confirmed my Dinamani fears further. I also gave an interview for AID-Cincinatti Newsletter.
I also was part of UNICEF's TN State Committee on Adoloscents. I took Shanthi, one of our volunteers from Kandhili, to the first meeting. She totally floored everyone - that is what real field experience does to a person. Anyway, we could not attend most of the later meetings - we became busy with the other programmes. Anyway, such broad meetings are not very useful - each NGO wants to do what they feel like and the funding agency tries to push its ideas. On the surface things seem smooth, but really there is not committment to any of the ideas. Funding agencies feel that field NGO are very narrow and the field NGO feel that funding agencies are talking through their hat.
Other activitites - I gave a couple of talks at K.V.IIT (my old school), went to various colleges to talk and mobilize volunteers, arranged for fixed deposits for MALAR to get a bank loan (which the bank has still not released), sent requests for various items on AID-News (slide projectors, CDs, etc), attended Kanyakumari All India Samata camp for initiating the savings programme all over the country, and participated in the Millinium Dialouge meetings initiated by M.P.Parameswaran (and in TN mainly organized and coordinated by Vasanthi Devi.
I have one piece of advice for other people with similar situations like me who want to take up full time social activism. Make up your mind first. However kind and friendly your parents are, your views differ. There will be many different arguments which will be put before you - of duty, of security, of morals, etc - some hypothetical, some real and many imagined. the ability of parents to come up with a variety of creative arguments in this situation is really amazing. But if you are convinced, face these arguments logically and in a detached way. If you take them too personally, it can lead you to trouble and particularly to reverse your decision. Of course unless you are fully convinced, it makes no sense to take this work up full-time. Always best to volunteer part-time and slowly increase your time till finally you are convinced that you really want to do this full-time.
Why did I write this long report? Most probably no one is going to read it fully (or partly?). But the idea of a report is to help self-analyse one's actions - to see whether one is useful or not. I guess the idea behind sending the report to you is similar. For you to judge whether I was useful or not, and to suggest where I can make improvements. Of course, whether I take your advice will depend on whether I feel it is applicable in my situation - but still it would be good to read and understand your points.
But what are these judgements of "usefulness" you will be making? How do I make such judgements? Do we really need these judgements and what do they actually mean?
When I was in the USA and involved with AID there, this question would often come up. Are we useful ? And in particular, am I useful ? I would look at the work of many different NGOs and feel that at least something is happening and even if not the best, it was still better than nothing. But the question of my own usefulness, I would always skirt by thinking that this is all preparation for work in India and there I would be useful.
But, my hope that somehow in India this question will not arise was wrong. Our usefulness in India is less obvious than it seems from far. Most of our volunteers in the USA or in cities may feel that I am quite useful. Why? Why do not they have this doubt?
In the last one year, I think I have understood this issue a bit better. "Usefulness" is a psychological notion. Often we do not ask for what is the person useful for and to whom. When I write an article or send a report about certain conditions that I see here, I am 'useful' to you - as a communicator, a reporter - so you see me as useful. But am I useful in the field? One cannot say. Also, I may be reporting the work of someone else - but because I communicate it to you, the usefulness of the work gets transferred to me.
There is also another way this works - we see others doing things we ourselves are not doing. Especially, if what they are doing is defined (culturally and socially) as "good" and "sacrificing", we see their contribution as useful. This is especially so if they in addition also "inspire" us.
But none of the above ways of looking at usefulness or deciding someone is "useful" has anything to do with actual field problems. They have more to do with our own notion of "usefulness" than with any real sense of utility in addressing the problems. Rationally therefore, the ability to "inspire" or "sacrifice" are good tools which can make one useful (for example to organize people), but does not naturally make a person useful for just possessing these abilities.
Apart from these cultural forces which define usefulness, there is also a strong objective need to define "useful" work. As individuals in an organization, as organizations in society, we have the need to define our own area of work (implicitly or explicitly). The utility of our work is defined only within the larger context. We define the larger context to be useful and then look at our contribution within it. For example, a volunteer 'sees' that AID/TNSF is useful and looks at how he/she is useful to AID/TNSF. Activities like monthly mailing, collecting pledges, making posters, sending emails etc. get their meaning from "being useful to AID which in turn is useful to the poor". How does the volunteer know he/she is useful ? Because AID tells him/her.
AID itself gets its usefulness by defining "the work of good NGOs" as useful. So AID looks at ways in which it can contribute to NGOs and then feels itself useful. How does AID know it is useful to NGOs? Because they tell it. Since most NGOs ask for money, AID sees its usefulness there.
This chain of utility is a fundamental organizing tool in society - without it no structure can be built. If we look around, we can see this at work everywhere - in governments, banks, roads, factories, families, etc.
But there are two problems in the way this chain sometimes works.
If for example, AID feels it can raise funds, there is a drive to search for 'useful objects' which can use this money - NGOs asking for money therefore fit the bill.
We have to ask the question "Is my 'useful' object really useful and to whom?" Even worse - sometimes our useful object may be very harmful to the actual poor as is the case with many development projects. We should at least ensure this is not the case.
Therefore we get to the question - Are our 'predefined useful objects' (NGOs) really useful? I have a lot of doubts about that. Why do we feel that they are useful? To AID they are useful certainly - but are they useful to the poor? I don't know the answer. Maybe they are making 'sacrifices' - even this is not clear. But so what if they are doing a 'good' and 'sacrificing' job. Is this job really what will address the problems? The same question can be asked of me - Am I useful? To whom and for what? Other things seem to change and move - but this fundemental question remains. And on this note, I end this long report.
List of material I was involved in writing
(You can send me an email and request for any of the notes below)
These are hardcopy material. The first one can be purchased.
Balaji Sampath
SF-7, Asmana Apartments
58/1 Kalakshetra Road
Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai - 600 041
Phone: (044) 4402434 or (044) 8266033
Email: kb@eth.net or bsampath@eng.umd.edu