During the past few months, I have had several thoughts going through my mind looking back on the trip and experiences I had. And I just thought it will be good to write a few blogs at least summarizing some of the experiences during the trip that I have not yet shared.

I will begin with this blog to just give some update on what I have been through in these past 7 months post trip and will follow up (hopefully regularly) with blogs on sharing some experiences at the broad level.

I was more confused with the role of technology for development after the trip than before the trip. I will cover this aspect in detail in a blog later. Thinking more during the confused state led to the decision of joining Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi (IIIT-Delhi) as a faculty – http://www.iiitd.edu.in/~amarjeet/.

In my new position, I wanted to work on some technology solutions that can help improve delivery of basic services to a general or a specialized group. To this effect, we started working on developing mobile based solution for healthcare. In this work, we are currently collaborating with a group at MIT called Sana and developing a mobile client that can be used to send health related information to a backend server. This information can then be accessed by a doctor sitting remotely and he/she can either diagnose remotely or ask for a patient’s visit (or more information about the patient). Parts of this project were floated as summer internships and the work of student interns in the past 2-3 months is nothing less than impressive.

We also started working on voice based value added services for farmers with a subsidiary of one of the biggest fertilizer cooperative. Several insights from this work have helped in developing a good understanding of ground realities of making a project of this scale self sustainable.

The developments in the last 6-7 months in this direction of exploring different technology solutions has been very satisfying on personal front and have far exceeded my expectations. However, another reason for taking up this position was to explicitly find time to involve myself more closely in some grassroots level activities to further my learning from the trip. This direction really took a backseat since then and I am very positive that I would be able to come back and work on moving it further as well.

Thats a broad updated on developments at my end in the past 6-7 months. I sincerely hope to regularly update this blog with some overall experiences from the trip that I would like to share with everyone.

Its a tradition among the elders of the Wancho tribe of Arunachal to blacken their teeth by chewing some special herbs and roots found in that region. They believe that the blacker their teeth, the beautiful they look and the stronger they are! Apparently, it was believed that only wild animals and evil spirits had white teeth and this tradition was also followed in other South-east Asian countries, including Vietnam.  Read more..

Location: Village-Wakka, District-Tirap, Arunachal Pradesh.

Rani Padmini, the famous queen of Chittor, led all the royal ladies of Chittor to commit suicide (known as Jauhar) in the 13th century A.D.  Inorder to save their honour from the lustful army of the Sultan of Delhi, a huge fire was lit and all ladies jumped into the fire following Rani Padmini.

Location: Maharana Pratap Memorial, Udaipur, Rajasthan.

These girls are refered to as the ‘first generation learners’ simply because no one from their previous generations has ever gone to school. I don’t quite like the word because I dont agree with this concept! Having stayed in their tribal village ‘Mozda’ I know for sure that the knowledge and wisdom of this community is far superior than most of the people like us who’ve been through formal education!

Location: Mozda, Gujarat.

I spent quite some time observing these kids pickup a poly-bag with some left-over meal in it. Both of them seemed really hungry and nibbled on some crumbs bit by bit. When there was a last chunk of bread left, the elder one happily offered it entirely to the little one, without hesitating a bit. It made me sit back and think that all of us were selfless as kids but somewhere in the process of growing up, this innocence disappears and gets overpowered by greed.

Location: Udaipur, Rajasthan.

This photograph was taken at Saheliyon-ki-bari at Udaipur. This place was built for the royal ladies and their friends where they would perform raas~leela, which was presided by their Raaj-mata.

Location: Udaipur, Rajasthan.

This lady belongs to the indigenous self-sustaining tribal community of Mozda, Gujrat. For a very long time, ’salt’ was the only commodity that they bought from the market; everything else was produced by them in their village, including cotton (for khadi clothes), cattle (for milk, manure, fuel) and used solar electricity to light lamps at night!

Location: Mozda, Gujarat.

• Positive changes in last 5 years

1. Increase in information
2. Improvement in healthcare
3. Improvement in education
4. Availability of drinking water
5. Electricity improvement
6. Transportation improvement
7. Communication improvement
8. Reduction superstitions
9. Increase in TV
10. Availability of computer
11. Right to Information Act

• Negative changes in last 5 years:

1. Increase in greed
2. Lack of care for neighbors
3. Broken social web
4. Difficulty in government operations
5. Free availability of stuff in the beginning (tobacco, seeds, pesticides) that led to the wrong path
6. Expensive to follow customs
7. Health deterioration due to use of pesticides
8. Religious fights
9. Pollution from factories
10. Increase in traffic
11. Ill use of mobile phones
12. Adoption of western culture without deeper understanding
13. Climate change
14. Increase in TV
15. Increase in wrong habits like tobacco
16. New diseases like swine flu
17. Increase in usage of plastic
18. Reduction in cultural values (no help in building houses, low participation in festivals)
19. Availability of computer
20. Increase in corruption (people openly ask for it and are not ashamed of it)
21. Big dams

• When asked about the wish list, following were the responses in order of their priorities (based on number of people from the group wishing it to happen)

1. Road, transport, electricity improvement
2. Improvement in social web
3. Improvement in healthcare
4. Reduction in corruption
5. Save forest and plant more trees
6. Reduction in use of plastic
7. Save culture
8. Exposure to complete knowledge through centers in their village 

• Following were the responses when asked what changes do you want in your personal life

1. No 24×365 life
2. Be helpful to others
3. Learn farming
4. Self organization
5. One travel every year
6. Improve farming
7. Improve financial status
8. Increase in new knowledge
9. Develop new mindsets with changing world

It was good to hear people speak up – something I couldnt have imagines unless the environment created by Michael and Swati. Ishwar brought up a very good insight during the discussion that often we all say that these tribal people should speak up but they are used to going to the field in the morning and coming back late, having dinner and then going to sleep. So, even in their everyday life, they are not used to talking much. How can then one expect them to speak up to a stranger.

Amusingly, quite a lot of people remarked that a lot of questions asked by Michael and Swati are much more difficult than answering the exam questions even if it is boards of 10th or 12th. Indeed they are difficult but unless we think, we will not get out of the comforts of status quo and will not desire for the change.

The key people from the village gathered in one of the classrooms and Ashok started the discussion on several issues, including the construction of parts of the school and activity based learning with a long term vision of prosperity of the village. The enthusiasm of Ashok was once again on display but I felt that it was unmatched by anyone else present in the room.

We were then taken on a tour of different watersheds developed with support from AID as well as further support from the government. It surely was very impressive to see the amount of rainwater harvesting that has been done using these developments. We discussed how water is an important issue to solve for any village as it forms the basic requirement for an agrarian society – the primary constituent of villages in India. And since most of the farms still depend on rain water or the (fastly depleting) ground water (which again can be sustained only by harvesting rain water) the need for such a project for Surodi was apparent. We were also told that some money left from the project funding received from AID was utilized to create a playground for kids in the school – something that kids seemed to enjoy a lot and can be considered as a worthy investment).

I tried to move away from the group and talk to an elderly person by a pond as well as a women by a well but none of it worked due to language differences. I did have some conversations with a young person from another village. In his opinion, the political scenario in the village has produced a divide amongst the people. Only those who are in power or who know people in power get access to resources such as loans. A leader with a common vision of development of the whole village is missing .

It was this discussion and later a visit to Hivre Bazar when I started appreciating the true requirement of effective leadership. It was in 1991 when Popat Rao was unanimously elected the Sarpanch of Hivre Bazar. Since then, there has been no Panchayat elections and under his leadership the village has prospered tremendously. Some of the key steps taken under his leadership were:

1. Addressing the need of water for irrigation through several means:

• Constructing small bunds using several government schemes
• Passing a resolution to not cultivate water intensive crops
• Planting more trees on the hills to let water soak into the ground

2. To avoid grazing lands being spoiled by animals (when they walk on grazing lands, they waste 90%  and only eat 10%), a resolution was passed which only allowed people to take in one head load of feed for their animals every day (and that too after paying a nominal fee – to remove the notion that anything comes for free)

3. Everyone was made to put in manual labor for bund and pond construction and savings of money hence produced was used to build temple and mosque in the village (even when there was only 1 muslim family in the village, they decided to build a mosque) passing on the message that efforts of people went for a noble cause

4. No one was allowed to sell the land to anyone from outside the village

5. Even when someone gets richer and decides to build a house, it was decided that all houses (small, big, kutcha or pukka) will have same facade design and color to show equality.

6. New roads were constructed but a small part of the entrance of the village where people used to break the coconut on auspicious occassions was preserved as cultural entity.

7. In 2001 they decided that if someone from the village is getting married (whether within the village or to someone from outside) both have to undergo HIV test before panchayat will approve the marriage.

And many more…

Because of all these efforts no family in village in now in BPL category compared to 1991 when almost all families were in that category and the migration of people to towns and cities has stopped. It has also inspired nearby villages to put in place some such efforts but I feel that such was possible primarily because of visionary leadership of PopatRao Pawar – traces of which I could also see in Ashok in whatever small discussions we had. It is very critical that such leaders are to be bred from within the village so that they remain close to the community, address their concerns as and when they arise and gain their confidence.