Break-out Session : Project

This was the first hands-on session of the conference that I attended, that is after I figured out what break-out groups 1a through 3b meant and whether I was in 3a or 3b. (Strangely, this confusion and sudden loss of direction reminded me of my first day in BITS). Anyway, it turned out to be 3a, a projects discussion moderated by Chandra Anil and Kiran Vissa.

The next hurdle was to figure out near which column 3a was seated...got that one!!! Me and my fellow volunteer, Jeeth, squeezed our feet into the circle and thus joined the group :-).

The ensuing discussion was very interesting and I learnt quite a bit. It was based on role-playing and open discussion, and hence interactive.

The first situation was about a village and us (the participants) being some NGO penetrating the village to do the good work we do. The question asked was - How would we enter the village and diagnose the problem that needs fixing. People shouted out various answers, the most relevant ones being - Interacting with the headman as he is one definite source of information about the needs, talking to other sections of the village (primarily the marginalized peoples) to get a feel for problems in each section. Kiran played the role of headman and Chandra was a dalit representative. We asked both of them what the problem is. Kiran, being the wily and political headman that he is ;-), told us that water supply was a big problem.

hmmm.. okay, he was talking about the higher-up's in the village and the conscientious NGO's that we were, we decided to talk to marginalized Chandra, who was tired of taking crap from the mukhiya and his homies. Chandra also said it was water-related problem but the real problem, as we NGO's discovered on further interrogation was that:
a) The dalits could take water only for 1 hour sometime in the afternoon while the mukhiya and his co-castists could avail 24 hour water supply from the well.
b) The land-owning and decision-making class could threaten the dalit workers with job loss if they accepted any water sharing plan from us.

Now the color of this issue has quickly turned from just water supply to water sharing divided along socio-economic constraints. Now Kiran, quickly switched his turban to that of AID ka mukhiya and gave us Rs. 50K in the NGO coffers and said we could do all we can within this amount. We again came up with various suggestions, including, timed water release, pooling water spouts so that it can reach more people etc.

So, thus went on this discussion and we ended up a list of possibilities on:
1. How an NGO can attain penetration of a village and into the minds of villagers.
2. How an NGO can discover the problem(s) by speaking to various class members.
3. How an NGO should be sensitive to ongoing political and socio-economic issues that might jeopardize their own as well as long term sustenance of the marginalized members.

The next case study was a village in Srikakulam where 30% of the houses did not have power supply, even though this village sat in a power grid. This was a very different kind of topic as we already knew the problem at hand and the NGOs had to discover the mind set of the villagers for not adopting electricity, which was accessible due to the grid.

These villagers used kerosene lamps for lighting. Our assumption was that the monthly amount spent on kerosene was to be same as that they will have to pay as electric bills. We did go about in circles for which Kiran and Chandra had good counter arguments. While it seemed straightforward, Kiran (who now played someone else, which I fail to recollect) decided to let us know about a crucial fact - that the AP EB people charged Rs 1500 for meter installation, that is Rs. 500 for the actual + Rs. 1000 as a "gift", which was evidently out of reach of these villagers. And no, giving the ECAAL $0 bill was not an option :-)

We talked about improving the economy and went off on those lines till someone came up with the bright idea of mobilizing the affected villagers to confront the EB people, demanding their right to get electricity at the Rs. 500 installation charges. This had to be a group confrontation against the EB to get press publicity as well as to get the attention of the EB and their superiors to the rampant corruption.

So this case study illustrated the relevance and importance of activism as a tool to solve the problem (strangely, this never came to AID Chapters for approval during the case study!). A useful footnote to this is that the NGO representing the village at the EB or a small subset of the villagers going to the EB is not a viable option.

The next thing heard after the closing words of this case study was the tom-tom by Dwiji telling the moderators that their time was up and had to wrap up for the next session inside the auditorium.

And thus ended my first activity-based session. My next activity-based session was the Pluralism session in which I was a silent observer. That session is not something I really would like to talk about now...may be later.

[Note: This entry is delayed by about 3 days as the author did not have time to do it during the conference.]