Ravi:
ACTUALLY AID WORK IN INDIA did not start with people coming back from USA. It was already going on but it got a major impetus when we returned.
The presence of AID volunteers in India is divided into three regions. Chennai has the largest presence; then Bangalore and now in Mumbai we have a small group. What these groups do is to try to involve city people in village activities.
As far as AID Mumbai is concerned, we are involved in villages of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, while also travelling throughout the country. There is a tribal village 3 hours from Mumbai called Kaduchiwadi. We started visiting in May and have on average visited twice a month. With this kind interaction, we have done a few things, like planting trees in the village after talking to the people about their problems, and making greeting cards. Even a one day health camp had some benefits, though you can’t do much in one day. But even something like recommending ointment for the hands of women who worked in water a lot did make their lives more comfortable. We did ask some of the people in this village to go to their PHC for follow-up where we suspected TB etc but their doctor has not reported to the PHC so that follow up has not happened.
One of the major problems in the village is lack of water. After December the groundwater dries up. So the men and especially the women walk 45 minutes down the hill to the Vaitarna river. This is the most ironic thing about development, because this is the river which feeds the city of Bombay through pipelines. Pipelines are going to Bombay but no system is there for this village. The government did a half hearted attempt to preserve water in the ground there but within a year all the small things they constructed like check dams have all eroded and they basically feel that we as AID volunteers may do a better job.
One of the shortcomings of AID Mumbai is that we don’t have much expertise.
But we have started something, a library, when we took some books and one of the girls there, who is in 10th standard, suggested that they needed a library.
Aravinda:
Even though we don’t speak Marathi we do sit around with the kids
and read aloud. It would of course be better if we knew Marathi but
these are things which you can overcome through other kinds of communication.
Ravi: I will just mention our other activities. We visit projects being reviewed by AID US. There is no one project committee which decides on the projects, they are presented to groups of people just like yourselves. We have people’s participation in our project review, and all the projects are visited. We have helped with visiting these. People were always visiting projects but after we came back this picked up.
We have also been moving around quite a bit, visiting Narmada Valley, attending Traditional Science Congress in Varanasi, Bhagavatula Charitable Trust in Visakhapatnam, also spending time with AID Chennai’s work in Taramani.
We also develop interesting links with people who don’t necessarily associate themselves with organisations but have a lot of love for the kinds of things we do. For example, we have a friend Lakshman in Lonavla. He has lots of experience in composting, bamboo making, etc. He tries to inspire people where he works, and one of his successes is at the scale of a hostel of 100 people. They now have a natural waste processing system for all the organic waste.
Also one IIT student came with us to Kaduchiwadi and saw our greeting card making efforts. He decided we should make our own paper for our greeting card project. After 1.5 months I got a sample of beautiful paper that he made, better than what we could find in the market.
So we are linking with interesting people and not necessarily having a group orientation.
We have also been interacting a lot with Narmada Bachao Andolan, which in Maharashtra includes Nandurbar District. There we are learning a lot about standing up for our rights, and interacting with people who are involved in such struggles.
Aravinda:
AID IN MUMBAI STARTED a bit haphazardly before we were here, after
we were here. As far as volunteers, we don’t have a consistent volunteer
base, but we have a few who interact with us in and out. Some people
have Marathi skills, some people don’t know Marathi but have other skills,
we have one person who doesn’t know Marathi, doesn’t have prior experience
in rural work, but has the commitment to show up every week. And
we need all of these people. So getting volunteers is just a process
that is going on by itself. Maybe other chapters with strong volunteer
base can enlighten us on how they got together.
We are working in different areas, one is visiting and developing
projects. A lot of times the volunteer base or the project ideas
will come from a nearby university where there are people whose energies
can be pooled. For us this has been the Tata Institute of Social
Sciences. They have a good library and their students are involved
in a lot of interesting things. We met a few of the students in the
Student Action Committee, they are working with the adivasis – tribal people
– who live along the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, which is being built at a
very rapid pace. They are working with them on their displacement
issues, challenging the public purpose of different phases of the land
acquisition. We have met others working in slums of Mumbai.
We have had some interaction with SP Jain students, they had a project
in which they had to use their management skills in a non profit organisation,
so they came to us. In IITB we made a presentation and we got one
enterprising student who as Ravi said was able to make paper. He
was from Bihar, and recently got his dream job with Indian Railways which
enables him to work in Bihar and get involved in villages there.
It is funny because AID was presented to you as a group formed by Indian
people abroad – so even when I am here I feel a bit schizophrenic.
We are sort of still continuing as if we are members of the home chapter,
so we sometimes visit projects being reviewed by AID in the US. I
think later we will be talking about how this collaboration can mature,
now that some of us are resettled in India.
Our involvement in AID-US projects varies greatly. For example,
Kanpur is a place where we have been involved for 4 years. Orissa
is a state where we don’t have any contacts on our own, but we have met
Madhubhai. Anandwan – several AID chapters were corresponding on
this, unsure how to proceed. We met people there and made a successful
project though we initially thought it was too big, and we were too small.
We were in awe of Anandwan because it is such a well respected organisation.
By going there we worked out the issues.
This is part of the way we are still in close contact with volunteers
of AID US helping them review projects. Later we will be talking
about AID volunteers in India initiating more of their own projects.
Ravi talked a little bit about our outreach -- we heard a funny statement
about networking, so I will use the word outreach. Just by chance
we find out about things that are going on. We have met a lot of
interesting people by getting our name out through things like Traditional
Science Congress, NGO fair, etc. Traditional Science Congress started
in IIT of all places. There were people there with knowledge in traditional
arts, traditional technology, traditional medicine, even traditional philosophy,
all of what you might call traditional science. These are opportunities
for us to broaden our exposure to what is India and what is development.
We attended a conference on rural education at BCT – we will show you
a product that came out of this as part of our environmental initiative.
One more organisation we met at the NGO fair is Sakhya – students of
Nirmal Niketan College of Social Work. We saw this sticker “Just
say NO if the groom demands dough” and asked them if we could
reprint the sticker adding our name and address [shows sticker].
Volunteer Camps – we just started this. Part of our outgrowth
from still feeling like part of AID-US. We get at least one request
a week from people abroad who want to do volunteer work in India.
It is not always easy to place people. People are very interested
but often have no idea what they will do. So we tried out this idea
of a volunteer camp. We are planning to have another one in summer.
This is a way we can pool this interest that a lot of people have.
There are other organizations that place volunteers but they sort of charge
$1500 to do it, so we don’t want to get into that business. But we
are trying to improve this program and make it more valuable both for the
volunteers and the organisations.
Now I will talk about our dreams – just briefly. Anti dowry movement:
we know that we face this issue in unexpected places, it affects so many
issues. Women’s education for example. The higher the education,
the higher the dowry. So parents may face a dilemma on whether to
spend for education enabling the woman to be independent, but only increasing
the price she will have to pay for her husband. This is a problem
in the village in the city, in the US. It is a global issue, in more
ways than one. The US groom is at the top of the pyramid, the highest
priced commodity and that drives the prices of the rest of the boys.
We learned this in the villages where they told us that the prices were
fixed in the cities.
In addition to having a volunteer camp, I am thinking of having a volunteer
tour, of certain people who are interested in global issues, like biotechnology,
organic standards, nuclear issue. Because I went to school in Wisconsin
and find that same issues we were making noise about there are quite hot
here. So if I find among the people interested in coming for the
volunteer camp, people who want to focus on these issues, I would like
to take a tour with them.
Daily resensitizing of our minds is also very high on the agenda, responding
to things around us instead of numbing ourselves, speaking up and having
the confidence that other people will listen. All of us have at some
point gotten sick of seeing trash in a train station or public park and
started cleaning it up. I’ve done it, I know others have done it.
While doing it I think, yes – but then it doesn’t last. No point
doing
for one day. Just speaking up when e.g. we see young people
sitting in the seats for old people on the bus or men occupying women’s
seats – even though there will be people who put us down – can have a ripple
effect.
Most of what we are doing at this point is learning. We are trying
to build up a library for volunteers (in addition to making libraries in
villages). For example magazines like Down to Earth on environment
and Manushi on women’s issues are good places to start.
And one last visual aid before I turn to questions, here is the canvas
bag we are marketing [shows bag and reads text].
Prasanna: I think you were mentioning that you did not have expertise. One of the important things is that we should create a body of knowledge, make what we learn available to all other volunteers, along the lines of the AID library.
Ravi: to discuss these coordination issues within AID and also between AID and others, we will take it up tomorrow in the AID India discussion session.
Prakash: I would like to know what your fund situation was in the past year
Ravi: We have about 6 volunteers in India, 30 in Chennai, and 10 in Bangalore, and maybe 10 in BITS Pilani.
Ramani: funds raised in India is about Rs. Rs. 6000. We have not yet started intensive fundraising in India.
Ravi: we need to start raising funds in India, this bag is one of the key things.
Sanjay: Is your message just that you want to help developmental groups in India or did you have some ideology or analysis with which you started?
Ravi: that is a good question. Our analysis was just that we were inactive. For example in India Beckons we had a skit, “What is India’s Biggest Problem?” Each person answers that it is population. When asked what they are doing about it, the politician for example says, now that I am elected, I am visiting foreign countries. The IIT Prof said, the students have a practical training with a company and that teaches them about problems. At the end the speaker says that the biggest problem is really inaction, not population. The biggest problem is that we are not acting. As we act our ideology changes. The other day in a meeting organised by MP Parameswaran and Dr. Anthia, they also discussed the problem. They said it is not population explosion, it is consumer explosion. If all the people were producers there would not be a problem. The issue turns to our own consumption.
So our ideology started with just realising that we are inactive, and the problems are as much with us, though we are educated. Or when we started interacting with NBA or when new volunteers like Aravinda joined us, then we our ideology grew to include fighting for rights.
Sanjay: there are other groups in the US, like IPSG, what is your assessment of these groups?
Aravinda: we don’t really look at other groups with a view of assessing them. I have been part of IPSG or groups like that but we don’t spend much time with them.
Ravi: regarding VHP, we gave a presentation a few years back on exponential growth of a grassroots movement. Those who invited us into their offices were top bosses of the BJP, VHP. We had no clue that the conference in DC was organised by them. They invited leading professors, etc; we had petitioned them for a 10 minute slot as there was no student group present. In that we projected how AID would grow exponentially and become a million dollar organization in 10 years. Immediately we were taken to all their rooms and asked to join RSS. We of course rejected all that. There is a strong fundamentalist group in the US.
Second, there are student groups like ours which are not bothered about religion or electoral politics -- like Asha, IDS, ILP etc. We have good interactions with them and collaborate occasionally.
Third there are American groups, this is the most important group for us to get involved in. Aravinda has a lot of experience in these groups. University students are involved in all kinds of issues which challenge exploitation and question authority -- for example, when I was with her in her university, a group of them went to inspect American sites to check for chemical and biological weapons. Because UN wanted to inspect Iraqi sites. So we went in Madison to inspect the federal buildings. Everywhere they said, no you cannot inspect, there is nothing here – so they tried to make their point. Press, etc. was there.
I found that the students with whom she lived were very active in environmental issues, they do recycling, composting, and we have a lot to learn from American groups. Student activism in American groups is a big thing which I think Indian universities should incorporate.
that all concessions yet made have been born in struggle...
if there is no struggle there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor Freedom and yet depreciate agitation are those
who want crops without plowing up the ground....
Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will.
Frederick Douglass