Paternalistic pronouncements and practices by government agencies discourage previously ...... should be given to education because it creates the requisite human resources. A number of such ..... their health programme, she parroted off the first lines of a health manual. ..... in Kashipur, INDAL and L&T mining for bauxite.
CONSTRUCTIVE POLITICS IN ORISSA GANDHIAN ORGANISATIONS AND THEIR LEGACY
DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY
SEEMA ARORA JONSSON . UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF PROFESSOR SUMIT SARKAR
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY UNIVERSITY OF DELHI DELHI, 110007 MARCH 1995
Table of Contents INTRODUCTION
1
CHAPTER ONE
12
CHAPTER TWO
49
CHAPTER THREE
85
CHAPTER FOUR
101
EPILOGUE
112
APPENDIX I
115
APPENDIX II
119
BIBLIOGRAPHY
120
0
Introduction Constructive Politics- an effort made to right the balance of wrongs, to construct a politics that might ensure a more equitable system than the one that exists at present. The degrees, the people, the place may vary but the core of the effort remains the same. Constructive workers try to approach this end through what they call ’development from the grassroots.’ They work in the countryside, helping the people looking for community self-expression to organize themselves and provide information about government mechanisms and how to deal with trends emanating from outside their immediate environment. Much of this work is centered around income generation activities and training in various crafts so that the people can supplement their incomes with them. This particular aspect lays stress largely on economic growth but constructive work ideally seeks to develop local ability to confront and take care of their problems, public participation in the development planning process and expanding access of the people to their own environment and resources. Each case is different since “there can be no magic formula or standardized model for successful community development work; each case will be idiosyncratic, unique and particularistic...”1 In most cases there is an endeavour to bring about specific local change by stimulating community self- help. Any such activity becomes political even if does not overtly intend to. The very fact of its doing kindles a desire for change and processes of change would inevitably work against the status quo. It is political in the sense that its proponents hope that its success would result in the redistribution of power in a community or society. Constructive Politics is politics from the bottom up or that of the grassroots. By constructive work, I mean not government efforts towards the uplift of the poorer or weaker sections but such nonviolent development activity that had for long been carried out at the margins of the system, hoping to change the system itself. The system being not just the government machinery or the governmental edifice but the entire socio-economic structure and the power relations that exist within it. Much of this kind of work today is carried out by NGOs and or voluntary organizations. Before going further and looking at studies of specific NGOs in Orissa it might help to
1
look at the various roles a voluntary organization /NGO (I will use the term interchangeably) can assume. An NGO, of course, can mean anything from a charity organization to a commercial group. However here I take NGOs to mean groups or organizations comprising people who are working to try and alleviate the problems in the cities and villages by helping communities identify their problems, organize themselves and provide the knowledge that would enable them to respond to their problems in alternative ways both individually and collectively. (Such people may come from within the community they are working with or may be graduates from other places.) The words welfare or charity have taken on an ominous meaning for these people working at the grassroots today. The intention is no longer to work for the people but to help them work for themselves, by helping them to organize themselves. What is really needed in the countryside is alternative knowledge, knowledge that would empower the people, knowledge that would offer them different choices, knowledge about their own environment and outside as well knowledge about the working of various systems -- the government, market forces, etc. So far this knowledge has remained the preserve of the powerful who have used it to perpetuate a system that serves only them. Not infrequently one hears villagers complain about harassment by local officials because the people did not know any better and had no other avenues to approach for help. What many organizations want to do, or at least those attuned to the rumblings of discontent at the grassroots, is to turn such a system on its head, to deconstruct the system as it is and start anew. Most talk of trying to understand what the people really want and try to operate along their reading of the situation. Besides providing alternative knowledge of the world outside they hope to find a space where the knowledge system of the outside world and the one of the people in the countryside could meet. Only then could success be guaranteed. Alternatively, there would be two systems working along side each other but always parallel. We can see two mindsets operating. On the one hand, the policy makers at the top who believed that their education and college degrees gave them the knowledge to govern the country in the best possible way. And yet we see today that it did not work. The policies 1
Alliband , Terry, Catalysts of Development, Voluntary Agencies in India. (published by Kumarian Press, U S A, 1983). 2
in the 1950s and 60s made significant intrusions in the lives of the people in the countryside and yet they remained interventions from the outside not efforts along with the people. “Professionals trained abroad, totally out of tune with the grassroots situation in the country, were at a loss when dealing with India's major needs...”2 “...discipline must be provided from institutions created by the people themselves. That is, democracy is organized so that it is a self-governing system. A major danger to survival of a democracy exists when the government takes control over most existing institutions and determines who may start new ones...The clear danger here is that such sweeping power might breed a form of institutional imperialism in which the citizens of a once free society forfeit their chance to design the type of social and economic systems they prefer...Vested interests of those persons and parties now in power may play a major role in determining national policy priorities.” 3 Therefore, while collective action has been a major force in India in earlier decades and centuries, or so many of the older Gandhians I have spoken to say, it is presently undermined by new "traditions" (Uphoff) emanating from the state and market sectors. Paternalistic pronouncements and practices by government agencies discourage previously reasonable expectations of self-help, and preoccupations with personal profit can deter people from pooling resources to create public goods. The disrepair into which many roads and irrigation canals have fallen...reflect either or both of these influences. These shortcomings have created a serious crises in terms of environmental degradation, poverty level and so on. Now, more than ever before, along with the working of the government, there is a felt need for collective action. Whatever collective action that we do see seems to function now...“ usually as a default mode for meeting development needs, whereas previously it was more ’normal’ or ’natural’ mode.”4 The NGOs working especially in the villages hope to channelize such collective efforts in a more concrete way. They hope to bring back the will for collective action that was and still is (though distorted by various intrusions, even though well intentioned, into their lives) an important way to get things done. It was this collective power or strength that 2
Baig, Tara Ali, ’Voluntary Action : Retrospect and Prospect’ , Mainstream (Edited and published by Sumit Chakravartty for Perspective Publications Private Ltd., New Delhi, January 12 1985) 3 Uphoff, Norman, ’Grassroots Organzations and NGOs in Rural Development: Opportunities with Diminishing States and Expanding Markets’, World Development, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Pergamon Press, Oxford, New York, Seoul, Tokyo, April 1993). 3
they call lok shakti. Annapurna Maharana, one of the Sarvodaya leaders in Orissa who was also an active participant in constructive work of the 1940s, laments this lack of lok shakti, “During the British era, in times of floods and other such natural calamities, people came forward to take care of their problems themselves. Now this lok-shakti is missing. Everyone waits for the government. The ideology of self-sufficiency, of taking their own initiative has broken down. People have begun to mistrust those who say they want to help them partly due to the fact that the image of the vote-garnering politicians is always before them. The suspicion that behind every move is an ulterior motive of political gain is always present. The politicians and the people are never able to identify with each other. At the same time, government moves may not always be ill intentioned. In all the efforts they make to govern the country many sincerely believe that they can do so all on their own.”5 One place where traditional collective action was probably present and distorted by government intervention is in the case of the forests. The extremely huge and unwieldy edifice of the forest department inherited from the British was carried on after 1947. As a result many rights and practices and customary norms were restricted and villagers who so far regarded their forests as common property were denied entry. An imbalance was created. Now in many places collective groups from amongst the community to manage forests are coming up again. Whether they are of the traditional kind of the past is doubtful. The villages of Orissa are not the isolated entities that some people believed they once were. In any case they do not remain unchanged by the economic or sociopolitical changes outside. Going back to earlier patterns or social structures is perhaps not enough. Thus it would seem that what is to be mobilized through the structure of the NGOs is “not just material contributions and labour but also ideas, management skills and a sense of social responsibility. State institutions by themselves are inadequate for this as are market institutions alone. There is growing evidence that working with and through collective action organizations at local levels can produce improvements in productivity and well being more far reaching than the stereotype that local efforts benefit a few communities or a few families. 4 5
Ibid. Interview with Annapurna Maharana, Bakhrabad, Cuttack, November 1993. 4
Collective action has functioned for centuries at local levels in third world countries. Its present uneven performance is partly a consequence of state penetration that has often displaced, constrained or distorted the informal institutions that met a variety of people's needs before -- for agricultural production, consumption guarantees, constructing public facilities, etc. The penetration to local levels of commercial market forces has also disrupted many local voluntary activities, as working for cash income has taken on more importance.”6 (ii) Voluntary organizations or NGOs have been recognized as belonging to what is being called the “third sector,” operating between what we refer to as the public and the private sectors.”7 It has some characteristics in common with each of the other two sectors but it is also different from each in meaningful ways. “It can be designated variously as the voluntary sector, the membership sector, the self-help sector, or the collective action sector...The main thing distinguishing the three sectors is the incentives used to get cooperation or compliance.”8 The first sector relies on bureaucratic mechanisms and seeks enforced compliance with government decisions...The second sector uses market mechanisms to promote desired behaviour . . .The third sector depends
more on
voluntaristic mechanisms involving processes of bargaining, discussion, accommodation and persuasion. Norman Uphoff writes that decisions are taken with reference both to group and individual interests. Neither state authority nor profit maximization determine choices, though members’ decisions can activate both regulatory and price inducements.9
6
Uphoff, Norman, ’Grassroots Organizations and NGOs in Rural Development : Opportunities with Diminishing States and Expanding Markets’, World Development Vol. 21, No. 4 (Pergamon Press, Oxford, New York, Seoul, Tokyo, April 1993). 7 Berg, Robert J., ’Non - Governmental Organizations New Forces in Third World Development and Politics’ CASID Distinguished Speakers Series No. 2 (East Lansing Centre for Advanced Studies in International Development , Michigan State University, 1987) cited in Uphoff, Norman, ’Grassroots Organizations and NGOs in Rural Development : Opportunities with Diminishing States and Expanding Markets’, World Development Vol. 21 No. 4 (Pergamon Press, Oxford, New York, Seoul, Tokyo, April 1993). 8 Hunter, Guy, Modernizing Peasant Socities (Oxford University Press, New York, 1969) in Uphoff, Norman, ’Grassroots Organizations and NGOs in Rural Development : Opportunities with Diminishing States and Expanding Markets’, World Development Vol. 21 No. 4 (Pergamon Press, Oxford, New York, Seoul, Tokyo, April 1993). 9 Ibid. 5
These are obviously ideal types and not mutually exclusive. In fact as a more recent train of thought suggests the second sector influences voluntary activities in more ways than it was thought of before. The shifting conceptual features among the three have resulted in quite divergent attitudes underlying or justifying broadly similar kinds of work (more specifically collective activity and other work carried out by various voluntary organizations). One might schematically distinguish, perhaps between three kinds of approaches underlying NGO work -- Gandhian neo-traditional, left inspired and more recently a semi-market rationalization. Those that espouse Gandhian principles adhere to an approach based on non-violence, believe in holistic community development, adopt Gandhian techniques like padayatras (foot marches) and satyagraha (fasting and so on). Protests by Gandhians of government action since independence have however, virtually ceased and are a startling contrast with
pre -- independence activism of the Gandhian movement. The left inspired
organizations hope to be able to empower the people so that they could help alter relations in a more equitable direction. A more current mode of thought has been inspired by some sort of market rationalization. Shashi Kolavalli (Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad) voicing one such trend writes that “individuals would have no incentive to restrain their consumption (of natural resources) unless they are ensured they will benefit from their actions. . . When restraint or sacrifices are collective, there will be an increase in total benefits arising out of the actions of those who do, each one would have the incentive to free ride expecting to benefit from the actions of others.”10 Quoting Robert Wade (Village Republics: Economic Conditions for Collective Action in South India, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1988) he writes that the incentive to work collectively may arise from the desire to gain benefits and avoid costs which cannot be done individually. Further clarifying his general premise he cites Libecap, “Individuals will work for either specifying or modifying rights only if the private benefits of so doing exceed the private costs.”11 “Some villagers are able to establish 10
Kolavalli, Shashi, unpublished paper presented on Collective Action for Joint Forest Management at a Workshop on Joint Forest Management, August 25 and 26, 1994, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. 11 Libecap, Gary . D., Contracting for Property Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) cited by Kolavalli, Shashi, unpublished paper presented on ’Collective Action for Joint Forest Management’ at a Workshop on Joint Forest Management, August 25 and 26, 1994, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. 6
patterns of use which are favourable to them. In the absence of protection of individual rights, they will have a vested interest in maintaining the status-quo and can be made better off. Examples of such situations are easy to find. Some families may have encroached on forest lands. Some families may be more dependent on forests for grazing and fodder compared to others. Any restrictions on traditional use will be seen to impose more costs on some as compared to others. Those who are well placed. . . will subvert or not participate in collective action.”12 Kollavalli cites several case studies to illustrate his point. In essence, what he says is that “collective good makes sense to an individual when his/ her gain is greater than the total cost of providing the good.”13 Thus, according to this way of thinking it would seem that collective action, although not determined by state authority or by profit maximization in the sense of the market, is dependent on what profit the individual can make or how he /she can gain by collective action. To an extent this can explain the situation in many cases when an NGO has tried to link itself with groups at the village level, for example, in the case of forest protection these groups have been feasible if the people living around the forests could see a foreseeable gain in the near future. An attempt to get them together to protect forests based only on the reason that they are fast disappearing does not alone provide the motivation. In the same way, any help that the outside NGOs provide has to be based on what the people have taken up themselves or it would not succeed in the long run. Yet there are several instances when people take up issues and activities with no apparent economic gain, as for instance the protection of a patch of forest considered as the sacred grove.14 Although I have distinguished between these approaches they are not hermetically sealed in any way. Many NGOs look at different situations with whatever approach suits them best. Some, for example take up strategies like padayatras without necessarily conforming to Gandhian philosophy. In several NGOs one can find strains of all three
12
Ibid. Olson, Mancur, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Massachussetts : Harvard University Press, 1973) cited in Kollavalli, Shashi. 14 There is another such instance in Kashipur block of Rayagada where all surrounding mountains have been denuded except for one which was given by the queen in that area a long time back to the tribals living around the place. The mountain is named after that queen and although the people may have to walk another mile to fetch fuelwood, they never touch a tree in that forest because of the belief that it would bring them bad luck. 13
7
approaches. Therefore when I talk about conceptual differences between them it is to draw on the different ideological underpinnings of these organizations rather than to compartmentalize them.
NGOs work at different levels, the international, the national, state, district and community level. Many such NGOs in Orissa are involved in working at the grassroots, meaning at the local level, that of the village, group, and community. Although many of the NGOs I will be looking at have linkages at the national and international levels, their area of work is confined to Orissa. I have also tried to look at some people's organizations (at the group, community or locality level) as they are doing on a smaller scale and at the grassroots level what many NGOs are doing at the state or district level. In several cases these local organizations collaborate with the larger NGOs to form linkages and try to effect policy changes that they would be unable to do on their own. The basic characteristic of what is local from a socio-economic perspective is that most people within a locality, community or group have face to face relationships and are likely to have multistranded connections.15 In the case of Orissa it could be as members of a gram panchayat, as buyers at the Saturday haat, the weekly market, as relatives through extended families and so on.
15
Uphoff, Norman, ’Grassroots Organizations and NGOs in Rural Development : Opportunitites with Diminishing States and Expanding Markets’, World Development Vol. 21 No. 4 (Pergamon Press, April 1993). 8
(iii) I chose to look at constructive work in Orissa when I realized that not only was the history of the areas now comprising the state of Orissa replete with instances of such work but there were also a phenomenal number of voluntary organizations existing today. Whether they naturally followed from previous examples or were significantly different was something that I felt would be interesting to study. Focusing largely on contemporary work in my study, the earlier movement forms the backdrop to what is happening today. It is a somewhat unusual subject for a history thesis apart from the fact that a large part of it deals with the contemporary period unlike many other studies of modern Indian history that tend to end at 1947. I felt, however that the presence of these voluntary organizations were part of an important trend in the state and reflect the changing social, political and economic life in Orissa. The fact that they have a precedent in the Gandhian organizations brings into perspective the role of such organizations. Of course there are several problems in working in this field. Apart from not really having the benefit of perspective one acquires with time, the drawback has been the absence of more conventional sources like written material, books and so on. No major work has been published in this area. One often tends to read about government initiatives concerning rural development, poverty alleviation. The work being carried out by several small organizations in Orissa is rarely brought into focus except when newspapers pick up incidents of interest as in the case of Sumani Jhuria and the anti liquor campaign. I have had to rely mainly on fieldwork, i.e. interviews of people who have been involved in constructive work and more recently those involved in various NGOs across the state. I have also talked to groups like the mahila mandals, teachers, children and attended village meetings. Unfortunately in cases like this especially in Western Orissa I have had to rely on interpreters and in doing so one tends to miss out many of the nuances of what the people have to say. This is not to say that the translators were unreliable (in fact I am extremely grateful to them for taking me around) but that those involved in NGO work have a special development jargon and they often tend to use words and intonations which I felt were different from what the villagers had to say.
9
Apart from the fieldwork, I also looked at the reports published by the organizations I was studying. They provided me with a lot of valuable information about the organization. At the same time it was interesting to probe the language of some of these reports and discover new meanings to activities taking place. Voluntary activity is not really new to Orissa. Christian missionaries have been carrying on welfare activities since times past. They concentrated on the tribal areas of the state and laid emphasis mostly on education and health services. Some other organizations and private people also funded orphanages, balwadis and other such work in this field. The kind of work that I will be looking at began with the Gandhian movement and although there are vast differences in the way subsequent work functioned, the Gandhians left a legacy that was hard to ignore. In my opinion their work was the genesis of the modern voluntary movement (however much it may have changed since then) since their appeal to educated youth to dedicate their lives in the service of their country people was the first of its kind. Constructive work was a phrase used by Gandhi during the time of the national movement for work of social uplift in the villages, at the grassroots. During the forties the work being done in the villages by Congress supporters gave rise to a number of voluntary organizations. In Orissa initially, the activities of these institutions centered around the then state capital, Cuttack. Later, on the instructions of Mahatma Gandhi, other districts were also taken up especially Koraput which was chosen as an area of concerted effort, mainly because it was (and still is) one of the poorest areas of Orissa. The late fifties were the time of Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan and Gramdan movement that gave birth to a large number of Sarvodaya agencies. They were in the same mould as the earlier Gandhian organizations, though with a major emphasis on helping government agencies allocate donated land to the landless and to make this land more productive through land development and irrigation programmes. I began my study by looking at the Gandhian and the Sarvodaya agencies. They had the required organizational structure but the sense of their activism or even programmes was difficult to detect. It was necessary to talk to several people before I was able to get a picture of the changes having taken place in the working of these organizations. 10
What caught my attention however are the large number of new voluntary organizations working for the uplift of the people in the countryside and the urban slums. The number of all kinds of NGOs/voluntary organizations in Orissa is staggering. It is rumoured to be almost 55,000 organizations. It is not really possible to get an accurate number. Although there is a central office in Cuttack where they can register, many just register in their own district offices. I began to study these hoping to see if they could explain what it was that the earlier ones lacked. It was interesting to see what the changes are and how they have managed to respond to the needs of the time. I hope by looking at some of the new organizations in Orissa I would be able to shed some light on why many of the Gandhian organizations are losing their significance. In the years since independence this sort of activity has undergone certain changes and I would like to clarify what I mean by analyzing the different interventions in this field.
(iv) In Chapter 1 I have tried to present a brief history of the organizations that I have studied. From there I have proceeded to look at the major issues that they have taken up and the activities that they carry out and in the process their ideological framework as well (Chapter 2). Chapter 3 deals with the backdrop to the present day NGOs in the form of the Gandhian movement. The thrust of this chapter is to see how the Gandhians looked at what they considered were the major problems of the country. The last chapter looks at the new NGOs in the light of the tradition of Gandhian social work in the state and here I have tried to sum up the trends that are taking shape today. The epilogue is to remind us that the workers involved in constructive work have a vision of a society and the work for this vision is far from complete.
11
Chapter One Life in the villages in Orissa has been affected by changes in the country and the rest of the state at large in many ways. Yet, many of the problems of the past have remained. Caste still plays a major role in determining occupations and oppression by the dominant caste is ubiquitous. People still go to sahukars (local moneylenders) in large numbers and almost every family on the lower scale especially in the tribal areas is burdened with debt. Bonded labour especially in Western Orissa is not unheard of. The Orissa State Government has stipulated that for every labourer that is contracted, the employers are bound to pay Rs. 25 for eight hours. These conditions are rarely met. Throughout the tribal regions of Orissa, there has been a continuing process of alienation of their land and increasing controls by outsiders (mostly non-tribals from nearby villages and small towns, sahukars, merchants and so on), which has finally resulted in the tribal being deprived of any entitlement to productive assets. Consequently, tribal in general and tribal women in particular are forced into a situation of wage employment with no bargaining power. Land ownership is highly skewed in favour of big farmers and the remaining holdings are small and fragmented. Small and marginal farmers owning less than two hectares farm 75% of the land holdings but control less than 40% of the agricultural land, whereas the farmers with more than 5 hectares account for only 7% of the total holdings and control 35% of the land. The Orissa Consolidation and Prevention of Fragmentation of Land Act, 1972 was enacted during the IVth Five Year Plan, but few tangible results have been achieved.16 The total population of Orissa is 31.66 million which is 3.74% of the total population of India. Nearly 38% of the total population belongs to the scheduled tribes and scheduled castes, the largest proportion among all states of India. A literacy rate of 48.55% was
16
Government Of Orissa, Forestry Sector Review For National Foresstry Action Plan, (Orissa Forest Department, Bhubaneswar, February 1994). 12
recorded in 1991 as compared to 34.20% in 1981. The male and female literacy levels are 62.37% and 34.40% respectively.17 In contrast to the increase in the national Gross Domestic Product, the State Domestic Produce (per capita) declined at an annual rate of 1.4% during 1970-71 to 1979-8018... There is a great disparity between the average per capita incomes of Orissa and India which is increasing over the years: a gap of Rs/-155 in 1970-71 increased to Rs. 204/- in 1982-83. In 1983 the incidence of poverty in Orissa was higher than the national average and 51% of the total population was below the poverty consumption level. An alarming trend in the north has been the increase in the number of agricultural labourers and a decrease in the number of workers engaged in household industries. Despite the increase in labour force the agricultural growth in terms of area and productivity is very low. Although there are large patches of unused lands which can be brought under agriculture, they have neither been reclaimed by villagers ( who generally lack resources required for reclaiming laterite soils) nor by the State Government. Considerable unemployment and underemployment exists in Orissa especially in the rural areas. The employment in the agricultural sector is associated with disguised unemployment and underemployment. The estimate for employment generated during 1992-93 is 223 thousands in the State. This leaves a huge backlog of unemployment which will increase rapidly in future unless labour intensive technologies are adopted on a large scale. Also. as per the 1991 Census, 37% of the total workers (of the total state population) in Orissa are engaged in house-hold industries, majority of which are forest based. Although a number of poverty alleviation programmes have been taken up in the rural areas by providing income opportunities through employment, the recent estimates for poverty in Orissa published by the National Sample Survey Organization do not indicate the desired impact. ... Most of the employment schemes such as Jawahar Rozgar Yojna and Rural Labour Employment Guarantee Programme focus on wage employment and
17
Census of India 1991, Series - 19, Orissa, Paper 1 of 1991 Supplement, Provisional Population Totals, R N Senapati, Director of Census Operations, Orissa. (Bhubaneswar, Dec. 3 1991). 13
therefore only fully unemployed people get opportunity for employment. Self employed workers who are mainly engaged in household industries are not attracted to these Government sponsored employment schemes which possibly explains the marginal impact on poverty alleviation.19 Hence many NGOs in Orissa have concentrated their programmes on income generation activities for both men and women. There is also an effort by many to try and evolve new ways of managing their resources. For example, Joint Forest Management with the Forest Department and the villagers is something they are trying hard to bring about. Although Orissa is endowed with comparatively rich natural resources such as forests, minerals, rivers and an extensive coast line offering opportunities for trade and ports, the state economy which is predominantly agrarian and rural, has not benefited from these resources. Apart from all this, is the growing spectre of diminishing resources. Forests, which are the livelihood of hundreds of people are fast disappearing. Natural calamities caused by mismanagement of resources have been increasing everywhere. The recent floods in the months of July - August 1994 bear witness to the fact. Yet, these are not sudden / new occurrences. And that something needs to be done by the people themselves is a realization that struck more than a decade back. Hence, NGOs took it upon themselves to try to alleviate some of the problems plaguing Orissa.
The organizations that I have studied are quite diverse but which I think can all be classed as voluntary organizations or NGOs. At any rate all of them are involved in constructive work. I hope to be able to arrive at some sort of an idea of NGOs in Orissa by looking at these different organizations. Apart from the Gandhian organizations and the Sarvodaya agencies that came up in Orissa in the aftermath of the Bhoodan movement, there has been a mushrooming growth of NGOs and or grassroot organizations since the 1980s. These include village level yuvak sanghas, mahila samitis, small, medium and large operational voluntary organizations, support structures, welfare oriented groups, programme oriented, a
18
Sharma, R A , ’The Land use economy of Orissa’, Indian Forester (Forest Research Institute, P.O New Forest, Dehradun, U.P, 1993). 14
combination of programme and mobilization and of course the ones with vested interests. In this chapter I would like to start by looking at the apex Gandhian organization in the state, the Utkal Navajeevan Mandal, which was formed in the midst of the independence struggle but still exists today. I will also try and look at it in the light of the more contemporary NGOs with which it shares its field. Categorization of these NGOs is difficult as according to me there is so much overlap organizationally and ideologically that I could not do so without creating even more confusion. There are some that I would like to highlight here - Agragamee in Kashipur, Rayagada district (formerly within Koraput district), Gram Vikas in Mohuda (12 kilometres from Berhampur) in Ganjam district, Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad with its head office in Kesharpur village in Nayagarh district and a local sangha, the Chetna Shramik Sangha, at the block level in Paikmal, Bargarh district (formerly Sambalpur district). The only city based organization that I have studied is the Ruchika School Social Service Wing which has schools for street children in slums and railway platforms. The earlier organizations started in the 1940s were looked after by more or less the same people as they all functioned within the umbrella of the Sarva Seva Sangh and other Gandhian organizations.
The Utkal Navajeevan Mandal came into being as a result of a number of influences. Firstly, the need to provide a focus to the various activities being undertaken under the constructive work programme launched by the Gandhians, and to orient these to serve the welfare needs of the tribal population in Orissa. Such an organization was needed at the time to assert the right and necessity of the tribal population to take part in the independence struggle. In fact in its initial phase the organization was an instrument of social mobilization to bring together isolated tribal communities in the national struggle for independence. This organization also played a pioneering role in raising the question of the oppressed tribal women as an integral and important part of the movement to organize and alleviate the conditions of underprivileged groups. The association of Malati Chowdhary and Rama Devi with the formation of the organization, brought into focus this particular objective of the Society - the importance of working with 19
Government of Orissa, Forestry Sector Review For National Forestry Action Plan (Orissa Forest 15
underprivileged women. The formation of the organization was also greatly influenced by the Sarvodaya movement which was launched in Orissa in 1947 by Amritlal Thakkar. The people responsible for setting up the Utkal Navjeevan Mandal ashram in Angul were the very people carrying out constructive work in other areas. Those active in this work seem to belong mostly to the upper castes. Many of them came from the wealthy, upper caste Chowdhary family - Gopabandhu Chowdhary, Rama Devi, Nabakrushna Chowdhary, Malati Chowdhary. They were all prominent Gandhians. Sarangdhar Das became the first president of the Utkal Navajeevan Mandal, Gopabandhu Chowdhary, the secretary and Malati Chowdhary, the treasurer. Apart from them, the other nine founding members were Acharya Harihar Das, Krupasindhu Hota, Nabakrushna Chowdhary, Rama Devi, Ishwarlal Byas (sent by Gandhi), Upendra Mohapatra, Bharat Charan Mohanty, Radhakrishna Bose and Bishwanath Patnaik. From 1950 onwards the activities of Utkal Navajeevan Mandal have been supervised by Malati Chowdhary. The people they recruited to work among the villagers came from the lower middle class and at times some young outcaste men joined them as well. At a later stage those involved in constructive work especially in the Bhoodan movement included Annapurna Maharana, Manmohan Chowdhary (once again from the Chowdhary family). In 1951 the two Gandhian leaders, Gopabandhu Chowdhary and Rama Devi launched the famous padayatra in which Gandhian workers came face to face with the situation of the rural poor. The situation of the tribals in Ganjam district - their indebtedness to moneylenders and consequent exploitation by both the moneylenders and government agencies - was an immediate cause of concern for the movement. The responsibility of tackling this issue was entrusted to Utkal Navajeevan Mandal, and specifically on Malati Chowdhary, who by then was the secretary of the organization. She settled down in Angul after her release from prison immediately after independence. Since 1951 the Angul centre of Utkal Navajeevan Mandal developed under her guidance into a centre for the training of Gandhian workers who could work with the tribals, as also a welfare centre undertaking development and welfare programmes for the tribal population.
Department, Bhubaneswar, February 1994). 16
The Utkal Navajeevan Mandal is a registered body. Its charter says that four categories of people are eligible for membership. They are : 1. Sevak members - those persons working for the furtherance of the goals of the society. 2. Sahayak members - Persons interested in the issues tackled by the Mandal, namely, the welfare of tribal communities and underprivileged groups. 3. Life members - Well wishers who subscribe to the aims and objectives of the society and have paid a stipulated amount in subscriptions. 4. Patrons - Any person who has faith in the objectives and programme of the Mandal and pays a subscription of Rs. 1000/- or more either in one lump sum or in twelve monthly instalments within the year. He or she will be a life member. The general body comprises all categories of members. This is a stipulation of the Societies Registration Act but is rarely followed by organizations in Orissa, most of whom do not have a general body. The absence of a general body undermines the democratic process of the structure. In this sense Utkal Navajeevan Mandal is quite unique. The general body elects the executive which has a membership of nine to fifteen persons. There are three office bearers - the President , Secretary and Treasurer. Malati Chowdhary was, for a long time the Secretary and then the President. Since the elections held in 1987 however, she has been an ordinary member. The operational structures of Utkal Navajeevan Mandal consists of centres at village level in Dhenkanal, Phulbani, Keonjhar and Sundergarh districts. Each centre is responsible for a variety of activities depending on the needs of the area and Utkal Navajeevan Mandal’s capacity to respond to these. There are a total of thirty-five centres spread over five districts. The majority of the centres are located in the Dhenkanal and Angul districts. Balwadis and crèches are an important feature of these centres. At the main centre at Dhenkanal a women's training centre, maternity centre and an oil ghani are located. Although linked to the centre at Angul, the others run quite autonomously. The people in charge of these centres trained by the Angul ashram, are mostly women, and have worked for a long period. There are instances of initiative by the workers in their centres raising funds for their centres indicating the degree of autonomy allowed to the workers.
17
An important part of the Utkal Navajeevan Mandal ashram is the Bajirout Chatrabas, an innovative school and hostel for an alternative education or Nai Talim. One of Gandhi's companions at Noakhali in 1946 was Thakkar Bapa, an illustrious social worker with whom Malati Devi had been in close contact for many years. By then political prisoners in British India had been released, but the Prajamandal agitators in princely states were still behind bars. Thakkar Bapa asked Malati Devi to start a school and a hostel for the prisoners’ children who were getting no education. She bought about ten acres of forest land from the family of landlord Girija Shankar Dutta, building a few thatched sheds there to accommodate a dozen odd children and named the institution Bajirout Chatrabas and formally started it on 11th May 1946. It was named after a ferry boy in a nearby village who was shot dead in 1938 by the police for refusing to ferry them. With independence and integration of feudatory states, all political prisoners were freed and Malati Devi converted the hostel into one for tribal and harijan children.20 The memorandum of association states that the objects of the Bajirout Chatrabas society are to impart and propagate nai talim or education for life, as defined by Gandhiji in all its different stages including the University stage and to train teachers enabling them to teach pupils and to train workers for spreading Sarvodaya ideals of society. Presently there are one hundred and fifty adivasi and harijan children, nearly half of them girls, living in the hostel and going to the nearby government school. Activities within the institution are minimal with some activities like gardening and tailoring. Initially Bajirout Chatrabas was meant for adivasi children and a little later admitted untouchables, but now they have several savarnas as well. The institution is run mainly on grants from the government under the orphanage scheme and the Harijan and Tribal Welfare scheme. While the students of Bajirout Chatrabas got primary education from the nearby government school, Malati Devi found that those who had finished with their primary education had nowhere to go for secondary education. So in 1954 she started a post basic school at Champatimunda, some fifteen kilometres from Angul town.
20
Prasanna, R and Pattajoshi, L, ’Mother of Freedom’, The Week (published by Jacob Mathew from Cochin for the Malayala Manorama Co. Ltd., Kottayam, Kerala, December 30 1990). 18
In its early years Utkal Navajeevan Mandal essentially represented a movement and hence it is somewhat difficult to summarize the work done by it. Malati Chowdhary went walking to otherwise totally inaccessible areas in the interior and set up centres there. She inspired courage among the workers. The Utkal Navajeevan Mandal categorizes the work done by it into two - social action and social welfare. The social action programme undertaken have been participation in the Bhoodan and Gramdan movement, movement against the moneylenders in Dhenkanal and Koraput districts, legal aid to tribal people to restore to them lands alienated from them. In Koraput district there was a movement to free tribals from the exploitation of government agencies like the Forest Department and Revenue Department and in Dhenkanal various movements launched with active support of tribal women against alcoholism. These activities however came to a halt by the 1960s. The Utkal Navajeevan Mandal was initially aided by the government and Gandhi Smarak Nidhi. Some centres were being run in adivasi areas. The government was funding it entirely. In 1957, H K Mahtab, the Chief Minister thought it unnecessary and cut down on social supports and networks. There was considerable tension between the constructive workers and the Government over the issue of the Bhoodan and the Gramdan movement. At this time the Jayprakash Narayan movement began to spread all over the country. He called out to the youth of the country to resist corruption. Meetings were held in Orissa as well to make people aware of the state of affairs. Malati Chowdhary and others associated with the Utkal Navajeevan Mandal were the leaders of the Jayprakash Narayan movement in Orissa. As a result of this they were jailed in 1975 during the emergency that followed. Nevertheless, till 1975 the government was giving substantial assistance. After 1975 all government help was discontinued by Nandini Satpathy.21 The concentration of the organization after that was on social welfare activities. The balwadis in tribal villages in Dhenkanal, Koraput and Phulbani districts continued with grants from the Bhartiya Adimjati Sevak Sangh. (affiliated to the Central government grant institution). The women's training centre was discontinued for a while on the plea that there was no necessity for it. However it was so as there were no funds available and
21
Interview with Golak Patra, Utkal Navajeevan Mandal, Angul, September 1993. 19
since there were no funds it was useless to open new centres.22 Women were trained for two years and then went to stay in harijan bastis (colonies). Some of the programmes that were carried out included: introduction of improved agricultural techniques and new crops among the tribal peasants, installation of minor irrigation schemes to improve agriculture, provision of drinking water sources in tribal areas, income generation programmes based on local produce and cottage based industries. These have been set up in tribal villages in collaboration with the Khadi and Village Industries Commission. The Utkal Navajeevan Mandal has a khadi production and sales centre in Kamakhyanagar. Initially there were three units but now they have been reduced to one. Those employed are women especially those who have no other source of income. The Utkal Navajeevan Mandal also sponsored the State Resource Center for adult education to develop literacy materials and training programmes for the National Adult Education programme. The basic education centre for tribal children at Champatimunda also houses an old age home. At the moment they have twenty-five early childhood education (ECE) centres in Angul which impart non-formal education (NFE) to children from six to fifteen years old under the National Education Policy of 1986. A major and successful programme that had been undertaken by the Mandal was in collaboration with World Health Organization in the eradication of the yaws disease. The Utkal Navajeevan Mandal undertook mass inoculation and health education campaigns regarding the disease. Some activities like khadi are still being carried on but others seem quite out of tune with the changes taking place. The sprawling ashram at Angul houses the families of a large number of workers not all of them associated with any of the Mandal activities. The spirit seems to have gone, apart from the fact that the funds are low. There are still about two hundred students living at Bajirout Chatrabas who do take part in looking after the kitchen garden but other activities like carpentry, tailoring are minimal. Some of their buildings have been rented out to the government to earn some money for the Utkal Navajeevan Mandal. There the government conducts a World Bank sponsored training programme for women. “The maternity centre does not get much support because of the government stipulation that such centres must practice rules of the family planning 22
Interview with Joykrushna Mohanty, Bhubaneswar, May 1993. 20
programme, a condition which Malati Chowdhary has refused to comply with in the ashram.”23 The Utkal Navajeevan Mandal has played an important role as a pioneer in the field of tribal welfare and development. Its advocacy of social reform measures to alleviate the poverty and destitution of the tribals helped to focus the main problems of the large tribal population in Orissa. As one of the oldest voluntary organizations in this field, it has highlighted through the movements it undertook the impoverishment of the tribals as a result of their exploitation by moneylenders, merchants, government agencies and so on. It is only now, in the last one decade, that these lessons are being learnt by voluntary organizations working in rural development in Orissa. In its work the Utkal Navajeevan Mandal has had considerable influence in the field of women and child care with a focus on tribal and underprivileged women and children. It has functioned primarily as a welfare organization which runs programmes for this section. Given the style of work and functioning of Gandhian organizations after independence, much of this work has been shorn of its rhetoric. However, the culture of well-run, service oriented programmes has been a definite contribution of
the
organization. One of its drawbacks however is that it is a leader based organization, although its field units have considerable autonomy. Malati Devi, the charismatic revolutionary, is today too advanced in years to guide, supervise and bring about qualitative changes in the programme. This has led to a lowering of morale and standard of work. The decline began in the mid 1970s and was also the result of financial distress faced by the organization. In the 1980s with the growth of many more organizations operating in tribal areas with more funds at their disposal and different strategies of work, the importance of Utkal Navajeevan Mandal has been undermined.
Several organizations have come up since the late 1970s and though they deal with the same kind of problems, there is a significant difference in the way many of them operate. 23
Interview with Golak Patra, Utkal Navajeevan Mandal, September 1993. 21
I would first like to give a brief history of some of these organizations that I have studied before I look at their work and structure in detail. Agragamee, named after the Oriya word meaning the pioneer or the one that leads the way is situated in the beautiful mountainous district of Rayagada in Kashipur block. When I visited it in the month of October, the mountains were a patchwork of shades of green and the yellow of the olsi flowers that turned to gold in the sunshine. It is no wonder that the Agragamee workers call this the golden belt. The olsi or niger is grown widely for its oil. There is wide scale shifting cultivation (podu) in the area, so the mountains are bare of forests and are used for crops almost everywhere. Kashipur is fortunate in that it has good water resources. It is a tribal area and the tribes include the Paraja, Kondh, Jhuria, Penga. Unlike the Utkal Navajeevan Mandal, Agragamee was started by a number of people who may have faced problems similar to the Gandhians, but had a considerably different approach. The people were different, the ideas were new. Achyut Das started the organization with a number of people in 1980/ 81. Himself a graduate of Ravenshaw College at Cuttack he recruited four other graduates from the surrounding areas. He had come to Kahipur while working for Oxfam and felt that given the kind of resources Kashipur had, there was much that could be done to help the people. Initially their organization was a part of the Social Work and Research Center headed by Bunker Roy in Tilonia. In 1987, it took on the name Agragamee and became autonomous, although motivated by the same ideology - social change and human development.24 In the initial year, Achyut Das got Rs. 10,000 from Bunker Roy to completely survey the area of Kashipur. Along with the four graduates, he studied every possible village that he could within the time frame of a year. They had five tribal youths helping them in their research. Once having come to understand the major problems of the people, they felt they needed a forum to interact with them. Soon after this, they started several night schools which were more of a platform where they could talk with the villagers and the children. The five tribal boys who taught there evoked a big response especially since the government schools in the area had been dysfunctional for years. 24
Interview with Pradeep Mohapatra, Agragamee project coordinator, Bhubaneswar, May 1994. 22
For the first year, people were suspicious of these ’educated’, ’city dressed’ people. It took some time before many could relate to them. Nevertheless, once dialogue was started with the tribals, they moved to other things. In two villages they helped them build water-harvesting structures.25 Since their mud structures for irrigation got washed away every time it rained a lot, the one thing that was important for them was to build a permanent structure. The villagers came to Agragamee for help. Agragamee in turn asked them what they could do. They said they could provide their labour. So, Agragamee had cement sanctioned and hired a truck to bring it to their headquarters. Beyond that to take it to the villages in the Dongasil panchayat was impossible since the roads were bad, being only mountain tracks and there was no bridge over the river. The villagers came en masse to Kashipur and carried bags of cement on their backs. Their wives met them half way and there they divided their load and carried it to their villages. This was no small distance and it was their determination that eventually led them to have water harvesting structures. The villagers involved in this said that it was the first time since independence that cement had come to their villages. Initially they had spoken to the Sarvodaya workers in their area but nothing had come of it. This time round, they had themselves to thank. In 1983 the young people helped the tribals organize themselves on the issue of bonded labour. They supported them in leading protests against landlords or the sahukars that had kept them in bondage, make petitions to the local authorities, since technically goti pratha had been banned a long time ago and furthermore gave them the confidence that they were not totally alone in face of the huge literate bureaucracy. They demanded the right to own and cultivate their own land. This quite obviously generated a lot of ill feeling from vested interests and created a lot of tension. The landlords were extremely angry and blamed Agragamee for inciting the labour to leave them. In April 1983 Achyut Das went to visit an irrigation facility being constructed for the gotis in Amarsinghguda. The source of the water was in a non tribal area and hence there was a dispute with other castes. At the site Achyut Das was attacked and injured badly. Agitation by the gotis also 25
A watershed is an area from which runoff, resulting from precipitation, flows past a single point into a large stream, a river, a lake or an ocean. The term water - harvesting structure, catchment area or drainage basin are used in the same sense. This is especially useful in areas which do not have rainfall in all seasons. Water is conserved in such a way by building bunds, ponds, check dams and other such structures so that there could be a constant supply of water for irrigation and other purposes. 23
picked up. The years between 1983-85 were extremely tense and there was a serious law and order problem. Eventually the district administration had to step in and promised to rehabilitate the tribals in a new village. They gave them land to settle a new area and sanctioned Rs. 80, 000 for building houses. Since the tribals provided their own labour for the purpose they were able to save quite a lot of money which went into buying their own land for cultivation. When I visited their new village, Haliasahi (see appendix 1), I met only one or two women there as everyone else had gone out to work in the fields. The cement structures with brightly painted blue doors seemed somewhat incongruous in these mountains but the people seemed happy to have some place to call their own. Sinai, a young woman who had stayed back in the village due to her new born infant spoke of their days in bondage when they got only Rs. 20 a year and thirty kilograms of ragi or paddy. While the women used to do podu on dangar (mountain) land their husbands were indebted to the landlords and compelled to work on their fields. She said that when Agragamee workers first came to the village, the people, afraid of all outsiders, used to run to the mountains. Agragamee slowly initiated village meetings. Finally many of the people were convinced that they should stand up to the sahukars and write to the Block Development Officer (BDO) about their plight. It was then that the whole process began of rehabilitation began. After being rehabilitated they got bullocks and buffaloes supplied by the BDO. Using their animals, they repaid the sahukar with their labour. Besides, the government had also become more strict about bonded labour, so the sahukars/landlords had been under considerable pressure to release them.26 Although they were freed eventually, it is important to note that they were not freed unconditionally but had to pay back the sahukars with their labour. When it came to buying land (from some savings they had) the women insisted that their names be put on the deed. When asked what prompted them to do so, the women said it was because the rate of divorce was high and often the husband would take another wife and just as easily evict the first from what he considered his land. So to make their 26
Interview with Sinai, Haliasahi, Mandibisi panchayat, Kashipur block, Rayagada, October 1994. 24
position secure, they felt this was important. Before this came about, there were several meetings in the village as the men saw no reason for such a demand. The women were the ones who had any kind of savings from selling fuelwood and so on. They threatened to withhold them if their names were not put on the deeds. The men had no choice but to agree.27 Interestingly, it was in much the same way that Gram Vikas ingratiated itself among the tribals of the Kerandimal hill range in the area of Mohuda where they are now situated. Gram Vikas is about twelve kilometres from Berhampur and can be reached by a bus that operates every hour especially for the people staying there. Through long village roads some barely four feet wide, one arrives at Mohuda. Although I had come unannounced, Gram Vikas personnel were only too hospitable and invited me to the mess for lunch. It was normal for visitors to drop in and at the same time there were several who happened to be staying there, one a friend of one of the workers, some volunteers from Australian Volunteers Abroad, an organization in that country that recruits young people to work as volunteers in developing countries. The sprawling campus houses most of the project workers along with their families in red brick cottages and had the air of an University, peaceful and huge, people nodding at each other as they passed by, occasionally stopping to chat a bit. In the background rose the Kerandimal hill range populated by the tribals whom the young students from Madras had befriended. Gram Vikas was started by a number of students from Tamil Nadu, among them Joe Mediath who heads the organization. In the 1960s, the Young Students’ Movement for Development (YSMD) was formed by a number of Madras University students. During the devastating cyclone in 1971 in Orissa, the YSMD sent about two hundred volunteers for relief work, a few of whom stayed back. In 1976, they received an invitation from the district authorities of Ganjam, among them Ramnath Das, a prominent citizen of Berhampur (President of the Central Cooperative Bank at the time), to come and work there. The students started a dairy farm there which was a failure. They then began to work with the tribals of the Kerandimal hill range. Although the reason of this sudden shift to working along with the tribals is
27
Interview with Sukiri, Mandibisi Panchayat headquarters, October 1994. 25
not all that clear, this was the starting point of an organization and in 1979, these students registered themselves as Gram Vikas. Their work in the Kerandimal range began with nurse Amthya Mediath and a doctor going in and treating the inhabitants. Their presence as healers helped a great deal in winning them some confidence among the people. Therefore when Gram Vikas began to try and assist them in other ways, they were not shunned completely by the people or viewed with suspicion as they were familiar to them. Land alienation was the major problem confronting the tribals of the area. Almost 75% of their land had been mortgaged to and usurped by moneylenders. Once again, the NGO ( Gram Vikas this time) stepped in and organized the tribals to demand for their land and be freed from the sahukars’ oppression. They went in large processions to the BDO’s office and chanted slogans. All this created a considerable amount of tension in the area. Eventually, supported by Gram Vikas, the tribals managed to get back all their mortgaged or usurped land. Once having established themselves as friends of the tribals, Gram Vikas began to set up educational facilities in the area. Teaching, I was told, was meant not only for literacy but for a basic knowledge of their environment. The fact that the students who started Gram Vikas were initially approached by the district authorities and other well placed people to come and work in their area is quite unusual and unlike the other organizations that I have looked at. Whether it influenced the way the organization developed could be an interesting aspect to look at. I was not the only one who came to Mohuda wanting to know more about Gram Vikas. They were often expected to answer a great many questions by aid agencies, government officials and many others. Both Gram Vikas and Agragamee are funded largely by foreign donors. This could also explain why both Agragamee and Gram Vikas have detailed reports on their organizations. Gram Vikas had made a videotape about their work for those who would like to know more about them especially donors and the Government. The person assigned to answer my questions put the tape on for me and for some foreign students/volunteers visiting the organization. According to the film, Gram Vikas is a rural development agency which works in two spheres 1) integrated tribal development. 2) energy and ecology 26
As far as the first is concerned it is supposed to deal with organizing people, income generation activities and other aspects that would improve their daily lives. The ultimate aim is to withdraw from the area by which time they should have been able to look after their needs. Apart from that in their energy and ecology programme they have a number of projects - biogas, social forestry, trying to tap underground water, composting, fishery and so on. Perhaps the organization most radical in taking up issues has been the Chetna Shramik Sangha. This organization is in western Orissa. There are nine government recognised societies that exist in western Orissa which could be said to have a distinctive people’s base and local leadership unlike many such organizations in the state. These sanghas often comprise representatives of several villages. I will be looking at just one of the sanghas called the Chetna Shramik Sangha with its headquarters at Paikmal, a part of the newly formed Bargarh district which was previously a part of Sambalpur. Before I talk about the formation of the Sangha, it might be useful to look at the socio-economic situation that exists in western Orissa since it plays a major part in the formation of these organizations. Western Orissa used to comprise three districts namely Sambalpur, Kalahandi and Bolangir. Several blocks of the old Sambalpur have become the newly formed Bargarh district and Kalahandi has also been divided up. Since 1965 this entire region has had scarcity conditions, erratic rainfall and recurring droughts. This area is a part of the deccan plateau presently characterized by extreme climatic conditions and high deforestation tending towards desertification. The recurrence and intensity of droughts has been increasing over the years. The social structure is a remnant of the feudalistic caste based zamindari system. A feudal family called the gauntia exercises authority in almost every village. Although financially many of them have weakened over the years, they still wield a lot of power in the villages. In this region almost more than 50% of the people belong to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Untouchability is very much present in the area and in places where there are multi caste populations, it makes the lives of the people especially difficult. The women are the most affected social group. Due to a situation of extreme scarcity they have been forced to sell their own children, migrate in large numbers and 27
take to prostitution, besides having a low intake of food. The Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA), a scheme for the development of women has not left any impact on the status of women in the area. The area is characterized by a low level of living, low levels of productivity coupled with significant dependency on agricultural products, an inadequate government and political system, chronic drought, widespread group disparities, and large scale migration for wages. Both men and women especially from Kalahandi migrate to parts of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and other parts of India. Many also migrate to places within the state as from the Padmapur area to Bargarh. Bonded labour exists here in the form of chiddue which is an annual contract. The Government claims that the system has been totally abolished and all released labourers have been rehabilitated, whereas the people say otherwise. It is true that the bonded labour system has been weakened substantially due to government laws, voluntary organizational effort, migration, but it still exists in disguised forms.28 Distress sales of land, labour, and forest/agricultural produce is common. The moneylenders gain during difficult periods and the poor become poorer. The Chetna Shramik Sangh was formed in 1986 by the coming together of various informal village committees. These committees deal with the protection of forests, assertion of rights vis a vis legal mechanisms, try to create an awareness among the people of the schemes that the government has floated for them, encourage women’s savings and so on. Since 1978 the U K based donor agency, Oxford Famine Research (Oxfam) in a programme called the Oxford Western Orissa Programme (Oxworp), had been carrying out relief measures in the area. They pulled out in 1982 although continued some support. The villagers working along with Oxfam decided to form an organization to look after their interests in the long run. The Chetna Shramik Sangha grew out of this. As a result, before Oxfam withdrew from the area, it arranged some leadership and financial management programmes for the societies and made funding arrangements for infrastructure. According to the old leaders of the community who also served in the
28
These views were expressed in a Sangha meeting in Komna block, Nuapara district, at the headquarters of the Banbasi Seva Sangha. Similar observations have been expressed in the report of an 28
executive body, the Sangha was formed as a forum to organize the socio-economically weaker sections, to reduce migration, fight exploitation at the local level and to confront corruption and negligence meted out to them by the local government institutions. This is also found in the bye-laws of the society. At present the Sangha has tried to generate awareness on issues like goti - pratha (system of bondage), drought, environment, employment, anti - poverty schemes, casteism, status of women. They aim to remove illiteracy, to bring about social reform, to enable women to participate in development, build up the weaker sections and increase their political participation. After Oxfam withdrew in 1982 the Sangha took up the issue of low wages being paid to kendu bush cutters, of rehabilitation of bonded labourers, low wages paid by government and private contractors. The Goti system existed as a major problem in the early 1980s. Movements were initiated in 1980 and 1981 that continued till the mid-eighties. The goti-andolan (movement) tried to build up public pressure on the government for their release and rehabilitation. There were no other political organizations or social bodies that were taking up this issue. The Chetna Shramik Sangha tried to do so by building up an awareness through education programmes, padayatras, cycle march, gheraos, hunger strikes, surveys of the people concerned, interaction with the government and legal assistance to the poor. During the years 1982 - 1989, Chetna Shramik Sangha approached the High Court for the rehabilitation of bonded labourers in Paikmal. In 1982 the government officials declared that there was no bonded labourer in this area. The volunteers of the Chetna Shramik Sangha however identified three hundred and ninetysix bonded labourers and out of them managed to get rehabilitation for one hundred and six. This was not taken up afterwards. The gotis were identified but not all could be rehabilitated. Nevertheless, the movement which continued till 1985 made a tremendous impact on landlords, gauntias and government officials. The Chetna Shramik Sangha holds awareness camps in the villages to disseminate information on various programmes of the government and develop skills to avail of these programmes. Also discussed at these camps are the usefulness of forestry evaluation of their respective sanghas conducted by the sangha members and Oxfam representatives in 1992. 29
programmes, health and hygiene, the effect of liquor, exploitation and corruption in the government. Along with other NGOs the Chetna Shramik Sangha educates the people on government schemes meant for them and this they do so with the help of a grant from the Council for Advancement of Peoples Action and Rural Technology (CAPART). Village committees were formed in those villages and government officials invited to camps to inform the people about various government schemes. The Sangha has an administrative staff of about three people and an office building from where they can coordinate their plans. This is in Paikmal. Oxfam gives infrastructural support i.e. salaries for the office staff although recently they have also helped them with specific programmes and will do so for the next three years after which they hope the Sangha will be able to manage on its own. The Sangha has a four tier structure with the village level committees at the grass root level, the panchgaon committee at the intervillage level, the Central Committee at the apex level and the Executive committee comprising the President, Vice president, Treasurer and four other members at the top. The panchgaon committee at the gram panchayat level was formed to act as a pressure for fund mobilization from the government and is responsible for interacting with the government in other matters. The Central Committee looks after programme management and meets once in three months. The executive committee however, meets every month. Membership is restricted to scheduled tribes, scheduled castes, marginal farmers and the landless. A small amount is generated by membership fee which is about Rs. 2 a year for a family. The structure of the organization was as I’ve talked about before until the older office bearers were unceremoniously thrown out by younger people. They complained that there was nepotism and mismanagement of the funds at the office. Apart from that there was also a joint evaluation of the activities of the Sangha by the Sangha members, Oxfam representatives and two external evaluators which made certain changes necessary. The new office bearers also decided that they did not want any direct funding and that the Sangha should be more issue based as it had started out rather than programme oriented as it was tending to become.
30
On a visit there some of the Sangha people told us about the corruption in the gram panchayat which the Sangha felt it was strong enough to protest about. Quite naturally this created serious problems for them. In fact in Kalahandi one such sangha is said to run parallel to the panchayat system. However, one of the Oxfam field officers working in the area, said that many a time the Sangha was able to avoid conflicts with the local authorities when they carried out dharnas and so on since in such cases the whole village participated and although the Chetna Shramik Sangha had a hand in organizing the event (as in the case of the Gandhmardhan andolan) it was seen more as the entire village being responsible for it. The Sangha is also viewed with suspicion by the upper castes and they have often tried to stop their activities. Due to this, in some of the programmes that Chetna Shramik Sangha has initiated, other upper castes have also been included. Programmes like land levelling and forest protection have included middle farmers and even gauntias at the village level, though the central level structures are still keeping the big farmers and gauntias out. The political role of the Chetna Shramik Sangha has not been explored. The members who had been evicted from the Sangha on corruption charges have in the meantime tried to form an organization called the Paschim Orissa Krushi Jeevi Sangha which is still in its formative stage. They have been creating quite a lot of problems for the Chetna Shramik Sangha, slandering them and spreading misinformation. Sangha members have also been facing problems from local politicians who feel that their popularity may make them potential rivals. In fact some Chetna Shramik Sangha members are already ward members. The villagers often come up against the police as well. Recently some villagers were beaten up by the police at the behest of the local Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA). The MLA’s men had wanted to cut logs in a forest which the villagers were protecting. The villagers refused to allow the men to do so and ran them out of the forest. The retribution was quick to come with the police bearing down on them. Such cases have been quite common ever since Chetna Shramik Sangha started its forest protection activities. The ex - members who had been asked to leave have joined hands with such politicians and local authorities in order to try and discredit the Sangha.
31
Although they have not really taken any steps to counter it, the Chetna Shramik Sangha members are very aware of the corruption in the Gram Panchayat. They say they hope to be able to make the people aware of it as well as of the possibility of fighting it together. Organizations like the Chetna Shramik Sangha in development parlance are often classed as people's organizations and not necessarily as non-governmental organizations. Another such organization is the Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad. These two are similar in their organization and in the fact that unlike the two previous ones, they were started by youth living in that very area. Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad is a grass roots organization in Kesharpur in Sadar Block of Nayagarh district (formerly Puri district). It is situated at a distance of twelve kilometres from the district headquarters. The village is inhabited by one hundred and twenty families from different communities. The people are all dependent on agriculture with an average land holding of about one acre. Over the last two decades the village has completely changed its identity and is being called Buddhagram (the village of enlightenment). When we reached Kesharpur we were greeted by the singing of the Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad song ’Brukshya bina jeevan nahi, jeevan nahi...’ by the people at the Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad office. There was Joginath Sahoo, former secretary and one of the founders of the organization; now merely a member but still one of the main forces behind the forest protection movement. He teaches at the local school nearby. There were other office bearers present as well as a number of girls who were enrolled in the tailoring classes being given at the office there. Before we were taken around the village to see the work that they had done, Jogi babu told us something of the background of the organization. Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad is based on Gandhian philosophy. He said they believed in the non-violent and gentle way of convincing people of what they were doing. Many a time they had fallen at the feet of people, even passing visitors, to tell them to come and plant a sapling.29 I was also provided with a sapling which I planted nearby. Kesharpur is situated near a hill called Binjhagiri which is spread over 970 acres with a height of 280 metres from sea level. Since independence, the growth in population has 29
Interview with Joginath Sahoo, Kesharpur, Nayagarh, September 1993. 32
resulted in higher dependency on forests. Trees were felled and the forest destroyed. The hill became totally bald which resulted in soil erosion and deep ravines being formed. Agricultural fields below began to fill up with sand, gravel and pebbles washed down from the hill. There was an acute shortage of fuelwood. In fact many of the Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad members cited a particular incident when talking about the inception of their organization. The story goes that a farmer not getting wood for the cremation of his dead brother's body, threw it into the river. This was apparently what totally appalled the villagers. Not only was this action bound to bring bad luck, but it brought home more forcefully what had become obvious by now. If things continued as they were, soon they might not have even fuelwood for their daily needs. Then in the early 1970s a prolonged spell of drought affected the village for six consecutive years and it was believed that the drought was caused due to deforestation. “The forests of Nayagarh districts have undergone both quantitative and qualitative degradation. The process started even before independence when the contractor system for harvesting the forests was initiated by the three ex-states of Nayagarh, Daspalla and Khandpara. Unscientific over exploitation of forests by the contractors led to depletion of large areas of forests. After independence there was a surge in forest destruction by the local population as the controls over the forests became lax. It seems that large areas of non reserved forest were converted to agriculture in the post independence period. . . During the working plan period of 1960 -1980, failure of management prescriptions have been observed ... leading to major deterioration in the condition of the forests. The bamboo forests were mainly leased out to the Titagarh Paper Mills. The harvesting of bamboo was taken up unsystematically, leading to depletion of bamboo forests. This brings to the fore the failure of the formalized forest management system in the division. The forests have receded from the villages. The villages which are away from the existing forests face a scarcity in forest produce, especially fuelwood and small timber.
33
An informal market has evolved for these products, leading to still more pressure on the forests.”30 The destruction of forests led to a host of negative repercussions. The scarcity of fuelwood led to inconvenience in either bringing it from afar or in collecting twigs and leaves for burning. In some cases due to the unavailability of sufficient fuelwood, people cooked only once a day. Construction timber had to be purchased at a high cost or smuggled out of distant forests at great risk. The forest produce on which the poor subsisted during the lean months was difficult to obtain. Medicinal plants became rare or unavailable both due to deforestation and due to their over exploitation. The indirect effects were more severe. Streams dried up and heavy soil erosion on the denuded slope adversely affected agriculture. The eroded soil and gravel from the hills got deposited on the fields at the base of the hill, destroying their productivity. The humus laden water from the hillsides is now full of silt. Erratic rainfall and droughts are also being linked to the destruction of the forests. Thus the depletion of forests has led to the erosion of the life support system of the people especially in the non - reserved forest areas which are owned by the Revenue Department. The management is supposed to be in the hands of the forest department. This has led to a management vacuum for the non reserved forests. Traditionally in this area, community institutions have managed common issues as well as resources such as ponds, temple lands and so on. In some of the villages such institutions took up protection of degraded forests in their immediate vicinity. They were motivated by the need to conserve forest resources to meet their forest product needs as well as for their future generations. Direct linking of droughts, soil erosion, water regime disruption, loss of soil fertility etc. to forest destruction in the common perception also motivated them to try to reverse these phenomena through forest protection. By the late sixties, sporadic efforts for protecting forests were already present in Nayagarh area, for example in Patchandiprasad and Sholapetta. These efforts were self - generated with little or no support from external agencies.
30
Report of the Evaluation cum Planning Exercise for Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad, Kesharpur, 34
Professor Narayan Hazari, one of the founders of the Buddhagram movement said that Kesharpur was ’bedeviled’ by factionalism. Factions constantly ran to the police and to the court to settle scores against the enemy. Then in 1954 when Narayan Hazari had just finished his matriculation, he along with a group of people decided to stop the rot and tried to bring cohesion in the village. They talked to the people, asked them what their priority was. Everyone wanted something to be done about irrigation. Through cooperative, voluntary, community labour the people renovated their public dams. Similarly the people constructed the lower primary school together in 1958. The middle school came in 1965 and the high school in 1970. “The school threw up some young teachers who became the bulwark of social mobilization, political organization and economic development, not only for this village but also for the entire area. Joginath Sahoo was one of the first teachers to start the movement, and is today along with some other teachers the mainstay of the movement.”31 Several farmers are also actively involved. One of the great lessons of the movement, Professor Hazari told me, is that whenever you work for social reconstruction, you must go for education. He also quotes a Chinese proverb in one of his writings, “If you want to plan for one year go for agriculture, if you want to plan for a decade go for a well from which you can irrigate the fields, if you want to plan for a century build up a school.”32 He said that first priority should be given to education because it creates the requisite human resources. A number of such people thus came together in Kesharpur and tried to analyze the causes of environmental degradation. The group then decided to motivate the villagers on the need to protect forests and rejuvenate the degraded hillock. It started with informal discussions with the villagers. “The volunteers organized a series of village meetings to create an awareness about the need to protect the hill. The people of Kesharpur decided to protect the Binjhagiri hills in 1976. The volunteers approached various organizations for support and cooperation. On their request the National Social Service (NSS) unit of Nayagarh College organized an afforestation camp at Binjhagiri during the summer of 1978. The NSS volunteers with the help of the villagers planted saplings supplied by the Oxfam (India) Trust Bhubaneswar. (Interim Draft, June 1993). Interview with Professor Narayan Hazari, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, November 1994. 32 Hazari, Narayan and Hazari Subas Chandra, Environmental Revolution in Orissa : The Buddhagram Experiment, New World Environment Series IV Enviromental Pollution and Health Problems Edited by Rais Akhtar (Ashish Publishing House, 8/81 Punjabi Bagh, New Delhi 110026 , 1990). 35 31
forest department at the base of the hill. On the concluding day of the camp a mass meeting was organized wherein educationists, forest department officials and social workers spoke on the need for forest protection and regeneration. The villagers decided to protect the forests through an innovative method called thengapalli (stick rotation). Four sticks were made and one member each from four families used to go and patrol the hill. In the evening they would keep the sticks in the verandah of the neighbouring four families and the person on whose verandah the stick was placed would patrol on the succeeding day. The number of persons going on thengapalli varied with the size and value of the forest, the time of year, perceived threat and so on. “In some villages watchmen were appointed. The number of watchmen depended on the size of the forest but normally did not exceed two. The watchman was either paid from the village fund or through direct contributions by the villagers. Apart from these two systems, the villagers in general kept an eye on the forest. In some villages, thengapalli or watchmen are resorted to only in times when chances of theft are greater. Some villages controlled the access routes to forests and stopped theft by checking on these routes. In case information about illegal felling in the forest reached the village, they rushed enmass to the forest to apprehend the person. The group’s attention gradually moved to the neighbouring Malati hill. The people living in the nine villages surrounding these hills were motivated. Further the group also arranged camps for the villagers with the National Social Service (NSS) volunteers and seedlings from the forest department. The villagers were motivated to involve themselves in the plantation programme. The plantation was opposed by some vested interests. In the Malati hills the plantation programme which was carried out with a lot of effort was upturned by some villagers at the instigation of a quarry contractor. In February 1982 the NSS unit of the Utkal University with the collaboration of the Nayagarh College NSS unit organized a workshop on forest conservation. This was attended by four representatives from each of the twenty-two villages. There the problems related to protection were discussed. It was facilitated by social workers, educationists and forest department officials. The need for an organization to foster activities and coordinate efforts in all the twenty-two villages was articulated at the workshop. Hence with proportionate representation from all the villages a committee was 36
formed and the principal objectives of the organization were decided. The people at the workshop decided to name the organization Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad which literally means ’Friends of Trees and Living Beings’.”33 The people associated with Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad do not look upon it merely as an organization. When I spoke to people like Jogi Babu and Narayan Hazari, they always referred to it as the ’Buddahgram environment movement’. Hazari et al have written, “The Buddhagram movement stands not only for environmental conservation, wildlife conservation, ecology development and afforestation but also for total development. It stands for development in its economic, social, political, cultural, humanitarian, moral and spiritual aspects. Apart from economic reconstruction the movement has also worked for social reform, family planning, employment generation through cottage industries, development of agriculture, irrigation, water management, biofarming, health care and sanitation including supply of low cost earthen latrines at the rate of Rs 6 per piece, education, leprosy eradication, prohibition, raising awareness against dowry, removal of untouchability, settlement of disputes in villages, village reconstruction through voluntary action rather than voluntary organization (because Indian society is over dependent on the government on everything) ... have been some of the social reform measures undertaken by the movement.”34 The Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad which started as a small organization in one village and has now grown into three sets of institutions involved at three different levels - village level institutions, anchalik (regional) level institutions and Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad at the coordinating level. At the village level, forest protection is undertaken by the village committee or village forest protection committees. The members are normally selected/nominated/elected by the general meeting of the villagers. In certain villages both village committees and village forest protection committees exist which cooperate with each other. The village committees or the village forest protection committees take day to day decisions regarding forest protection. In case of a major decision, the village meeting may be called to discuss the matter.
33
Report of the Evaluation cum Planning Exercise for Brukshya O’Jeevar Bandhu Parishad, Kesharpur, Oxfam (India) Trust Bhubaneswar. (Interim Draft, June 1993). 34 Hazari, Narayan and Hazari, Subas Chandra , Environmental Revolution in Orissa : The Buddhagram Experiment, New World Environment Series IV Environment Pollution and Health Problems, Edited by Rais Akhtar (Ashish Publishing House , 8/81 Punjabi Bagh, New Delhi 110026, 1990). 37
These villages which are directly protecting forests have federated to form regional apex level committees. In some other areas anchalik level committees (federation of villages) are directly protecting forests. The anchalik committees have been formed as a result of intervention by Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad. These committees are identified as the sister organization of the Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad and work in consultation with it. They enjoy full autonomy in management and administration. The number of villages within an anchalik committee varies from eight to twenty-four. In some Anchalik committees a general body of village representatives is present which again nominates a managing committee (sabuj jeevan). The village representatives are nominated by the village institutions or village meetings of their respective villages. The organization has a general body of one hundred and one members representing the core twenty-two villages. The number of representatives sent by each village is proportional to the number of households in the village. The representatives are selected or elected in the general body meetings of the villages. An executive body is elected from amongst the general body. The general body meets once in a year while the executive committee meets three or four times a year. The executive committee decides on the major policy decisions relating to the organization. The secretary of the organization is the chief executive and is responsible for implementing the decisions of the executive committee. There is a consultative core group comprising members of the executive committee and the staff which meets at monthly intervals to discuss the ongoing activities of the organization. They also decide the plan of action for succeeding months. Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad strongly believes in volunteerism. There is a team of about 25 committed volunteers who provide their time to the organization on an honorary basis. Basically the group of youth involved in the movement from the beginning used to carry out padayatras and other motivational campaigning in the area. As a follow up they also helped the communities in streamlining their forest protection activities. They entered the movement due to their belief in the cause of environmental protection and have improvised upon their approach based on the learning from their experiences. These volunteers have a very high level of motivation and hence enjoy the acceptance and regard of local communities and organizations. 38
With the growth of project activities Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad started recruiting full time paid workers for organizing different programme activities and helping in administrative work. The staff strength of the organization has now gone up to eleven. This includes one field coordinator, one office coordinator, five organizers (two male and three female), one worker each for the seed bank and nursery raising programme, one office assistant and a night watchman. All the staff is under the direct supervision of the secretary. The staff comes from the younger generation in the local area. Motivated by the inspiring work of the volunteers, they have joined the organization. Given the respect and regard the volunteers command in the area, the paid staff is not given as much importance. As a result the paid staff's aspirations are reduced and their growth in the organization has not taken place. This aspect has not been given attention to and no corrective action has been taken. This has led to the full potential of the paid staff not being realized. 35 Though there is no formal monitoring of the forest preservation movement, Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad is kept well informed through visits by villagers / members of sister organizations. The staff and volunteers of Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad, during their field visits also collect the required information. Earlier since there were programmes with only a small number of people, little attention was paid to the maintenance of records. Now they have started strengthening their record keeping systems. The village level institutions/sister organizations have involved sets of written/unwritten rules to regulate the protection of forests. These rules relate to the regulation of thengapalli, watchman, definition of office, penalties to offender or rule breakers etc. Some examples are given below: (a) Those who default for Thengapalli will pay Rs. 101/- (Shingarpur). (b) If a person from the protecting village felled/removed restricted forest products she/he will
pay a fine higher than what an outsider would have to pay for a comparable
offence. The watchman on duty during the time of offence is also penalized.
35
Report of the Evaluation cum Planning Exercise for Brukshya O’Jeevar Bandhu Parishad, Kesharpur, Oxfam (India) Trust Bhubaneswar. ( Interim Draft, June 1993). 39
(c) In one case if offender belongs to the same village he is fined. Outsiders are not fined, rather an attempt is made to convince them. The rules controlling the access to forests and allowed use of forests depends on variables like type and size of forests, availability of products, size of dependent population, the perceptions of the protecting groups and so on. Therefore during initial protection years, quite often nothing is allowed to be removed from the forests. As regeneration leads to greater availability of forest products, the rules are slowly relaxed. Normally non-timber forest products (NTFPs), dried and fallen wood, leaves, twigs etc., are allowed to be removed without any restrictions. Explicit permission is required for removing small timber or poles especially those of the valuable trees.36 Not only this, but because these men handle money that has started coming in from donors like Oxfam, they are now viewed with suspicion. Many believe that they are there to make money. This is bound to happen, says Narayan Hazari, in a society of scarcity when people see another group suddenly handling so much money. However, for fifteen years, from 1970 - 1985, these people had no money. Then Oxfam stepped in and at a go gave them Rs 75, 000. A few years later, they gave them Rs 85, 000. Since last year the budget has been Rs 6 lakhs. All this is a very huge amount for the villagers. They have demanded that all the money be accounted for. So, the Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad has decided to circulate a statement of accounts among the people. This should restore the credibility of the organization.37 Both Jogi Babu and Narayan Hazari told me that Gandhian philosophy was at the core of their movement. They fall at the feet of the people to persuade them to think about their own development, conservation and of the environment. This, Narayan Hazari said, usually happens when there is factionalism in the village and there is a group of people in the village destroying forests. Then, the activists fall at the feet of those who are cutting down the trees to move their hearts. Asked whether this works he said that it did work for some time. Padayatra is another important technique to mobilize the villagers for conservation and other activities. They have also taken to fasting at certain timessatyagraha. Apart from this there is a strange mix of the religious. At times Narayan 36
Ibid. 40
Hazari goes from village to village reciting the Bhagvat and talking to the people about the environment and their lives. There is a very strong spirit of volunteerism among these people unlike most of the other NGO’s. Several Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad members have made a number of sacrifices. Joginath Sahoo has left his family at their village while he himself spends all his time working for the ’movement’. Fortunately for him his elder brother was there to look after his family. This was not the case for Bishwanath Basuntia’s family. The repercussion was that none of his children are doing very well in school or otherwise and his family life is in a mess. Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad members keep stressing on the need to be independent from the larger political administration of the country, about their need to be able to solve their own disputes instead of going to the courts which seemed merely to extract money from the plaintiff as well as the defendant without necessarily imparting justice and to be to be able to plan their own development in various ways. They showed a total disillusionment with the governmental system of the state and seem to be seeking for a solution from within their own community. Although their main emphasis is on forest protection, it seems that it all began with an effort to bring the people together to solve their own problems. The villagers seem to have realized that outside politics and the factionalism that comes with it is to be avoided at all cost. Thus during elections they take a unanimous decision on which party to vote for in order to prevent external politicians making inroads into village unity. Shri Udayanath Khatei, President of Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad and a local farmer, told me that the political parties often tried to instigate factionalism within the village so that they could be assured of at least half of the votes. This is what Kesharpur has managed to avoid quite successfully. A problem with the movement is that although their motivation has been strong enough to inspire the people to protect the forests around them, they often move to other areas to compensate for their daily need of fuelwood. As a result they hope to create a greater 37
Interview with Narayan Hazari, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, November 1994. 41
awareness in the entire area and help to find alternative means of energy. In any movement there is no finality. Some people still cut trees. “But you have to keep working,” says Narayan Hazari, “I do not think a very big thing has been achieved. There are a lot of forests in Nayagarh which we have not been able to conserve. But in perspective of the progressive destruction the movement has made a significant impact. We have covered more than 1500 villages in padayatras. So far three hundred twenty four villages have started forest protection.”38 The Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad was awarded the Prakruti Mitra award of the Orissa Government and the Brukshiya Mitra award of the Indian Government in 1986. It was the first voluntary organization in Orissa to receive the award from the Government of India. The Global 500 Environment Award of the UN was also given to Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad in 1989. At present the loss of forest cover is one issue which seriously affects all villagers irrespective of caste. It is a comparatively safe issue unlike some of the other work they have tried to do, as in the case of women’s emancipation. Recently, this is also one area where it has become possible for them to generate funds. Protection of the environment is much talked about nowadays and both Indian and foreign donors are very willing to support this cause. I have not heard of a donor agency giving funds for any kind of aggressive assertion of rights. The inflow of funds could tend to influence the way voluntary organizations chalk out their work. Nowadays Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad has been deeply involved in soil conservation around their areas and their work has also become quite technical. Although this is extremely important for them, it has seemed to have become the main objective and other issues have taken a backseat for the moment. The increasing importance of the technical aspect is evident in the programmes of Agragamee as well. Achyut Das believes that they have brought into the field a completely new way of looking at resources. He calls it the wholistic approach to development. The emphasis on Natural Resource Development is something that was not envisaged during the time of the Gandhian workers. One could argue of course that at that 38
Ibid. 42
time there was no pressing need for such an approach. Later for several reasons those organizations did not really adapt to the times. In fact Utkal Navajeevan Mandal gives us an example of a debate ( in 1977-83) of this kind and represents perhaps the dilemma that many of the older organizations are facing today. B.B. Mohanty, Malati Chowdhary’s son-in-law wanted to carry out some reforms within the organization. At the time he was a UNESCO official in Indonesia. People within the ashram like Joykrushna Mohanty, Golak Patra and others vehemently resisted any such moves. They were unhappy with his style and felt that he would totally change their character, that he would turn them into a modern commercialized NGO. On the other hand B B Mohanty writes in his book, ’Bapi’ (as Nabakrushna Chowdhary was affectionately called) that Bapi supported him but found it difficult to convince the others. Mohanty is afraid that unless the ashram takes measures to revive its activities and forge a new direction, its closure would become a certainty.39 This kind of new input is what the NGOs believe they can provide. This could imply that what had been going on in the countryside was not sustainable and they were there with new solutions. On the other hand Agragamee for example, insists that they are there to help the people when and if they need them. The tension generated over the issue of bonded labour has made them reconsider their involvement in the more volatile issue of social change. Their accent is now more on projects like watershed development. This is even more so in the case of Gram Vikas. They have tried to set up small enterprises to provide designs and marketing techniques to traditional designs and skills. Some of the factories they have put up comprise a pickle making unit based on locally available forest produce, making furniture and other items from cane, turmeric processing, tamarind processing and a bamboo board factory. All these help the surrounding villagers generate a reasonable supplementary income. Epidemics are common in Orissa and therefore sanitary latrines have been set up to prevent excreta born diseases from spreading through water. Gram Vikas also helps with several government schemes.”40
39
Interview with Professor Manoranjan Mohanty, Delhi University, December 1994. 43
Unlike any of the organizations I have talked about so far, Ruchika School Social Service Wing is an urban organization based in the capital city of Bhubaneswar. It is an organization dedicated to bringing education within the reach of slum and street children, those working as ragpickers, rikshawpullers, hotel boys and so on. They try to make education accessible to the children especially for those who will not turn to it as a matter of choice. The Ruchika School Society registered under the Registration Act of 1960 was started in 1985 by Inderjeet Khurana, formerly a research fellow at the Punjab University at Chandigarh. The plight of children, rural and slum, unable to reach schools is a common experience for people living in Orissa. Thinking of a way to reach out to the most neglected section of children in the society, the beggar and street children, led Mrs. Inderjeet Khurana and a physical training instructor, R.P Dwivedy to set up a small school at the Bhubaneswar railway platform. Inderjeet Khurana initially started a school for her niece and her gardener’s daughter at her house and gradually more children were taken in. As the school grew, the disparity between the two socio - economic groups became more apparent. The more upper class children would look down upon the others and often ridicule them. Mrs. Khurana, known as Mama in the school, felt that it was unhealthy for both and thus made two wings of the school. The idea of a platform school did not occur to her until later. Since 1979 she started looking around for ways to provide education to deprived children. She met with several anganwadi and balwadi teachers at a training. Their prime concern seemed to be to be able to get a building for the school, a cupboard and other such things; in other words they seemed to be totally involved with infrastructure. She sought to challenge this constant ’whining’ (as she called it) for such things. Though she did not minimise the importance of these provisions, her belief is that it is the teachers who are important, their dedication to the children which is essential so that they give to the children what they might not be able to get elsewhere. It was then that she came up with the idea of starting a school on the Bhubaneswar railway platform. That had the infrastructure that they needed, there was always a 40
Film on Gram Vikas made by the public relations team. 44
number of kids loitering on the platforms, besides which Bhubaneswar being a small station, the platform was quite deserted for a few hours every day. The first platform school was started on the 7th of April once a week as a Sunday School, for three hours from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. There were about fourteen children on the first day, but with every successive class the result was spontaneous and overwhelming. They were eager to be taught regularly demanding an everyday class. This was started on 14 July, 1985. At present it has eighty children on its rolls (morning and evening). Initially Ruchika School was funding this school totally till they grew into seventeen schools. The costs became too much for just the school to bear. Since then, they have also been funded by various government and private organizations. In November 1985 there was an article on Ruchika School in the Times of India. Letters began to pour in from people who wanted to help. They began with a government funding from the Central Social Welfare Board which supported three crèches. Then they became aware of other government funding. From the beginning the staff at Ruchika had wanted the schools to be small and demonstrative. The Ministry of Human Resource Development however had a policy of not giving funds for less than twenty - five centres. Since they had teachers who were willing to work as well as the infrastructure for it, they increased the number of centres to twenty five. The thirty - five non-formal education centres are based in various slums of Bhubaneswar. There are ten schools at the railway stations from Puri to Jagatpur. They have popularly come to be known as platform schools. The report for 1991/92 says, “For the poor going to school is expensive. Even if education is free, most children are baby-sitting or doing household chores. We therefore, decided to take the school to the children. Slum locations in different parts of the city were surveyed and thirty-five non formal centres were started in December 1987. Twelve centres are in the slum area. The older of slum destitute children are preoccupied during the day begging, rag picking or doing some odd-jobs for an earning. They could not attend the morning school and so an evening school for such children had been started in April 1987. The number of children attending the evening school is 159. By November 1988 sixteen non-formal schools had been started in different slums of Bhubaneswar. The programme expanded to twenty-five non formal education (NFE) centres after 45
receiving financial aid from the Ministry of Human Resource Development in September 1989.”41 Now that the government has accepted non - formal education instead of trying to mainstream the children, organizations might be able to educate them at least up to class V. In December 1989 the Ministry of Labour, Government of India, sanctioned ten centres for institutional care of working children. The target group for these schools are beggars, runaways, hawkers, shoeshiners, ragpickers, scavengers, orphans, hotel boys, teasellers, slum children on the station or streets. There are three crèches in temple platforms provided by the slum community and maintained jointly by them and the organization. The complete programme of Ruchika School Social Service Wing reaches nearly 1500 children. This includes children attending the three crèches and thirty-five non-formal education centres. The evening school has on its station platform destitute and beggar children. The age of the children coming to these schools ranges from six months to eighteen years. A home called Asra for destitute and street children ( boys only) was started on 30th of November 1989. This is being sponsored by Salaam Balak Trust, New Delhi. There are twenty-five children who stay at Asra and attend regular schools. Another shelter near the Bhubaneswar station offers shelter, bathing facilities and food at subsidized rates to any destitute child who drops in during the day. It was thought necessary to have a separate place for those boys who stay on a regular basis and those who merely decide to drop in when they please as those not going to regular schools had often tried to drag the others off with them to the station. The Asra staff usually has to battle great odds to keep them there. They hope to attract them to the shelter not merely for a more comfortable time but to impart in them some vision of the future. The lure for the boys from the station, staying at Asra, to go back and lead an independent and restriction free life is ever-present. Often these little boys can make around Rs. 50 a day just by sweeping the train compartments. A report of the organization states the aims of the shelter : To develop self reliance and self confidence among them.
• 41
Annual report, Ruchika School Social Service Wing, 1991/92. 46
•
To build on the existing strength of cooperation amongst themselves.
•
To provide education to all up to class V and higher education for those interested.
The founder of the organization as well as its director cum secretary is Mrs. Inderjeet Khurana. The thirty-five non formal schools are looked after by the project officer, three supervisors, twenty-three teachers. The shelters have one case study worker, a teacher, a cook and a shelter in charge. Teachers’ training is perhaps one of the most important activities which is not only necessary to maintain good standards but also keep the teachers in touch with each other where they can discuss their problems together. At a teachers’ meeting I attended, one of the teachers told me that it was the government school students who were really good and did well in their work. The Ruchika school with its activities that took up so much of the time was unable to produce such top-rankers. The point that at Ruchika School Social Service Wing, the endeavour was to have an alternative education for those who won't necessarily go for it otherwise seemed to have been lost on her. Not everyone could be good. There were many children who would be average at their work. It is up to the teacher to bring out the best in each student. “Each teacher,” according to Mrs. Khurana “should be a mother or father to the children that often their own parents are not.” She asked the teachers for little acts of kindness that would draw the children to them, “The children are not really expected to know the value of the education or what it can bring them. What brings them to school is a kind teacher, a meal, the activities that he or she can enjoy and eventually, hopefully the education process itself.”42 The teachers’ calibre therefore really needs to be stressed upon. This is one area where not all centres meet the standard. The projects give a salary of Rs. 300 on an average.( it used to be Rs 150 before). Several teachers manage to raise it by working at two or three centres. Nevertheless even Rs 600 per month is hardly enough to sustain someone, less so a family. One of the areas where the RSSSW is therefore trying to get money from the various donors is in the salaries given to the teachers. A major problem that the schools face is the turnover of the staff who leave for better paid jobs. Also, not all are able to
42
Inderjeet Khurana was addressing a meeting of all the school teachers at Bhubaneswar, September 1994. 47
adjust to the slum situation and traditional social norms often inhibit them from working in such areas. On one occasion when I asked one of the teachers what it is that they told the people in their health programme, she parroted off the first lines of a health manual. That being that if they were unable to boil the water for some reason they should put purifying tablets into the water. Where was the money to buy these tablets when people did not even have enough to eat ? This was of course only one teacher and one can’t really tell if she actually would tell the slum people such obviously irrelevant things. Nevertheless it underscores the need to have a dedicated and knowledgeable staff because if they were to give such information to the people, they would have no use for them.
Broadly speaking these are some of the kinds of non-governmental organizations that one can find in Orissa today. At one end of the scale is a fairly big NGO like Gram Vikas with a number of personnel engaged in various programmes. Agragamee is also somewhat similar in that it has people from outside the immediate locality working in it. Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad and Chetna Shramik Sangha on the other hand are at the other end of the spectrum and were formed with the coming together of local people especially the youth in their respective areas. From there they grew to encompass a number of villages in the surrounding region. Completely different from these is the Ruchika School Social Service Wing not only because it is a city-based organization but because its primary focus is only on children unlike the others which deal with a variety of problems. Despite their differences there is a common thread which runs through all these organizations and that is the will to try and effect changes for a better society. The manner in which different organizations have responded to varying issues will be dealt with in detail in the next chapter.
48
Chapter Two Voluntary organizations are motivated largely by the desire to bring out peoples’ power or lok shakti. They try and form people’s groups and organizations that would be able to assert their rights and demand what should be theirs. Agragamee believes that it is their responsibility to facilitate such groups. Gram Vikas also talks about such an approach wherein their goal ultimately is to withdraw once the people have managed to take the reins in their own hands. Though Narayan Hazari admits that Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad has not done all that much in this regard, this was intended to be the main focus of the movement. He said that the villages were not politically self-governing or economically self-sufficient, hence there was no lok shakti. Unless power was given to the people, there could be no development. Most villages have a political system, but due to the lack of Governmental support, it was decaying. At the moment, Orissa has a two-tier system of Panchayati Raj and the Government is now proposing a three-tier system. According to Hazari there should be four tier system of Panchayati Raj in every village with a tenure of one year. “Most necessary for a village is social cohesion. In Buddhagram there have been regular annual elections through secret ballot to choose the informal panchayat headed by the gramini. Mass participation in politics increases the legitimacy of the political system and strengthens its effectiveness. There is no credibility gap between the leaders and the masses. Democratic politics has proved to be the force behind Buddhagram’s transformation.”43 “As a result of the operation of adult franchise in the political system of the village, considerable shifts have occurred in the social base of politics. Sections of the people who had been hitherto denied access to political power have realized the power of
numbers.
Participation in Government has led to a heightened sense of responsibility, awareness of the problems of Government and hence a degree of realism. It has led to chastening of hostile and negative attitudes held for long as a result of being continuously deprived of power. Control of Governmental power by different groups has led to greater accommodation and appreciation of opposite points of view. An important development
43
Interview with Narayan Hazari, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, November 1994. 49
is the discarding of the confrontation system and the emergence of a consensus system between the various groups.”44 In order to promote greater independence in decision making, voluntary organizations in Orissa have taken active steps to set up local pressure groups and operated as channels of infomation for the people; with information or knowledge which was hitherto inaccessible for them. This is also what they call awareness generation and is an important part of their work which I will talk about in this chapter. Their activities range over a wide spectrum of issues concerning the everyday lives of the deprived sections of the population. Other major issues that will be discussed in this chapter are those concerning land, women’s development, rehabilitation of people displaced from their homes due to developmental efforts, environment issues especially forest protection and conservation, the struggle for minimum wages and helping the people to ensure, vis a vis the government, what has been deemed theirs by right. Their efforts at encouraging savings, education, health and sanitation have also been outlined. Most of the organizations especially those like Agragamee and Gram Vikas operate and carry out their activities through groups of people usually at the level of the panchayat or the village whatever the case may be. The Kerandimal Gana Sangathan, a body comprising tribal leaders of the villages acts as a counterpart to Gram Vikas. At the village level the savings and credit programme is usually carried out by them. Now each village’s secretary meets once a month with Gram Vikas. Field coordinators and workers of Gram Vikas work with them on various projects. Similarly, I was told that Agragamee wants to ensure cooperation in implementation and operation in all their work - hence a village committee is appointed to look into that. They have meetings with all those involved regularly and they may be youth meetings, animators meetings or mahila mandal meetings. The formation of mahila mandals and women’s development in general is an important component of Agragamee’s work in Kashipur. Through the mahila mandals they have 44
Hazari, Narayan and Hazari, Subas Chandra, ’Environmental Revolution in Orissa’, New World Environment Series IV Environment Pollution and Health Problems, Edited by Rais Akhtar. (Ashish Publishing House, 8/81 Punjabji Bagh, New Delhi 110026 , 1990). 50
tried to express the power of the women. The mahila mandals try to mobilize the village against alcohol abuse, to save, to demand ’job-works’ from the Government that have legally been declared for them (since there is a big disparity in the measures the Government promulgates for the people and what its officials actually do), to take responsibility in making the Government give pattas in the name of women - the dangar patta on hilly slopes that have actually been demarcated for them. In fact, out of the 100 villages demarcated, 20/30 have already been granted pattas in the name of both the husband and wife. Agragamee has recently drawn up a suggested plan of action for women’s development which it would like to see enforced. The action plan being formulated takes into account three broad regions of the state namely: tribal, coastal and urban. They believe that this wholistic approach is essential to help different interest groups identify with the action plan. In the action plan one can see an attempt to bring some kind of cohesion among various women’s organizations. It is an effort to bring the intellectuals, city dwellers and village women closer together so that they can work in tandem. If this succeeds, it should be an extremely valuable contribution by an NGO. They have helped to form several mahila mandals, i.e. organized groups of women which would look after their own interests. On a visit to the Mandibisi Mahila Mandal I was told that the women from the village of Haliasahi along with others in the Mandibisi panchayat have come together to form this mandal. Agragamee had organized training in carpet weaving for forty beneficiaries for about a year. They got Rs. 300 per month. After their training, these women organized themselves into a mahila mandal with some pushing from Agragamee. They all contributed Rs. 200 each for a common fund. Lakai and Sukiri, both from Haliasahi, are the President and Secretary of the Mandibisi Mahila Mandal. They said that the most compelling reason for them to form the mahila mandal was that they wanted to form a cooperative society through it. Utkal Navajeevan Mandal was the first organization to address the problems of women in Orissa. However the work that they did was different from Agragamee’s in significant ways. The Utkal Navajeevan Mandal recruited women for various activities and they laid
51
particular stress on training women to carry out constructive work. In a report45 published in 1993 they elaborate on the kind of work that the women are trained in. They impart training to women workers including workers from sister organizations for various constructive programmes started from the very beginning of the organization through its permanent establishment of the Mahila Sibir. Women are trained as anganwadi workers and in maternity and child welfare and could choose to take care of balwadis (centres which take care of young children) and crèches. The early childhood education centres are aided by Bajirout Chatrabas. Apart from this, women are also trained to work in day care centres for the aged, at the Nabakrushna Chowdhary Niwas at Champatimunda, at the non-formal education centres and in village and khadi industries. According to this report, women’s development also includes income generating programmes like kitchen gardening, cup plate making, spinning for polyvastra with ambar charkha and weaving. Most of the women trained at the Utkal Navajeevan Mandal since the 1950s have been taken in at the various centres where they are responsible for their running. There has been a stress on taking in mostly destitute and abandoned women. While this gives the women the confidence to start a new life, their role is still limited. Whether they use it or not the mahila mandals in Kashipur give the women a forum where they can come together, identify their problems and identify with each other. It gives them the strength that comes with numbers and together they can counter oppression. For instance, in one of the villages in Kashipur, the women said that now a man would think twice before throwing out his wife from the house or taking a new wife especially if the mahila mandal there was strong and took exception to the fact. Not that there have been any dramatic changes in gender relations, but since the women have their own organization their say definitely carries weight said Lakai and Sukiri. Now the men turn to them for their opinion on various matters. Lakai had apparently tried to stand for elections as a ward member but her application had been rejected as it was incorrectly filled up. Both Lakai and Sukiri believed that women could make good ward members if they had leadership qualities and worked properly i.e. created demands. That, they felt, was the first important step to identify their problem and demand their 45
Report by Utkal Navajeevan Mandal, ’At a Glance, as on 31. 8. 93’. 52
dues from the Government. At the moment the women don’t do anything, both of them said. If one of them were to become a panchayat member, they said that they would see to it that the Government programmes were implemented in all villages. They felt that once they were in the panchayat, they would be able to speak out for themselves and their community.46 In direct contrast is Sumoni, the firebrand of Siriguda village. She feels that her voice would be drowned out in the panchayat. It would be possible to do much more from the outside than by being a panchayat member. Sumoni has had an extremely interesting and unusual history in comparison to other tribal women in these parts. Along with other women from different villages, Sumoni has been going from village to village mobilizing tribal women to raise the minimum wage rates, build up grain banks to avoid moneylenders and organize to resist exploitation in any form. As her experiences increased Sumoni perceived more and more contradictions in the existing social system and questioned the inherent corruption. She presented her observations in different village meetings and thus was able to mobilize women on different issues including minimum wages, moneylending and corruption in the local Government administration. The quality of her work was recognized and Sumoni was made a member in the steering committee of the Orissa Tribal Development Project (OTDP), Kashipur, supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) as a tribal representative along with Luka Majhi of Pandakapadar village. “.....Fearlessly she confronted district and state officials with various issues and programmes concerning the tribal in general and women in particular. Her efforts helped to bring about policy changes in the Tribal Development Project against commercial plantations like coffee and sisal on the hill slopes. She spoke out in a steering committee meeting that coffee was only useful for officers, but the landless tribals would die if the hills on which they grew a wide range of food crops were taken up for coffee. They had seen elsewhere that once commercial plantations became lucrative, the tribals were the first ones to be evicted from their land to make way for big business enterprise. The outburst forced a reconsideration of this policy and agroforestry was introduced as the alternative for hill slope development. Sumoni also led the opposition against setting up of liquor distilleries in different panchayats of the block. As 46
Interview with Lakai and Sukiri, Agragamee office, Mandibisi Panchayat headquarters, Kashipur, 53
her work continued many attempts were made to subvert her with bribes and other means. Sumoni did not waver in rejecting these. And so the efforts to woo her changed to hostility.47 It was at this time that a local member of legislative assembly, Akhil Saunta threatened by the resistance of the tribals which he felt had been instigated by Agragamee, accused an Agragamee worker of abusing tribal girls. Sumoni along with Shabai of Siriguda, Lakai of Haliasahi, Gomati of Kalakani, Nilendri of Rengasil and Sabitri of Dongasil led five hundred women in protest against the misrepresentation to the Collector. Soon Sumoni Jhuria's name was being bandied about everywhere. She began to receive threatening messages and even the police complained that she was disturbing the ’law and order’. On 22nd April 1992, once again Sumoni and her group of women led more than five thousand women in protest against Akhil Saunta’s statement and the lack of any activity to alleviate the poverty of the tribals. The Minister spoke to Sumoni Jhuria and then to all the tribals and assured them of support to their cause of fighting poverty and exploitation of the tribals. The hostility and messages threatening Sumoni as also the other leaders in the group became more aggressive and more frequent. For many days Sumoni’s movements were completely restricted. She did not even dare to go to Kashipur for any purpose. The people of Sumoni’s village as also those of neighbouring villages had wanted her to stand for panchayat elections but the menacing situation has dissuaded her.48 It is no wonder then that that she insisted that raj-niti was not for her. She said that there would be so much pressure from politicians that she wouldn’t be able to do anything even if she wanted to. Her fear was that she would end up being controlled by the sarpanch. Being out of the system gives her the freedom to raise her voice against any perceived injustice. At present Sumoni leads a mahila mandal in her village, which once again was formed when Agragamee workers came and talked to the women. The mandal runs a nursery with 1500 trees. They have got the contract for making a drain in their Rayagada, October 1994. Report by Agragamee, ’A Case of Sumoni Jhuria : The Many Hurdles to Tribal Leadership’. 48 Ibid. 47
54
village away from the contractor as well as road work nearby. The mahila mandal has managed to get a license from the Government to collect minor forest produce which was hitherto considered illegal and subject to punishment. This is the first time that such a license has been granted in Orissa. Many of the women trained in the beginning have formed a cooperative society for ragi, rice and so on. Sumoni said now several young men wanted to join the mahila mandal. She saw no reason for them not to. We are all in the fight together, so why not join hands, she said. The men seemed happy with the work that the women were doing. It was the older people who had scorned them when they first set out to form their mandal. They laughed saying what could a bunch of women do. Now they seem to be coming around to the idea that a bunch of women might be able to do some good. Sumoni wields immense clout in Government circles. When she and other representatives of tribal women approached Biju Patnaik, the Chief Minister, he made them his consultants on tribal women’s affairs. This has forced officials at the lower end of the bureaucracy to accord her some respect. They often consult her when they want to do something in the block. Nevertheless she feels it is the local Government which is often the big stumbling block in development. She told me that the ’head’ (meaning Biju Patnaik) was good but the limbs had become sick. They were almost so bad that it was impossible to cure. All the money that was sanctioned by the Government, the many schemes set up for the poor never reached the people. Sumoni said that her mission was to gather people, to bring them together to demand what should be rightfully theirs. She and other like her were going to give the sick body (that was the Government) a taste of their tribal medicine. Various parties have vied to co-opt her since she has become extremely popular among the people. But, Sumoni says, her aim is to be able to handle all these parties without getting into any one of them. Party politics she wanted to keep away from. Sumoni has become a local legend in these parts. Bijoy Pani (Agragamee field worker) told me of the time when Sumoni accompanied him to a village where a diarrhoea epidemic had broken out. They parked their jeep at a distance from the village and walked to it. Nobody paid any attention to them until one of the villagers recognized Sumoni. Then there was pandemonium for he went around shouting that Sumoni was there and within minutes a large crowd gathered round to see her and ask questions. Bijoy Pani was edged out completely. 55
On their way back from the village, when they reached the jeep, there was another crowd waiting there. Some people passing by had inquired why the jeep was standing there and when the driver told them that Sumoni had come, immediately a crowd gathered there to wait for her. Although they were running quite late Sumoni stopped to speak to the villagers who asked what they should do to be able to fight for their rights and so on. There are several women who have formed or are in the process of forming mahila mandals in Kashipur. Many have come together and used the organizing process to form an alternative leadership in the village that could challenge the arbitrary rule of the traditional heads of the village like the sarpanch and so on. Another village that I visited (the first one in fact) was Patiasil in Dongasil Panchayat. I went there with Alyali Mohanty and Bijoy Pani, two Agragamee field workers. It was dusk and the women were just coming back from the mountains at the time. It took a while before Lakhmi and Para, the two Agragamee animators, rounded up the village women to speak to us. Although their mahila mandal was not officially registered as yet, they had managed to act collectively and get a number of tasks accomplished. When I asked how they came to start the organization, they said that Agragamee had come up with this idea. It took them a while before they could accept it as possible. About three years back some women were selected for ’leadership training’. Soon many more believing that this might work came around to it. Now they feel that if they act together anything is possible. 49 We saw a drain being constructed in the village. The daily work on the drain, rather than being given to the people of that village as it is supposed to had been initially given to a contractor. Lakhmi and Para led seven women to the sarpanch and demanded that the work be given to them. The sarpanch threatened them, certain that they would never dare to go up to the Block Development Officer (BDO), let alone understand official rules. They, however, went to the BDO and not only refused to leave till the work was handed
49
This was a slightly unusual village in that a number of tribal castes lived here together - jhuria, naik, sahu, sundi. In other villages it is usually the sundis that make alcohol to sell. In some areas like Rayagada and Koraput there is a strong nexus between liquor-making and moneylending; in other words the sundhi is the sahukar. Those who sell liquor are often those who have the tribals indebted to 56
over to them but threatened to follow him home and camp there, if he didn't. Eventually the women got their rightful work for their village - to be able to construct their own drain. There is a provision in the Jawahar Rozgar Yojna that work should be given to the village committee and not to the contractors. However the sarpanch in a village usually gave it to a contractor for a share of the money that had been sanctioned. What has given the people strength are also the grain banks the villagers have set up together. Not only that, but the women came up with the idea of keeping aside a fistful of rice every time they set out to cook in the evenings. This rice is kept as a rice bank and lent out to whoever needs it, as when sick and so on. One of their major problems the women told us, is alcoholism among the men. They went around Dongasil Panchayat destroying liquor stores and breweries. Although this brought a great deal of wrath on their heads from vested interests, the success of the venture and the fact that the Chief Minister promised to prohibit liquor vending in the area, more than anything else gave them the confidence they sought. At the moment they are full of ideas of what to do for their village. Their next mission is to make bandhs for irrigation on their fields. None of the women in the village were ward members. Theoretically, they felt that there was no problem being in the panchayat. When asked whether any one of them would like to join the panchayat now that there is 33 % reservation for women, none of them thought it was a very good idea. They said, "we have no time... we are not literate... the more you know, the more problems come up...” The men standing around began to banter with the women. One of them said that if there ever was a woman who spoke well and had leading qualities, then they would definitely listen to her. The men in the villages seem quite satisfied with what the women were doing for the village. Although many of them said they were very apprehensive in the beginning, they seemed quite content for the women to fight the battles for the village. As per their action plan, Agragamee also wants to set up a mahasangha so that there would be greater interaction among the women from different villages. All this becomes them (Biswamoy Pati). Patiasil is unusual in the fact that they all seemed to be living together in the same hamlet. 57
even more difficult in the outlying mountain areas as the women have their days so full of chores that they are not always inclined to look beyond their own village. In such circumstances, the perseverance and tenacity of the Agragamee workers is remarkable. Towards the end of greater communication among the tribal women, Agragamee organized the Fourth State Level Tribal Women’s Convention at Kashipur from the 25th to 27th February, 1994. Six hundred women from various tribal tracts of Orissa discussed their problems. The convention ended with much fellow feeling amongst the participants. There was a general feeling that these get togethers and the feeling of oneness and of shared troubles and experiences generated should be consolidated in a state level organization of tribal women. It was felt that this should be finalized in the next meeting of the convention. To express their sense of solidarity and show their determination to organize and find their own alternatives, the tribal participants drafted a resolution for action. They agreed to make a sustained effort for implementation of the Minimum Wages Act as declared by the Orissa Government which promises Rs/- 25 for men and women alike, yet rarely adhered to especially in the case of women. To take up village level works including the Jawahar Rojgar Yojana through village level women’s organizations, raise collective savings of grain and cash to overcome problems of indebtedness and hunger, fight against production and sale of liquor and help in the implementation of the Prohibition Law
passed by the Orissa Government
were
important points of their resolution which present before the reader some of the manifold problems of these women. They also resolved to fight for human rights at all levels and demand proper resettlement and rehabilitation of displaced victims of large scale development projects. If necessary, they vowed to take up organized struggle for such a cause. (There are two multinationals in Kashipur, INDAL and L&T mining for bauxite. About 120 villages are to be evacuated due to their work in the area. However the evacuees have no village name or rights and are therefore not entitled to any Government schemes). This they declared, could also mean taking up organized protest against multi-purpose dams, industrialization and other mega-development projects in tribal areas which lead to the destruction of the local environment. Furthermore, they resolved to work for the protection of their local environment and resources like forests and ensure its use for and by the local people. Last but not the least, the report of the resolution states that they aim 58
to make a sustained effort towards the literacy of all women in their villages, and ensure that all girls go to school. Eight women from this group represent the tribal women in Biju Patnaik’s counsel. Their demand is that each tribal district be represented in this group. At the moment they represent only six districts. The Chief Minister has promised to accede to their demand of implementation of the Prohibition of Liquor Act. After the initial mahila mandals that came up with Agragamee support, the number grew as the idea spread to neighbouring villages. There are several villages with their own grain banks or even an alternative public distribution system. Agragamee has helped them by providing the logistics to achieve their goal. They lobbied for them within the Government and managed to have various measures sanctioned. For example, as having the women’s groups registered. The detailed account of the changes taking place in the villages of Kashipur might give the impression that these are taking place in many parts of Orissa. In actuality, such mahila mandals are the exception rather than the rule. Though the Government has authorized the registration of such groups all over the state, very few have been able to take any stand on issues or assert themselves in any way. Compared to the other organizations I have looked at, Agragamee’s emphasis on women is not so common among the others. Workers of the Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad feel that in places where the women were also approached, they have been the first to come forward to take the oath to conserve forests or agreed to bring about changes. Professor Hazary also said that when the Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad went for padayatras and campaigning, it was almost always the women who were moved first. For instance, on 6, 7 July 1986, the organization celebrated Vana Mahotsav (Forest Festival) at Tulsipur (seventeen kilometres from Buddhagram) in the foothills of the Balaram mountain. A padayatra and a workshop on forest conservation were also organized. The organizers wanted full participation of women in both plantation and the workshop. The men in the village said such a thing would never be possible. Joginath and Biswanath begged the villagers to permit them to contact the women directly. With the help of both girls and boys they 59
contacted every house and the women were requested to come to their doorsteps to meet the workers. When they came, both workers prostrated themselves at their feet and implored them to come out and participate in the function. The women were moved by their sincerity and almost all women young and old numbering more than two hundred joined the function. They were the first ones to take the oath to conserve the forest.50 Yet Narayan Hazari admits that barring a few villages like Manapur and Tulasipur there has been no involvement of women in the movement. The scarcity of fuel is especially the women’s problem as they are the ones who collect fuelwood from forests and are also responsible for making the meals. No such movement will pick up unless they come to the forefront. “The purdah system is a great inhibitor. Women do no attend the meetings of the movement. Only in tribal and dalit villages where women are wage earners and hence more liberated, they come to the meetings.”51 The Brukshya O’Jeevar Bandhu Parishad has tried to encourage family planning and they also carry on some income generation activities like tailoring. Often on their padayatras they talk about women’s rights but there has not been any concerted effort to involve women in decision making or having them form their own groups. Similarly in a joint evaluation by the Chetna Shramik Sangha members and Oxfam representatives, they found for one, that although women were members of the Sangha they hardly brought up their grievances. The villagers argued that their areas of concern were quite different from that of the men and therefore a separate committee for them at the village level was necessary. ( It is difficult to say how this suggestion came up, but it would not be illogical to presume that Oxfam who has been funding them had a lot to say in this).52 As a cultural practice, women don’t participate in meetings and discussions and the decision making process. Through several training camps and discussions, women were encouraged to participate in meetings and camps. The Sangha tried to give them a social recognition which had been denied to them and also to bring about a change in attitude 50
Hazary, Narayan and Hazary, Subas Chandra, ’Community Action in Environmental Conservation : An experiment in Orissa’, Environment Management in India Vol. II , Ed. R K Sapru (Ashish Publishing House, 8/81 Punjabi Bagh, New Delhi - 110026, 1987). 51 Hazary, Narayan and Hazary, Subas Chandra, ’Lessons of the Buddhagram Environment Movement’, New World Environment Series The Fragile Environment , Edited by I. Mohan (Ashish Publishing House, 8/81 Punjabi Bagh, New Delhi-110026, 1991). 52 The meeting of the sangha that I attended did not have a single woman present. 60
among the men. Some volunteers were also appointed to continue this activity. These volunteers visited villages frequently and conducted meetings and tried to organize the women into active groups. Methods like awareness songs were used to make them aware of their role in the society and the importance of women’s literacy. As a result of women’s awareness, in some villages they took steps to claim their rights from the Government. In two Jogendrapur and Salhepali women raised their voice against unequal payment of wages by mine workers and for not implementing the minimum wage act. Since then, two village committees were formed, one of the men and one of the women. Chetna Shramik Sangha has planned to form mahila mandals in eighty-six villages focusing on savings and credit. Informal group formation has started in thirty-one villages. The women's committee looks after this aspect. After several meetings it was decided that the Sangha would not involve itself in any income generation programmes since their economy was below subsistence level but would try and form savings groups so that they would have a working capital at least. Since the women are involved in maintaining the household economy they formed the credit groups. A characteristic feature of this and the neighbouring Chattisgarhi area is apparently that women play a major role in organizing the sale of vegetables, rice and so on. It is common to see women going from place to place hawking their goods in the villages. In other places women usually prefer to work as labourers and in other income generation activities. They have yet to build a strong women’s group. Women’s committees were formed in twelve villages of Paikmal block. By and large the women seemed most interested in adult education. In fact I was told by an Oxfam field worker that in a few villages that she visited the women there had expressed their dissatisfaction with the discontinuation of such a programme after approximately five to six months. By the time the women had been motivated and had started attending classes, the period of learning was over. It would seem that by and large women’s issues have not really been taken up. Ruchika School Social Service Wing a very different kind of organization in terms of its setting and approach has also shied away from keeping girls at its shelters. Although the slum and station schools have both girls and boys, the shelters gave up having girls staying at the shelters shortly after they started the practice since a number of problems arose with having both boys and girls staying there. Some of the teenage girls who had been prostitutes at the station found it hard not to try to make some money by soliciting the 61
boys there. Such problems and the fact that the organization was not equipped or ready to handle these problems made them restrict the shelter to boys. Their vocational training centre however, although not very big, has encouraged the girls to take up professions (like shoe-making) normally the preserve of boys.
The struggle for minimum and fair wages is an ever-present reality in the countryside and several NGOs have tried to take it up. The efforts of the Chetna Shramik Sangha received a very good response from the locality, though it created strong enemies from land owning sections who have their nexus with the local administration. The Chetna Shramik Sangha argued that the labourers working in the graphite mines were exploited by the employers. The Sangha talked to the local Member of the Legislative Assembly and Government officials and tried to make the people conscious of their exploitation. Unfortunately not very much has happened in this direction and the people continue to work in much the same conditions. Many a time the NGOs have acted as channels of information for the people for lack of which they were being exploited endlessly. For instance, Pramod told me of the time when they put up posters at almost every corner of Kashipur telling the people that the minimum wage had been increased to Rs 25 and was not Rs 15 as they thought it was and were still being paid.
NGOs in the countryside have tried to involve the women in credit savings groups like in the case of the Chetna Shramik Sangha as I mentioned before. In fact in Kashipur, a public distribution system (PDS) is also being run by the women and the men in the village in the name of Draupadi Jhuria, a Jhuria woman. When Agragamee first came to the Kashipur villages, they realized that the people had no idea of the Government run PDS. The villagers did not even know who the local retailers were. With their help PDS have been set up in a few villages. Agragamee has encouraged the villagers to start a credit management group in four panchayats. About fifteen animators from various villages are planning to start this.
62
A number of grain banks have been set up in various villages with the help of Agragamee. They gave the farmers ten quintals at an interest of 2% which he had to multiply during the harvesting period. Agragamee also provided them with the grain that they needed to start with. These grain banks operate in 104 villages and in some villages the savings have gone up to Rs 25,000. In most cases banks are working very efficiently. Those villages that have large savings even lend to neighbouring areas. The grain bank at Haliasahi is quite big. The people of the Mandisbisi Panchayat also run a public distribution system from there which seems to be running efficiently. It is looked after by a former bonded labourer and his young son . Savings is an aspect that many NGOs in Orissa have taken up. With the help of the National Bank for Agricultural Reconstruction and Development (NABARD), Gram Vikas set up a Gramin Bank Model where the villagers were given loans with minimum interest so that they did not have to resort to the greedy sahukars. Gram Vikas claims that this sort of thing was the first of its kind. Apart from this, they also started savings and grain units run by women. Ruchika School Social Service Wing have gone a step further and have made it a condition for the boys and girls in the Vocational Training Centre to save some of their training money in a bank. With the new savings scheme for destitute children in the State Bank of India, all this has become much easier. The Chetna Shramik Sangha tried to develop the habit of saving among the people and to raise community funds. For this the Chetna Shramik Sangha volunteers have been going from village to village and encouraging the idea in village meetings and adult education centres.
For the people in the villages their biggest asset is land. Once they own some land they can cultivate, there is a sense of stability about their future. However as I have mentioned before the distribution is skewed and landlessness is a major problem. Along with the villagers Agragamee hopes to be able to get a hectare or patta (title deed) of land for each villager or at least a usufructuary right. Pradeep said that they hoped to achieve a total change in land patterns wherein each villager would be able to plant fruit bearing trees on his or her own patch of land. Despite this, it is not for a more equitable distribution of land that Agragamee campaigns, nor is it to get back their land alienated 63
by the sahukars in their villages. Agragamee has hoped to circumvent the problem by being able to persuade the Government to assign dangar pattas to the villagers. The dangar pattas are tracts of land on the mountains surrounding Kashipur. As far as the question of land is concerned Gram Vikas too helped the villagers get their land back initially but the effect was short-lived as all the old problems that had initially led to its alienation tended to resurface. The Bhoodan movement had also tried to bring about changes in land ownership but once again not very much remains of that effort.
The forests of Orissa are the livelihood of a large section of the population and their rapid disappearance has begun to cause considerable alarm among the people, especially the tribal communities and others who live around the forests. The Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad has promoted the protection and regeneration of forests on a large scale but even the others have taken it up as it concerns almost every rural community vitally. The Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad has actively promoted forest protection through awareness campaigns, padayatras and cultural programmes. They hold meetings in villages to explain the need for forest protection and have published a number of pamphlets and booklets and distributed them to pass on the message of forest protection. The organization has evolved its media and message in the local idiom. In their various cultural activities and norms they have managed to infuse an awareness of
their
environment and of forest protection. In a large number of villages, Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad's awareness and motivation campaign has led to initiation of forest protection. Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad has supported these new initiatives while strengthening the efforts of villages where protection was already taking place. In certain cases where forest protection was already taking place, or where forest protection had failed, Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad intervened to rejuvenate and support these efforts. Through its advice and guidance, as well as the motivation of all sections of the villages, it strengthened and streamlined the forest protection system in these villages. Major conflicts between or within villages, or related to sister organizations which could not be solved at the local level often come to Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad for resolution. Sometimes in event of serious conflicts, Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad intervenes on its own initiative, using consensual methods 64
and its innovative approach. The organization has been quite effective in resolving conflicts. Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad has also been involved in providing training to the members of the village level and regional level organizations on the skills of motivation, nursery raising, conflict resolution and rule framing for the management of the organization and the forest as well. Unfortunately it was not all that adequate or systematic. Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad has initiated the formation of a Mahasangha of all the villages and sister organizations involved in forest protection in Nayagarh district. The Mahasangha shall act as a lobby to pressurize the Government and the Forest Department, as well as a conflict resolving body at the apex level.
The organization’s work in its twenty-two core villages influenced the people in other parts of the district. Further, the motivational campaign and the strong awareness generation activities of the organization spread the awareness to other areas. The people of the district were moved by the approach of the organization. Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad also followed a policy of spatially extending its programmes. At present, the sphere of influence of Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad has extended to up to 324 villages spread over nine blocks in Nayagarh and Khurda districts. As the area of operation of the organization expanded, Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad, realizing its limitation, strategically formed and promoted regional level organizations as sister organizations. Apart from eighteen sister organizations, twenty-three village forest protection committees are also functioning in the area and are coordinating their activities with Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad. These organizations are independent entities and enjoy full autonomy in their planning and implementation. However Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad plays a supporting role in providing guidance as and when necessary. The Chetna Shramik Sangha has also been quite successful in its forest protection efforts, partly due to the Sangha’s efforts and largely due to the increasing realization among the people that the little forests they have left will not last if they don’t manage them well. I visited Saraikela village to see their forest protection efforts. The forests in this belt are fully degraded. There is considerable smuggling and on the other side of the forest are the 65
Madhya Pradesh villages close to Raipur, a major centre of threat. The villagers have been protecting this area for the last three years. This was the only patch of trees in the whole range. Forest protection activities have been initiated by the Chetna Shramik Sangha in villages which are close to the forest areas. The villages surrounding Gandhmardhan hill and Adhul hill have been targeted for this purpose. In view of this, the Sangha has completed awareness generation on forest protection in sixty-four villages and of these forest protection committees have been formed in thirty-six villages. Besides this, the Chetna Shramik Sangha has contacted all the existing yuvak sanghas in Paikmal. Some of them are also protecting forests. The Sangha members have found that those who are already protecting or are willing to protect are doing so in expectation of a grant from the Government. The importance of forest protection has not really been realized by all, but given an orientation such sanghas should be able to play an important role in forest protection activities. Hence, Chetna Shramik Sangha is trying to bring these sanghas into a broader coalition. They have now been protecting forests since 1986. A bana (forest) committee has been formed in every village which is responsible for this work. At least five villages are protecting an average of ten acres of forests. Like in the case of the Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad the thengapalli system is followed in some villages and others have forest watch-men. Another objective of the Chetna Shramik Sangha is to initiate forest management in concert with other villages where protection has already taken place and strengthen cluster level forest committees (meaning committees in adjoining villages). A training was organized by Oxfam for the staff and some protection committee members on forest management. The outcome of the training has been that the Chetna Shramik Sangha has decided to take up micro-economic planning in five of its programme villages. For this, the preliminary data collection work is going on in those five villages. The Chetna Shramik Sangha is also thinking of working on wasteland development as a part of the forest plan but not much has come of it yet. Gram Vikas has also taken up agroforestry. In the Kerandimal area there has been a huge loss of the forest cover due to shifting cultivation and random felling for commercial purposes. Having taken on afforestation in Ganjam and Kalahandi through social forestry 66
(which aims at creating sustainable forestry resources ’for the people and by the people’ ) they claim to be consciously trying to involve women in it. Forest protection is an important activity supported by Agragamee as well. In their view there are three categories of people dealing with the forests- those protecting forests, those willing to protect and those who are destroying them -- and Agragamee’s plan is to get everyone together and conduct discussions amongst them.53When Agragamee approached the forest officials however, they were stonewalled. They had wanted to start a Joint Forest Management (JFM) unit in Rayagada and therefore invited the Divisional Forest Officer for meetings with the villagers. 54 The Rayagada Divisional Forest Officer refused to attend any such discussion with the villagers. He said that to take any decision on JFM or to even discuss it, was not his job. It was the job of the forest Secretary. Pradeep, the Agragamee field worker who had gone to him, quoted him as saying that issues like protection and conservation were too generalized. The DFO suggested instead that they restrict themselves to putting out fires and such work if they were interested in doing anything in the forests. In his opinion there was absolutely no need to involve the people in decision making or to invite them for discussions. Having been rebuffed by the forest officials, Agragamee drew up its own programme. In many areas, peoples’ groups in villages have begun to protect forests on their own.55 Another aspect of such work is what Gram Vikas is doing. The organization is raising nurseries to provide seedlings at a subsidized cost to villagers. There is an effort to develop degraded land and improve on their extensive horticulture programmes. They are aggressively promoting their own nurseries to provide seedlings at a subsidized cost to the villagers. The Chetna Shramik Sangha also raised two nurseries under a social 53
Interview with Pradeep Mohapatra, Bhubaneswar, May 1994. So far the management has been in the hands of the forest department and the consequences more than dismal. There are a few however who have realized that the people of the area need to be involved in the upkeep and management of their resources if any sort of efficiency is to be achieved. Not only that but independent of the Government several forest protection committees have come up all over Orissa and in the vacuum created by goverment inability to look after the forests they have taken the management of their patch of the forest in their own hands. JFM is a much talked about acronym among those concerned with forestry. For those who genuinely want to see it through, it implies what it says in other words joint forest management between the people living around the forests as well as the forest department. 67
54
forestry programme, one in Pathrel village and another near its office in Paikmal. A seed bank has also been set up there. The village committees of Kokhara and Sadanandpur, on their own initiative raised 1500 saplings and supplied them to the landless and small farmers. The Sangha feels that it has made its contribution in this in terms of awareness.
It would seem that not only Ruchika School Social Service Wing but most NGOs, even those not directly concerned with education consider the opening of schools both for adults and children one of the major areas of concern. As Professor Hazary said, the Buddhagram movement started only after the schools came up in the villages and with them the teachers. The failure of the Government to run viable schools in the villages of Orissa by and large prompted the NGOs to provide the people with the means to come closer to and understand the processes beyond their villages. Prior to independence, limited franchise and alien rule kept the political system out of the reach of ordinary people. Now that the political system is at least theoretically within their grasp it is still alien to them especially if they don’t know the written word. One of the first actions of Gram Vikas after having settled down in Mohuda, was to set up educational facilities in the area. Teaching, they believed was meant not only for literacy but for a basic knowledge of their environment and their rightful place in society. In their education programme, Agragamee stresses on literacy for innovative education. This is a part of their non-formal education programme. From 18th September 1993 to 20th September 1993, a Workshop on Education for All in Tribal Areas was organized in Kashipur, the headquarters of Agragamee. In this workshop more than a hundred participants from twelve districts viz. Rayagada, Koraput, Nawrangpur, Kalahandi, Nawapara, Phulbani, Gajapati, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj, Khurda, Angul and Sambalpur participated. They were from eleven tribal communities namely Paraja, Saura, Kondh, Kui, Gond, Bhunya, Santala, Kolha, Munda and Jhodia. The workshop was conducted by Professor Chittaranjan Das of the State Council of Education Research Centre and Dr. Prafulla Chandra Mohapatra as the representative of the Government. A large number of voluntary organizations from all over Orissa also 55
Ibid. 68
participated. The report of this workshop is almost a manifesto.56 It begins by saying that it can also be considered as a blue print for action.57 Hoping that the report would provoke the participants to think and act, it suggests that education in tribal areas was not literacy alone, but a systematic synthesis of action, reflection, development of creative potentials, political literacy and humanism. It seeks to understand how and why local schools functioning in areas where Government schools are known to be defunct, utilize only a fraction of the resources of the formal schools. The report brings to light the fact that participants working all over rural Orissa were of the consensus that the situation of Government run schools was dismal and thus opinion was divided on whether there should be concerted efforts to improve the existing system, before more funds were spent on a greater number of schools which would be just as ineffective as the already existing ones. On the other hand it was emphasized that there were still many villages with no access to formal schools, functional or otherwise. It was essential that these children also be given fair opportunity, along with efforts for improving the system. People’s participation in the management of these schools was considered essential. Women should be involved in the management process. The participants felt that they should be able to have a check on the teachers’ activities and performances. In this way the whole village would be involved and not just a token village education committee. Combined effort of the teacher and the villagers for improving the schools and the educational process in the village was thought to be necessary. The report suggested that management strategies be worked out with the people and that they be given the responsibilities as also the powers to ensure correct teacher selection and functioning. This sort of feeling was probably widespread among the people present as most of the Government school teachers in villages or otherwise are known to collect their salaries without ever even having been to the schools. One often comes across instances where the local shopkeeper in a village or block is actually the local teacher but spent his or her days selling tea or groceries. Some of the other points that the report mentions were that it was important that the teacher know the local language and for this reason preferably be a local boy or girl, it
56
Education For All In Tribal Areas - A Report, Agragamee, 1994. 69
was essential that school schedule be made suitable to the local needs. In fact one of the reasons that formal schools often do not have the students attending at certain times is because they have several chores they must do and in such times education becomes just a waste of time or at least secondary. Even in Bhubaneswar, at the Ruchika School Social Service Wing centres many children in the slums return with their parents or even otherwise to their villages at harvesting time since the families need all the labour force they can get. The fact that schooling can be an alienating process with the children becoming reluctant to identify with their community after leaving school, was recognized not only by the workshop as mentioned in the report but also by Mrs. Khurana of the Ruchika School. They all seem to be of the opinion that it was essential that components of education include things of interest and relevance to the particular community so that the educated youth would be able to identify with their socio-economic status in the long run. The workshop also grappled with the question of whether value based education that would help to get rid of class and caste differences was possible. Our society is hierarchical with the higher classes exploiting and oppressing the lower classes. Most participants were confident that education would help the tribals fight the hierarchical social ordering. In this context, alternative thinking and attitudes had to be built up so that people could take the initiative to change their own situation. A major component of the education, said the report, should be political literacy, which would create political sensitivity amongst the students. This would make them aware of the relative connections of the micro and macro political situations and take informed decisions rather than make blind choices based on a sense of fear or immediate economic gain. However the report shows that it was also pointed out by some of the participants that without the support of the power structure, teaching people to fight social evils would entail a backlash from vested interests. Thus the Government may not be interested in such a programme. Also, it was necessary to prepare people to counter the backlash. Without this there would be more discouragement than anything else.58
57
The reason I have summarized this report in such depth is that a large number of NGOs attended this workshop and the report reflects their thinking on this particular need and the role that the NGOs envisage for themselves. 70
In Haliasahi the effects of education seem to have paid off when it helped the people to fight the oppression and exploitation of the local vested interests. (see appendix 1) Similarly in Adajore village of Kashipur block, Rayagada district, a fourth grade boy took up the issue of non - payment of minimum wages. The people supported the boy and were able to get their due payment. Agragamee feels that regardless of giving access to a salaried job, education should be such that the person should feel empowered to take on the role of an activist in his/her community. The present system of education often deprived a person of that capability he/she had, as also of his/her self-confidence. If we think of an alternative education, we should ensure that it plays a more positive role. In this respect skills as identified by the people needed to be developed. This, said the report, would give much more meaning to the educational process. It would also facilitate learning. Gradually the traditions of oral history and along with it their tribal history appear to be getting eroded. This could be made up by introducing local history as part of the school curriculum. This would help instill a pride in their past amongst the children. The younger generation in tribal areas are often ashamed of singing their own songs and engaging in traditional forms of entertainment and cultural expressions, which often compounds the process of forgetting. Education should help counter this. Many of the participants at the workshop felt that the responsibility for education lay with the society, and so with the Government which was the representative of the people. In education voluntary organizations could at the most play a supportive and watch dog role. Many participants felt that the Government which should take up the responsibility for such basic services as education to its people was shirking its responsibility and side stepping the real issue; which was that of streamlining the administration and using the education department for education, and not for gaining political mileage. Nevertheless, since many of them run schools in tribal areas the report quotes them as having resolved to build up trust and confidence of the people in them, build up their own capabilities and skills, involve the parents of the children, the teachers, and the Government in the process of education, undertake to convey the aims and objectives and other details of the Education For All programme clearly and without confusion to the people. Voluntary organizations, they felt should make the people understand the usefulness of education 58
Education for All In Tribal Areas - A Report, Agragamee, 1994. 71
and convince them to send their children to school. Also that there should be a systematic attempt to motivate and work through trust and commitment, rather than through fear and authoritarianism. Maximum effort had to be made to build up a good working relationship with the teachers and gain their confidence, so that they would be encouraged to build up a similar relationship with their students. As per Government plans, the responsibilities for Education For All would be given to the Government, voluntary organizations, the village community, the teachers and the parents (at places the Government does seem relieved to hand over responsibility to the NGOs, however mostly if they stayed out of controversial issues or dared not question their working in any way). The report sums up the gist of the workshop towards the end, “Education is not something that can be confined to the narrow confines of the school room. Education should be a liberating, enriching and empowering process that can make a person free to do and create what she or he wants and equip them with the skills to do it. This workshop rediscovered the resourcefulness within tribal people and tribal communities, their aspirations to learn and to grow. The process of education must capitalize on these to be meaningful, effective and appealing to tribal and rural people all over the country. The concluding session of the workshop underlines this point clearly. There needs to be a combined effort of the people, the NGOs, and the Government to realize the aims and objectives of Education For All.”59 Non-formal schools imparting an alternative education is what many NGOs hope to achieve today. The inability of the formal schools to cater to the large number of children living in rural areas and in the slums and streets of the big cities has made alternative means necessary. Ruchika School Social Service Wing centres have tried to keep such an approach in mind. Their vocational training programme began with a grant from the National Children’s Fund in 1991. Under this RSSSW was able to train children as tailors, launderers, cane chair weavers, motor mechanics, welders, cooks as well as bell boys and waiters in restaurants and hotels. Subsequently supported by Child Relief and You (CRY), Bombay, the unit continued to give training in tailoring, laundry, shoe59
Ibid. 72
making, hotel utility. The Vocational Training Centre started with a one time grant from the Panchayati Raj department of the Orissa Government. In the meantime The National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development sanctioned Rs 75,000 from the National Children Fund. This enabled them to continue the work. At present it is supported by Child Relief and You. Self - employment is extremely important and Inderjeet Khuarana has tried to gear her schools towards this with the small entrepreneur as the end result. At the schools at the stations and in the slums they try and impart basic and functional literacy and numeracy. The children are taught in a playway methodology. There is also an emphasis on teaching the children to be clean. On a visit to one of the slum schools I saw the teacher there brush the hair of the students as they came strolling in and wash their faces before they began their class. In a meeting with the teachers, Mrs. Khurana asked the teachers to do for the children what they would have no means of doing themselves. They write in one of their reports that destitute children have no permanent means of personal cleanliness - no soap, no extra set of clothes. It was therefore decided, that one day should be set aside for personal cleanliness. On this day, the children get a scrub down, oil in the hair, clipping of nails, and cutting and combing of hair. Everyday health care is restricted to brushing the teeth regularly with salt, washing their faces, hands and legs, and combing their hair. The children are made aware of health habits, proper nutrition and emergency first aid, through personal discussion as well as through puppet shows and story- telling. A doctor visits these schools once a week to check on any children who might be unwell. A full medical check-up of all children is done once a month. The doctors’ provide medicines by way of physicians’ samples. Once the schools had gotten underway, the teachers noticed that the children who came to the schools often had not had a meal before and nor were they expecting one when they got home. Very often they would leave during study hours in search of food. The idea of feeding them once a day came up. In the beginning Ruchika school started by giving them milk and bread everyday. However the money coming in from the funders did not keep up with the hike in the price of milk. In these circumstances Ruchika resorted to giving the children chattua, a meal that almost every Oriya has been forced to 73
have during his/her childhood. It comprises groundnut, gramflour, milk powder, sugar and so on ground together. This is packaged and supplied to the RSSSW office at Bhubaneswar. From there it is distributed among the teachers. Apart from hygiene, literacy, Ruchika lays great stress on activities like songs, dance, dramas, craft like puppet making and so on. In fact it is these activities more than literacy or numeracy that draws many of the children to the schools. At the Saheednagar slum school, a young boy when asked what he'd like to do when he grew up said that he would be an artist - a musician. Thereupon he broke off into several Hindi film songs. Although the supervisor, Ranjan was in a hurry to leave for a meeting at the office, the teachers pressed him to stay and watch one of their play rehearsals. The little boy was the star of the play. Another girl said she wanted to be a doctor. She was studying in the nearby Government school and came to the slum school for help with her schoolwork. There are many like her who attend regular school and come to the Ruchika teachers for help since no-one at home has the time or the ability to help them. The Ruchika School educates but it hopes to bring to them an education which would not only help the students to cope with the outside world but to make them confident of themselves and enable them to achieve things in their own way. There is an interesting account of a young boy who used to come to the Ruchika school in the evenings and drive his rikshaw in the daytime. After attending school for a while he realized that he had been charging the same sum of money from his passengers whether it was one kilometre or six kilometres (Rs. 2 for both ). With a simple grasp of numeracy and mathematics he was able to determine how to charge for longer distances. The teachers at these schools are also part and parcel of an awareness programme. Once a month they meet with the community they are working with and discuss various problems. Many of them try and convince the parents about the usefulness of education. The teacher being some sort of respected figure is sometimes called in to settle disputes among the people. According to the Sakhigopal platform teacher he was once called in by some slum members to talk to the parents of one of the students since they were always fighting at home. Apparently the mother was involved in prostitution and the 74
father was a pimp for other women. Their constant fights over their work had an extremely unpleasant effect on their children. The teacher tried to talk them out of what they were doing, pointing out the negative effect it was having on their children. The mother, he says, stopped as far as he knows but the father continued with his activities. 60 Training is imparted to the teachers to provide the slum and station dwellers with information on how to combat diseases. The remedies provided are those which are possible for the people to manage. For instance it is useless to tell the people to boil their water since they hardly have the required fuelwood to cook their meals. In such cases they are advised to pass the water through a thin cloth since some of the parasitic larvae in the water would get filtered. Distillation is another method. Community contact made them aware of the problem of working and ailing mothers of young children. In December 1987 three crèches were started in the slums, near the railway station. The crèche programme receives a grant from the Central Social Welfare Board. Children in the age group of six months to six years are cared for in these crèches. A mid-day meal and health care is provided. So as not to alienate the children from their home base and to make do with the existing infrastructure, the crèches are located within the slum area. They are sometimes on temple platforms or whatever shelter can be provided for them. There the staff takes care of the children as a mother would do. Mothers usually leave their young children in charge of
their older siblings who are not always above the age of three years
themselves. Cases of small babies having been burnt to death or injured while the other child has tried to take care of them are widespread. In such cases the crèches are useful for the slum women who go out to work as domestic helpers (cleaning, washing etc.) and other jobs. Often the mother comes and looks after the children at the crèche in the few hours that she gets off and then goes back to work. Since many children stay at the crèche for almost a full day, the crèche provides the babies with milk once a day.
60
The Sakhigopal teacher told me of this incident at one of the teachers’ meetings, September 1994. 75
On December 8 1991, a rally was conducted to observe the day of protecting the child in distress. Placards and leaflets were distributed to make people aware about the large number of children living in difficult circumstances in the city. Balmillan- a run and then a seminar on the rights of the child was organized on the 8th of October 1993. On the third of August 1993 there were two street plays by the slum children and visiting slum children from Bombay. It was a commendable effort, although some people in the audience felt that children in enacting the drudgery of their daily lives were encouraged to see themselves as martyrs. For the next phase of their project the Ruchika staff has thought to draw up a list of meetings with parents, the police, community leaders and so on. There they talk about the problems confronting the people, about health and hygiene, banks, hospitals and other subjects.
Apart from the activities discussed above, NGOs also carry out several other programmes. Agragamee for instance carries out campaigns for literacy, safe drinking water, environment protection, health and sanitation and food security. The communications team stages street plays, puppet shows on various issues like the value of forests, on their campaign on literacy. Building a water harvesting structure is another major programme that Agragamee is involved in. It was set up by Agragamee, however looked after and maintained by the inhabitants of the area. Only if the damage is extensive does Agragamee step in with financial and technical help. Here they wanted to enable water harvesting structures to use perennial streams for irrigation even in dry seasons. In this way they hope to stop shifting cultivation. The villages in Orissa generally use perennial water for drinking purposes. This can cause spread of epidemics especially in the rainy season when gastro-enteritis and such diseases are widespread. For this reason Agragamee thought it necessary to install deep tube wells for safe drinking water and they have managed to do so in about seventy villages. Instalation of tube wells has been undertaken by Gram Vikas as well. They had also experimented with biogas plants in a number of areas but that had been a failure in almost all the places. Several programmes have been set up by Agragamee for the formation of community plantations and backyard plantations. It hopes to set them off by providing them with 76
external inputs like seeds (mango, tamarind) and other infrastructure while they are to belong to them for them to take care of. 61One of the areas where Agragemee has not been all that successful is in their demand for the rehabilitation of the evacuees of the multipurpose projects.62 Perhaps in keeping with their recent thinking of not having a very confrontational attitude vis a vis the Government they have not pushed this issue too far.
All these NGOs have at one time or another come up against the Government in their work. Although many of these organizations are filling in where the Government has not been able to provide for the people, the local Government at least tends to view such organizations with a great deal of suspicion. The Chetna Shramik Sangha is one organization which has come up against Governmental wrath. As a result, over the years one can see a shift towards a programme oriented approach rather than an issue based movement as it had started out. Nevertheless they still carry on with many of their activities and hence it has been somewhat difficult for them to grow and stand up to pressure from vested interests. Apart from that it is always easier to succeed in programmes with an end in sight than carry on a struggle with no foreseeable gain in the immediate future. Hence there has been a conscious as well as unconscious tendency towards the implementation of programmes. This helped to increase the expectations of the people. Consequently there were intra - group and inter - group conflicts due to receipt and non - receipt of schemes and mismanagement of the saving fund. These conflicts stopped the regular flow of funds to the Sangha. In a few villages, members received assistance and others did not. Since these schemes did not emerge as main occupations, families depended in labour work or migrated. In a normal year they could get only some supplementary work and income. Overall these factors adversely affected the growth of the Sangha, which reduced them to the status of mainly small voluntary organizations with limited beneficiary oriented membership and permanent leaders. The struggle theory was given up during the post 1982 phase. One can look at the issues and find that the wage issue and rehabilitation of bonded labourers were only directed at the Government departments rather than the 61
Interview with Pradeep Mohapatra, Bhubaneswar, 27th May 1994. 77
gauntias and sahukars. The focus shifted from arousing consciousness and organization building of the poor with the original objective of fighting exploitation, corruption and advocating for constitutional rights to promoting low cost delivery organizations without sufficient management skills. This view was corroborated by a draft report written by Oxfam “The general trend would be literacy rather than conscientisation in adult education. . . . The direction was not set and the vision not so clear. Hence there was no consistency between the overall strategy and programmes, the nature of the problems and objectives of the programmes from one year to the next.” 63 Other organizations have dealt with these problems in different ways. However most of them have given up taking over issues which could get them into trouble with the authorities. Some like Agragamee have managed to get support from the Governments in New Delhi and Bhubaneswar for the work that they are doing. The local Government is not very happy with all their work but since they have the blessings of the state and the centre they are not threatened with closure or censure by the local administration and can at times afford to criticise the government for its wrongs. As I mentioned before even Sumoni Jhuria has immense clout and is not taken lightly. Achyut Das is a member of the Planning Commission and his criticism of Government policy is often offset by this fact. Gram Vikas for instance has steered clear of any confrontation with the Government or local interests. Their direction seems quite programme oriented and they have trained personnel for the purpose. One gets the impression that often people involved in one project did not even know what was going on in the other ones. The first person I met there was in charge of installing sanitary latrines and when I tried to question him about other aspects of the NGO he seemed to know very little, in fact almost nothing about it. He was a professional social worker. It is difficult to say whether this attitude was commonplace but it does seem that this kind of specialization would make these people lose sight of the larger reason for them to be there and could get restricted to a particular activity as installing latrines in this case. In the case of Gram Vikas this might also be the result of the huge infrastructure of the organization. Gram Vikas has an elaborate office
62
Ibid. Draft of a summary on the western Orissa sanghas by Oxfam.
63
78
network. Four auditors come from Madras every six months for about one month to go through the accounts.
Ruchika School Social Service Wing has tried to keep a low profile with the one branch of the Government they come in contact with most of the time - the police. Mrs. Khurana told me that they take them on as partners. They have tried to build up empathy for the children in them. Many of the policemen on their beats, do beat up the Ruchika children if they find them loitering about, but the school has tried to keep a non-confrontational approach. She said that since she runs a private school as well, that would suffer in the process. In that way, although the private school supports the social service wing it can also prove to be a liability. For this reason she hopes to make the social service wing selfsufficient in its funding so that she would be able to separate the two. Other people at the schools told me how difficult the police made registering a report, trying to trace a lost child or any such thing. They would make people get them things to eat and drink and try and delay the whole procedure until they were somewhat satisfied. As far as the Government is concerned many individual people from various Government departments have come forward to help Inderjeet Khurana in her endeavour. She expressed her appreciation for these people who have been very alive to the problem of the street child but has often come up against what many NGOs consider the nemesis of the country - the system. The bureaucratic delays and obstructions in the smooth functioning of the organization has created several crisis situations. Since much of the school’s funding comes from the Government, delays in money reaching them causes several problems. Teachers are often paid as late as fifteen days after they are due their salaries if the funds do not reach them. “Furthermore the Government builds up its accountability through paperwork and as long as they keep getting beautifully written reports they are quite happy.”64 At a meeting with some NGOs the workers asked the Government representative to come and visit their organizations and judge for themselves rather than asking them to spend their time in writing lengthy reports.
64
Interview with Inderjeet Khurana, Bhubaneswar October 1994. 79
The Government has now started co-opting NGOs in their work but by and large they are still suspect, Khurana told me. On the other hand she echoes several other NGO people that I spoke to when she says that many NGOs especially those like Ruchika cannot do without the Government at any stage. Unless the Government is supportive of their programme even the best of efforts cannot succeed. It is only the Government which can take up development in a wholistic way since it is the Government which has the money, the power and the infrastructure.65 This situation is even more apparent in the case of Agragamee in Rayagada. At the moment it seems that Kashipur is going to be bought up by mining companies. Even now negotiations are going on by several companies for mining bauxite in the area. This would mean that the place is going to be flushed with money. It is not illogical to suppose that much of the tribal land would be bought up and the people reduced to landlessness. Pramod Das, one of the coordinators at Agragamee is doubtful if the NGOs or anybody else can really do very much considering the magnitude of the investment contemplated. The Government has invited proposals from both foreign and Indian companies and the estimated budget for the mining project is Rs 3000 crores. In the face of this huge sum, Pramod shrugged ruefully, “what are small efforts like ours going to achieve. Once the companies come into Kashipur, the whole scenario would change. The local people involved in this have already bought off many of the tribal leaders.”66 Agragamee’s efforts to obtain a patta for each family and ideas of agroforestry will all come to naught. According to Pramod, since there is a Government stipulation that tribals cannot be alienated from their land, there was a move by local officials, politicians and so on to try and include the Jhuria and Paraja in the Other Backward Class (OBC) list of the constitution. Once they are taken off the Scheduled Tribe (ST) list where most tribes are listed now, getting their land would be no problem since they would no longer be classified as tribals with inalienable rights to their land. It was when Mr. Das intervened with the Government and Agragamee organized their animators to let the people know what was happening that they protested in large numbers and the move was given up. All this illustrates that without Governmental sanction there is not very much that the NGOs can do unless of course the NGOs representing decide to take up a more vitriolic attitude 65
Ibid. 80
and even then their success is precarious. Small piecemeal efforts at uplift in the countryside can prove to be futile if the Government deems it otherwise. A lot of intangible good might have come about by the very organizing of the people but in terms of land and a more equitable system for the poor the tide would be reversed totally by the coming in commercial enterprise of the sort being considered in Kashipur.
Despite the fact that there is immense pressure by the Government for this kind of mining, neither Agragamee nor any of the groups at the village level has come forward to decry such a move. The debate between ’development’ as opposed to the displacement of the people has come to the fore in Kashipur as well. As I mentioned before several tribal leaders have been bought off by those interested in setting up the mining project. Though opposition in the face of such an enterprise may be considered premature or even foolish, it goes against what Agragamee writes in its reports. Agragamee defines its main objective to promote throughout India all aspects of tribal development and in particular to adopt an integrated approach to help the tribal communities in mobilizing for selfsustaining development organization and to build an institutional base for the training of tribal youths as well as young educated professionals. To further these objectives they want to attempt total human development and social change in a tribal area through the formation of local level organizations, bringing an awareness amongst scheduled tribes and other underprivileged groups such as scheduled castes, small and marginal farmers, landless and bonded labourers for self-reliance and social justice. They also hope to better the economic conditions of the target group through suitable utilization of existing skills and resources. Similarly, they also claim to have made an effort to organize the target group against exploitation and oppression for the support of human rights, emphasize on relevant action for development of women and children belonging to the underprivileged groups and want to establish a training base for the grass-root functionaries drawn from the target group as well as the young educated professionals. The training would cover education, agriculture, health, skill improvements and income generating activities. In order to make the tribal communities become self-supporting in areas of agriculture, animal husbandry 66
Interview with Pramod Das, Kashipur, October 1994. 81
and processing in no-profit and no loss basis, they aim to carry out all such activities. All this they combine with research studies with the aim of searching alternative development strategies.67 Reading such reports one notices that the language that many NGOs use has become extremely bureaucratic and managerial and Agragamee is not alone in drafting such reports of their work. An example of this kind of report writing is epitomised in their Strategy for Development68 which states that the planned intervention of Agragamee and its workers into the Kashipur situation is the effect of a cause. The cause is the Kashipur situation, where the majority are in a state of powerlessness, the effect is conscious action for change. This cause and effect lead to intervention in the following areas: 1. Technological
- Agriculture
- seeds supplied - farmers training - irrigation facilities developed,
- Communications
- Audio visual aids - puppetry - folk theater,
- Forestry
- social forestry -
alternatives
to
shifting
cultivation
introduced - Appropriate
-
renewable
energy
demonstrations
technology
- improvements in grain storage and building materials,
2. Institutional
- Bridging the gap between people and the delivery system - participation in programmes of the Government - involvement of govt. officials as resource
persons
for
training
programmes.
67
Profile on Agragamee published by the organization. Ibid.
68
82
- cooperation with Government officials for implementation of govt. schemes. - encouraging bottoms up planning - training of youths for non-formal schools, - cooperative development 3. Leadership Utilization management of resources
- group action - village committees
Non-formal education
- materials supply - training
Cultural Action
- puppet and folk drama - collection of folk songs and stories.
4. Conflicts
Moneylending
- formation of community savings, - alternative employment, - vocational training
Bondage
- legal education - enforcement of minimum wages etc.
5. Decentralisation Planning
-
participation
in
village
level
decisions. - participation of animators in Agragamee's planning - formation of development cooperatives Material and Work
- for various technological inputs
Management - for the schools - for the Cooperative development. Agragamee and other organizations are supported by the Government and funding agencies and perhaps this is what prompts them to use bureaucratic language while writing proposals or writing reports. What sets the NGOs apart from the Government or even other institutions is the very fact that they were never meant to be institutions. Their strength lay in their flexibility and proximity to the people. The increasing formality of 83
the language and the activities suggested in the report could just as easily be what theoretically a progressive block development officer backed up by a willing Government could be doing. In fact, since not all NGOs are able to write proposals or even reports in this way there are NGOs in Bhubaneswar which exist for solely this purpose - in other words all they do is to help other NGOs with their paperwork. Although this is seen by some as a translation of the demand of the people into a language that another world can understand this could not but have some repercussions on the thinking of those involved.69 The restraint used in the language, couched in safe words shies away from confronting the basic issues of inequality and oppression of the people which is the real reason they are there.
69
To a certain extent I felt this way whenever I was interviewing villagers involved in constructive work. I always had a NGO worker translating for me since I did not always understand the dialect and mostly because of my inability to express myself in Oriya. There were many times however when I asked a question and understood somewhat what the person was trying to say in their roundabout but extremely interesting way but which was often reduced to NGO jargon and though the tribal woman or whoever may have spoken for almost fifteen minutes it was reduced to a single sentence with the essential words - sustainable, development and so on. Although it was translated to a language I would understand much better, I could not help but thinking that I had lost out the essence of what the person was saying. 84
Chapter Three Voluntary activity of the sort wherein outsiders often help people of a particular area to organize themselves or provide a more formalized way of voicing their needs, is not new. In Orissa, several organizations precede those of today and in many ways have provided the background for the newer ones to work on. Although outside intervention in the form of missionaries working for the uplift of the people had been present since long, the kind of work that I am looking at seems to have taken root with the onset of the national movement, especially under Mahatma Gandhi. Social uplift in those days was inseparable from political activism. The people who were actively involved in constructive work in Orissa were more often than not the ones who were also at the heart of the struggle for independence. They were the ones who helped mobilize people in times of political activity at the centre. Most of them worked under the direct guidance of Gandhi. “Gandhi’s concerns necessarily ranged from physical health of individuals through programmes of village improvement to matters of the highest political import, for they all constituted a compelling continuum....”70 The December 30 issue of 1939 of the journal Harijan carries the significant working committee’s resolutions responding to the British government's failure to define their war aims, especially with regard to India's freedom, and the demand for complete independence. A signal paragraph of the pledge reads: “We believe that non-violent action in general and preparation for non-violent direct action in particular, require successful working of the constructive programme of khadi, communal harmony and removal of untouchability.71 One can see how, for Gandhi, the means to the end were extremely important. For complete independence in every sense, constructive work was indispensable. He writes in the Harijan, “Strange as it may appear, I suggest that ceaseless occupation in constructive programme is the best preparation to face danger. For it means concentration in villages of the city people and their being occupied and occupying the villagers in productive and educative work. . . .This removes unemployment and with it fear. Such 70
Bondurant, Joan, Introduction, Harijan, A Journal of Applied Gandhiism 1933 - 1955, in 19 vols. (Garland Punlishing, Inc., New York and London, 1973). 71 Ibid. 85
movement on a large scale at once inaugurates a new social order. It will constitute the greatest contribution to internal peace...”72 Gandhi published the first edition of his Constructive Programme in 1941 and then revised it in 1945. He writes, “Readers, whether workers or volunteers or not, should definitely realize that the constructive programme is the truthful and non-violent way of winning Poorna Swaraj. Its wholesale fulfillment is complete Independence. Imagine all the forty crores of people busying themselves with the whole of the constructive programme which is designed to build up the nation from the very bottom upward. Can anybody dispute the proposition that it must mean complete Independence in every sense of the expression, including the ousting of foreign domination?...Anyway I have no substitute for it, if it is to be based on non-violence... Civil Disobedience, mass or individual, is an aid to constructive effort and is a full substitute for armed revolt. Training is necessary as well for civil disobedience as for armed revolt. Only the ways are different. Action in either case takes place only when occasion demands. Training for military revolt means learning the use of arms ending perhaps in the atomic bomb. For civil disobedience it means the Constructive Programme. Therefore, workers will never be on the look out for civil resistance. They will hold themselves in readiness, if the constructive effort is sought to be defeated....Pioneers even in such programmes can be obstructed. They have had to go through the fire of suffering throughout the world. There is no Swaraj without suffering. In violence, truth is the first and the greatest sufferer; in non-violence it is ever triumphant...” (Poona, 13-11-1945).73 The desire to free the country of oppressive rule-whether British or that of the princely states and to establish swaraj seemed to be the force behind constructive work in Orissa. Pyarelal quotes Gandhi as saying, “Resistance to a foreign government cannot be relaxed for a single moment. The way to it is through constructive work aided by individual civil disobedience whenever there is scope for it. Civil Disobedience is a very potent weapon. But everyone cannot wield it. For it needs training and inner strength. It requires
72
Gandhi, M K , Harijan, Ed. Mahadev Desai (Ahmedabad, Sunday, January 18 1942), A Journal of Applied Gandhiism, Vol. IX, No. 1, (Garland Publishing, Inc., New York and London, 1973). 86
occasions for its use. But constructive work is always there for anybody who will take it up. It is the drill of the non-violent soldier. Through it you can make the villagers selfreliant, self-sufficient and free so that they can stand up for their rights. If you make a real success of the constructive programme, you will win swaraj for India without civil disobedience.”74 Swaraj was the ultimate goal of the constructive workers. Annapurna Maharana quoted to me from Gandhi’s writings to explain what they in Orissa saw as swaraj.75 Gandhi had expounded on his definition of swaraj in several letters and articles. At one place he exhorts people to establish swaraj as something only they could do themselves. He writes, “My conscience tells me that my movement is such that even the smallest community in the country can live without fear. It will not be possible to harass anyone...and no evil glance can be cast even on a defenseless woman--this is the meaning of swaraj. Such swaraj will not be a gift from anyone. It will not fall from above, nor will it be thrown up from below, we have to establish it.”(Speech at a meeting at Bulsar, April 20, 1921, from the Gujarati).76 “Swaraj is a state of being of individuals and nations. Just as only a person who eats will have his hunger satisfied, so he alone can be free who throws off subjection.... Swaraj also means being able to defend ourselves ... we can enjoy swaraj only if the people take over this duty themselves...”77 The attainment of swaraj thus became an individual enterprise. Everyone was meant to be instrumental in bringing about this swaraj. For the constructive workers in Orissa swaraj was shaped by Gandhi’s vision; but for the people it touched it symbolized different visions at different levels in society. Although a certain amount of restraint was emphasised in Gandhi’s writings (see appendix II 10-12), his use of the words swaraj, poorna swaraj, ramrajya, gramswaraj and sarvodaya unfolded before the people the vision of a non-violent, free and equitable world that they wanted to see ushered in.
73
Gandhi, M K, Constructive Programme Its Meaning and Place (Navjivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 1941, 1945, 1991). 74 Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi, The Last Phase Vol II (Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 1956). 75 For Gandhi’s twelve defintions of swaraj, see appendix 2. 76 The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Vol.XX April-August 1921 (The Publications Division Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India,New Delhi, May 1966). 77 Ibid. 87
Gandhi tried to give a practical face to this vision and as a result espoused constructive work and set up organizations for it’s realization. He wrote in the Harijan, “The end to be sought is human happiness combined with full mental and moral development...This end can be achieved under decentralization. Centralization as a system is inconsistent with non-violent structures of society” (Sevagram, 13-1-42).78 In other words raj-niti was to be
replaced
by
lok-niti
in
the
democracy
of
a
Sarvodaya
order.
Constructive work in Orissa began with a concerted effort at carrying out relief work, imparting nai talim -- an experiment in basic education, and an emphasis on spinning khadi which gathered momentum after Gandhi’s visit to Orissa in 1921. He urged the women especially to take up spinning. Joykrushna Mohanty, a veteran constructive worker as well as former secretary of the Utkal Navjeevan Mandal said that it was here that the practice of giving the charkha to unemployed women originated. Nai-talim stressed the importance of free and compulsory primary education, where the medium of instruction throughout would be the mother-tongue, where the child’s capabilities should be developed through some form of manual and productive work, in other words, an education based upon a craft. The Harijan carried the following, “Teachers and children have so long been used to the dominance of the printed word that the absence of books will stimulate initiative in both. Besides the feeling that the children and teachers are cooperating in the creation of their literature will bring a new pride and interest to their study. Really speaking, given efficient teachers, the need for text-books for children, especially in the early stages should not arise.”79 This brings to mind the more recent attempts at setting up an alternative system of education. Gopandhu Das known as Utkalmani or the jewel of Orissa was one of the earliest constructive workers and Congressmen. His earliest campaign was the demand for a separate Oriya state. That was not achieved until 1936. Before that Orissa had been a part of the Bengal Presidency till 1912 and from then on it had became a part of Bihar. Another personality famous for constructive work was Madhusudan Das. Gopabandhu
78
M. K. Gandhi, Harijan ( January 18 1942), A Journal of Applied Gandhiism, Vol. IX, No. 1 (Garland Publishing, Inc.,New York and London, 1973). 88
Das, Acharya Harihar Das, Pandit Neelkantha Das, Godavaris Misra, Pandit Krupasindhu Hota were active in the politics of the early 1920s and were called the panch sakhas. They started the Banobidhayay national school. Gopabandhu Das also started one in Sakhigopal in Puri district when Gandhi asked them to boycott British institutions.80 Several ashrams were set up in Orissa especially after 1921. Gandhi stayed at the Swaraj ashram at Cuttack when he visited Orissa at the time. Apart from many such organizations in Cuttack, there was the Alaka Ashram at Jagatsinghpur, Govind Babu’s ashram at Champapur, Gopabandhu Seva Sadan at Kadua in Sakhigopal and so on. In 1934, Gandhi came to Orissa for the second time and undertook a harijan padayatra from Puri to Bhadrak. In the same year Rama Devi and Gopabandhu Chowdhary set up an ashram at Bari in what is now Jajpur district. There they trained students especially girls (including Kironlekha, J. Mohanty’s wife) to become workers. This was in keeping with the broader curriculum of the nai-talim. According to Joykrushna Mohanty, Gandhi’s education was rooted in action -- spinning, weaving, prohibition, swadeshi, removal of untouchability. The eighteen point programme was followed scrupulously in the ashrams.81 The workers followed Gandhi's eighteen point programme but that of course did not exclude activities outside of it. Gandhi wrote that his list for the constructive programme did not pretend to be exhaustive; it was merely illustrative. The 18 Point Programme 1. Communal unity
10. Education in health
and hygiene
2. Removal of untouchability 11. Provincial languages 3. Prohibition
12. National languages
4. Khadi
13. Economic equality
5. Other village industries
14. Kisans
6. Village sanitation
15. Labour
7. New or basic education
16. Adivasis
8. Adult education
17. Lepers
79
A.K, Sevagram, 22-1-42, Harijan, (Ahmedabad, Sunday, February 22 1942), A Journal of Applied Gandhiism, Vol. IX, NO. 6 (Garland Publishing, Inc., New York and London, 1973). 80 Interview with Joykrushan Mohanty, Bhubaneswar, May 1993. 89
9. Women
18. Students.
Rama Devi also started the Kaibalya Kutir, a hostel for harijan children in Cuttack district. People like her carried out a great many relief measures and set up ashrams. They worked in the scavengers’ bastis, started schools, distributed medicines, gave stitching classes in Cuttack and other such work. The Kaibalya Kutir was Rama Devi’s first experience in field work as far as constructive work was concerned. It was then that Gandhi asked her to go to the villages and help the girls train in spinning.82 Spinning symbolized the joining in of ordinary people into the haloed circle of those with a common cause. In this way women for whom it was often difficult to leave their homes and go out were able to join into a movement which would hopefully bring them a better life. Gandhi once wrote in Young India, ... “I cannot be satisfied, not till every man and woman in India is working at his or at her wheel. Burn that wheel if you find a better substitute. This is the one and only work which can supply the needs of the millions without disturbing them from their homes.”83 “The khadi programme not only brought new hope to the village, but spinning also provided the avenue through which a popular movement could be organized: Indians from all walks of life could unite in identifying with the poor.”84 For the moment I would like to look at the place these ashrams and the constructive workers involved in working among the people in the villages, occupied in the politics of the late 1940s. Politics in the sense not only of the kind envisaged by the Gandhians but also the response from the people, that is, the perception of those on the receiving end their politics. Several workers had taken part in the padayatra from Puri to Bhadrak in 1934. Rama Devi was responsible for managing it in Cuttack district. These interventions in their lives were initially resented by the harijan and tribal communities. It was only gradually that they came to accept the Gandhians working in their midst and even then their reaction differed from place to place. When women like Rama Devi, Malati Chowdhary
81
Interview with Joykrushna Mohanty, Bhubaneswar, May 1993. Interview with Annapurna Maharana, Gandhi Smarak Nidhi, Cuttack, November 1993. 83 Gandhi, M K, Young India, 15-9-1927, in Chowdhary, Gopabandhu, Gandhi and Utkal, translated by S Kanungo (Navajeevan Publishing House, Ahmedabad-14, 1969). 90 82
and others went out to the villagers, they were received with something close to consternation and amazement. Here were women from the upper caste, moving around without the purdah. The people never ceased questioning them about what they were doing, many thought they were quite crazy. There was a great deal of opposition, especially from the brahmins for their ’unseemly conduct.’ In the conservative society of the Oriyas, minute caste rules were (and still are) observed even between harijan groups.85 Malati Chowdhary and Rama Devi who were working in the villages at the time used to attract huge crowds especially women. A large part of the crowd gathered just due to the fact that here was a high caste bahu coming out of the house without the purdah. In 1929-30, the Salt Satyagraha was called by Gandhi. There was a great upsurge in Orissa as hundreds of men and women gathered to break the salt laws at Balasore. This was the time when women came out in great numbers to join the movement. According to Annapurna Maharana some kind of magic had been wrought upon the people that they came out in such large numbers. Apart from Malati Devi and Rama Devi, the women who led the Oriya women included Sunamani Devi and Kokila Devi.86 There seemed to be no perceived threat to the established social order and this gave the women legitimacy for their involvement. “Malati Devi and others who had abandoned the hearth for an active life outside inspired awe not derision. One of the first women who had defied the purdah openly was Sarla Devi, the wife of advocate Bhagirathi Mohapatra. She had been severely castigated by the people because of her ’fearless’ ways.”87 On the other hand Annapurna Maharana talked of how Malati Chowdhary and Rama Devi took great pains to try and win over people persuasively. The reason they were accepted among the people could have been the surcharged atmosphere of the times. It was a time of tumult wherein people were more open to revolutionary gestures such as this. Apart from this, the very fact that these women were seen as being persuasive and gentle lends credence to the fact that they were seen more
84
Bondurant, Joan, Introduction to the Garland edition of Harijan, A Journal of Applied Gandhiism 1933-1955 (Garland Publishing, Inc., New York and London, 1973). 85 Interview with Annapurna Maharana, Gandhi Smarak Nidhi, Cuttack, November 1993. 86 Ibid. 91
as benevolent mothers (Malati Devi came to be called Numma meaning mother) rather than firebrand revolutionaries. The women who often joined in the processions and andolans and even those who came forth for constructive work were mostly from the middle and lower classes, the wives of small zamindars and teachers, widows with some land. Annapurna Maharana firmly believes that the root of the inspiration was Gandhiji and when people saw these dedicated volunteers come out and fight for their rights, they were further inspired to do so themselves. All this political activity however seemed to have a fleeting impact as far as any change in their lives was concerned. In the aftermath of the struggle they retreated into their homes and nothing seemed to have changed. In fact it would seem that even during periods of activity the home was always a place to retreat to once the day's procession had ended. Annapurna Maharana talked of a club they had in Rampa and Paghira villages which quite often became the place where women could discuss their problems together. There were mostly middle class women but even then when they got home things fell into place automatically for them as soon as they washed themselves to cleanse their bodies of any sort of contamination caused by mixing with lower castes or with those women who had mingled with the lower castes. Although most women retreated into their households once things subsided, the upheavals could not but have left an impression on them. These women include many who were involved in constructive work as well. After 1947, many went back to their homes to manage their families. Nevertheless things could never be the same. “Once they were baptised (had been to jail) and had participated in the movements on an equal footing and had made a difference in their own right as women they could never really be the women they were before.”88
87
Ibid. The word that she used was nirbhik. She was somewhat disparaging about the conduct of Sarla Devi in contrast with that of Rama Devi and others. 88 Annapurna Maharana quoted a bhajan from Mirabai to illustrate her point - ab to baat phail padi meaning that now that the women had seen what they could do, the word had been spread, they had experienced a change that had made them different and although they did go back to the confines of their homes they were not the same women as they were before. 92
Through constructive work of men and women such as Malati Chowdhary and Rama Devi, the Congress stretched out into the countryside and tried to garner support for their struggle, to draw in the people living in the far flung tracts of Orissa into mainstream politics. Work among the people in the countryside by the Congress workers and Gandhians helped to increase communication among the people and provided opportunities for them to get organized. Several organizations such as the Kisan Sangha (1935) and others that did come up during the freedom struggle were often formed as a result of
the consistent effort of people like Malati Chowdhary and Nabakrushna
Chowdhary to move closer to the people. Those associated with them at the time talk of how they walked miles and miles at a stretch in the villages, reaching people who were totally isolated from the mainstream and yet oppressed by it in many ways. The Kisan Sangha began among the ryots especially in Dhenkanal. Dhenkanal, at the time was under the rule of the extremely repressive R. P. Singh Deo. People had begun to rise against the government there. They began their movement against the zamindars and it spread to Cuttack, Puri and Balasore. In Puri they raised slogans against the mohunts as well as the powerful zamindars -- zamindari lop hoi, (zamindari be wiped out), that temple wealth controlled by the powerful mohunts (priests) be distributed, bethi uthi jao (forced labour be abolished) and compulsory payments or ’presents’ be stopped. One such compulsory present was the shuniya that the zamindars charged the ryots on new year's day when they changed over to new records and held a great feast. The people were also expected to perform bethi at this time.89 Organizations like the Kisan Sangha came up with the coming closer of the intellectuals and peasants after these mass movements.90 At such times conventional Congress constructive work proved to be inadequate for the people. “The Kisan Sangha in fact was responsible for the polarization of the Congress into left and right wings. Part of the Provincial Congress Committee left wing as opposed to the right wing harped only on the anti-imperialist theme and clung to the Gandhian programmes of khadi, village reconstruction, harijan uplift and prohibition. These included men like Nilkantha Das, Godavaris Misra and Acharya Hari Har Das. The Kisan Sangha appealed to the Congress landlords to set the ideal of renunciation and 89
Interview with Joykrushna Mohanty, Bhubaneswar, May 1993. Pati, Biswamoy, Resisting Domination Peasants, Tribals and the National Movement in Orissa 192050, (Manohar Publishers, New Delhi, 1993). 93
90
sacrifice. It expected them to demonstrate their sympathies with the downtrodden peasants by surrendering their property which could be managed by a trustee appointed by the Kisan Sangha. This particular tendency reflected the utopian moorings of the peasant movement and its interaction with Gandhian politics.”91 Not only that but it also illustrates the close proximity of organizations like the Kisan Sangha and Gandhian work which in a way was its breeding ground. Scholars believe that the Congress’ constructive programme was very often an attempt to divert the enthusiasm of the people in times of political lull.92 At certain times this could hold true, for instance when one looks at the constructive programme of the Congress epitomized by Gandhi’s famous eighteen points. The Gandhian programme could well fit into the category of welfare, it can in several instances actually help to perpetuate the status quo. It may even happen that at times like this, the existing set up is augmented by the work carried out in a way that it serves to diffuse aggression or revolt by piecemeal work in the villages. In these times it served as a background for a movement of social action, a buffer to fall back on in moments of lull. Nevertheless, as I said before, this was merely one side of the coin. That constructive work in several cases laid the groundwork for more radical movements cannot be denied. “Interestingly, the spark that set off the extremely powerful Nilgiri people’s struggle was associated with Gandhian social reform - harijan uplift. Drawing inspiration from the Gandhian ideals of harijan uplift some young men of Ajodhya had started an annual dinner from about 1932 in which people of different castes, both ’high’ and ’low’ (untouchables) sat down and ate together.93 In such a case the result was to draw in several people into the mainstream or at least help them believe that things were going to change quite soon. Similarly constructive work was responsible to quite an extent for the upsurge in 1942. Although the aspirations and motives of the people involved differed markedly, Gandhian constructive workers acted as catalysts for them to voice their aspirations. The reasons for the upsurge in various areas may have been diametrically opposed to what the workers believed but they did do a lot to give hope to the peoples’ vision of the future. Biswamoy Pati writes about the time in 1941 when the Talcher 91
Ibid. Ibid. 93 Ibid. 92
94
Prajamandal took up the constructive programme of the Congress, especially the question of harijan uplift and prohibition which served to unite and strengthen the prajamandal.94 In Koraput there was an upsurge among the tribals due to concentrated constructive efforts in the area. At the same time the participation of outcastes and tribal women in the 1942 movement was quite limited especially in the coastal districts. Annapurna Maharana suggests that material constraints and the penury that even a day’s absence from work would entail kept them away from active involvement, that since harijan and tribal women were equal breadwinners for their families it made their involvement minimal. This does not necessarily explain why there was such limited absence as far as women were concerned especially when contrasted with the turnout at the time of the salt satyagraha. After the upsurge of 1942 Rama Devi and others carried out relief work during the floods that had struck Orissa. The boys who came out from jail were sent to Sevagram for Talim. A smaller boys hostel was started for them in Ramachandrapur in Bari which experimented in basic education. In the meanwhile Malati Devi had been interned in the Cuttack jail during the Quit India movement and was released after the war in 1945. She was then elected to the Constituent Assembly and much against Sardar Patel’s requests that she stay on as she was the only woman member, she followed Mahatma Gandhi to communal riot hit Noakhali. With her there, Gandhi had an effective interpreter to his Bengali listeners. Soon after, she returned to Orissa and set up the Bajirout Chatrabas in 1946. Around the same time the Utkal branch of the Kasturba Gandhi Memorial Trust was also set up and Rama Devi who had been released from jail on 8th July 1944 was asked to look after it. The office was located at Ramchandrapur in the flood stricken Bari area. A Kanyashram with thirty girls of ages six to twelve years and training with eleven women were started there on 1st June 1946. Constructive work carried out from all these places formalized itself and in 1946 the idea of a new organization, the Utkal Navajeevan Mandal, took root. By 1948 the Utkal Navajeevan Mandal registered itself as a formal body although
94
Ibid. 95
the people associated with it had been carrying on constructive work since long before.
The first major problem that had confronted the constructive workers before 1947 still lay unresolved after independence - that of land alienation and bonded labour (goti pratha). The land laws passed by the state government had not helped the people. Agrarian legislation did not afford enough protection to the peasants as their long time opponents often took shelter behind the subtleties of the law to defeat the provisions of the act. Rama Devi and Gopabandhu Chowdhary undertook a padayatra in 1951 to apprise themselves of the situation in the villages. Vinoba Bhave had about the same time begun his gramdan/bhoodan movement. To these people in Orissa the non-violent bhoodan movement seemed to be the only acceptable solution. They started collecting land for the landless in Orissa from the 7th of January, 1952. In their first trek of padayatra for over four months from the 7th of January 1952 to the 28th of May covering 1100 miles, 1626 acres of land were collected from 233 donors. On the 29th of May 1952, a non-official Bhoodan Yagna Samiti was constituted under the chairmanship of Gopabandhu Chowdhary with its headquarters at Cuttack. “The immediate task of the Bhoodan/Gramdan movement was the redistribution of land among the landless, the fulfillment of
the spirit of the land reform acts and the
establishment of a single institutional entity to which all people of a village, irrespective of their class, caste, religion, rank and strata would belong. Bhoodan was the first phase of the movement. It envisaged that every landowner would part with 1/6th of his land for redistribution to the landless. In May 1952 after a year’s trial the Bhoodan movement was further radicalised and the new phase of Gramdan came into being. Now 75% of the population of a village ( or be it of a block or of a district) owning 51% of land of the area were to be persuaded to part with their proprietary rights in favour of legally constituted Gramsabhas (village councils); and 1/20th of the land of every owner was thereafter to be available for redistribution among the landless in a manner to be decided by the Gramsabha. The decisions of the community were to be final in all other matters of the village government... 96
A gram kosh or a community chest built on the basis of subscription of the villagers e.g. 1/40th of the income of every earner was to provide the initial capital for village or area development. Later when the movement grew beyond the village limits, it was decided that if 75% of the population of a block and of a district owning 51% of the land had similarly agreed to sign up a new unit of decision making, what has now come to be known as the prakhand dan and zila dan units would come into being... In 1957 the Bhoodan movement received nationwide support. At the invitation of the All India Sarva Seva Sangh a gramdan parishad was held on September 21st and 22nd, 1957 at Yelwal in Mysore. The members pointed out that the governments concerned would have to proceed with their schemes of land reforms which were based on the abolition of all intermediate interest in land, the limitation of holdings and the promotion of the cooperative movement in all its phases with the consent of the people concerned.” 95 The Bhoodan movement gave birth to a large number of Sarvodaya agencies. Their major emphasis was to help government agencies allocate donated land to the landless and to make these lands more productive through land development and irrigation programmes. The Orissa Bhoodan Yagna Act was enacted in 1953 and the rules under the act were framed in July 1954. The Chief Minister at this time was Nabakrushna Chowdhary. The movement found fertile ground in Orissa in the early days. “In Gunpur sub-division, in the district of Koraput, acute land hunger led to a spectacular satyagraha in 1950 and offered a great impetus to the movement. By 1953 and 1954 workers of all political parties had joined the fray. They came forward to lend their might to the drive for collection of land in every district of the state. When Vinoba Bhave came to the state on 26th January, 1955 he was presented with one lakh and 22,000 acres of land given away by 40,000 donors. Ninety three villages had been declared as Gramdan.”96 In comparison with other states, the Bhoodan movement found greater support in Orissa. From the concept of the Bhoodan also originated the Shanti Sena (the army of peace) to spread peace in the world at large. It developed into an organization with its slogan of jai jagat in 1958.
95
Bhoodan and Gramdan in Orissa, edited by Singh, T.P and his associate. (Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan, Rajghat, Varanasi, 1973). 96 Ibid. 97
“After the resignation of Nabakrusha Chowdhary the Bhoodan movement ran aground partly because of the hostility of the state government which didn’t look upon the movement very favourably. It was beginning to rock the power structure of the government. The success of the Gramdan movement depended on the change in the psychology of the people regarding the land question. This however was something the social workers were unable to do. It was not enough to acquire land and distribute it among the landless or to form village communities to look after village land. The movement had to be sustained. A cadre of dedicated people should have been created from among the villagers who would see to that the new system wouldn’t crumble when old quarrels tended to resurface. Apart from that, there was a counter movement of sorts started by local government officials, sahukars and so on.”97 At the inception of the gramdan/bhoodan ideology, the social context seemed favourable. The new economic policy was still in the making and a socialist pattern of society wasn't anathema. However, in the later years, events outside the state also began to have an effect. H.K. Mahtab’s government wanted to put a stop to the andolan which had spread quite rapidly in Orissa. This considerably slowed down its momentum. Since many of the leaders involved were also political figures, political wrangling at the higher level seriously undermined the movement. Fissures began to develop within the movement. By the 1970’s, the movement had almost died down. The emergency declared by Indira Gandhi in 1975 further arrested such activity. Many of the Bhoodan activists who opposed the emergency were imprisoned at this time. Even in the 1970s Gandhians like Malati Chowdhary, Nabakrushna Chowdhary and others at the various ashrams carried on their tradition of keeping a watch as far as the government was concerned. This was probably the last time that they took such a stand for with the passing away of the old guard much of the inspiration died away. Furthermore, even in the gramdan villages most villagers were apparently unaware of what was actually taking place and at times distrustful of such moves. Neither were their fears totally unfounded. The land distributed among the people was often infertile or of bad quality and of little use to a poor farmer who had no resources with which to make it
97
Interview with Manmohan Chowdhary, Gandhi Smarak Nidhi, Bakhrabad, Cuttack, November 1993. 98
productive. It was not very surprising then that after a year or two even the cultivators stopped supporting the movement. When Vinoba Bhave came back to Orissa for the second time in August 1963, both he and Jayprakash Narayan were shocked to find that many of the gramdans were bogus,98 that is, merely on paper and the leadership was quite corrupt. In Sambalpur the concept of bhoodan-gramdan had found much support in the early days especially amongst the women. However, now almost nothing remains of it. In Koraput, the gramdan workers were able to achieve much more as constructive workers and the ashrams had been active in this area since the 1930s. More than that, it was the tribal ethos of community living which proved to be receptive to the gramdan notion of joint property. Despite some success in establishing gramdan and gramkosh in these
villages, little of that still
remains. In fact one of these villages is in a bad state as there is in-fighting over land. One side had come to the Bhoodan committee headed by Manmohan Chowdhary (it still exists) to try and help them sort out the mess. Even now innumerable cases are pending with the revenue officer over the land apparently distributed during the Bhoodan years. Bhoodan leaders like Manmohan Chowdhary and others have been unable to do much to help them. An important reason that the bhoodan movement failed was its lack of initiative from the people concerned. Hardly any of the changes wrought by the movement were lasting. In fact in some villages bhoodan enabled unscrupulous elements to turn it in their favour. The Kisan movement on the other hand reached its peak between 1948-55. They forcefully occupied land in Begunia which caused a great uproar in the Assembly as it was the constituency of Gangadhar Paikray (CPI MLA) who was actively involved in the Kisan movement. Similarly some land belonging to the Jagannath temple was also occupied which eventually resulted in the passing of the Land Act. The Kisan Sangha supported the bhoodan movement but was critical of all those who donated uncultivable land.99 Eventually the land problem lay unresolved and the Sarvodaya agencies near collapse. This was the scene whence many of the NGOs began to come up and try and take up 98
Ibid. 99
these questions again. This time around their approach was quite different, at least in Orissa, as I have tried to show in the two previous chapters.
99
Interview with Gangadhar Paikray, Bhubaneswar, February 1994. 100
Chapter Four By and large, up to the late 1970s, voluntary work in the state remained confined to the organizations discussed in the previous chapter. The late seventies and early eighties saw the coming up of several alternative development initiatives which combined mobilization including elements of class struggle with some programmes. These were headed by middle class youth, usually from the cities and towns. The Jayprakash Narayan movement in the seventies and the formation of various student groups, the Chattra Sangharsh Vahini were often the starting point of many organizations. Emerging alongside in the mid-eighties were also independent peoples movements or andolans such as Gandhamardan, Baliapal and Chilika where the people took over and the role of the voluntary agencies was limited. Similarly, there has also been the tradition wherein people have independently taken up the protection of common property resources such as forests. Whether Gandhian100 or the more modern ones, the thrust of all these NGOs has been towards decentralization, an effort to awaken among the people a lok shakti so that their aspirations would find expression in the work they themselves would do. Gandhi’s vision was to make the village a self -- sufficient unit. Everyone in the village had their own work - whether it was agriculture, spinning or oil pressing. Danger to democracy arises when the state begins to take over institutions which could be looked after by the people themselves. This thinking prompted both the Gandhian organizations and the more recent NGOs to work among the people and bring to life their will to find solutions to their own problems. The situation has changed a great deal over the years and the organizations have responded to these changes in many ways. There are significant differences in their philosophies and the manner in which they operate. The most obvious difference is of course the fact that the early organizations were set up in the backdrop of the national movement. It would not be surprising then that the fervour and passion of those days would be missing now. The overarching mission then was swaraj. In that process social contradictions took a backseat. On the one hand constructive work was the plank from
101
where many autonomous organizations took off. It gave people strategies of resistance and helped them identify their problems. At the same time the constructive workers tried to keep such activity within bounds, creating great tension in such situations. In the early years, work of social uplift was inseparable from political activism. There was an effort to channel all activity towards the larger goal -- that of independence. With independence such organizations that had come up in the ambit of the independence struggle lost some of their reason for existing. Once independence was achieved, all the tensions and conflicts which had been unresolved surfaced again. No longer was it enough for people to spin khadi and feel themselves to be a part of a larger family. This is, of course, not to say that they did so before but during the national movement, when so many diverse strands were knit together, many of these problems got pushed away. The kind of work that had been going on became even more critical after independence. The Indian government took over and the people felt that the time had come for their aspirations to be met. The centralizing force since the 1960s onwards destroyed any such hopes. People were alienated from their resource base with the formation of the ’Nation State’. The Government decided to take up everything in the new setup and the people were left out of management. Land was the important issue. The Gandhians had not always tackled it. The Bhoodan movement did so, but it touched the people only ephemerally. The failure of the Bhoodan movement in the 1950s and 60s exemplified the strengthening of the landed and wealthy class. Land relations could not be changed in this way. Control of land reflected the power relations in the society especially in the countryside. The government took over the role of the benefactor (benevolent or not ) and the people settled back and waited for grants to come their way. In a large country like India this was of course impossible. The unwieldy edifice of governance was retained and perfected. The people who did not come in touch with it usually stayed forgotten. The crisis in the country in the 1970s exacerbated the situation. The Jayprakash Narayan movement and the emergency declared by Indira Gandhi created great tension in the country. Various student groups like the Chattra Sangharsh Vahini became the vanguard 100
When I talk about Gandhian organizations here I mean those that were started by the Congress workers and others associated with Gandhi’s ashrams in the 1940s and 50s. 102
of protest movements, but later also became the starting point of the new voluntary organizations. Meanwhile, the Naxalite movement had evoked tremendous hope in popular movements and the will of the people but at the same time its collapse in the late 1970s and 1980s brought with it a great disillusionment with the left. People began to look for alternative ways of redressing their problems. Many young people went out into the countryside hoping to be able to do something different: to restore to the people their self -- respect and dignity which they had lost with the control over their lives being taken away from them and due to their almost complete dependence on state subsidies and grants. The number of such voluntary organizations grew rapidly in Orissa in the 1980s. The Gandhians had worked a great deal among the people in the countryside though, as I have shown, such work after independence was restricted mainly to relief. Even in the preindependence period the locus of activity of the Gandhian organizations were the ashrams where people could get succour. Many of the local organizations that did come up were partly a response by the people to the work that was being done by the Gandhian organizations for their benefit. When constructive work seemed inadequate to deal with their problems and yet in a way it helped them define them, people often took their own initiative. The formation of the Kisan Sangha in Orissa was one such instance wherein numerous kisan committees sprang up all over as the peasants felt the need to go beyond the confines of the ashrams and fight a more aggressive battle. In no way does this minimise the role of the Gandhians in bringing into the open such discontent. They represented a major tradition of social service and have left a rich legacy for the new NGOs. Gandhian organizations often worked to resolve class contradictions and conflict. This aspect is
especially incongruous
at a time when the opening of markets and
industrialization is widening the disparity between the rich and the poor in the country. Not only in terms of wealth but value systems seem to be changing. The upper classes tend to identify more and more with some sort of international standard than with the poorer people in their own country. The present day NGOs aim to help the people fight for their rights, to help them organize themselves into protest groups and to bring to them the knowledge of the world outside so that they are aware of it and not oppressed by it. 103
As I mentioned before they profess to help people help themselves. Though many carry out relief measures, there seems to be a general realization that nothing can be achieved unless the villagers want it themselves. In the case of Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad, Hazari & Hazari have written that there needs to be two types of leadership in the villages - - a group rooted to the soil and others being the contact men between the village and the local administrative and developmental authority. Such people should be close to the seat of power.101 The need to have channels to the centre of authority has become an important part of their work, reflecting how the distance between the two worlds is increasing instead of coming closer together. Whether such people are university graduates from outside or educated people within the village (as in the case of Brukshya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad) is immaterial. As long as a large part of India remains uneducated about the larger mechanism of politics, these channels will be necessary. Hence, the emphasis has been on organizing opinion on certain issues, helping people voice their grievances and forming groups to oppose oppression. Despite all such rhetoric there are very few NGOs in Orissa which actually take up major issues like these. The change in Gram Vikas over the years reflects this case. When they began to work in Mohuda, Gram Vikas took up the fight of the Kerandimal hill tribals. So much so that Gram Vikas itself came up against a number of influential people as well as the authorities in their cause of freeing the tribals from bondage. Fifteen years later one sees the very sahukars who had them in bondage back in the tribal villages, the villagers going to them for loans and Gram Vikas having withdrawn from the scene. In the first few annual reviews, Gram Vikas talked a great deal about its Kerandimal project. The success they had achieved had been the foundation of their other activities which now range from biogas production to social forestry. However in a later annual review (1992/3) they write that Kerandimal was not exactly the success story they had thought it was. The report says that the tribal social ideals on which they had based their efforts had not been good enough. No society could remain isolated from what was happening outside their immediate environs. What Gram Vikas had failed to realize was that the society they were working in was also changing and needed different and varying goals and
101
Hazari, Narayan and Hazari, Subas Chandra, ’Community Action in Environmental Conservation : An Experiment in Orissa’, Environment Management in India Vol. II, Edited by R K Sapru (Ashish Publishing House, Punjabi Bagh, New Delhi 110026, 1987). 104
approaches all the time. The ideal tribal society that they had hoped to re-establish was not the one that was really needed anymore. There is a considerable toning down in the rhetoric of the organization. Although they still talk about making the tribal independent and self-sufficient, class or caste issues find no place in their reports. They say they hope to withdraw from the area but the numerous factories they have set up and their vast infrastructure makes that seem quite unlikely. Gram Vikas had managed to win the confidence of the people by evicting the sahukars from the villages and establishing gramin banks. The fact that the sahukars are back in full force and the people once again opting to go to them indicates that something went wrong. Gram Vikas had not really figured out with the people what they really wanted. It would seem that the credit facilities they provided as an alternative to the sahukars were not sustainable. People’s financial needs change over time and Gram Vikas probably realized that too late. The biogas project is another effort which has been a failure. It is too complex and time consuming for the villagers to carry it through on their own. So, although outside knowledge is vital as well as useful for the villagers, every situation is particular and application of ideas without total understanding of the people and a study of the ground situation can even be harmful. This combined with the fact that there is a big difference between the kind of work Gram Vikas started with and the activities it carries on today throws up a number of questions about the space NGOs occupy in the overall development of the state. Many function merely as auxiliaries of the state in that they supplement the implementation of government schemes and programmes. Within Agragamee as well one can see a watering down of their radicalism. Although they have successfully promoted peoples’ organizations, in my interview with Achyut Das it seemed that there was a reservation about taking up issues which were controversial. They had also taken up the issue of freeing bonded labourers in Kashipur and come up against a great deal of opposition. They have moved away from taking up aggressive action in such cases. Agragamee was unprepared to fight the onslaught of the vested interests on the issue of bonded labour. Das said that they were ill equipped to handle issues like this. In the initial five years that they were there they did a great deal of work but they talk of that time as one of confusion and turmoil. “They had thought to 105
empower people in different ways, thought to free them from bondage, but this was not something they could do as outsiders. It was only the people themselves who could do that. What they could do, he felt, was to bring underlying issues to the surface, to support the people whenever they had a demand but were too weak or intimidated of going it alone. These were political issues and could not be addressed by developmental work.”102 This statement is somewhat of a contradiction in terms since what they are doing in the villages is ostensibly changing power relations (even if in a marginal way). The mahila mandals and village committees emerging as an organized counterweight to the traditional power structure are a new force wherein people are taking a hold over the direction their lives are taking. Yet the rhetoric has been tempered down as far as Agragamee is concerned. They now talk about creating facilitators in the villages who could help to bring about change and would be able to keep their community apprised of changes taking place outside their villages. These changes affect them in various ways, often detrimental and they are unable to fight them as they do not have the necessary knowledge or support. Achyut Das is very confident that now with the Panchayati Raj system coming in, things are going to change dramatically. Although the first few years will be chaotic, he is quite hopeful that by the third elections people would take control. Politics has to come to the grassroots. Once again, it is debatable what direction such politics will take. Even now villages are riven with factionalism between opposing political parties. The question remains, ’who are the people who will gain power in the Panchayati Raj’? On the other hand power will go to the lowest level and hopefully the new confidence that the people have acquired, in Kashipur at least, will change things for the better. “Once the Panchayati Raj system gets into motion there will no longer be any need for NGOs,” says Das. NGOs, according to him are a transition phase. They are a part of a larger process, wherein a market has also been created by several funding agencies and the inability of the government to look after all sections of people. Hence there has been a sudden spurt in the number of NGOs. Many people are now beginning to realize that a code of conduct is needed - - a certain transparency that would help them stay on the path. Even the funding agencies are beginning to realize that. 102
Interview with Achyut Das, Agragamee, October 1994. 106
At the moment the NGOs are coming into the limelight where the government is failing. More and more are coming to supplement government programmes. Very few are actually issue based these days. Agragamee for instance is critical of the government but at the same time held in esteem by the governments in Bhubaneswar and New Delhi. This case is symptomatic of the relationship many NGOs share with the Government. Often the central Government as well as the state Government is supportive of the measures undertaken by the voluntary organizations but the local administration remains hostile and tends to create impediments. It has been difficult for voluntary organizations to function in Orissa as the government has not been very encouraging. As one can see, at several places they have tried to thwart efforts for uplift of the underprivileged sections if it clashes with their interests. There is usually a collusion between the local politicians and the bureaucracy in the area. More often than not the politicians are the ones who own most of the land, they are the moneylenders or contractors. All this makes voluntary work extremely difficult especially if it is more radical in nature. Many voluntary organizations in Orissa have thus merely come to supplement government programmes. They are dependent on the government for funds or alternatively on foreign donors which once again can come only with the government’s goodwill. To be able to get funds from foreign donors NGOs have to go through the FCRA, the Foreign Contribution Registration Act and it is at the discretion of the government whom they give it to. It can also be revoked by the government if they think that the situation demands it. Hence NGOs that need the money do not always take a stand especially on issues which bring them in opposition to those in authority. Money from foreign sources has changed the context of voluntary work as well. Due to the fact that there are several donor agencies ready to pour money into the country, NGOs have come up and just as easily closed down once they have received the money. There have been cases of misappropriation of funds as well. Some NGOs open up since the lack of opportunities has prompted young people to look upon this as an alternative employment. In such cases they are not always prepared for the difficult life of the voluntary worker, living among the people in the villages, being subjected to all kinds of diseases and so on. 107
The skewed distribution of land has always been a problem in Orissa. The Bhoodan movement tried to tackle the issue but failed to do so successfully. Even today not many organizations take up this problem. There are some that have come up with less dangerous ideas than redistribution but in the process have circumvented the major issue. “To get back old land which in the past has been alienated or mortgaged is nearly impossible. Agragamee was able to persuade the Government to give some usufructuary entitlement to the people, the dangar pattas in the name of both men and women. Land use should be redefined to be more effective. It should be a combination of agroforestry depending upon land capability.”103 In this way they have managed to get some land for the people without upsetting the status - - quo too much. Many NGOs came up initially on the margins of the system hoping to effect changes from the outside. Increasingly, they seem to be getting absorbed into the mainstream. Supplementing government programmes is merely one part of it. As I have tried to show before, this is apparent in Chetna Shramik Sangha to some extent but even more so in the case of Gram Vikas. Their initial effort at trying to restore the land to the tribals seemed to be the only major social issue they had taken up in the fifteen years they were there. Since then they have confined their activities to income-generation programmes and so on. Within Agragamee the hesitation in taking up issues concerning land and others which may be confrontational indicates that the vigour that many NGOs started with, i.e. to combat the system is slagging. The downslide is evident even in their rhetoric which is considerably less aggressive and has taken on a governmental language. The NGOs in the 1970s in the wake of the student movements had started out to deconstruct the system. Now many face the danger of either getting absorbed into the mainstream and surviving or just dying out. Though there are varying organizations, a new feature among them is the fact that many of the workers are often technically trained, University graduates with specific training in the field they are working in. They are professionals and are paid for what they do. The salaries of course depend on the kind of organization that they work for. It has been the experience of two of the NGOs that I have met that people from within the locality are much more adept at handling problems than those that come trained from outside. This is 103
Ibid. 108
merely the view of two NGOs and need not reflect that of the others. The ideal of selfless service and the charitable Gandhian worker has changed to that of the professional social worker. In such an instance the zeal and dedication that constructive work inspired is often missing. Ideally at least the Gandhian constructive worker had Gandhi’s dictum as his/her guiding principle, “The kind of service I have in view is not one leading others, but one which consists in labouring for them. He is the true volunteer who works harder, is more honest, more efficient, more humble and has a better sense of discipline than a paid employee. Such a voluntary worker is paid just enough for living. He does not, thus live upon alms, but gives true service to the country.”104 The institutionalization of voluntary work as it is happening in many parts of Orissa may cause repercussions. “NGOs will one day kill themselves,” is a view voiced by Bipin Das of Gram Vikas. According to him they are taking over from where the Government left off. The bureaucratization and hierarchy in several organizations is beginning to inhibit the flexibility which makes the NGOs so much more effective than the Government. Gram Vikas carries out several income generation activities like the bamboo factory as well as other cottage industries which they run themselves. It is difficult to see the villagers taking over and running this vast infrastructure in the near future. This is not because they may not manage but because these factories provide only a supplementary income and the villagers need to work on the fields most of the time. It would be impossible for them to do both. In case some of them would want to take it over, there are again many difficulties in that. So, although many such organizations speak of withdrawing, their growing infrastructure has almost made it impossible for them to do so. This reinforces the trend of NGOs slipping into the mainstream without changing their environment very much in the long run. Nevertheless a lot has been achieved. The people’s groups especially the mahila mandals are more articulate than ever before. There is an element of confidence among them as they try and relate themselves to larger issues. In the case of the Chetna Shramik Sangha an evaluation report states that low caste groups have been empowered and their effective self-assertiveness has increased ....caste based and class based i.e. gauntia leadership still exists at the micro level but it has been weakened to a great extent and the self104
The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi,Vol. XX April-August 1921 (The Publications Division 109
assertiveness of low income groups has developed. Sangha activities played a significant role in this. In the present form of the halia system, the relationship between the halia and the landlord is no longer exploitative and oppressive. The generation contract with the landlord has been changed to a yearly contract system. The tribals in this area now have a somewhat better status. There has been some intercaste mingling as well. Women’s organizations, however, could not be sustained in Sambalpur. In many places bonded labour has managed to free themselves with the help of organizations like the Chetna Shramik Sangha, Agragamee and Gram Vikas. Unfortunately in Sambalpur much of the effort was not for the poor and the landless (who are the main members of the Sangha) but for the small and marginal farmers. One weakness of these NGOs is that there is not all that much networking among them. None are ready to learn from each other. Very often they make the same mistakes which could have been avoided if there was a forum where they could discuss their problems. Much of what the people do is localized as well. Their thinking tends to be restricted to their village. Even among the animators, although there is the feeling is that they must fight for justice, not unnaturally it is about what concerns them specifically. The new confidence among the women has spurred them to tackle more and more issues that concern their daily lives like constructing bandhs on their fields, getting drinking water and so on. This interaction is still on a limited scale but hopefully once the people are able to take control of their own lives they would be able to relate themselves to larger issues. Until there is an unanimous opinion about such issues, the people will not have the power to stand up for themselves. The large number of NGOs in Orissa indicates the desperate need for development in the state. Poverty however is only one pointer to their presence. The strength of the Gandhian movement also encouraged people to move in this direction. Unlike some other states like Uttar Pradesh for instance there have been no violent caste or class movements in Orissa. In such a case the NGO workers provide the people with one avenue through which they can express their grievances. One could argue that in some cases this may even provide them with a safety valve and inhibit other more radical movements. Anyway in the absence of any movement that could take up their problems the NGOs have been
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, May 1966). 110
welcomed by the people for the help they give and of course in many places for the influx of money that can come with them.
111
Epilogue “The poverty structure of Orissa is epitomised by the fact that 53.12% of the people live below the poverty line. The problem is acute among the tribals and the dalits.” ... “the dismal picture of health in the state (is) something symbolized by the death of 122 children out of every 1,000 that are born.” “A state with a declining female population (viz. from 1,000 males: 981 females in 1981 to 1,000 males: 971 females in 1991), a sharp increase in dowry deaths, coupled with a 54.9% increase in the incidents of rape.”105 These are some of the alarming statistics that one comes across Orissa these days. The concept of the NGO/voluntary organization becomes all the more significant in this context. The increasing politicisation especially in the light of the subdivision of the districts in the state has made the position of the poor even more precarious. “The tribal dominated Malkangiri District is going to the polls this year for the first time after its bifurcation from Koraput. Though the district has abundant mineral and forest resources and manpower, lack of proper communication facilities detaches it from the mainstream of the other parts of the state. The new district has two segments for assembly, Chitrakonda and Malkangiri. Chitrakonda constituency (ST) has been depending on tribal support.”106 At the same time, “ with the assembly elections about a month away, the Naxals operating in the agency areas of Koraput District have asked the tribals to boycott the polls and ’force out’ the candidates from their villages. ... Apparently this advice is going down well among the tribals.... A random visit to any village in the area will tell you that the Naxal presence is all pervasive ... Although the Naxals have made a virulent campaign against elections, the boycott call has always come in the form of an appeal to the tribals and not through coercion...
105
Bohidar, Bijaya Kumar, and Mohanty, Manoranjan, Odisha Daridra Kahinki ? cited in Pati, Biswamoy, ’Roots of Orissa’s Underdevelopment’, Economic and Political Weekly (A Sameeksha Trust Publication, Bombay, December 25 1993). 106 Indian Express, Vizianagram edition, Sunday February 12 1995. 112
Despite the call, the self - - contradiction is evident - CPI (ML) candidates are in the fray from the neighbouring district.”107 In such a case it is no wonder then that the people are disillusioned with the political wrangling seeping into their homes. The tone of the article suggests a tacit understanding of the dissatisfaction of the tribals with the political system and a sympathy with their choice. Although it says that the boycott is not destined to be widespread it reflects a malaise within the system. In their programmes of political education, the role of the NGOs becomes even more interesting. In order to maintain their status - quo they may give advice which may be biased or they could keep mum, both of which could be politically devastating for the people. With the government abdicating its responsibility and the NGOs taking over in such instances, the values of the NGOs become something that needs to be looked into. Despite their shortcomings, the NGOs apart from the more radical groups are the only people who have taken it upon themselves to do something about the depressing situation facing the people today. Unfortunately they are not very many people who have taken up this task or who are even aware of the poverty and dismal condition of their countrymen and women. Very few people in the cities even in Orissa are aware of what an NGO is all about inspite of there being such a large number in the state. Though the NGO efforts are as yet piecemeal and isolated and no general strategy exists, they have served to highlight the needs of the people to some extent and help them get their rights. In face of the almost insurmountable problems facing Orissa, such efforts are unfortunately not enough. The edifice of the government too seems redundant to carry out any large scale change in the system. An awareness among the public has become essential. A certain transparency in the work of the NGOs is important as well. Too many are totally dependent on funding and spend most of their time chasing money. They are none too different from the Government in that they become the benefactor and the people once again their beneficiaries. Such a state of affairs is not going to make any difference in the long run.
107
Ibid. 113
The problems plaguing Orissa remain, making it all the more important for action to be taken. The NGOs can help to pressure the country to sit up and take notice, for unless the people at large consider the problems of the poor as their own country’s problems, not very much would be achieved.
114
Appendix I
115
116
117
118
Appendix II The Twelve Definitions of Swaraj 1) Swaraj means rule over one’s self. One who has achieved this has fulfulled his individual pledge. 2) We have, however, thought of swaraj in terms of some symbol or image. Swaraj, therefore, means the complete control by the people... 3) ...Swaraj, therefore means the easy availability of food and cloth, so much so that no-one would go hungry or naked for want of them. 4) Swaraj, therefore, means conditions in which a young girl could, without danger, move about alone even at dead of night. 5) ...it will mean total dissapearance of the practice treating ’antyajas’ as untouchables. 6) ....end of the Brahmin-non Brahmin quarrel. 7) Complete dissapearance of the evil passions in the hearts of Hindus and Muslims. 8) Swaraj means that Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians and Jews should be able to follow their own faith and respect that of others. 9) Swaraj means that every town or village should be strong enough to protect itself... and should produce the food and cloth it requires. 10) Swaraj means mutual regard between the princes organizations on the one hand and their subjects on the other, that the former should not harass the latter and the latter, in their turn, should not should give no trouble to the former. 11) Swaraj means mutual regard between the rich and the working class. It means the latter working gladly for the former for adequate wages. 12) Swaraj means looking upon every woman a mother or sister and respecting her to the utmost. It means doing away with the distinction of high and low and acting towards all with the same regard as for one’s brother or sister. From The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Vol. XX (April-August 1921) The Publications Division Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Government of India, May 1966. 119
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Sharma, R A , ’The land use economy of Orissa, Indian Forester, Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, 1993. Shivkumar, M.S., ’Voluntary Agencies and Development’, Mainstream, Vol. XXIII, No. 43, Edited and published by Sumit Chakravartty for Perspective Publications Private Ltd., New Delhi, June 22 1985. Singhal, M.M, Chandra, Suresh, ’P.M. on Test’, Mainstream, Vol. XXIII, No. 38, Edited and published by Sumit Chakravartty for Perspective Publications Private Ltd., New Delhi, May 18 1985. Uphoff, Norman, ’Grassroots Organzations and NGOs in Rural Development: Opportunities with Diminishing States and Expanding Markets,’ World Development Vol. 21, No. 4, Pergamon Press, Oxford, New York, Seoul, Tokyo, April 1993.
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Film on Gram Vikas made by the public relations team.
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