Keeping up the pace…
Posted in Blog
On 27.05.2009
We are inviting everyone to a peoples’ demand gathering on 28 May 2009, 5:30 pm opposite Roopallee Cinema at Sardar Baug, Ahmedabad. We want peoples’ voices to be heard as we are trying to bring the problems of threats, fear and reprisals, and callousness into the open. I feel only then will the awful fear fed silence that allows crime and thuggery with such impunity, be broken. Please join us and make this meeting an inclusive one.
Update on 29.05.2009: Read the report by DNA on the public meeting held at Sardar Baug.
So much has been happening that it is hard to write it all up.
My colleague Bharat Sinh Jhala (BSJ) and I have been back to villages in Sanadd, Gandhinagar and Bawla. A new fight that seems to be emerging is with a very politicised Sarpanch (either Congress or BJP) who has purloined funding and grants and is in cohorts with higher-ups, and the people who want us to come and work with them. There is a huge amount of fear, of reprisals if they speak the truth about how the Sarpanch has been corrupt.
And the levels and circuits of corruption are so entwined and enshrined that I am lost as to where to break the chain.
In Rama Pir No Tekro, we have started distributing forms for widows to register, for those who don’t have BPL cards, and for children who need subsidized notebooks. Yesterday, there was a queue of over 400 women who wanted to fill forms, and our local support there ran out. There was a mad dash to photocopy more forms! And, about 700 children have registered for notebooks. We have bought 6000 notebooks from a whole-seller at Rs. 6.85 per book and are providing them at Rs 5 per book. So we need to find about Rs 11000. Any ideas?
We also wanted some lines about true democracy and citizenship to be put into them as stickers. Does someone want to suggest some lines?
Working with Pradan and the Aga Khan Research Foundation people we are introducing SRI, a new way of planting rice for higher productivity. We are talking about this in the villages and are getting very enthusiastic responses. Next week we will be organizing workshops for the farmers and AKRSP agronomists.
Meanwhile BSJ has been to Piyaj, Randheja, Borisna, Borij and to Sector 15 in Gandhinagar, to assess the needs of the people. The levels of backwardness amongst the Thakor community women is frightening. There is a thirst for education even amongst the older women. This is true of most villages.
We are also trying to help individuals: Mankol has its first two girls from the village to have taken the 12th standard exams. We are trying to guide them into the careers they wish. They will become the village’s first two women with careers outside farming. I am sure that would open the way for more girls to come out.
