The Long Road To Tribal Education

There are over eight million tribal people living in the state of Orissa, in the east of India, representing some 22% of the population. Despite their numbers, this indigenous rural population is continually marginalised and disenfranchised. The eyes of the world briefly turned to the tribal people earlier this year when the Dongria Kondh battled with mining company Vedanta to stop their sacred Niyamgiri hills being ripped apart for bauxite. They won that battle, but tribal people across the state are losing a much longer war to get their children a decent education.

On a sunny morning in the village of Nuaguda, in the south of Orissa, I met children from tribal families arriving at school. On the way there, I had seen many more in the surrounding fields and villages. This is a common sight, particularly in rural areas. According to the Indian Education Department, although 96% of India’s children start primary school, by the age of 10 around 40% have dropped out.

I asked Sunita Dolei, of local NGO Ekta, why this is the case. She told me that for tribal people, school is secondary to the need for survival. “Education is a livelihoods issue,” she says. “Tribal people often need to send their children out to work in order to survive, which means that they aren’t able to attend school regularly.”

She argues that while the Indian central government offers support to those living in poverty, it is those who need it most who often end up missing out – precisely because of their lack of education. She describes a vicious cycle. “The Indian government have introduced many schemes to try and reduce poverty,” she says, “but those who need the help most lack the necessary education to take advantage of the schemes.”

The literacy rate for Scheduled Tribes in Orissa stands at just 37%. Although the literacy rate has been steadily growing over the last few decades, it has remained significantly lower than the rate for the rest of the population. In 1991, the literacy rate for tribal people was 18% compared to 41% for the general population. By the time of the 2001 Indian census it had risen to 37%, but the rate for the population as a whole had risen to 54%.

There is also a significant and worrying gender disparity in education. While the tribal literacy rate stands at 52% for males, it is just 23% for females. Three in four tribal women will never be able to read or write their own name, cutting them off from many of the schemes designed to help them and curtailing their own independence.

Ekta are visiting Nuaguda today as part of their programme to get tribal children back to school. When the team first arrived they quickly realised that there were a high number of dropouts from the village school. They organised a meeting with parents to explain what a difference education could make to their children’s lives. Few of the adults who attended had spent much time in school themselves. They grew up in a time before the constitutional amendment, introduced last year, which makes education a compulsory and fundamental right for everyone from the ages of 6 to 14. Community involvement is key to successful schools in these remote villages, so Ekta know they have to start with the parents.

A further complication is the diversity of languages spoken by tribal people. Although the most-widespread language in Orissa is Oriya, there are numerous tribal languages from a total of three different language groups – Austro-Asiatic, Dravidian and Indo-Aryan. Many children are put off school simply because they find it impossible to study in a second tongue. If education is to function, it must take account of these regional variables.

Ekta’s staff work hard to persuade parents that broadened horizons in the future outweigh the financial benefits of sending children out to work. Lulu, 24, is one of Ekta’s village facilitators. He’s from a nearby town, and he tells me of that there is also a lack of opportunities available to adults. “There is no education to help them provide a livelihood for their children,” he says.

Getting children into the classroom is only half the battle. Jagannath Mishra, Ekta’s Chief Secretary, estimates that as many as 70% of rural teachers have not been to school and are illiterate themselves. In many cases they don’t even turn up. He says that there have been reports of people bribing officials to appoint them to the relatively lucrative role of teacher, and then bribing them again to turn a blind eye to their own poor attendance. A UNESCO report into education in tribal areas found that poor attendance by teachers is a major problem at traditionally run schools.

One possible solution is the creation of community schools. Trials in tribal areas near Vishakhapatnam, in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, have shown that putting communities in charge of their own schools, with the power to hire and fire teachers, improves attendance by staff and pupils.

Localising responsibility for teaching should not let the Indian government off the hook. In the country as a whole, Scheduled Tribes make up a smaller but still significant proportion of the population, at around 8.5%. Their lack of education is a factor in the ‘two-tier’ development that India has witnessed over the last decade. ‘Scheduled Tribes’ were identified in 1976 by the Indian government as requiring special measures to safeguard their interests. There are 645 different tribes in India, with 62 living in Orissa alone. 13 of Orissa’s tribes have been categorised as ‘endangered’.

The government acknowledges that the tribal population has specific needs, and this needs to be reflected in education policy. When educators and academics met in Bhubaneswar, the state capital, in 2006, they concluded that “the state should come out with an education policy that reflects and includes tribal children and families.”

Improving the literacy rates among India’s tribal people will require a concerted effort to engage with local realities and dedicated teachers willing to stick to their task in remote and often underfunded schools. But the message from the villages is clear: there is a new willingness to learn. Ekta’s Amit Kumar Njayak oversees the schools intervention project. He tells me that the tribal people he works with are increasing aware of the need for better education for their children. “The villagers and the school teachers really appreciate the importance of this cause. If with this project we have been able to make a small difference in the life of the community then I think that all our work is on the right track.”

He acknowledges, however, that there is still much more progress to be made. “We know that this is only the first step of our journey,” he says. “We still have a long way to go.”

Secrets and lies

My article about tackling HIV among female sex workers in Damanjodi, Orissa has been published by The Guardian.

Being Gay in India: World AIDS Day

In the week running up to World AIDS Day I’ve been visiting colleges here in Orissa, in the east of India, to talk to students about HIV awareness. For the most part, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how switched on Indian teenagers are – for a country where just talking about sex, especially sex before marriage, is considered a taboo they’ve been surprisingly open and forthright about their knowledge of the topic and the value of using condoms to prevent HIV transmission.

The sessions I’ve been running have involved an essay-writing competition and they make for fascinating reading. Well, I thought so anyway. While I was marking them a teacher from the college told me to hurry up. “In India, you just read a few sentences and judge the essay on that,” he told me. Poor kids, I thought – but who knows, maybe my teachers all did the same thing?

Anyway, even if the students aren’t used to actually having their work read, for me it proved to be an invaluable way of understanding social taboos. The students went into real depth about their views and feelings about HIV.

I should emphasise that for the most part, their essays are pretty similar to those you’d expect anywhere else in the world – a mixture of dry scientific knowledge about what HIV actually is, mixed with the key messages about transmission that have obviously been drummed into them by the HIV awareness campaigns that have gone before.

However, a handful of essays caught my eye because of what they wrote about homosexuality. Here are a couple of quotes so you can see what I’m talking about:

“Homosexuality should be discouraged because it is considered to be one of the causes of this virus.”

“In both developing and developed countries, a rule should be made against homosexual sex because it leads to infection and causes the disease.”

Sadly, I can’t say I was particularly shocked to see people repeating these stereotypes. Even so, it’s maybe worth reiterating that the perception of HIV as a ‘gay plague’ is wrong. While gay men have certainly historically been more at risk of contracting HIV, according to Avert of the reported 24,296 people diagnosed with HIV in Western Europe in 2008, 42% probably acquired HIV through heterosexual contact while only 35% were men who had sex with men. Closer to home for these students, in the southern states of India HIV is primarily spread through heterosexual contact. (If you really want to get into the details – it’s anal sex, whatever your gender, that really ramps up the risk of transmission.)

When I talked to the students about this, there was a fair bit of uncomfortable squirming. If I thought talking about sex was taboo, homosexuality is really pushing it. Bear in mind that it was only last year, on 2 July 2009, that the Delhi High Court decriminalised homosexual intercourse in India. When you consider that, it’s worth celebrating that just last Sunday, hundreds of people marched through Delhi for the city’s third Gay Pride parade. The times they are a-changin’. Slowly.

Rural Orissa is not Delhi, so it’s not surprising that these views crop up – indeed I’m sure you can find the same views in countries like the UK where gay rights are much more firmly established.

It’s always a minefield when you bring your own values with you to a culture as different as India’s, but I still think it’s important to challenge homophobia whenever and wherever it arises. After all, the theme of World AIDS Day this year is ‘Universal Access and Human Rights’ – and if you think that people have the right to do whatever they want in their own bedrooms, it really shouldn’t matter what country you’re in.

Diwali: Festival of Frights

Yesterday was Diwali, the 'festival of lights'. In Koraput, there was no electricity all day. I assumed at first that this was at least partly deliberate - that the intention was that for one night the whole town would be lit solely by the candles that traditionally dot everybody's houses for the occasion.

It turns out that it was actually just another in our regular series of 24-hour power cuts, but nevertheless it seemed well-timed to create some magical, candle-lit scenery. At least, it would have been magical if it wasn't for the constant explosions lighting up every street in town. Diwali, it turns out, is more about bundles of firecrackers than serene candles.

The constant drumroll chatter of these smaller explosions was regularly punctuated by a ground-shaking boom from some truly heavyweight explosives, cutting through the air like a full stop.

I ventured out into town for a while but eventually decided to retreat. There's nothing like a series of loud explosions to sharpen your sense of being an outsider. It's not that the fireworks were particularly impressive - but the relaxed attitude to lighting them made them scary in the same way that neglected seaside fairground rollercoasters contain much more real terror than any of Disney World's chrome dreams.

I was keenly aware that I wasn't familiar with 'the rules', or if there were any. Does everyone else know not to go down this or that pitch-black street because they've just rigged it with explosives? Speaking of not being familiar with 'the rules', I'm pretty sure nobody in Koraput has ever heard the phrase "never go back to a lit firework". As for keeping pets indoors, I was surprised by how calmly the packs of street dogs reacted to it all - but then, I suppose you don't last long as an Indian street dog with a nervous disposition.

On my way back home I met my boss and his family stood on their porch watching the neighbour's children play with catherine wheels on sticks. He started to explain to me the significance of Diwali in Hindu culture - it marks the occasion of King Rama and his wife Sita returning from exile, and imprisonment, to their Indian kingdom in the 15th century BC.

He asked, naturally, if we have a similar celebration in Britain. By coincidence, this year Diwali, which is decided by the lunar calendar, fell on 5th November. "Yes, tonight is Guy Fawkes night", I replied over the noise, "We mark the occasion of a terrorist getting caught trying to blow up the government. It probably would have sounded a bit like this." He looked at me like I was quite mad.

Dussehra

Over the last week it has been the Hindu festival of Dussehra, which is one of Orissa's main holidays. Everyone at Ekta had a few days off work, and many people either visited their family or had their extended family come and stay with them.

In part, the holiday is to celebrate the victory of the goddess Durga over Mahishasur. Durga is a powerful goddess, and is depicted with ten arms, often riding a lion or a tiger and carrying swords and other weapons. She is said to represent two forms of female energy - one mild and protective and the other fierce and destructive.

During dussehra offerings are made to effigies of Durga. This large statue was erected near to the Bus Stand in Koraput, which is effectively the town centre. On the final day of Dussehra, a procession known as Bhasani Jatra takes place. Durga is loaded on to the back of a van and paraded around the town. People dance around the vehicle, which moves slowly and plays loud music. Eventually, the image of Durga will be taken to a river or lake and immersed in water.

Towns like Koraput do not just have one image of Durga, however, so on the occasion of Bhasani Jatra the roads were clogged with vans taking different statues of Durga to find water. Being cast into the water is supposed to be symbolic of Durga travelling to the Himalayas to be re-united with Shiva. However, in recent years people have become increasingly concerned about the impact the effigies, which are often made with cement and plastic and decorated with toxic paints, have on local water sources.

Water

Blog Action Day 2010: Water from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Today is Blog Action Day 2010 and this year the world is writing about 'Water'.

One of the biggest differences I've had to get used to while living in Koraput is not having running water in my house. I have a large barrel which I refill every few days using a hose pipe attached to a communal standpipe which only works at certain times during the week. It's inconvenient, of course, and naturally I have to boil the water if I want to drink it (which leads to me drinking an inordinate amount of coffee).

My situation isn't that unusual though, and my inconvenience is nothing compared to what many people here in Orissa deal with, particularly those living outside the main towns. There are over 50,000 villages in Orissa but only 1,881 have access to tap water. This leaves 36,791 villages where they must haul water from wells, and 24,563 villages where they rely on large communal water tanks. Both wells and tanks are notorious for harbouring water-borne diseases such as cholera, dysentery and typhoid. The likelihood of these diseases spreading increases rapidly when combined with a lack of adequate facilities for sanitation.

I wrote about the need for better sanitation in the slums of Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the same is true in many parts of India.

However, India is at least blessed with a remarkable organisation called Sulabh International, who work to spread the use of sanitary toilet facilities. Their public toilets can be found all over the country and they have also developed low cost toilets which are easy to construct and can be tailored for slums or rural areas.

The toilet pictured below is designed to keep waste away from the village water supply. They have calculated that it costs on average 1,700 Rs. (£24) to dig and fortify the substructure and 950 Rs. (£13.50) to build the superstructure. That's surely worth spending a penny on?

Indie in India

My article about the indie music scene in New Delhi has been published by The Guardian.

Back to School

My article about Ekta's work to get rural children back to school has been published by UNICEF.

Summit To Think About

World leaders gathered in New York last week to discuss progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, the ambitious targets set in 2000 for reducing poverty. Just days earlier and eight thousand miles away, another group of politicians, academics and development workers met in Bhubaneswar, the state capital of Orissa, to talk specifically about the chances of achieving the MDGs in one of India’s poorest states.

I arrived at the summit just in time to hear the opening address by the state governor, MC Bhandare. He gave the proceedings a sense of cultural context by quoting Mayadhar Mansingh, a renowned Oriya poet: “Orissa is the most beautiful and scenic place in the world. Minerally it is the richest, culturally richest, scenically richest but economically poorest. How could such a beauteous nation be so cursed?”

With his challenge to answer that question, and to find a solution, hanging over us, we divided up into smaller groups to discuss progress towards the Goals, and where there was still more work to be done, just as was done later on a global scale in New York. Looking back now, it’s interesting to compare the overview that world leaders saw with the specifics here in Orissa.

The region suffers from many of the problems crystallized in the MDGs, but it has unique priorities all of its own. For example, while HIV is a major issue in many parts of the world, here the rate is still thankfully relatively low, but malaria and cholera remain big killers. That is where medical resources need to be directed.

Similarly, while many areas in the world are struggling with massively inflating urban populations, in Orissa the people in most need are still to be found in the rural areas, particularly scheduled caste and tribal populations. ‘Scheduled’ caste and tribal people are recognised by the Constitution of India as being the most neglected and marginalised in the country, and their population in Orissa is much larger than in other Indian regions.

Development indicators are significantly lower for these groups across the board: for example, the literacy rate for Orissa is 54%, but for tribal people that falls to 37%, and just 23% for females. Similarly, while the percentage of the population living below the poverty line has fallen from 47.15% in 1997 to 39.90% in 2005, the percentage of tribal people living below the poverty line exceeds 78% in some areas.

The summit may not have been able to answer Mansingh’s lament for his cursed nation, and only the most optimistic think that the Goals will be met by 2015, but for the delegates that is no reason to stop fighting. One of the key lessons is that world leaders making the headline-grabbing decisions must be attuned to local contexts and realities on the ground.

Speaking to Shairose Mawji, the Chief of UNICEF’s field office in Orissa, at the end of the summit, she told me that even within the state they need to vary their approach widely between cities like Bhubaneswar and the rural areas in the south of the state. However, she made it clear to me that she’s undaunted by this challenge. “Now is the time to act, for all of us. Focusing on the poorest, the most marginalised, is the way forward,” she said. “The answers are known, the key interventions are known, but we need to continue to take action.”

Published in Ctrl.Alt.Shift

MDGs: The view from Orissa

My coverage of the Millennium Development Goals summit in Bhubaneswar has been published by New Internationalist.

Happy birthday, Ganesha!

Today is Ganesh Chaturthi, a Hindu day of celebration in honour of Lord Ganesha's birthday. For the occasion a shrine was constructed in the Ekta office, pictured above before the ceremony.

As you can see, instead of wrapping his gifts, Ganesha himself gets wrapped up to hide him away until the party starts:

We were due to start at 11am, but the ceremony was delayed because the priest was late. Lots of families and organisations host their own celebrations to mark Ganesh Chaturthi, so priests are in high demand and will lead several ceremonies during the day. When our man arrived, he prepared the ground in front of the shrine with a circle of earth. This is where he would build his fire:

Meanwhile, Ganesha himself is unwrapped and then quickly festooned with flowers:

The ceremony involves making offerings to Ganesha of fruits and sweets. He seems particularly keen on coconuts. One of them is burnt on the fire in front of him, producing thick plumes of white smoke, while the priest prepares more for the worshippers. I try and fail to imagine an English vicar breaking open coconuts with his bare hands during a service:

The ceremony concludes with a fire offering to Ganesha, and the flame is then used to bless everyone as they pray. The room is by now full of smoke. After the flames are extinguished we get to eat the fruit that had been offered to Ganesha, and all his coconuts. He doesn't seem to mind.

A break from Bollywood

My article about Ram Ganesh Kamatham's play 'Dancing on Glass' has been published by The Guardian.

India Floods Appeal

The rain keeps coming down across Asia. In a year when devastating floods have shaken up countless numbers of lives from Pakistan to Nepal, now millions more of India’s poorest people are facing the future in the knowledge that their crops, their homes and their livelihoods have been washed away.

I’ve seen it on a small scale here at Ekta, where we’ve been working to help villagers from the Koraput district of Odisha who have been affected by flooding. Jagannath Mishra, who is leading the efforts, says: “Our role has been to coordinate the delivery of support to people who have had to leave their homes. The government is providing some tarpaulin for temporary shelter and also some healthcare provision, but we have to work to make sure it reaches the people who need it. The government is slow to react.”

He pointed out that as well as the disruption and displacement the flooding causes, many people now have long-term concerns about how to feed themselves: “Not only have the floods destroyed the standing crops, they have destroyed food stores as well. We need to help people to start replanting the land so that they can start feeding themselves again as soon as possible.”

North of here, in Uttar Pradesh, the situation is even worse. More than 800,000 people have seen their homes submerged by severe floods after the Ghaghra river burst its banks. Of those, more than 30,000 are now living in government-run relief camps while others have taken shelter in local schools and community centres.

Along with Odisha, Uttar Pradesh was recently identified by the United Nations Development Programme and Oxford University as one of the eight poorest Indian states. In total 421 million people live in poverty in these states, more than in the 26 poorest African countries combined.

Christian Aid estimates that up to 10 million people have been affected by the floods in Uttar Pradesh. Sajjad Mohammad Sajid, Christian Aid’s Regional Emergency Manager for South Asia, said: “We are very concerned for those affected by the floods, many of whom are from the Dalit communities, India’s oppressed class, who have nothing to depend upon during an emergency situation other than relief assistance from the government and humanitarian agencies.”

He warned that the dangers were not being treated seriously enough: “The disaster in Uttah Pradesh has not gained the attention needed to scale up the necessary emergency response from the government and international community.”

A lifeline is being provided by food provisions delivered by CASA and PGVS, Christian Aid’s partner organisations. Christian Aid are urgently appealing for donations to support and widen this vital work. For more information, please visit www.christianaid.org.uk/india-floods

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The 16km Scholar

How enthusiastic were you to go to school in the mornings? Did you rush out the door, desperate to fill your head with another day’s knowledge? Or did you have to be dragged unwillingly from the warm cocoon of your bed, just to sit daydreaming at the back of class?

At the age of 14, Raju Chinthakayala was offered a choice most schoolboys wouldn’t have had to think twice about - whether to keep going to class. He had outgrown his local school, and there was nowhere nearby that taught beyond his age group, the 8th Standard. As far as his parents were concerned, he’d finished school. His father is a fisherman, and is illiterate having never been to school himself. His mother had finished education at 11. Raju, however, had other ideas.

It was a challenge that Raju rose to. “I got up at 6am and walked 16km every day for four years.” He laughs, “It was good exercise!”

“The nearest school that taught the 9th Standard was 8km away. I asked my mother for a bicycle so that I could go, but she told me we couldn’t afford it. I would have to walk if I wanted to continue my education…”

When he graduated from that school at 19, he set his sights on a degree - although the college was too far away even for him to walk. Fortunately, his parents understood how much his education meant to him. “My mother was able to give me 300Rs a month which covered my train fare and lunch.”

It was a loan that he would pay off many times over. When he graduated he went to work for an organisation which represents fisher folk like his father. “I was paid 4000Rs a month, so I was able to give 2000Rs to my family and save the remaining 2000Rs for myself. I still had my heart set on more education.”

Raju worked there for two years, until he had saved enough money to apply for a Masters at the University in Vishakpatnam. “I got the First Rank on my entrance test and completed the two year postgraduate degree.”

It was this Masters in Social Work that helped Raju get his current job travelling to many of India’s states working with NGOs and other aid agencies. He earns 10,000Rs a month, but he never sees the majority of that money: “I send 7000Rs back to my family. I have a sister, and in our tradition it is required that we give a dowry for her. As her brother, it is my responsibility to save money for her marriage. We don’t know how much the dowry will be. I want to change this system, it is treating humans like they are in the marketplace, but it is a challenge to change it - I would rather be saving this money for my sister’s education than for her dowry.”

Now 26, he’s still just as dedicated to education, but these days his passion is ensuring that other children can benefit from school in the same way he has. He describes India itself as his classroom and library now: “You can learn everything from this country.”

Raju has worked in Andhra Pradesh, his home state, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Orissa. One of his first jobs was participating in the Social Audit in Rajasthan. This involved visiting communities to establish eligibility for state benefits such as the NREGA, which guarantees a minimum number of days employment to rural people. This was his first introduction to India’s tribal people.

His experiences in Jharkhand really opened his eyes to the problems tribes such as the Bondha and Santalis face. Raju is honest about how he felt as he travelled there: “Before I went, I had some doubts in my mind about the tribal people. The perception of the tribal people is that they don’t have any culture. That they live like animals in the forests and they don’t know how to treat other people.”

He says that arriving in the tribal villages was a revelation: “I realised that they are more than culturally advanced, especially their way of treating children and other people and the way they distribute things equally. I learnt so much from the tribal people. When I slept in their houses, we all slept under the mosquito net together – men, women, children and animals! They gave the same priority to all of God’s creatures. In their mind, there isn’t any difference. They respect nature equally. I asked someone why they do that, and they told me ‘We don’t know where God is.’ He is in the animals, in the forest and in the water that quenches your thirst.”

Raju also noticed a more equal gender division of labour than he had experienced elsewhere in India: “The man would get up first thing in the morning and clean the whole house. He would clean all the utensils and do the housework. At that time I realised that they have a much more equal culture. There is no need to change them. If the government can give education, health and transport then that is a good thing, but instead the industrialisation of the country means that these people will lose their land. The tribal people are not hurting anyone. They know how to respect people. They know how to respect society. They know how to respect God’s creation. They don’t know how to exploit others. They don’t have any selfishness in their minds. Maybe that is the drawback for them!”

I ask him whether he thinks efforts such as his own to spread education and good health could inadvertently lead to the tribal way of life dying out. He said, “If tribal people get a good education, then they will have the knowledge to choose what is best for them. Maybe then they will want to change their lives in some positive manners. But right now, what they are being taught is how to be selfish.”

Having lived through a period of rapid change in India, while experiencing many of its problems firsthand, I wonder what he thinks of economic growth: “The country is becoming richer and richer, but according to Arjun Singh’s report right now 70% of people have an income of less than 20Rs per day. If I have an illness in my leg, you cannot say that my whole body is healthy. Equal development is important. We have huge manpower and resources, but it is controlled by too few people.”

I ask Raju what he’d do if he somehow found himself as one of those people in control: “We need a more equitable division of resources. We also need more rotation of politicians. In India, whoever is elected as an MP will still be elected for 30 or 40 years. There is an election process, but whoever has power will be able to get themselves re-elected. There needs to be more opportunity to change who is in power. This requires that equitable division of resources and also a decentralisation of the decision-making process.”

He returns, finally, to the central importance of education: “Our education system is also very important, but we need to change the way we teach. There is too much spoon-feeding in schools and not enough thinking.”

Published in Ctrl.Alt.Shift

Save A Mountain For Me

Everything takes longer than expected in India, but some things are worth waiting for. Four days after a decision was expected to be made, the Indian Government today announced that they are rejecting Vedanta's plans for a bauxite mine in the Niyamgiri hills.

As reported in The Hindu, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said:

“There has been a very serious violation of [the] Environment Protection Act, Forest Conservation and Rights Acts by the Orissa Government and Vedanta’s bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri Hills.”

The Hindustan Times summarised the panel's key findings here.

Survival and ActionAid are both rightly celebrating the role they've played in ensuring that the inhabitants of this land got their voices heard.

It's the result the Dongria Kondh wanted. For people like this mother and her son, who I met in a tribal village recently, it's also a sign that, against all odds, they do have a say in what happens to the land they call home.

Village People

Meet Lulu. He’s 24 and he works as a Village Facilitator in a project run by Ekta, a human rights organisation here in Koraput, India.

He’s about to start work on a UNICEF-backed project that will see him and his 59 colleagues, in total 30 men and 30 women, visit 1,000 villages over the next two months. Their job is to raise awareness amongst village people about a whole range of health issues. This ranges from simply knowing that you should wash your hands before eating and after going to the toilet, right through to HIV/AIDS awareness, the importance of breast-feeding, health checks during pregnancy, routine immunisations for children and why girls need to go to primary school as well as boys.

They work in pairs, so Lulu will normally be accompanied by a female colleague like his friend Bharati. They are provided with a range of resources written in Oriya, the local language, and by working in male-female teams they are able to better target themselves to the audience, particularly as they are often dealing with gender-sensitive issues.

Lulu says that he does this job because he’s from this region himself, and wants to help “inter-area” people. By this, he means those people who fall through the cracks because they live in villages so remote that they are cut off from the services available in towns and cities. “There is no education to help them provide a livelihood for their children,” he says.

He’s got some long days ahead of him. “We have to manage our time,” he tells me, “because we have to do things the people’s way, not our way.” They work in two days cycles and a normal working day will start at around 6 or 7am, when he’ll meet villagers at their homes and invite people to take part in focus groups later in the day.

As Lulu says, they always have to be ready to adapt to specific circumstances, but usually from 9 until 11 he and his colleague will go to the local school to talk to the children about hand-washing and why girls should be in class too.

At lunch time, they’ll make sure everyone is washing their hands properly, and explaining about the rather unappetizing risks of diarrhoea.

During the afternoon they’ll work in focus groups with people from target groups – they’ll talk to 15-24 year olds about sexually transmitted diseases, and young women about the health checks they’ll need if they become pregnant.

In the evening they’ll show a video – or, if electricity isn’t available, they’ll rope in some local people and school children for a community theatre production.

The following day they’ll be back in town to interact with the community again and make sure that the previous day’s activities are being put into use. Then it’s off to a new village to meet with key people and discuss what issues the town needs addressing.

This sort of outreach work is the only way to reach people in a world far removed from instant global communication. The only way to spread essential messages is to go out and visit each village. For Lulu, it is a way of serving his community. As he puts it, “I just want to help people lead a healthy life.”

For more information about Ekta, please visit www.ekta.org.in

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Independence Day

Independence Day starts early in Koraput. Yesterday I received a text message from Umesh Ku Patra, one of Ekta's Joint Secretaries, reading:

"Be prepared at 7.30am 2moro 4 celebration of our Independence day of our country at Duruguda. Thanks"

Despite his warning, at 7.30am this morning I was not prepared, certainly not for the glorious sunshine which greeted the day. There was still some last minute preparation to be done as Raghu tied a bundle of flowers inside the flag and raised it, still folded.

Fittingly father of the nation Gandhi, or Gandhiji as he is more commonly and respectfully referred to, was in attendance.


The opening of the flag was followed by several speeches, not to mention lots of shouting of 'Jai Hind!' - 'Victory to India!'.

This being monsoon season, however, the sunshine turned out to be as temporary as the flagpole.

Indian Takeaway

Today was my first experience of a rural Indian packed lunch. When it was time to eat, my colleagues all had identical meals and presented me with one of my very own: three small plastic bags and a ball of leaves the size of a child’s head.

Unwrapping the bundle revealed, inevitably, a block of sticky rice. The leaves handily double up as a plate. Today’s accompaniments were:

• One bag yellow daal. To be poured over the rice.
• One bag curried eggs. In curry sauce.
• One bag chillies. I’m pretty sure this was a practical joke.

There’s no cutlery, so just dig in with your right hand and start shovelling. Who needs sandwiches?

Buckets of Rain

Ram Mandir, in Bhubaneswar, in the rain

2010's rainy season has started in earnest over the past few days. In Pakistan, the weather has brought with it destruction. The Disasters Emergency Committee is appealing for help here for the thousands affected.

In Orissa, the rains have been greeted as good news for the many people whose livelihoods depend on the land, not just farmers but also those others who are supported along the chain of production.

In other positive news, The New Indian Express reported on Monday that Vedanta Resources are now being investigated by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests for alleged violation of forest laws.

Josh Strauss wrote an excellent article for Ctrl.Alt.Shift entitled "Vedanta Resources = Expendable Homelands" about last week's protest in London, which you can read here.

I Me Mine

"I've been to the Niyamgiri hills in Orissa and seen the forces of money and power that Vedanta Resources have arrayed against a people who have occupied their land for thousands of years, who husband the forest sustainably and make no great demands on the state or the government. The tribe I visited simply want to carry on living in the villages that they and their ancestors have always lived in.”

- Michael Palin, 23 July 2010

It’s a small world after all. I’ve only recently arrived from London, but an event being held there today could have huge repercussions for Orissa’s Dongria Kondh tribe.

Today is Vedanta Resources’ AGM, and it will be attended not just by its shareholders but also by protestors from Survival International and many other groups angry about the treatment of the tribe, and of the Niyamgiri mountain where they live.

Vedanta Resources want to start open-pit bauxite mining on Niyamgiri. For the Dongria Kondh, the mountain is sacred, but it’s not just ancient gods at risk – their lives are too. A report by Amnesty found that Vedanta’s existing alumina refinery is already causing river pollution and damage to crops. For the 8,000 Dongria Kondh people who live there, that means disease and impoverishment.

The campaign to stop the mine opening is gathering pace. Organisations including the Church of England and the Joseph Rowntree Trust have already disinvested from Vedanta because of their concerns over its human rights record. Today, shareholder lobby group Pirc will recommend that investors vote against the re-election of three non-executive directors because of the company’s performance on environmental, social and governance issues. In particular, Pirc opposes the election of Naresh Chandra who chairs the company's health and safety committee.

Here in India, Vedanta suffered a further setback when the Indian government announced that it is widening the mandate of the committee charged with deciding the fate of the proposed mine. They will now look into the “likely physical and economic displacement due to the project, including the resource displacement of forest users and the rehabilitation plan”. This is in addition to their original remit to investigate “the implementation of the Forest Rights Act in the area, the impact of the project on the livelihood, culture and welfare of the Dongria Kondh tribals, and the impact on wildlife and biodiversity in nearby areas.”

What have Vedanta had to say for themselves? They recently issued this statement: “We work with more than 90 non-governmental organisations and numerous authorities in India. This is to ensure full compliance with all environmental standards, as well as contributing to India's development. Over the last five years, Vedanta has invested $75m [£49.2m] on a number of social development programmes. These include child care, health and hygiene, nutrition, and sanitation.”

Which sounds laudable, but for many here it’s nothing more than sleight-of-hand. As Arundhati Roy wrote in her essay, ‘Gandhi, but with guns’:

“On the outskirts of Raipur, a massive billboard advertises Vedanta (the company our home minister once worked with) cancer hospital. In Orissa, where it is mining bauxite, Vedanta is financing a university. In these creeping ways, mining corporations enter our imaginations: the gentle giants who really care. It's called CSR: corporate social responsibility. It allows mining companies to be like the legendary actor and former chief minister, Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao, who liked to play all the parts in Telugu mythologicals – the good guys and the bad guys, all at once, in the same movie. This CSR masks the outrageous economics that underpins the mining sector in India. For example, according to the recent Lokayukta Report for Karnataka, for every tonne of iron ore mined by a private company the government gets a royalty of Rs27 (40p) and the mining company makes Rs5,000. In the bauxite and aluminum sector the figures are even worse. We're talking daylight robbery to the tune of billions of dollars. Enough to buy elections, governments, judges, newspapers, TV channels, NGOs and aid agencies. What's the occasional cancer hospital here or there?”

Delhi's Demolition Plan

Just around the corner from the Habitat Centre, a fashionable arts centre and hotel complex in Delhi, there is a narrow strip of rubble. There are strips of rubble like it all over the city. They used to be people’s homes. Not any more.

In preparation for the Commonwealth Games, which are being held here in October, government bulldozers have been scouring the city for unsightly shanty houses and flattening them. Typically, the demolition men have given families just a couple of hours notice before moving in and destroying their homes.

The Indian government is desperately rushing to clean up Delhi’s image before wealthy and influential guests arrive to enjoy their sport. India is a growing economic power, and it sees the Commonwealth Games as the perfect opportunity to flaunt its wealth.

The problem is that these newfound riches are not being evenly distributed. A recent United Nations-backed study by Oxford University found that in at least eight Indian states there are more extreme levels of poverty than in sub-Saharan Africa.

The booming capital Delhi has a gleaming new airport and an ever-expanding Metro network, but even here there is a vast population living on the edge of society - and the edge of the road. It is these houses that have been most at risk from the recent round of demolitions. They were homes that had developed along roadsides because their inhabitants had nowhere else to go. Now they must find somewhere, although the government has not offered them any alternatives. Local newspapers report that police have beaten residents who refused to leave.

There is something odd about the fact that the rubble still remains. It seems that it was not the buildings the Indian government were most concerned about causing an eyesore. I think their fear was that the sight of their inhabitants would prove too much for the sporting delegations. It is the people, not the houses, which the Indian government is pushing out of sight and out of mind. That’s the thing about the Commonwealth Games: the preparations haven’t considered the common people, only the wealthy.

Published in Ctrl.Alt.Shift