Thursday 30 September 2010

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

Friday 24 September 2010

MDGs: The view from Orissa

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

Saturday 11 September 2010

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.

Thursday 9 September 2010

A break from Bollywood

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

Tuesday 7 September 2010

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

Published in Ctrl.Alt.Shift

Thursday 2 September 2010

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