Sundarpahari and its people. A visit after long 13years. Pragya works at Sundarpahari to address the health issues of the people. Bhim Soren was in class-IX when i worked here. Below Pragya and I are with the family of Bhim. At the bottom Bhim and I were with Manuel Hansda. It was a visit of joy and sadness....life goes on.

Going to the Dream Land... Sundarpahari, Godda, Jharkhand.

Industrialization & Environmental Protection

Today I was watching a Bengalee News Channel. There it was being discussed that how much important is industrialization in Bengal. An eminent guest was saying that already enough industrialization has been done in this world; if the industrialization goes on at the present rate the by 2050 most of the greenery on this earth will be gone and we will directly head towards the doom. The host of the program could not support the view of the guest, God knows why.

After watching the program I felt I should share with my friends one of my thoughts when I was doing graduation. Actually these thought are reward from my mother. Whenever news of any new motor factory came she used to say, "how many more factories like these we need? Our food production is not growing so fast!!" And I think she is right. In the name of development we are stressing on industrialization. The State Governments in India are competing with one another in providing lucrative incentives to various industrialists, so that they invest in the state. But the call of the day is one needs to decide in what field actually investment is needed. I am not hearing much discussions regarding investment in agriculture and environmental protection.

In today's fast world man needs speedy transport. But are cars solution to that? What about the basic needs of survival? Food, pure drinking water, and first of all oxygen? Who is investing to provide these things?

some times U r rewarded...

today i had a nice experience in office...for some times now the work sphere was quite disturbed...mostly due to present political turmoil in the state and also u could see a lot of fraud around u. however, today one of the very superior officers of our dept. has recognised my work...in the open meeting he said "it is clearly evident that these ladies r really doing the work properly and they know their field quite well"...haha...it is a nice feeling that at least some seniors r recognising our willingness to do our duty. feeling Happy...

Again Tribal World

God knows...what a co-incidence it is...I started my first job in a tribal area and the next job I got was due to the subject called anthropology, the study of which includes the study of the tribes.... Not only that, if I had not met the tribal people of Rajmahal Hills I would have never been able to love and njoy my work. My regards to them....I will always be grateful them.




I have learned a lot and have earned a lot due to that experience Sundarpahari. Earned not in kind or cash...earned in terms of qualitative value addition. I learned to respect people of all the strata of our society, I learned to do hard work and overcome the hurdles one faces to achieve something. Most of all I learned to love the village India...which is sitll the core of our nation. Now I think I should stop talking much about Sundarpahari at this moment, because it is heard that the place has changed a lot sice i have left it. So, I would better visit the place and then write about it. In the mean time I will try to share my experience in village India...rather my experience in some villages of Bengal...which are my present field of work.

TRIBAL WORLD OF SUNDARPAHARI

In my last post I told that I would share my experience of working in the tribal world.
It is very strange that I got the chance to go to Sundarpahari Development Block of Godda district of the then Bihar. Now this place comes under the state of Jharkhand. It is also very strange that just on the very first day of my visit to Sundarpahari I fell in love with the place (as if it was love at first sight).
I was working in a National NGO which was funded by the UNDP and a consultant to the UNDP was visiting the Godda project. As a part of her visit she went to Sundarpahari....it was my 2nd day in that NGO.....I too was sent with her to see the place. The block is populated by 100% tribal community. Several SHGs were already existent there and a meeting was arranged with the leaders of the SHGs and the UNDP consultant. I was astonished to see how smart the tribal leaders were to answer all the question asked by the consultant and to show her there Tassar cultivation area. That very day I decided that this should be my field of work, this very forest is calling me to stay here and learn the values of life and learn to work with people. Thank God, I responded to that call..........Sundarpahari taught me to face any kind of situation without any worry, it has taught me to respect others and to understand the values of different cultures. Most of all it has showed me the path to give something back to our motherland, that is, to contribute at least something to the land you are born.
I had an opportunity to stay at that place only for 7-8 months. During that period I organised a Programme for the district administration, with all the 20 SHGs present there. Several times I used to go to the villages by walking 7-8kms through the forest path, because no other communication was available...at the villages I used to audit the accounts of the SHGs; I used to attend the weekly group meetings to solve there internal problems; I also used to go with the group members to the forest, on the top of the hills and collect Shal leafs for making plates. I was more than 200kms away from my home town for the first time in my life, but the company of the villagers of that area was so amicable that I never felt lonely.
I saw extreme poverty in that area.......meagerness of food, lack of health care facility, lack of education are most common there. Diarrhoea, Malaria and Dengue are the most common diseases. Malaria had claimed the life of a very well built young Hor of 22, whose 20yr old bride had no idea what killed her husband in just 7 days. In a Paharia family I saw a mother, sitting with her two sons and moaning that diarrhoea had claimed 8 of her 10 children within just a period of 9 months. No medicare reaches this place........shame on our civilization, shame on me......I have also not been able to do anything to change this situation. Whenever any of my readers opt for any construction work at your home, just think for a while...think that, these people are the aboriginals of India.....we are living on their land, they are starved to death, they are killed by lack of doctors and medicare facility, and this is not all....we are displacing them from what ever land left over for them........why? Because we need stone-chips for our construction works, we need electricity for our civilised world, we need factories so that our engineers get lucrative jobs and we get cheap cars at easy instalment.

SATISFACTION

I wonder, what makes people satisfied? Money? Power? Fame? What? To me it comes from good public relation, doing some developmental work. When I was a student I wished to do engineering or management and join the corporate world. But some turns in your life changes it completely. After the completion of my Masters I got an opportunity to join a famous NGO...which introduced me to the tribal world of Rajmahal Hills. This changed my ambition completely and permanently. While working with the Tribal people I learned to admire the basic values of life. Kindness, politeness, honesty, unity.....all these r the core of tribal culture. They opened my eyes and showed how much pleasure can be achieved if one can do some developmental work in the village-India. Though now I am working in a non-tribal area, but the concept is the same. Just trying to develop the area as much as I can. Or at least show the people how they themselves can improve their living condition. No more satisfaction can be derived from any other work, I guess. On my next post I would like to share my experience in the tribal world.