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.