Patch work

It has been over three weeks since my last post. During this while, I have visited Rajasthan thrice for work. Every trip clocking up to 2000km, from Lucknow by road and train. We are setting up vocational training centres in Ajmer and Kota. The work and the trip has had a fair share of criticism. We are moving forward despite the limitations. 

In my three years being back in India from a supposedly comfortable life in United Kingdom, I have tried and got tired of impressing upon people the need to do the job well. I have concluded that we as a country are great at 'Patch work'. There are exceptions in varying shades who strive beyond all expectations. My definition of patch work is quick fixes and piece meal approach to execution.

Whether it is planning, execution, assessments or even relationships, we want the shortest route to reaching the necessary parameters for justifying our role in it. The result being we keep moving from one fire to another. Are we questioning ourselves enough in our own effort? Or is it the case that we are not allowed to question or express ourselves enough?

The struggle for the village Kumhraura and the other similar villages on the fringes of progress, lies in our apathy and our attitude central to which is patch work. We want to pursue a different path in developing Kumhraura.

In the limited sphere where we can have an impact, we have started reviewing governmental schemes, policies, skills, theories and grass root partners that have preceded our effort. We hope to converge upon an execution plan for development. The goal is to change status quo for Kumhraura and to support the villagers in uplifting themselves out of centuries of neglect! 

The story of a village

Two good things happened last weekend, I started cooking after a year long hiatus and I visited a village called Kumhraura. Cooking has always been a delight, never mind that the Rajmah took twice as long to cook! The visit to the village left me thinking along parallel themes.

Kumhraura is a little village, not very far from Lucknow along the Deva road in the district of Barabanki. Quietly tucked in, it has barely been a part of the development process. The previous government did a whole lot in Lucknow building castles of sandstone, which interestingly is the only such work undertaken in independent India post the construction of Lutyen's Delhi. None of this large scale construction activity had an impact on the life of Kumhraura.

The village is not very far from the Tata Motors production unit that builds Marco polo buses in which most of middle urban India commutes. The local area has a University being established along with new housing developments and a number of small scale industrial units. Such is the story of Kumhraura that there is barely any electricity supply even with so much going on in the vicinity.

This village has half of the population of young and old either unemployed or underemployed. The means of subsistence is agriculture or manual labour. While a whole lot of people and villages in the nearby area have partially progressed at least economically, there is very little evidence of that in this village.

There is a school in the village apparently thinly staffed and a government school at the tehsil level where basic education is imparted. Children seem to be spending more time idling about or doing errands than attending school or studying. They barely have enough clothes to wear and the little bit there is remains in tatters. The villagers in Kumhraura are doing precious little about it.

Kumhraura is peaceful, it does not demand much and it does not offer much. There is nothing in terms of health care, pregnant women have to travel miles to see a doctor. A request for a tertiary health care centre to the government has gone unanswered. Kumhraura is quietly persevering and waiting to be included in growth story that India seems to have become to rest of the world. 

The visit left me thinking, had we been born in Kumhraura, how would we change status quo? Living in urban India, we see very little of the plight of tens of thousands of villages such as Kumhraura that are still living in the medieval times. It left a number of questions unanswered about the role of larger society and the apathy towards Kumhraura. More importantly what should we do to change status quo knowing where we are now?