RURAL IMMERSION PROGRAM REPORT

BM Section A

ABHILASH MUKHERJEE B14001

ABHISHEK PAL B14002

ABHISHEK TAORI B14003

ADIL BAINS B14004

AIMAN FARAZ B14005

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank XLRI and Father James for providing us with this wonderful opportunity

to be associated with AID (Alternative for India Development), the NGO which is doing such

amazing work for the improvement of healthcare in rural Jharkhand and indeed for the

transformation of rural India.

We would also like to show our gratitude to Mr. Duryodhan and Mr. Khudiram of AID

(Alternative for India Development) for guiding us during our 3 day stay with them and making

this an engaging and enriching experience.

INTRODUCTION

The rural immersion program provided us with an opportunity to witness the ground realities of

life in rural India. We saw the challenges that people in remote villages face as well as the

interaction between the various social structures present. It showed us that, even away from the

technology driven lives of ours, there are people who find happiness in each other and face the

extreme challenges before them with a positive attitude towards life.

AID- Alternative for India Development

The NGO we were associated with was the AID (Alternative for India Development). It was

founded in 1982 by a group of social activists and the Chatra Yuva Sangarsh Vahini, as an

umbrella forum that would provide support and technical aid to the large number of people

engaged as volunteers or non-registered social workers. It is presently head quartered at Madras

and has the status of a legal NGO in India. It is a Pan India organization whose vision is the

complete transformation of society by eradicating poverty, sickness, illiteracy, child labour and

gender & social issues.

Our Association

We were associated with the Bharagora (Jharkhand) Wing of AID. The main motive of AID in

Jharkhand is the improvement of health care and sanitation facilities in the rural and PTG

(Primitive Tribal Group Villages) of Jharkhand. In Bharagora, specifically, at present AID is

working on a 4 year project to increase awareness about the Tuberculosis and Malaria prevention

and cure programs being run by the government of India and to encourage the PTG (Primitive

Tribal Group) villagers to accept allopathic medication for such diseases. They had 130 villages

under the scope of their project covering the entire area under East Singhbhum district.

Bharagora (having project headquarters of AID, where we were stationed) is a special town as it

is on the confluence of 3 states, West Bengal, Orissa and Jharkhand. Hence the intermingling of

3 cultures and languages further complicates the sensitive work that AID (Alternative for India

Development) is pursuing. Even though Bengali was the predominant language of the area, it had

influence of the local tribal dialects in it as well.

Bharagora itself is about 90 Km away from Jamshedpur, however the major duration of our 3

day stay was spent in remote villages (some PTG villages) which were each about 30-40 km

away from the AID project headquarters.

Interaction with Villagers:

We started from Kanhas; then we moved to Dhalbbhumgarh. Following it, we covered

Mahisadhara. The last village that we went to was Gurgaikocha, the smallest and the remotest of

all the villages of our trip.

We had several rounds of casual interactions with the villagers in all the above villages. We

asked questions, went to schools, played with children, met the village Head –The Mukhiya/

Pradhan and also chatted with the village folks who gather around evening time just to socialize.

Via these interactions with the villagers, we gathered an understanding of the Socio-economic

setting of the villages and the way of life of the villagers.

Social life:

Each village, though located in the same district, has its own set of culture, traditions and

customs. The main features of the societal structure of the villages are following:

1. Family – There are around 300 households in Kanhas and Dhalbhumgarh , 125 in

Mahisadhara and 30 odd in Gurgaikochi. On an average each family has around 6-7 members

with 3-5 kids. Typically the husband is the bread earner while wife is a housewife who takes

care of the kids and does the day-to-day work of the household including cooking, getting

water, washing etc.

2. Caste – Caste is still a very important feature of the village life. Many systems, customs and

traditions revolve mainly around which caste do they belong to. Also, villages are often

located based on Caste; i.e., it is common to find a particular caste as the majority in a

particular village. In both Kanhas and Dhalbhumgarh, caste of majority of people was

Dhirbar. Dhirbar people are traditionally Fishermen and indeed in these villages this was the

main occupation. They catch fish from the Swarnarekha river and sell it either door-to-door

or in the market which was 5-6 kms away from the village. In Mahisadhara village people

where mainly Adiwasis whereas in Gurgaikocha village the main tribes were Sabbar and

Santhals. While Adiwasis used to rely on agriculture as their source of income, sabbar and

santhal people were mainly dependent on Jungles where they would gather wood for selling

to the market and also food by hunting.

3. Marriages – Marriages are caste based and revolve around the customary practices and

traditions. Marrying inter-caste is considered improper and such practises are very rare. Also,

because of lack of any source of entertainment, people in villages look up to marriages as an

event where they celebrate, sing and dance. Child marriages were common in all the villages

with Gurgaikocha having the worst scenario where people were married off as early as at the

age of 12-13.

4. Religion – In Kanhas and Dhalbbhumgarh, most people were Hindus by birth. There was a

temple each in both these villages. In Mahisadhara and Gurgaikocha village, the tribals were

followers of Sharna religion, in which they basically worship trees. They have certain

specified trees where they gather on their religious festivals, carry-out the customary rituals

and celebrate all day long with singing and dancing with the carnival going well into the

night. The thinking is that in the villagers are totally dependent on trees for their food, shelter

and well-being. In fact even for their daily entertainment, the meet-up near those trees and

chat, exchange stories and feel good in general.

5. Entertainment – Most villagers do not have any means of entertainment. Of the four

villages, Kanhas and Dhalbhumghar were better in this regard; where approximately one in

every seven household has a TV and one in every 5 having a radio. In Mahisadhara, despite

its better than average electricity supply, the presence of TV or a radio is almost nil. In

Gurgaikocha, the scenario is even bleaker because of absence of electricity. As a result,

villagers mostly depend on social interaction as their sole source of entertainment. They

meet-up at evening near one or two popular spots in the village where they exchange stories,

tell their own tales about what happened to during their day. Also, religious festivals are

mostly about celebrations where they eat, sing, dance and have a good time together with

everyone else. Same for marriages. The marriage season which starts around March and lasts

till July, keeps the village people busy. Also, because of lack of communication, like TV,

internet and low literacy level, the know-how about the outside world is very limited.

6. Health – Owing to poor diet, bad hygiene, random lifestyle and lack of awareness, the

healthcare scenario in almost all the villages is far from ideal. Lot of people just eat whatever

they can manage in their day and when they return from their work, most of them drink.

Also, drinking water is a problem, though in Mahisadhara and Gurgaikocha, people have

found a unique way to harness the fresh water of the nearby waterfall through a network of

pipes. As a result certain diseases are very common; Malaria and Tuberculosis (TB) being

most widespread. The situation is particularly threatening in Gurgaikocha because of its

remote location and lack of connectivity with the main land. Our partner NGO, AID are

doing some commendable work in this regard. They are spreading awareness among all the

villagers in not only each of the villages that we visited, but also in as many as 13 plus

villages in East Singhbhum district. They have many special set-ups like Mamata Vahan,

which takes care of transportation woes of pregnant women and a mini testing center for the

TB patients. They also have many trained workers in the villages to take care of primary

health need of the villagers and well as spread awareness. We met many of them and learnt

that because of their good work, many deaths were prevented in the villages.

7. Education – Kanhas, Dhalbhumghar and Mahisadhara villages have a primary school while

Gurgaikocha folks have to go to Mahisadhara for their schooling. High school and college is

located in respective towns. Schools have typically around 70-100 chidren, their numbers

decreasing as they go higher up the classes. The number of teachers is also very low,

typically around 4-5. All the schools run the mid-day meal scheme sponsored by the

government. Most people in village are very unhappy about the quality of education and

think that the schools are nothing but institutions offering free lunches to the kids. A very

low of percentage of children join high school and the number is abysmally low for the

college conversion ratio.

Problems of Villagers

Rural India specifically the tribal regions in Jharkhand are very backward. Its backwardness can

basically be attributed to several factors that we identified.

Namely:

Healthcare

Electricity

Education

Transportation

Lack/absence of modern banking systems

As can be seen these problems are more or less the same age old ones that our forefathers had to

face. The process of change is very slow but in the recent years it has been accelerated by several

welfare schemes provided by the government.

Healthcare:

The NGO we went as a part of , Alternative for India Development(AID) was currently running

awareness campaigns about Tuberculosis and Malaria. One of the major problem that AID faced

was the prevalent beliefs in magical remedies and black magic amongst the villagers.

Villagers first gravitated towards magical remedies and when these methods failed, after much

persuasion by volunteers would later turn to modern medicine. The time lost in getting medical

help sometimes made the difference between whether the patient lived or died.

Another major problem was lack of accessibility of Primary healthcare centres (PHCs). In

Jharkhand villages are fragmented. Houses are not concentrated towards the centre but spread

out over a large area. Sometimes spread around in an area of 30-40 km2. Thus getting to a

Healthcare centre sometimes required travel of more than 5-10 kilometres. Walking this distance

when critically ill is an herculean task. Taxi drivers would fleece villagers by charging exorbitant

amounts of money to take these patients to the nearest hospital. Therefore earlier villagers opted

for transferring patients on cycle. Noticing this, AID started an ambulance service for the 105

villages under their area. AID would transfer patients from villages to nearby Healthcare centres

free of cost. This ambulance had an integrated diagnostic unit which could cater tests for

Tuberculosis and Malaria. This led to speedy diagnostics and faster availability of treatment to

patients.

Another problem they faced was people deviating from the dosage of medicines as prescribed by

the physician. They would stop taking medicines as soon as they felt good andwould not

complete the whole dosage.

Economy of Village

Its quite compelling to think that even in the 21st century there are people who live a life that is

not just hardship but denial of some things that are obvious to the civilised society.

Electricity and Pukka House may be a luxury in the 3rd World Country but something like clean

water probably isn't. As far as we are concerned our village trip was a canvas with reality painted

in bright colours amidst a morbid backdrop.

A state of hopelessness was present where men had succumbed to the vagaries of political

indifference. Where there was a melancholic acceptance to an ordinary life, where aspirations

was serving the following day.

The village trip exposed us to a variety of villagers. Some were well off specially the ones who

were involved in the Historic "Sona Dhoa" profession , for some it was a little more struggle

depending on the whims of fish and tides of the Subarnarekha, for some it was animal rearing

and for the some it was collecting firewood.

The PTG (Primitive Tribal Group) fell in an economic strata that could be easily classified as

Below Poverty Line but what was more startling was the fact that for them was an utter disregard

of urban essentials. They lived on the bare minimum, food, shelter and nature were all they cared

about and they had a foot to mouth existence.

Our experience during the trip including our interviews and interactions with villagers

highlighted the fact that their daily income ranged from Rs 400-600 for Sona Dhoars to Rs 25-40

for the PTG.

We were also told that animals not only served as sources of milk and eggs but was also capital

for the villagers.

Animals could be sold for significant sums of money during emergencies and thus it was one of

the major investment options for the villagers.

The irony is that ,even though they owned animals in large numbers they rarely got enough

protein for strong immunisation highlighting the fact that the purpose of husbandry was a capital

investment.

We were deeply moved by what we saw and we felt a strong political reform was of utmost

requirement. We felt that these people who vote and exercise their rights as Indian Citizen

deserve an equal opportunity in society.

They deserve better. They deserve to be hopeful and one NGO can't make a difference. It has to

be a holistic effort from the political front so that these people get access to schools, clean

drinking water and medicine when necessary.

Conclusion:

Visiting all these villages and interacting with the villagers to get to know about their livelihood

and living conditions was a very intriguing experience for us. Looking at the bare minimum and

hand to mouth existence of the villagers helped us put our lives into perspective and realise that

the little things that we take for granted can mean the world for someone who doesn’t have the

same opportunities and resources as we do. Their priorities in life are very different than us. A

human always aspires to attain more than he already has. Such greed is inherent nature unless

one has experienced the life of those less fortunate than him/her.

Another thing that we observed was the difference even in people living in different villages

hardly a few kilometres away. Just 3 kms right beside the agricultural village of Mahisadhara,

which was a perfectly functional agricultural village with much better facilities, was

Gurgaikocha which was a Naxalite village deprived of basic necessities like electricity and

water. Also a little up ahead was a very small PTG group up on a hill. This shows us how unjust

life can be. Despite being born just a few kilometres apart kids of these 3 different villages will

have such varied opportunities, education and life standards. But each of these three were

relatively content with what they had. They put forward only their problems and were not

comparing their utilities with other villages.

Having looked at and experienced the life of those living at the right opposite economic strata as

us will help us always remain humble, to be satisfied with our lives and also help us to prioritize

and always work for the greater good.