Day 67, 68, 69, 70

24,25,26,27 June, 2011

These few days had been great. I had been working on quite a few things. It includes GP website, Rural BPO story and Abhepuri website. We visited Abhepuri on 23rd. We had made the teams. Ashok and the team were quite enthusiastic about the website. But the excitement seems to be dampened as soon as we left the place. I had been following this up with them since last three days but got little response from the team. But thats how work happens here. We need to do a lot of follow up to make things work. The good news is that 2 of them had almost finished their work. Probably would be visiting abhepuri again for the website and one more FGD.

Moreover, I mailed a lot of people from the rural BPO sector. I got a few responses too. I interviewed Mr Ashwanth of DesiCrew management team. He was a wonderful person to talk with. I got a lot of insights from the interview. More interviews inline. Mr Prashant from Sai Seva Solutions is to be interviewed tomorrow.

In these days in addition to the above, I got opportunity to interact with RD Mathur. He is amazing person to talk with. He has an anecdote for every question. That hows how adventurous and amazing life he had. He is almost 85. Till date, he hadnt had a proper salary in his bank account. He started building the MRA centre in 1963 with 1800 Rs in the account. Still, he had never slept empty stomach. He had been guests of the prime ministers and kings of various countries. JRD tata offered him to live in Taj for 6 months with every thing free. On the other hand he has also lived in a shattered roof leaking homes. We talked at length about topics ranging from Anna Hazare to youth of India. I find myself really lucky to be here and meet such dignified personalities. He is and had been instrumental in many changes that have happened in India and abroad. Be it the formation of Meghalaya of independence of Morroco. A fact is that Morroco's flag was brought to MRA centre before hoisting it in that country as they believed that MRA played a big role in getting the independence.

Anyways, the days are getting busier and busier with the end of internship coming closer and closer. and a lot of work to be done yet.

More later.

SD

Day 63, 64,65,66

20, 21, 22, 23 June. 2011

I prepared a schedule. Its like less than a month remaining for the completion of my internship. I now realize how much more do I need to do. The first thing I wanted to do was to get villagers opinion on computers. Based on their opinions, I would do my final recommendations. I started of with preparing for a FGD in Abhepuri. I planned a visit to Abhepuri with two purposes. One was to build a website for them and the other to conduct the Focused Group discussions. Well, the website is just a headfake. The real purpose is to get into the community and know them better. Well, this is the crux of any rural program. You need to know the need of the community. Its not like one size fits all. Every village is different. It is said that in India, the dialect changes every 100 KMS. Well, I have a corollary to it. The village needs and wants change every 100 KMS. Abhepuri is 25 KMS from Panchgani and 37 KMS from Mahabaleshwar. Its been raining cats and dogs in here and Abhepuri is all dry with a few drizzles. And hence due to such biasing of nature, the needs are different. Anyway, coming back to what I had been doing - preparing for FGD. So I prepared for FGD and then yesterday I went to Abhepuri to conduct it.

We reached in the morning. Ashok Mandhre was waiting for us. We first started off with the website. I had a team of 6 young people who were interested in making the website. We started discussing what should be there in the website and how should we approach them. It was finalized that the team would be divided in 3 sub teams. Each team would be responsible for collecting some information on a few of the predecided topics. Then, I started with the FGD. It was a sort of not-so-good FGD. I probably made a lot of mistakes and I probably expected more from the people. But some of the key learning that came from the FGD :

• No introduction about the moderator. This filters out the information.
• Need to do an ice breaker activity which would socialize the participators and make them comfortable.
• Speak less, probe less. Let them speak the most.
• Search for the tapering voices. Encourage them to make their points.
• Don’t make concluding statements. This would give a biased response.
• Make short questions. Once they provide answers in yes or no, then probe to ask the reason. This would make it comfortable in answering.

I am still analysing the responses. Would talk about it soon. I plan to conduct more such FGDs to understand the people better and probably giving them a better solution.

More Later.
SD

Day 62

19th June, Sunday

This was a perfect sunday. woke up late, went to Lucky Bakery in the town for breakfast with Nikhil. Came back and had a game of paddle tennis. Went back to Market with other interns, met a few peoplw from panchgani, had lunch at the centre, went to Dhom Dam with the interns, had wonderful swim there. And then dinner! Wow! A perfect Sunday.

When I went to market with other interns and Suresh Mathew, I met Bonty - A young lady from Panchgani, but basically Gujarati. She is Suresh's friend. She was a ticking bomb. She teaches english to foreign students in panchgani. She says that she has seen panchgani moving from a green hill station to a noisy town. She has a lot of anger in her for this. I think she should use this anger to do something productive instead of cursing. Anyway, her choice, but glad to know that such people are still there in Panchgani who have the fire to save the town.

More later,
SD

Day 60, 61

17^th, 18^th June

Life was bit settled these 2 days. I started to learn piano here. We have a grand piano in the IofC auditorium. Eun Young – a Korean friend is helping out. The atmosphere was also more or less good except a few happy drizzles. And yes, the power cuts. Due to the heavy rain fall yesterday, some electricity tower has fallen and so we are without electricity for a couple of days. This has actually turned out to be a good time to experience the nature and observing our dependencies on the man made power. The day went quite nice with the entire busy schedule – the conference, the paddle tennis match and all. After dinner, it was a total black out here. No computer, no internet, for that matter no light! Our neighbor gave us a candle and a match box. I lit the candle, put it in the candle stand and kept it in front of the mirror to make the room brighter. Nikhil (my roommate) has a radio. He turned on the radio and we listened to the music playing on it. Then we decided to take a walk to enjoy the moon lit sky. It was totally dark but the moon had enough light to show us the way. We went on the way towards Grampari and then diverted towards the table top. This is the first time in my life that I am seeing fireflies. And today I saw them all in their harmony. It seemed like a series of decorative LEDs had been put on the trees. All the LEDs came to life in a moment and the next moment they went off! And it would be one tree at a time. The trees went on and off in a rhythmic pattern. The light effects were supported by the sound effects of the frogs and the insects. I don’t think I would have ever got a chance to be in such an atmosphere if it was not my internship!

Day 59

16^th June

The atmosphere here is awesome and strange. The mornings would be sunny and bright. The noon it would be darker than dusk and it would start raining any time. The wind is confused which direction it has to go and keeps fighting with the trees as if trees are not allowing them to blow. Rain in bright sun is a normal scene here. Today was such day. It was bright in the morning. Grampari team was moving to Pune for a couple of days. I was kind of incharge for the place. All of a sudden a lot of black, dark and heavy clouds covered the sky. It didn’t follow the normal procedure of starting with a drizzle and moving towards heavier side. It jus t started! It was raining cats and dogs, sorry horses and tigers(This was the best analogy I could find in the larger size). I had to reach Grampari by 2 PM as a part of daily routine. I reached and opened the doors of the lab and what I saw was a keyboard and a mouse totally wet because of a whole in the roof of the lab. Ya – in the roof! I had to start rescue operation at warfront as the rains were getting heavier by the minute. I first of all disconnected the electric connections, took the drenched keyboard and mouse and wiped them with cloth. Then I tried finding the plastic covers of the monitors. I covered all the monitors, removed all the key boards, mice and other peripherals and packed them in a cupboard and moved all the CPU cabinets under the table. I ran to the Grampari workshop to see if any large plastic sheet is available. I ran up to the centre as I would not find any plastic sheets. I reported the condition to the admin dept and asked them for some large plastic sheet and if they could help with repairing the roof. They said they would get a large sheet in some time. I went back to Grampari and just as I reached there, opened the door and closed my umbrella, the rains stopped abruptly and sun came out laughing at me. I lost – that’s what the sun wanted to say in that laughter. It is strange – the atmosphere of Panchgani. The changes are more often than my mood swings!

Day 57 58

14 and 15th June

Grampari has a program called Livelihoods. Sewing, knitting, self help womens groups, solar lantern making, mobile repairing and computer classes are part of it. Recently some one from Grampari had to leave the organization and Dange - the person who mostly handles the livelihoods had to go to his home. So I got the responsibility of handling the campus for a few days.

The campus is amazing! MRA centre is like the grown fatherly figure standing tall at the foot hills of table land who has seen the ups and downs of life and who knows the world. Grampari is the kid growing in the lap of nature, not worrying about what is happening with the world, struggling with its own small problems, laughing and crying with mother nature. The weather makes the campus nearer to the nature.

The Campus holds the livelihood programs and the workshops conducted by Grampari. the first day was really challenging as I had 5 bunches of leys with me and did not know which key is for what lock! Moreover, I first time sat with the computer classes students in their class. the class had been running since 15 days. But I was surprised to know that they are not even aware of the parts of computer. The lab was not in a good shape. The wires wondering on the floor as if they were on a picnic at this place! the anti-viruses were removed from all the PCs. The server firewall was turned off and the support person replied that I don't need to look into that(a nice way of saying - mind your own business. Probably he didnt know that that exactly was my business :P ). All things combined with inability to complete the planned tasks for the day - Thats how the two days went. I have asked Tamim and Sefat to help me with putting things into order.

But I learnt one thing - Learning by doing is the best way of learning.

Day 55-56

12th, 13th June

'Discussions are exchange of knowledge and arguments are exchange of ignorance'. This is one statement which is some one said in the quite sessions that happened recently. There are some people who would not at all understand your point of view. This statement seems very true when we talk about them. Anyway, coming back to the point which I have not yet started. Focused Group discussions - a technique used to get opinions and conduct survey. My project here would I think require FGDs to take place. This is because I do not have resources to conduct big surveys and the secondary data available is not enough. So I am planning to start with FGDs with various communities. Moreover Ineed to start talking to people who have already implemented the rural Kiosks. More Later.

-SD

Day 54

11th June, 2011

A saturday, but a boring one. Still the infection in my throat is not clear - Antibiotics are taking their own time. This reminds me of a conversation with Mr RD Mathur in MRA. He is associated with MRA since it was born in India. We were discussing about the current affairs and related topics. He was sharing his experience of his recent dinner with Chinese ambassador in Delhi. He said a sentence which banged in my head. The infection spreads rapidly in a wound. Today India is being attacked from various fronts in one or the other form by one or the other known or unknown agency to dampen one or the other factor or parameter of prosperity in India. This is not possible unless one or the other internal organ of the body called 'India' is wounded. The wounds which I am referring here are not the external ones, but the internal ones which are extremely hard to heal, though not impossible. The stories I hear here at MRA are the proof of the fact that healing IS possible. Switching to my throat, the bacterial infection in there is result of a wound - not to be sentimental, it was an external wound due to a lot of shouting and lot of cold water and ice creams. And it is still not clear even after a full course of antibiotics! An infected throat, the rains, the wet atmosphere and the hell lot of work load - a perfect combination for a boring day. But then the interns came up with a plan of watching movie. Movie called My Name is Khan. I had watched it 2 times already and I was not at all in a mood to watch SRK pretending to be an abnormal human with asphurgur's syndrome and wieredly telling people around that his name is Khan and he is not a terrorist and yes - Kkkhan from the epiglottis! But then I didnt have any option as a lot of them wanted to watch it and I had to give up! The movie started after dinner. Well, I must admit that it was different this time.

It was different. The audience was different. The atmosphere was different. The reactions were different and the observation was different. I was sitting with the interns. 2 of them muslims from Afghanistan, 1 from Uganda and 1 from Korea. Last time when I watched the movie, I had people around me with similar line of thoughts. But this time, the minds were from various parts thinking in way different manner than what we do. After the movie, we went to my room and had a healthy discussion about the present situation of moslims and the Hindu muslim relations in India.

I was glad to know that the 2 Afghanis knew Islam way better than the self proclaimed leaders of Islam all over the world. The word Jehad is a highly misunderstood word. It is said in quran somewhere that Jehad is to be done against the unjust. Which is very similar to what Krishna said in Geeta to Arjun - Fight for the justice. People have started generalizing Islam with terrorism and thanks to the media for helping that happen. They always say that Most of the terrorists that are caught follow Islam. Hence lets declare Islam as a cruel and violent religion. If we look at the numbers then people killed by Hitler and Mussolini during their reigns is far more than total of all the terrorist attacks in the world. And they were christians. Then why not declare christianity to be a violent religion! It is clearly mentioned in Quran that killing of an innocent is killing of humanity. The point that I want to make is that its not the religion that is bad, its the people. One more fact that I would mention here is that most of the muslim terrorists that are caught are Pakistanis. Make your own judgement now. Moreover as RD Mathur rightly said - Infection spreads more rapidly in the wounds. We need to see the wounds and try to cure them up. Only then this infection (read terrorism) can be stopped.

Thanks Tamim Alam for this wonderful eye opening discussion.

-SD

Day 53

Recently, there had been some 15 people roaming around the campus of MRA with some heavy electronic equipments on their back. Looked like some cameras and lights and things like that. That was a film production crew. Yes there was some shooting going on here.It was for a documentary being made on MRA-IofC. The guys kept interviewing a hell lot of people around. Some footage was taken for me too. But what made me happy was this person called Nikhil. He is my room mate and is doing his interns here at MRA. He is a mass communication student from symbiosis and the happiest person in that crew. He said that people in his college would die to get a chance to work in a film production crew. I understand how it feels when you get a chance to work on something you really look forward to. He is an amazing person, at least the coolest among the people here. We go along good together. Coming back to the film being produced here, the documentary is meant to cover various aspects of MRA - the history, the present and the future. They are also making a documentary on Grampari. I was interviewed in that regard. It was a nice experience. Almost 10 people are standing behind the camera and you are asked to talk, not to those folks, but to the camera! that s a tough job - atleast for person like me who is more of a social animal! How can u talk to a non living thing. But on the other hand, its that non living thing that gives life to many living things. I heard someone saying this at MRA - The world looks more beautiful through the camera! Anyways, More to come later.

-SD

Day 40 - 52

May 28 to 9th June

This is a long period. I mean 12 days! Well, for me though, it went as if 12 hours. It was hectic... quite hectic. There was a series of events that transpired through these days. A presentation, preparation for the Grampari kids’ camp, the kids’ camp, a post event meeting, me getting sick, a youth camp at MRA and me recovering from the sickness. Let me review them all one by one.

The Presentation.

This was a presentation about the rural resource centre and kiosks. I studied a lot of research papers on the rural kiosks. Some were on understanding the implementation part. Some were on the post implementation part. And some were on the social aspect of it. But a lot of reading happened. I came to know about lot of projects going on in this area like the akshaya project in Kerala, Gyandoot on MP, nlogue in the private sector and a few more. Most of them were on a larger scale like on a district level and state governments being involved in it and a lot of funding happening for them. What I wanted is the kiosk on a lower scale. Well that’s what Grampari is planning to work on. It is not a full-fledged organization of that scale yet where it can do projects of this big volume. So basically I am looking towards having one kiosk on a pilot basis and observe how it goes. I would be uploading a separate post on the topic soon.

Next was the Kids camp. This camp was of 3 days. We expected 50 kids of age 8 to 12. Jayashree aunty asked us, the interns to make a program which turns out not only enjoyable for them but also which can imbibe the core values of IofC in their hearts. We discussed for almost 2 days and came up with a program. The program had wonderful sessions of IofC, games, environment and movies. The kids were supposed to come at 10, start their registration and the program was supposed to start at 12. The day arrived. I reached Grampari at 9. I see 20 kids already there roaming in Grampari. The registration started. Some of us went in the hall to arrange audio and video. We come out after 30 mins and see 40 kids at the registration desk. I was like – They have become punctual! We started with some games and ice breakers to keep the rest of kids engaged while some were still registering. In a matter of 20 mins, the registration desk was over crowded. At 12 noon, we had 72 kids already in and still the 25 kids who confirmed their presence were yet to arrive. At 1 PM they arrived and we had around 90 kids in the campus, with the preparation of only 50! We all went crazy. And on top of it, it started raining on day 2 which did not stop till day 3. But then we managed it nicely! Even this deserves a separate post. J

Since the last day of the camp, my throat was all dead. It is seven days now and am still suffering from throat infection. The throat infection was the result of all the shouting in the camp plus three days being drenched in the rain + a lot of sweet dishes! Just yesterday I went to see the doc. He gave some meds and now it seems to be better, otherwise all night I keep on coughing, disturbing not only my sleep, but also that of my room mate’s.

Moreover, there was a youth camp going on in the MRA. There were some 150 young folks coming from all over the country. They had very strong discipline during the program. The program coordinator, Mr Viral Mujumdar, was very strict about it. Of course he has to be or else these young kids won’t listen him.

Last few days I am not doing much. More on rest. The whole night I would be coughing and the rest of the day, eating and sleeping. Its almost 4 days not doing much work. More over its raining cats and dogs these days in Panchgani. I am fed up of coughing.

All in all, it was a lot of fun and some sickness these days. Posting it was pending since quite long. I would write on the kids camp soon. Till then Ciao!

-SD