Sorry

Got a lot of stuff on my plate right now... Am sorry for not posting! I know very few people care about my posts :P but its a sorry for my commitment and my few readers :)

Day 39

27th May, 2011

The day started with a session from Suresh Khatri, an amazing session about how to use the quiet time and how to divide the time and make mind concentrate on some things that are useful. It was really a nice session. Next session was by Commercial tax commissioner of Karnataka. He talked about how to reduce corruption and how he has implemented projects in his departments to reduce corruption. The facility of e-sugam in Karnataka was started by him. He also shared some cases on which he is working presently. One of them being the tax evasion by the multiplexes. I was able to connect to the e-sugam part because I had worked on a similar project in TCS.

The solutions he came up with were quite amazing. It was a paradigm shift in doing things. Talking about the e-sugam project, normally at the checkposts, the documents would be brought by the truck drivers and they were entered manually in the computers. That took a lot of time and was vulnerable to errors. What he did was - Enter the documents before coming to the check post on the E-sugam site. Get a unique number and come to check post. The check post would just verify the number and let you go! Less efforts, more accuracy and less paper work.

Thats what I call think out of the box!

-SD

Day 36, 37, 38

24^th , 25^th and 26^th May, 2011

Tata – a brand associated with almost every business. They make everything from watches to salt to cars and software. Come on! Who doesn’t know them! I mention the name of Tatas here because since last three days I have been meeting Mr Russi M Lala – a well known non-fiction author who had known the Tatas quite well. He has written a lot of books on the Tatas; The creation of wealth, the heartbeat of a trust and beyond the last blue mountain – to name a few. I first time met him in the MRA center. The interns here had a special session with him. He was happy to see the young people getting into the idea of MRA. At the first look, he is an old man of 82 years with shivering limbs who can hardly walk with the use of his walker. But when he speaks, he gets a new wave of energy in every new thread of thoughts he starts. His sentences are full of knowledge and each word he speaks carries the load of the experience he has gathered during these 82 years. Probably that might be the reason of his looks. The way he explains things is amazing. The voice modulation with the modulating emotions seems quite natural in his speech. Well, you can understand if one can do wonders with his pen, what if that pen starts speaking!

Suresh uncle gave me a recording of RM Lala’s lecture on ‘The role of purpose in Life’. I broke it into 6 parts and uploaded them on youtube. Suresh uncle asked me to show to Mr Lala, what exactly have I done. So I brought my lappy and after lunch I showed him his videos on youtube. Well, it was a small job for me but I was astonished to see the pleasure on Mr Lala's face when he saw himself being published on net. He asked me to come for lunch the next day to Pune. He was going to have lunch with Mr Chetan Tolia, the director of Tata Management Training Center, Pune. I really find myself privileged to have lunch with such dignitaries. They both had some stories and anecdotes to share about their experiences with Tatas. Mr Lala shared a story about how JRD cared about people. I have read many such stories about JRD. But this was the first time I was listening it from some one who has been WITH JRD when things happened! It was as if everything turned live. He insisted me on going to Tata Archives and have a look at the exhibition about the Tatas. It is one place to visit in a life time. When rest of the population in India was struggling for the political freedom, this family was preparing for India’s economic liberalization. From India’s aviation industry to automobile, from steel to software – they have pioneered many such industries. And in this exhibition there were bits and pieces of those moments. Its like visiting the Gandhi Ashram. I am thankful to Mr Lala who insisted me on going there. Otherwise I was in a plan to skip it.

All in all, I had wonderful time with the man called Russi Lala. Some of the most precious moments that I would carry back would be from these 3 days.

-SD

P.S. The Video Link - Role of purpose in life; RM Lala's website

Day 35

23^rd May, 2011

We visited Abhepuri today to attend the Grampanchayat meeting and then discuss things about the present and future projects. The discussion was more about a plantation program. The objective of the Panchayat was not to plant trees, but to get the monitory grants from government. The plan was to plant about 100 saplings. For that they needed 100 pits. This was a huge task. We suggested about Shramdaan, but the villagers were more keen on getting the JCB machines to dig the pits. They did not even plan for the maintenance. So it became very clear that their objective is not plantation, but the grant. During the discussion we met a person called Sachin. He was an electrician by profession and worked in Pune. He was a person full of energy. I was astonished to learn that the whole village was under debt of 60 millions. The village was facing water scarcity program and did not have more than one crop in a year. So they were in no condition to pay it back. And Sachin even feared that the banks might keep their lands on auction in future if they were not able to pay them back.

How come the whole village was in debt! That should be the next question. There was a scheme. A scheme to get water from the dam. I really don’t understand what happened and how the villagers were convinced, but all the villagers took debts from various banks. The scheme failed. The maintenance cost went too high. Moreover, no one was ready to take ownership. And so they did not attain the breakeven and finally in debt they are of 60 millions.

Sachin had a plan in mind. He had been studying some documents and maps. He had the map of the pipes and pumps in place. He had a plan in mind of how the village can be connected with the water in the dam. But then I don’t know why, the authorities did not seem to be convinced by it. Rather probably they did not want to get convinced. What ever the case may be, but there seemed a divide between the sarpanch and sachin. We went to the places around with Sachin. He showed us the pumps and wells. Jared said that if this system works out, most of the water problems of Abhepuri might get over. Lets see whats next.

-SD

Day 33, 34

21^st, 22^nd May, 2011, Saturday – Sunday

This weekend was fun. Saturday the interns planned to visit Pune. The Koreans wanted some authentic Korean food and rest all wanted to go for shopping. We started in the morning after tea and reached Pune by 10 30. The shops were still in the sleeping state. So went to one of the malls nearby. The lunch was planned at Café Maroo – a Korean restaurant. Koreans went crazy looking at the restaurant and the menu. Most of the items were non-veg, but they ordered something veg for me. It was a good experience having ‘Kimchi’ – a cabbage salad with a lot of red pepper and ‘Bibbibab’- very similar to mix veg pulao. But then it is always nice to experience something new. And in addition, having the sight of Korean girls eating religiously, I am happy for them. The rest of the day went in shopping! Amazing day.

The Sunday went lazy. Did not do much. Just lazed around, talked to people, cleaned the room and read a book.

More to come later

-SD

Day 31

19th May, 2011

Learning comes at very later part of the life - these are the words of Mr Vartak, the secretary of the MRA trust. Yesterday i had a chance to listen to the life story of Mr and Mrs Vartak. They are a very jovial couple. The turning and the learning points of their lives have really made an impact on my mind. This happens at the MRA center once in a week. Some or the other has to share their life story. This helps others in understanding the person better. So, that was it. These days I spend more time in the office. That too more on the internet searching for some or the other article or white paper written on anything related to rural villages and information and communication technology. I really wonder how the researchers can do this amount of research! Its really boring job. You have to first go through a hell lot of things that some other people have worked upon so that you do not re invent the wheel. It is not only going through, but you also need to understand what they have written all about! And trust me, its tough to read them. All the geeky and jargon-y language! I don't think I can do that. And I am kind of person who believes in getting some thing tangible, something that can be felt and touched, something that shows out put quickly. Lack of patience - I call it. But then yes, the research and the papers too are important. They create a base for what tangible output we can get from a system. Anyway. These days even Disha is taking up a form. Disha is a MRA or IofC Magazine published quarterly. The next Disha is dedicated to Grampari. And probably I would have an article or two in that. Lets see how it goes!

-SD

Day 24-25-26-27-28-29-30

12-13-14-15-16-17-18

One full week. I observe that the frequency of writing is decreasing with the increasing number of days I spend here in Grampari. I would take a note of it and try to make it more frequent.

I don’t even remember what I did on 12^th. But I am sure I might not have done anything important. Otherwise I would have definitely remembered it. Neither do I remember what I did on 13^th. But I guess I know why I don’t remember the stuff. It was because we were going to meet J ! She was coming on 14^th morning. Let us not discuss who she is and where did she come from and what she came for and etc. We were together for 3 days. I really enjoyed the 3 days. Anyway, so that’s till 16^th. The 17^th went on to make a schedule of rest of the days here. That’s about it. See… How easy it is to shrink things when you really don’t feel like writing. :P

More to come later.

-SD

Day 21, 22, 23

9th , 10th, 11th May, 2011

OMG! These kids are too much!

29 kids - 21 boys and 8 girls of roughly same age(14-16) have filled the grampari campus with a lot of fun and a lot of chaos. They are here on a 3 day camp which would include the four values of IofC, Importance of villages and Career opportunities for the youth. The first day started with the introduction session. I thought they were too shy to speak up. But that shyness remained only for 2-3 hours. After that as the sessions started and they got familiar with the place, the cacophony raised. By the dinner time, they were full fledged in their moods. But then they are kids. They are made to be mischievous!

The camp went wonderful. The kids were introduced to the idea of MRA and the four absolute standards. Later, we had discussions about various topics on the same lines. I opted to sleep with them in Grampari. Well, I must say, I had a horrible night! Some or the other noise kept on bugging me.

The second day was more of Grampari tour and Shram daan. They had a feel of what grampari worked on, the types of projects and livelihood programs. They also did shram-daan (labor donation). They built a tippytap, cleaned the weeds and the compost pit. In the evening, they discussed various problems they face in their villages. After dinner, it was dance, dhamaal and masti!

The third day was more of serious one. It was more focused on the opportunities in rural places and career development.

A few points that I learnt during the whole 3 day camp:

• Some things that we take for granted, are extremely important for villagers - eg. electricity, water and sanitation.
• We need to put ourselves in their shoes to understand their point of view. They are very simple and honest. Its just that we fail to understand that.
• Let the kids know the reality of the cities. They think that the migration to cities is the best possible solution to all the problems they face in the villages.
• Some of the sharpest minds of India reside in villages. Don't ignore them.

I made many friends during the camp. Pratik, Tejas, Sameer, Shreyas, Amit and Satish are few of them. Hope to see them soon.

The 23rd eve we had a meeting with Mr Ashok Mandre from Abhepuri. I must have referred him in other posts. He is very keen on making a website for his village. We discussed about the possibilities of it and how the website would be helpful in the development of the village. The discussion ended with 3 options.

1. A social website which lists out the achievements of the villagers
2. An internal site which would help them in organizing their data and increase in transparency of the operations of grampanchayat.
3. A website containing factual data about the village.

He has to decide on one of the options and come back to us.

Thus were these 3 days. hopefully, more would come later.

-SD

Day 20

8th May, 2011

A bright sunday morning. It was thought that I would be sleeping till late hours. But then I forgot that there was a visit planned by one of the trustees of MRA. So sort of a busy day. Also a Camp for 10th std kids is starting from tomorrow. So had to prepare on that too. Interacted with the trustee for some time. It was a wonderful conversation. His name is Mr Suresh Vazirani. He is the founder of a company called Transasia. The company deals with Medical instruments. Before starting the business, he was with MRA for 9 long years. And he believes that those 9 years were the actual training years for that business. He believes that honesty and transparency should be a part of the business. They help in the longer run.

The next three days are going to be funfilled. the three day camp for 10th std kids is starting from tomorrow.

-SD

Day 18, 19

6th and 7th May, 2011

The two days went fantastic. And we ordered the stabilizer too :)

6th evening we(all the interns) went to an outbound program near panchgani. The program included various outdoor activities like

rock climbing, rappelling, high ropes and a lot of other activities. It was conducted wonderfully by Vinita Saxena. The stay was in tents and the food was awesome.

6th evening, the session was for crossing high ropes or burma bridge or whatever you call it. The photograph would clear the thing for you.

7th morning we went for rappelling and rock climbing. At the camp we learnt various gears used for such activities. But on top of it I learnt how to conquer your fear and trust others. In some situations, you just don't have an option but to trust people around.

Thus were the two days - lot pf adventure, lot of fear, lot of confidence and a lot of fun, food and frolic!

- SD

My Roomie Tamim and Friend Saifat

Day 16, 17

4th and 5th May, 2011

I mentioned Pachputewadi and their water crisis in Day 14's post. That day we discussed a lot with the villagers about how to get the things done and doing all the measurements and finally getting an estimate of the whole project. Now the villagers were too keen on starting the project so by the time we were in office yesterday, they got all the

required materials, got it up there on the hill and the next day they called up and said - we've started working! Jared was awestruck by the news. A small disturbance in the spring and we can loose the spring. So he wanted Grampari to be there when things start. We had 2 springs to be totally redone and rest of them to be extended. A couple of new sources were also found and something with that too was also to be done. But then, they just started!

Jared and me immediately went there to see what they have been doing. What was feared the most had happened. The damage was done. One of the springs (We called it big spring as it supplied the most water!) was damaged. The water output reduced by 75 %! We went there and immediately asked to stop any kind of digging. No digging at any cost.

Now we had almost 80 people working randomly on different things! Some of them were women. Sowmya went and started talking to the ladies. Jared and me started to organize people. Finally we had a few teams and 2 owners of each stream. Owners were responsible for anything and everything that happened to the spring and the spring box. So we organized the whole team, of course with their help. People started working again. It was interesting to know how the springs can be effected by a small mistake.

Looking at the picture, we would understand how springs are made. In this hills that we are working on, it is quite similar to what is shown in the picture. There is a rocky layer sitting under the soil top of the mountain. The rain water penetrate the soil and go on penetrating till the rock layer due to gravity. There is also some pressure from the waters from the next rain fall. Then when they hit the rock layer, no more penetration can occur. So they find some other way through the rock and create some sort of spring. this is out the springs are created. Now the water is very lazy. It would go through the easiest route it could find. While digging if we change the pressures of the soil and the pores in the earth, we may change the path of the spring and then it might turn very hard to find it again.

Here is the design of the spring boxes that we planned to build.

This is very similar to the design that pachputewadi is going to build. The Box would act as a reservoir of water, the jelly behind that would hold the spring against soil erosion. And a pipe coming out to take the water to the destination. Let me know if you want to know more on the design part.

The last two days were all working with the Ashok, Falke sa'ab and all other villagers and contractor datta in making those boxes. During the process, the villagers also showed the other smaller springs which can be taken in to operation. Jared has another design for that. We all worked together and ate together for these two days. It is totally a different experience of working with them. There are more such days to work. The project would not be complete without the water shed activities. We have made a map of the whole area.

I had a compass in my bag since college time. I brought it from home. I did nt know we would use it here. It became very handy while making the map. You never know what/who would help you out. :) Would upload the photographs soon.

The video shows some of the work done

-SD

Day 15

The whole day went in office. Did not do much. I mean it was more of office work. Wrote some article. Just published it before this post. Plus a lot of discussion on a lot of things. So in all the day gave me a feeling of proper office today :P

MRA is having a educators' conference going on. The conference is having both teachers and students from around the world. So the campus is filled with a lot of kids to play with. :)

-SD

Zero Budget Natural Farming

Grampari is full of activities, workshops and a lot of other events. A lot of learning and sharing happens during such event. With reference to the article on DAY 2, recently on 20th April 2011, Grampari had a workshop for farmers in and around Panchgani on Zero Budget Natural farming. The workshop was taken by Mr Subhas Palekar and attended by around 110 farmers and officials from agricultural department from Wai. He is a farmer by profession and is involved in spreading awareness about Natural farming and disadvantages of chemical and organic farming since 1986. He is a believer of Gandhian philosophy and says that Green Revolution is a pseudo revolution. He made the audience aware of the economics going on behind the scenes in a very lucid manner.

According to him, revolution means creation not destruction. Green Revolution that we are talking about is the transformation process of violence. It is not a creation process. It means destruction of millions of micro-organisms by means of poisonous chemical fertilizers & insecticides, destruction of birds, soil, water, environment & human health also. It is a tool for exploiting the rural economy. He also explained how the MNCs are trying to destroy the rural economy through selling the concept of chemical farming. Chemical farming, he says, is a very dangerous technique. It is also partly responsible for the increase in the number of AIDS cases and Cancers patients. The chemicals used in it are responsible for decreasing the immunity. In addition, some carcinogens are also present in the chemical fertilizers. The audience never knew that there is a train called 'Cancer Train' running between Bhatinda and Bikaner. Today these diseases like cancer and aids are increasing vigorously. According to him, the pseudo green revolution should be held responsible for that. The only output of the Green Revolution is destruction - the destruction of soil, water, environment and human health. And if it is so, then this Green Revolution is not a revolution, he says. It is a worldwide scandal to exploit the farmers and rural economy. The farmers go to the cities to buy the chemicals and the seeds and from the cities the money flows to the multi-national companies. So in a way, they are sucking money out of the rural India.

Mr Palekar then moved to Natural farming. Natural farming is the technique in which the help of nature is taken in growing the crops. How does the forest grow! Does the tree in the forests need any artificial fertilizers or waters to grow? They grow on their own. Zero Budget Natural Farming means for all the crops, the production cost will be zero. In the Zero Budget Natural Farming nothing has to be purchased from the outside. All things required for the growth of the plant are available around the root zone of the plants. There is no need to add anything from outside. Our soil is full of nutrients. How much nutrients the crops takes from the soil? Not more than 1.5 to 2.0 %. Remaining 98 to 98.5% nutrients is taken from air, water & solar energy. Taking this thought further, he explained how natural waste can be turned into good fertilizers and can be utilized to the best. Zero-Budget says that the farmer should grow everything ranging from seed to the crop. In this way, he would not have to borrow for buying the seeds and the fertilizers and would save a lot of money.

A lot of discussion among the authorities, the farmers and the felicitator took place during the whole workshop. The farmers noted down the formulae and other technical things on natural farming. The feedback received from the audience was encouraging.

Further information on subject can be found on site http://palekarzerobudgetnaturalfarming.com

Day 14

2nd May, 2011

The day was dedicated to Panchputhewadi! I mentioned in the posts before about the village. The water condition is really really bad there. They get 5 Matakas per family per day. 1 Mataka could be approximately 7 litres. So thats 35 litres of of water per family per day. Thats all they get in all for everything. I suppose we flush more water than this per day!

Jared and me went to Veruli - thats a village on the top of the hill from where Panchputhewadi gets water. Now let me try to explain the system. There are a few underwater streams that have been flowing for years. There was a drought situation in the area and the wells in the villages went dry. They were in the search of the new sources of water. They knew about the springs on the top of the hill. The government helped them in creating the boxes near the springs.

These boxes would collect the water from the spring and supply it to the village dow

nhill through a pipe. The picture shows

one of the stream boxes in the working condition. There are around 4 to 5 stream boxes with panch'vadi out of which only 2 are in working condition. Rest of them have got some or the other problem and they don't supply water to the village.

Grampari is helping the village in reconstructing those stream boxes, repairing some of them and finding a few new streams for the village. In addition to that, Grampari is also planning to do some watershed activities so that the ground water does not dry up.

Grampari stands firm on its policy that we would not help in only sucking out the water, we also

need to help in replenishing the springs. Watershed is a must thing for this system to sustain for a longer time. So we took the measurements of the spring boxes and the required pipes. I must say that it was quite dangerous. We were working on a downhill slope of the small foot tracks. The other side was quite a deep valley.

After the measurements we had some discussion with the villagers who came along with us and then the lunch. They brought for us some rotis and sabzee.

While returning, I was astonished to observe that the villages who did not have proper sanitation facilities, nor did they have even proper doors to their huts, had antenna dishes on the top of the houses. Look at the penetration these DTH service has got. Now I really do not understand, if there can be DTH penetration to this level, why not the toilets. For a matter of fact, only 21% of the rural India has access to proper Sanitation (Source: http://www.wssinfo.org).

Similar penetration is of the Gutkas. You can see the packets of Gutkas all over around even in the remotest places. I really do not understand the market dynamics here.

If private players - with the limited resources- can have a penetration at this level, why not government with a hell lot of resources! A lot of resources are available;

I learnt a lot of stories from Jared where a lot of money was being dumped into the projects of water supply and then the whole lot projects have failed. All the farmers are now in debts of crores due to those projects. And then we talk about farmers doing suicide! Come on! We need to give some thoughts on that.

-SD

Day 13

1st May, 2011

Today is the Labor Day. Co-incidentally we had a workshop in Grampari on building walls by ramming the mud. I must say that the workshop was quite labor intensive, yet a lot informative too. It was conducted by Mr Saurabh Phalke, an architect from Pune. He is a young fellow and works in the villages for helping them in the construction activities using least possible energy.

This technique of building such walls out of earth is not a new one. Big constructions were done in ancient times using this technique.

The technique totally depends on the binding power of clay. Sand, Mud and Cement are mixed up in the ration of 6:6:1. Then they are mixed up with some amount of water. This mixture is then put into the rectangular hollow forms, one open end of it being on the ground and the other facing the sky. The construction goes layer by layer.

A layer of roughly 8-9 inches is made out of that mixture and then it is being rammed with all the possible force from the top so that the composition binds itself. This layer should be reduced to 4 inches after ramming.

And then the next layer is done. A couple of porcupines are to be inserted near the edges to strengthen the structure. This structure is to be sprinkled with water for 3 to 4 months. Saurabh says that with the time, this structure would become stronger.

Sometimes I feel that there is a lot to learn from the ancient technologies. And probably they are the answer to the new-age problems that we are facing today.

-SD

Day 12

30th April, 2011

Start of the weekend. Though there is no such concept of weekend here, but being from IT industry I always wait for the weekends. I planned to see a lot of movies during this 3 months and read a lot of books too. But the schedule here is really a bit hectic. So I thought of taking this weekend off again. But could not do so.

I tested the network connectivity of the lab which I could not do yesterday. All was in mess! Tried clearing them all and by 3 I was able to complete it.

Then made a document about what had happened in Grampari in past few months. Jayashree Aunty helped a lot in that. We had to circulate it among the friends of MRA google group.

The day ended with a visit to market. It was great loitering around doing nothing there. Panchgani is a cool place :P

-SD