Ladybug's field notes

In a winter morning, I travelled from Nagpur to the south western tip of Madhya Pradesh, the heartland of India. Balaghat district is close to 3 other states at least, Chattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. Even Orissa is not far away. State borders have their own problems everywhere. Naxalism or violent guerrilla wars in small pockets for changing social order (termed as biggest internal security threat in India by the present PM) is prevalent in the region. Whether it works towards changing the social order or not, this gives the reluctant authorities another reason to keep away from the area. Baigas are a Primitive Tribe Group (PTGs) and has a history of being pushed or rather shoved around. Baigas like to live in small communities in far flung areas and mostly deep inside the forests and on the hill tops. Their hamlets in this area are in and around the famous Kanha National Park.  Baigas are reducing in number every year even in the absence of any government sponsored sche

Mehroon was married and sent to her marital home only to find that her husband already had another wife. She was beaten up by her husband for not performing her wifely duties and the other wife did not spare her either. She ran back to her grandmother’s home where she grew up without parents to save her life. She now considers herself a separated woman and this “woman” is all of 15! This is not a story of North Bihar, neither a story from the hinterland of Rajasthan, it is only about 20 km away from Kolkata, the state capital of West Bengal. I know we would love to find the religion in it. After all it is always the “other” who has all the problems and not us! But, Malati’s suicide in a similar situation a few days ago would not let us do so. May be now we will try to find the caste in it, after all it has to be the other!! Mehroon, Susmita, Tapasi and Mahroof …I met them all in the adolescent centers run by an organization in South 24 Paraganas. Their stories give a new meaning

Nari sangh, that’s what they call their CBO or sangathan. Each nari Sangh has a separate name and the fascination is evident from the names they selected “ chingari ” (spark), “ bijli ” (thunder), “ sankalp ” (mission) along with names of myriad locally known female deities. Nari Sanghs started forming in villages of eastern UP early 2008. It was a time when the local organizations felt the need of going beyond working with elected women representatives and readying a ground for women’s leadership to emerge in a region now largely bereft of men. Men from this region migrate leaving behind their women to “man” the house and do more. But the social norms expected these women to remain hidden while shouldering these responsibilities. In their families they were to provide food to the hungry mouths and fetch water for the thirsty souls. But they were not to talk about the irregularities in the Public Distribution System (PDS) or for that matter had any say in deciding where the tube-wel

To reach Bopoli for a meeting around afternoon you have to take a bus from Roha to Nagothna as early in the morning, as possible. Walk about half a kilometer from Nagothna bus stand to reach the “six seaters'” stand. Now, board a six seater to Shiu, from Shiu take an auto to Bandhan, from Bandhan take a six seater (again!) to Kelaghar. Don't sigh so soon! You would still have to walk for about 2 km. to reach Bopoli. If you have Sopan bhau for company, he would tell you that you would actually have to walk up to the top of the hill, visible in the horizon and cross over to the other side to reach Bopoli! All he wants to have is a laugh at your urban vulnerabilities. And believe me, you would laugh too! You will never be as relieved to realize you have been conned, ever. The village is situated at the foot of the hills and not beyond it. “I am explaining the ideology of the sangathan see if you want to be part of it”, Taai said to the gathered crowd. “ Sangathan is about h

Arati said “My husband’s family had become Christians about 20 years ago…but then we returned to the Hindu fold about 6-7 years back”! We did not believe her...she hardly looked 40! But then, two women helped us to calculate. Arati got married at the age of 15! She already has sons in their twenties. We therefore better believe what she was saying. We were in Depaketa village. It was situated in the worst affected Blocks during the 2008 Hindu-Christian riots in Kandhamal district of Orissa. In the tribal dominated areas of Orissa, villages are mere conglomeration of many hamlets situated far away from each other. They are separated by forests and hills. As many as 10 such villages and 20 such hamlets make one Gram Panchayat. Sirtiguda Gram Panchayat in K. Nuagaon Block was no exception. Depaketa was one of the 17 hamlets of Sirtiguda. It is unique as the number of Christian families is almost equal to number of Hindu families. When the riot broke out, all the poor Hindus and all Ch

This was in Thane district of Maharastra before the monsoon. I spent one and a half day in the field doing nothing due to mis-communication, in the very begining. I and my colleague spent about 36 hours in a village named Nandgaon. We slept in the open veranda in the afternoon sweating and waiting for rain and did so in the night too. As soon as the sun went down, we climbed up the hillock nearby and stood on top of the biggest rock available and we waved our hands like people stranded in uninhabited islands to get signal in our respective mobiles. My colleague was much taller than me so he could talk normally whereas I had to shout on top of my voice keeping the phone up in the air in loudspeaker mode just to convey home that I was fine (winking)! The incident early next morning was the crowning glory of this part of the trip. A cow followed me when I left for my nature’s call and I do not want you to puke by telling why it did so! But, yes Indian cows of Hindu mythology like variety

There was a perfectly round hole on Baske’s forehead! Yes. a hole. One that caught my attention the moment I saw him. I thought at first, he was in the army and got a bullet injury but then rejected the theory the next second! Nobody would probably survive a bullet injury that is exactly at the middle of one's forehead. When I visited him, he was sitting on a charpoy in his open yard, legs folded close to his chest. When he squinted his eyes to look at us it seemed he was annoyed but, then he smiled at my uncle accompanying me. Baske seemed as old as my uncle but it is difficult to guess the age of any peasant in the countryside working in the field for 10 hours a day from the age of 10…they all look over 60 the moment they reach anywhere near 40. I was in his village working on a project to understand whether tribal culture itself keeps the tribal away from modern medicine. As you can see, I was checking a theorem deeply rooted in the colonial-urban mindset. My uncle t

--> A population of 1.45 million, 598 Gram Panchayats, 9 Blocks and only 3 Block Development Officers (BDOs), one of whom I met recovering from a tell-tale sign of a hangover and lying in his courtyard on a sunny winter afternoon. We reached his office and was quite taken aback by finding him on his cot in the backyard of government quarter instead of the office. I was in Uttar Pradesh  trying to satisfy my curiosity regarding what keeps UP at the bottom in NREGA implementation. Now don’t tell me you do not know NREGA. You will be hanged, drawn and quartered in the present government’s raj if you don’t. After all the current political party in power has beaten and keeps beating every willing and reluctant drum available to announce the program that at Rs 390,000 million has the single largest chunk of allocation and is second only to defense. If you are part of the middle class paying tax diligently like me (just because the tax norms are becoming tighter and mutual