Ladybug's field notes

Visiting field areas for work is always an exhilarating experience as you get to learn much faster than you can learn from a report. As one keenly listens to people and their observations one tends make more connections in one's head. Many assumptions get challenged. Many new learnings emerge.  I recently visited areas around the Indo-Nepal border in Uttar Pradesh. One of the most interesting insight that I got during this travel is that there is active push-back to adolescents’ aspirations. The Community Developers or the field workers working in these areas found this active push-back as one of the greatest challenges in working with adolescents. I would have assumed it is around getting boys and girls to sit together for the sessions in the villages, which was surprisingly seen as a positive thing by the mothers with whom I talked to.  They felt it was important. However, I heard that the greatest challenge came from the village elders who think by engaging with...

1. How do you know the students/women/rape survivor/villagers/displaced people were right in their manner of protest? Why were they using sanitary pads to write their messages? 2. How do you know they are not wrong in raising the issue? 3. Why are they raising it NOW? Why are you supporting them NOW? 4. How do you know this is not political in nature? (I know it is. So? You lose your case. ) 5. Have you heard the other side of the story? 6. Have you protested against all the bad things that are happening in all the other parts of the world? (I am sure you did not against the afforestation in Central Africa which is causing the current Ebola epidemic! What! you did not hear about that causing it? See. I told you!) 7. Did you stand up for that particular incident 10 or 20 years ago that happened in your college campus in the 1990s? You did not? You have no right to feel bad about anything that happened thereafter. 8. In such and such part of such and such country if women/student...

I received a phone call a few days back. The caller described how he has taken a new house on rent in the city he has shifted to. How the preparations were in full swing in the house for arrival of his wife and their only child. How he look forward to the reunion! All normal conversation between two erstwhile neighbors. Only this time it was raising my heart-beat. It was worrying me to no end that the "wife" in question would have to go and stay with this man. The man who was bragging about reunion of family, is a violent man. He called to boast that all my efforts to ensure peace for his wife fell flat. This man who verbally and physically abuses his wife and quite unabashed about it, scares the hell out of me too. Yes. I get scared. The one who is generally referred to as "the tigress" of the family and the neighborhood gets actually scared in the heart of heart. I become scared because I know how low these men can stoop and I also know that I am no match in that...

Have you heard this buzz of citizens' responsibility recently in the development sector? Take a careful look at who are ones who talk about them. Who are these people? Which strata of the society they come from? And you may be left wondering why these well-paid, well-fed ( and in my true foot in mouth style, not necessarily well bred, in terms of social manners) people who demolish rights at every opportune/inopportune moment love to talk about responsibility! I grew up in Bengal in the 1980s. Group Theater movement was still very strong at that time. It was actually stronger in suburban areas and industrial townships than in the sahar Kolkata (Calcutta that time). A group named Smarak from Durgapur steel township  was fortunate enough to be mentored by an extremely talented play-write and director named Gopal Das. One of his critically acclaimed play was named, Rakkhos (The demon). In this play, troopers of a circus sang a song "jader roj roj table e sajano thake a...

As I traveled in South-Western Rajasthan, village after village I met communities in denial. There was either silence or they tried hard to convince me that the phenomenon of sex selection does not take place in their villages. Period! If you push, show data, ask them to ponder and after a long pause it was a tentative, "May be...some women in some other villages are doing it" and then quickly turning to, "It is the urban areas you see..not us". It was tiring to talk to these walls of silence! We met them in different social groups. They were Local Government members (PRI) as we know them in India) or the health workers like, Auxiliary Nursing Matrons (ANMs) and Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA). Health, Nutrition and Sanitation Committee members and local doctors and others. "Although you say nothing is wrong, the data says otherwise" chipped in a NGO worker. "May be that's what God is doing. He is sending less girls to the world...

My friend from a land rights movement support group was aghast! She could not believe her ears. A fellow country-man landed in Delhi to 'support' the march of the tribes for land rights and seemed visibly disturbed on not finding a welcome committee with garlands, cars to take him to the venue 180 km away. He was also worried about being cheated by Indians and warned my friend against the same too! "They are basically cheats, you see!" My friend lost her cool, "Why did you come to India to stand by Indians in the first place? and you say you are a supporter!" But, this was a Frenchman! I thought of my experience during the trips with the Indians (not bharat ke log...but Indians), mainly from donor agencies and at times national capital based NGOs, to various parts of the country. I found a similar echoing in the sentiment. They couldn't think who to blame other than the rural women for remaining unlettered and not sending their children to school! ...

I am a staunch believer of everything that is humane. I trust human emotions. I believe, it is because we get moved, we get going.  It gives me immense pleasure to see a smiling baby in her mother's lap in the corner of a street. I smile all the way back from work. A face battling pain/tears never fails to bring tears in my eyes. I battle to send the tears back and walk on and murmur, "It will soon be better for you". When a thousand hands go up to the sky and say, "We would struggle/no matter what!" it still gives me goosebumps. A wonder thinking I have been part of rallies as long as I remember!  A lone voice of protest never fails to inspire me. It is the human spirit that keeps me going...always..everywhere..all the time! On my way to office, on the bridge over Yamuna, I see a kid quite often. All dusty and full of mud.  "Can I give him a bath?" I think, almost instantly. He evokes a strange urge in me. I want to give him a good scrub. Then ...