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...

I spent close to two decades in the development sector and about a decade and a half of which was spent as a donor's worker. It feels like a good time to reflect on the learning :) One of the things that has really intrigued me is the "want" for swift results as a donor. I probably came into the sector at a time when the discourse was shifting from "issues of poverty and disenfranchisement take a long time to address" to "we need to see the change in our period in the organisation that we are working for" or in other words "we are impatient optimists". I also got the dominant thought of that time as follows: "What can make me Mohammad Yunus of health or education or livelihood?" Probably a lot of business leaders were asking this.  Dr. Yunus broke new grounds by showing the banks (a profit making business) that poorer segments of the society can be their customers too and he introduced the non-profit sector to the idea that ...

It was only the other day when I wrote the line, "the potential of our youth can only be fulfilled in a gender-just world" as part of an essay. The line stayed with me for a long after I ended it. Now a days, I often catch myself repeating this thought. Why do I emphasize the strategy of bringing-in elements of gender empowerment and gender-equality in almost all the projects that are brought to me as a professional? Why do I always try to wear this lens?  I, who have no degree in gender studies. It is probably because, I have learnt the hard way that unless inequality is attacked upfront, one runs the risk of running programs that with discriminatory elements at multiple levels? Or the fact that this indeed affect sustainability.  This year in all my field visits, I observed something interesting. I observed it for the first time in Purulia, in February. We were talking to a group of girls in a school in Hura Block. They were part of the adolescent empowermen...

There are buzz words of every period. Some of these are recognized by people from all walks of life. You recognize them or worse, you get affected by them whether you are an accountant or a simple vegetable seller. Nationalism and patriotism are two words that have assumed this proportion in our time, in India. This week the buzz will be even more. To be fair it is not India alone that is feeling this overt, often misplaced sense of nationalism. However, in my blog, I will talk about India as my knowledge is very limited about other countries and of course, my patriotism and nationalism are not tested for any other country.   Like most of you who have grown up as first or second generation of citizens in independent India, I also grew up with a fair dose of nationalism. My "dedicated trade-union member" father often told me that for a communist, his country comes very high in priority. I am not sure whether he got that in some book on communism or from his grand-father ...

I tried to refer to everyone by their first name. It was my first effort in feudal eastern Uttar Pradesh to challenge the assigned gender-roles and caste ridden social norms. But I could not follow this with R B Palji. His name was Ram Badan Pal. I felt on many occasions that he did not like his name. He never introduced himself with that name. He hence remained, Palji or R B Palji to me whereas everyone else was called by their names. Even the senior most.  When I first met him in a training on "Human Rights and Gender in Development" in 2008, I thought he was a misfit in the group. A well built man in his 40s, he mentioned Pedagogy of the Oppressed within the first few minutes and I said in my mind, "O..o! Here comes a theoretician who would  take the training completely off track!" I admit this today with much shame! But, the situation changed quickly. We stayed in the same campus for 5 days and I got to talk to him. A lot! It helped. And what helped more ...

"You turned out just like us" Fahmida Riaz's poem does the round in my head at regular intervals. She is a poet from Pakistan and took refuge in India at the time of the rule of General Zia Ul Haq as she stood against the fascist nature of the state. However, in the wake of rightist politics in India that emphasized ancient Indian supremacy she became disillusioned and wrote;  Tum bilkul hum jaisey nikley/ Voh moorkhta, voh ghaamarpan/ Aakhir pahunchi dwaar tumhaarey ( You turned out to be just like us/Similarly stupid, wallowing in the past/You'v reached the same doorstep atlast.) Now I make some changes in the lines..... Pret paise ka naach rahaa hai/ Saarey ultey karya karogay/ Tum bhee baithey karogey sochaa Kaun hai donor, kaun naheen hai/ Ek jaap saa kartey jao/ Sabse badhiya kaam hamara.. ( Your demon [of] money dances like a clown/Whatever you do will be upside down/You too will sit deep in thought,/Who is the donor, who is not/Keep repea...