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...

"আমায় ডোবাইলি রে আমায় ভাসাইলি রে অকুল দরিয়ার বুঝি কুল নাই রে" You drown me now and you let me float then (at your wish)/  This endless river knows no bound.. . Ganga divides into Padma and Hoogly rivers upon entering this area and assumes its mighty form. In our country they call rivers "a mother". River valley civilisations are called নদী মাতৃক সভ্যতা (Civilisations around rivers as mothers), in Bengali. A river here is a mother who lets her children grow around her and helps them feed their own children in turn. However, this mother turns into the proverbial demon goddess when humans try to bind her in concrete. This free flowing spirit then takes violent twists and turns to not only change the course to submerge village after village, it also changes the course of the civilisation that it created in the first place. Murshidabad is a lesson for the human civilisation. It tells you what a mighty river can do when you try to interfere with its free will. T...

"Why do you think poor are poor? Simple, because they can not manage their finances well. Not only that they also make bad choices, they are greedy and to top it all either alcoholic or a drug abuser". I got this whole new perspective in Europe this January. What an insight to begin the year! And when the social security money that is provided is not enough (these poor fail to manage their finances again), the large  hearted, retired people of repute provide them food from the "Food Bank" in various parts of the country. They are large hearted indeed. What else can explain why they serve those they know as ignorant, greedy, drug and alcohol abusers! The volunteers work hard to put together a basket of food. What do these baskets contain? Food leftover from the local groceries that are nearing their expiry date or are past these. The kind of food, chocolates, candies, biscuits, cookies, condiments, bread and at times milk and yoghurt (ofcourse past their e...

--> 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 a...