Ladybug's field notes

Memories of two incidents are bugging my mind today. I will be short though not so sweet here! Thakur Ranh Singh walked across the main village lane. He was silent but his walking stick filled up the silent streets and conveyed the necessary message. No one turned up in the meeting that was planned long ago. We were in a village in Jaisalmer to hold a meeting against sex selective abortion and female infanticide. Ranh Singh is a member of the Village Health and Sanitation Committee. Technically he should have been the one organising the meeting with us. But that was not to be. His granddaughter had died within days of being born . The villagers' eyes changed colors when one enquired about the reason. One could hardly keep the news hushed...the baby was killed with a high dose of opium in the very home that she wanted to call her own. Asking for a home for a women in India? A sacrilege indeed! We organised a training for women of Uttar Pradesh on health. Participants were ...

The Census data is out and a development sector colleague heaved a sigh of relief looking at the Child Sex Ratio (CSR), “It s not as bad as I thought it would be.” This is when the Child Sex Ratio has plummeted to 914, the lowest ever in the history of Census in India, none of the northern states except Himachal has a CSR above 900 and almost all the states in India has recorded a drop a CSR. How much worse were we expecting it to be? Ms. Sonia Gandhi the declares in no unclear terms “In my own country, most worrying of all is the declining sex ratio of females to males”. Declining sex ratio has no doubt taken the centre stage of discussion and with marginal increase in the Sex Ratio, I am watching with complete disgust how we are losing sight of the bigger picture. Are we so shortsighted to realise that this low CSR will soon reflect in sex ratio sooner than later? Sex selection takes place not because one has anything against a child but it takes place because a female ...

"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...

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 govern...

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 a...