Picture shot memories of Haryana

Vinita recently had the opportunity to visit Harayana. And here is something she wrote about it:

4-lane or 6-lane highways...

Petrol pumps every 50 m... Left and right...

Flowing canals that have to be crossed every now and then..

Dhabas with huge parking spaces and at least 20 to 30 cars parked..

Illuminated 'Gardens' in rows... All glittering with thousands of lights..

Wheat fields until the eye can reach.. Lined with eucalyptus...

Small channels bordering every field to carry water for irrigation..

Thick green grass on the borders of the road in April..

Homes of bricks.. No zopadi to be seen..

Fat buffaloes tied in front of the house in a separately constructed cow-shed..

Turbaned elders sitting infront of their homes and playing cards or inhaling deeply from the hukka..

Village ponds filled to the brim in the middle of April...

Women either busy working.. Carrying headloads.. Or with a veil over their faces..

Huge piles of cowdung cakes on the outskirts of every village...

Machinery of all kinds to help agricultural activities... like this wheat harvester

Commercialisation everywhere...

Golden harvest - huge piles of wheat in the graineries..

Towers of brick kilns blowing thick black smoke..

'Tubelight' of hope

I have shared my pain and anguish with you…. Now is time to share something positive….

I walked into an NGO (Yerala Projects Society) office and found some women industriously doing something… they were preparing tube light ballasts……..(for the uninitiated, ballasts are those ugly boxes that sit on the middle of the tube light fixture…. Of course the new ballasts are electronic and much sleeker…) The wonderful thing about the set up was that the women were involved in a variety of tasks…. One was using a tension machine for winding copper wire….. some were attaching wires to the ballast… some were soldering the components on to PCBs…….some were assembling the ballasts – the PCBs in their plastic sheaths…. One was involved in testing and quality control of every PCB that was soldered…..

‘A common sight in any industrial unit’ you will say……. read on…….. all of these women were semi literate….. 4th standard in a government school does not really qualify as education anyway… one was illiterate…. She was the one doing the Quality Control!!!! These women had been trained intensively by the NGO…. All the women could do all the functions…… they did every thing by rotation….The women were not only manufacturing these ballasts, they had gotten started on the whole tube light assembly… The next foray was into small emergency lights……. The NGO has established a complete chain……

1. components are sourced in Mumbai and Delhi,
2. the PVC covers were made to design by a local manufacturer (the dies had been cut by the technical man in the NGO)
3. the ballasts were being marketed to tube light assembly manufacturers.
4. The tube light assemblies themselves were being marketed in Pune and Mumbai… at very competitive rates…

In spite of paying fair and just wages to the women, the NGO is showing a surplus… 25 women work in the unit …. They are unable to cope up with the orders that are flowing in!!! This has been on for 8 months now and the unit is definitely a ‘going concern’.

Now the kicker…….. all these women are HIV positive!!!!! They have contracted the disease from their wayward spouses……. Most of them are in the 25-35 year category………. To look at them and their children (who tag along) is gut wrenching….. knowing that death at an early age is certain… and yet fighting it out with dignity……. That’s great…. This effort that they are involved in has brought new life in them… their position in the family has improved……. They still live and eat separately but at least the abuse has lessened…. They have established a good camaraderie amongst themselves……. The work and the act of coming together for a few hours is a psychological booster……..

This experience has resulted in learning for me…… the key one being that there is no need to constrain ones thinking while making choices for trades that one can teach women from rural and tribal areas….. women can adapt and adopt newer skills…. One needs patience, vision and lots of hard work in establishing the backward and forward linkages…. Never again will I say ‘let us look at imparting Income Generation skills that are not ‘alien’ to women’…. There is nothing alien…. Our vision is narrow……..

I leave you with words from Tagore….

Said the setting sun,
“Now who will do the rest ?”
Offered the small lamp,
“I will do my best”………..

Random observations in West Godavari

Great blog post over at the Indian Economy blog. The author is hanging around the West Godavari district in AP and found time to blog with a bunch of very interesting and insightful observations.

Excerpts:

Gautam Bastian told me some interesting road factoids. Highways are intentionally made curved so as not to have drivers sleep off. Some well maintained roads in Orissa are oddly ill-maintained at certain stretches along the road. Turns out it is so because the road contract was given based on points marked on maps. The slight difference on the map between the parts of the road provided to two different contractors translates into no-man’s land in reality and nobody maintains it!

and

The decent hotel where I am staying in small-town Tadepalligudam has the clock faster by 20 minutes because the manager says it makes the staff more active!

See full article.

(By the way, the author of that post is an unrelated Naveen.)