Hapless People……. Sinking Society (A story of present day Maharashtra)

Readers of this post may be aware of the two month long Padayatra in Maharashtra that went through 163 villages across 9 districts covering 944 kms in January-February 2006. (For those who came in later, catch the story on www.greenearthconsulting.org/drought.htm

The process that was triggered off in July 2004 has reached a significant milestone with the publication of the report on the Padayatra and the findings (a web version of the complete report is available at http://www.greenearthconsulting.org/Articles/Padayatra English Report Webversion.pdfThe process was truly mammoth with participation of over 12,000 individuals, 200 agencies and over 1,500 urban based professionals. The findings are heart-rending. We are presenting these to you with trepidation tinged with hope… Hope that you will take it on yourself to do something about the situation.

First the findings. What we saw broke our hearts.. We saw

1. Pain and suffering : hunger, endemic suffering


2. Discontent and haplessness : agrarian crisis, debt ridden farmers, irrigation systems that don’t work, reducing livestock.


3. Loss of livelihoods : educated youth driven away from farming, break down of livelihood systems, unavailability of labour opportunities.


4. Collapse of institutions : panchayats, gramsabhas, co-operatives, social structures.


5. Irregularity everywhere in implementation.


6. Inequity and inequality as an accepted way of life


7. An invidious grip of culture that keeps sections of population under subjugation and passes it off as ‘tradition’

Yet we saw hope. We saw people coming together. We saw individual brilliance. We saw people finding joy in small things in life. We derived and continue to derive energy and impetus from these pockets.

On analysing the findings, we have come to a conclusion that this is happening because of a serious lack of

1. Accountability at all levels – individual, institutions and government.


2. Information and knowledge.


3. Collective ownership and responsibility.


4. Unity.


5. True and visionary leadership.
   

We have come up