We're planning to do a Village Development Project(VDP). We figured that our easiest entry point would obviously be primary education. We have the knowhow required to teach children. (It's not Artificial Neural Networks anyway!) All the other issues, women's empowerment(from literacy to menopause) or employment, are immensely important as well but need indepth knowledge which I fear we don't have. We didn't want to start from scratch. Ideally, all volunteers should participate in developmental projects. All members should be socially aware. But more often than not, in an organization such as ours, which is huge and has highly qualified members from diverging fields, there tend to be a lot of tangential ideas. One of the biggest obstacle is to sift through these suggestions that we get, use the best of them and form a strong foundation.
In Hyderabad, my vision is to ensure that BM works on 2 complementary paths.
One is obviously politically motivated. Even though that sounded like I am condoning the bad word that is "politics", I mean it in a very non-controversial sense. By the time we stand for elections we should have done enough ground work at the grassroot level. I want people to be empowered enough to refuse a Rs. 100 payoff from an MLA of an opposing party and choose to vote for us, simply becase they know that we will ensure a more positive future.
Another is the social work that is essential for an organization like ours to flourish. We have two options. Either we can start making parallel systems to bypass the current one or we can improve existing ones. For example, we can start new philanthropic educational institutions, put in personal capital and motivate children to join or we can use the existing Government schools, the infrastructure already available and make the Govt. accountable. But the problem with taking the 2nd option is that while we're fighting to secure Government funds and tring to eke out the corruption that exists at every level, many children will lose out on an opportunity at education. So, what we need to do instead of starting new schools is to adopt exisiting schools established by NGOs and other like-minded organizations and at the same time have members working on making the system and the people involved more responsible. This is just one of the paradox that I found. I'm sure that there are many more. We have a very complex Governmental mechanism. I tried to find out about the different initiviatives taken up for Women and Child Healthcare that the Govt. of India has. It took me no less than 7 and a half hours(obviously not at a stretch) to first find the exact department where I had to look for the information and then to find the exact information that I was looking for. And this was all online. Imagine, if I tried doing this on the field!
Politicians and bureaucrats have to deal with many more paradoxes such as the one I've mentioned. I don't want to give them too much credit because just the other day, they tried showcasing India's freedom by giving a very fine example. They televised a speech given by a fat MP(who looked like a goonda straight out of a Bollywood masala movie and who, I'm sure, got a lot of unaccounted money). He said, very proudly, that the country he lives in today is truly free for the simple reason that he, a class 5 drop out, could rise to the level of a Member of Parliament! He then enlisted every single plan he had for the upliftment of the minorities and got a standing ovation from the commissioned audiences.
Anyway, I'm sure we have a lot to learn. We will be governing a vibrant country and not just managing a company. I also find that I have to learn a lot about the issues faced by the people we intend to work for. So, I'm planning to take a course at CSIM http://www.csim.org/csimhyderabad.html I went there yesterday to find out the details. What amazes me about institutes like this is the fact that they've built very good models for NGOs and social change activists to work with. So, we won't have to start from scratch and ofcourse the networking opportunity will also be fantastic. I spoke with a couple of people about the VDP. Through our discussions, I found that the best way to make a project work, atleast at the initial stages, is to ensure that it's feasible. To make a VDP feasible, we need to identify a village that is accessible and by that, I mean, one which is less than 75 kms away. Since Hyderabad is growing at such a rapid rate, all we will find at the outskirts are the semi-urban localities, which have issues that are quite different than the urban or rural ones that are well-documented. And BM can work on these specific problems. In my experience, they will range from migration to the cities to havign specialized self-help groups in those areas. We can also introduce microfinance structures that will help solve a lot of socio-economic problems that I assume they face. We can make the Engineering and other institutions that are usually located in those areas resposible for the upliftment as part of their SUPW.
Another choice we have is to work as a support group. There are so many NGOs, NPOs, pressure groups etc. which need human resources. We can provide them with the volunteer services. We can also give them financial support, if required. We have doctors, teachers and many other members who can provide services for these organizations free of cost. We can also make NGO-specific software etc. There are a million ways to do it. All we need is the inclination, motivation and a little bit of determination to move that lazy ass.
Enough food for thought!
Hope you had a safe, colourful and happy....
