jenny b

So, perhaps you don’t exactly know the nature of my being here in Udaipur. In that case, I’ll give you a brief re-cap:

I am here as a Clinton Fellow with the American India Foundation. Many of you remember that I had a tough competition with the other 75 exemplary applicants (from the original 250) for just 20 positions this year. The 20 of us very fortunate ones were sent here to India for a period of 10 months to work with development NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations or non-profit/social profit organizations as we call them in the States).

I have been placed with a well-established, and quite large organization (almost 300 staff in total) here in Udaipur – Seva Mandir, in their Natural Resources Development Department.

Seva Mandir is a ‘Gandhian’ organization, which means its work is largely based on the idea that village self-sufficiency is vital for the country’s development; thus the focus is on participatory, “bottom-up” work. (Other community development approaches in India can be generalized by ‘Lefts’ or rights-based organizations and ‘Professionals’ or empowerment-based organizations).

About 25% of Seva’s work is on ‘Livelihoods’ efforts which concentrate on bringing communities together to enhance the productivity of (primarily community-owned) natural resources. They also work with people to create/find alternative income streams. The Women’s Empowerment Program has created a Fair-Trade market niche for handicraft makers. (The remaining 75% is in the areas of Education, Women’s Empowerment, Health, Community Organization, Research and Programming, and Field Support).

The majority of Seva’s work is in the more than 600 villages in the rural areas of Udaipur District (a district is something akin to a county) – though they do have a few urban education programs and safe-houses for women here in Udaipur proper.

Last week, I went with my mentor (AIF language – Seva calls him my ‘Reporting Officer’), Vivek Vyas, to visit one of Seva’s most successful villages – Som. Vivek is quite a character – I’m sure I’ll have many stories of him – who is 28, a bachelor, and has been working for Seva Mandir for 7 or 8 years (less the year he took off to work for a Swedish biofuels company – which he quit when he could no longer abide their push to divert agricultural land for biofuels production).

Som seems to be a bit of a pet project site for him as he lived there while conducting research several years back. He has helped to implement a number of projects there since. Our 2 hour drive to get there was really a beautiful, post-monsoon sight.

We were first driven in a Seva jeep to Jhadol, a larger village in Udaipur District – where I will actually be based when I am “working in the field.” We stopped briefly to eat some lunch, drink some tea, and to sit around for a bit (this seems to be a common office pastime here in India – surely something is happening, but with my lack of language and cultural aptitude I just can’t ever seem to figure out what it is. I’m getting used to it, and the fact that nothing ever happens on time here – I am now always prepared with reading material to pass the time effectively).

From there we carried on to Som, on the way picking up a few other field (“Block” or “Zone”) staff workers who also had some business to do in Som. Along the way we ran into this crowd of dancing festival-goers (I never did understand the occasion, but they were VERY happy!)

Som is a 900 ha. village (I never got the family population) that has been working hard to restore their “common” or shared community (not private) lands, with the help of Seva for the last 6 years or so. Seva has helped them build exclusion stone fences in forest areas that had been severely degraded from overuse; restoring for example, 65 ha. of forest by turning it into a plantation of native/community useful plants.

They also have a nursery and a community vermi-composting system, among other successful community/land rehabilitation projects. I did not see any of these things, however. I just tagged along as we went from place to place and the staff talked to the individuals they were there to touch base with. As I do not understand Hindi and am shy in asking to have EVERYTHING translated, I just watched the dynamics and looked around some.

We spent the majority of our time in the Som Education Center (set up by Seva) where Vivek needed to work with the man in charge of records for the Jatropha Seed Co-operative he set up as a  side project.

Jatropha, Jatropha curcas for you botany lovers, is a plant that is increasingly grown for use as a biofuel. This is the plant that Vivek worked with while working for “the (swedish) man”. The farmer’s co-operative grows the plants in “wasteland” areas and along the edges of agricultural plantings in Som to provide them with access to a growing market.

(Vivek is the one on the far right – white shirt).

Vivek needed to review (and correct) the 75 recent records of farmer’s contributions to the pool, which need to be accurately recorded so as to appropriately compensate each farmer when the seed is sold to the market (likely to the Indian Government for it’s developing biofuel program). He said that one of the biggest challenges is the inadequate capacity to get some of the fundamentals of a project like this done efficiently. For instance, the man in charge of the records for the Co-op has very minimal basic math skills. Village education is not typically very good and teacher absenteeism is a huge problem in rural India.

While waiting, I played with the camera a little. The teacher, Lila wanted her picture taken after she saw me shooting some of the (very shy) kids who were playing Carrom – a very popular Indian past-time.

One of the boys got a little brave and indicated that he wanted to have his portrait taken. Though he was like a deer in headlights while posing, he had a huge smile after seeing the result on my camera.

I was heartbroken when, after getting considerable chiding from the adults about his raggedy shirt, he left the building in a hasty run. But I was quite pleasantly surprised when he returned a few minutes later with this very clean, new-looking T-shirt on! What a doll. He was very happy with the new result – not seeming to care that he had, in his haste, put his shirt on backwards!