First Time in Rural India : Part 2

Contributor: Samarth Bansal

First day in village Tishti disturbed my personal self. I wanted to know more about the people. I wanted to know about their life. I wanted to understand their problems, if they had any. I was curious. I was enthusiastic. I wanted to bridge the ‘disconnect’ gap. 

Part 2: Witnessing the Reality

People say Tishti is a relatively developed village. Still, as expected, there were some serious problems out there. One of the reasons for my lack of empathy with them was for I couldn’t see life through their eyes. I needed to.

There exists 2 government schools and 1 private school in Tishti. Most of the children I met there are enrolled in school. You can find people with graduate degrees, generally a B.A. or a B.Sc. Even girls do go to school. At least primary, if not inter(11th & 12th grade). If I were to collect the entire data and present graphically, it’d have conveyed great stuff about education culture in the village. But this is exactly where stats defy your intuition, for there is no metric for quality of education. 1 teacher, caters to over 300 students in a government school. He is supposed to look after administrative stuff, provide mid-day meals, look after census data. And yes, he is supposed to teach as well. What to expect? On the other hand, most kids go to school for the very incentive of having food. Plus, they are paid a nominal amount to attend classes. Though most parents and children say they do understand importance of education, this is what you end up with : Education, for the heck of it. And so are the graduates. They have no idea why are they pursuing a degree. Enrollment in school/college is all that matters. People have accepted this, and learnt to live with it.

One evening, I saw a young man with some leaves wrapped over his foot. I inquired what that was. He replied, “Khet me kaam karte waqt lag gai thi bhaisahab”. Oh, that was sad. But the village had a government hospital, private clinincs and RMP’s (Registered Medical Practitioners). He should not have had leaves there. “Sarkari doctor kab aate hain, kuch pata nahi. Aur agar private jholachap doctor ko dikhayein, to hafte bhar ki kamai  bhi chali jayegi, pair bhi thik nahi hoga, aur aakhir me patte hi lagane padenge”. That actually summarizes the healthcare scene in the village. Private doctors have no degree, and they very well agree to it. Still they are ‘Doctors’ and earn good bucks. India me sab chalta hai. Government doctor is an MBBS, but people don’ trust him. Though treatment is free of cost, they hardly get any medicines for free, which they are supposed to, for they say they are black-marketed to the village chemist. For any major health issue, they need to travel at-least 15kms to Rasoolabad or Bilhaur. Its hard to bear the travel costs. On top of all this, there is no lady doctor in the village. Its a total mess when it comes for health care facilities. People have accepted this, and learnt to live with it.

For a village with population of around 5000 people, there hardly exists any toilets. Why? Because there lie big farms. Open toilets. They don’need any. Do they even know how harmful it can get for them? Concept of dustbins doesn’t even exist. Drains lie open and blocked with waste. Flies finally found heaven. Cleanliness and sanitation are odd terms. People have accepted this, and learnt to live with it.

It appears that there are a lot many problems existing in the village. But for them, its a way of life. For me, it was scary to see people devoid of basic necessities of life. Am I seeing that for the first time? Of-course no. Context matters. Time matters. The picture I made in slums of Dharavi last December, makes more sense now. I was in a state of mind that it clicked, somewhere deep. All the reflection sessions that the organizing team conducted, just reinforced this.

For the very first time in my life, I realized that development was not about having an efficient 3G network(or perhaps 4G now!), but about something very basic.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”

This a classic statement by Henry Ford when we talk about innovation. For long, we’ve been solving problems people don’ even know exist. We’ve been building products that smooths up our life. But here, I saw a whole bunch of problems lying naked in front of me waiting to be solved. There is no fancy stuff. Its plain and simple : Education, Health, Sanitation, Electricity! Problems seemed to shout out loud : “Hey Engineers, do you really want a challenge? Come, fight us! Oh there, you are an aspiring entrepreneur? Look, their is world beyond internet!”

I witnessed the reality. Rather, I felt it this time. And still one would say to me, “Humara Dehat aap ke Dilli se bahut badiya hai. Kitna kachra hota hai shehro mein. Chain se ghar se bahar bhi nahi nikal sakte. Kab kon maar ke chala jaaye.”

I’ll end with an interesting graph I came across :

Source : http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?tag=well-being

How were they able to quantify something as abstract as “Life Satisfaction”, still remains a question for me. Anyway, its clearly evident that rise from 0 to 10,000 produces a higher amount of happiness than that from say 40,000 to 50,000. Putting it simply, raising people out of poverty has greater impact than making rich even richer. Obvious, right? It isn’t actually. Had that been the case, this world would have had a different face.

Thinking.

Samarth Bansal

Pursuing his graduation from IIT-Kanpur, Samarth is passionate about entrepreneurial Solutions to problems humans face, backed by effective research and technology interventions. He want to spent next few years exploring these.