I picked
up what ever newspaper was available in the small shop on the platform and
rushed towards the waiting buses. We were on our way to visit Gram Vikas, in
Ganjam district of Orissa. I opened the newspaper with a smile on my face, it
had been 8 days since I read a newspaper. The smile did not last long as the
front page presented news of the death of a group of five elephants which had
been hit by a fast train yesterday night in the near by forests. The news paper
referred to it as the man-animal conflict. After listening to Joe Madith, I
realized it I should have said, animal - 'civilized' man - 'native' man
conflict.
Joe
Madith addressed us on the importance of promoting housing solutions for the
poor with water and sanitation considerations. Poor people don’t deserve poor
solutions, he said.
To a
question from one of the Yatri's on why he did not consider joining politics as
a good way to bring about change, he said he would be more interested in
educating and bringing awareness to the poor on the democratic processes of our
country, so that they could participate in it effectively.
He also
spoke on why a tribal selling land (to the mining industry) was very different
compared to others selling land, as the idea of private property was not really
understood by the tribals. How the compensation currently paid by the
government was unjust and why the new forests act, giving the tribals a 10%
share in profits earned in the land they
moved out from made sense. Forest rights act was trying to correct a major
anomaly, unjust, practiced by us for the
last couple of hundred years, he said.
On NREGA,
he was of the opinion that it had multiple loopholes. But one of the good
things that came out of it was the significant reduction of destitution among
the poor, as people were now not dependent only on their landlord for work.
Growing
Jatropa in areas currently used for food crops was a bad idea, he said. It only
made sense to grow it on land unused land.
We
visited some villages and saw the water and sanitation solutions Gram Vikas had
helped the villagers implement. At the end of the day we interacted with students in the
residential school run by Gram Vikas.
