Yatra - Gram Vikas

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.