letters from paderu -3

I look forward to be in the world.... 
where need of the SHG member is thought out before the devil named as  target 
where smile on a woman's face is considered more Godly than the data in a report 
where safety of women is considered a priority than providing suit-accomodation to senior officers
where we think of providing toilets in MMS office before constructing western toilet overnight for a visitor
where the SHG women are not corrputed by commissions  
where the SHGs are accepted as they are and not forcing to fit into our five rule frameworks
where giving timely water and food to women is treated more important than arranging fresh fruits and slightly ghee roasted ,salted cashew to some stupid person who neither cares about women nor the spirit of SHGs
where individuals at different (read as top) levels realize that they are working for the same simple women of their once upon time left villages
where waiting for SHG response is considered to be far, far better over waiting for some political big shot
where the staff is treated as an individual with family and personal needs and not as supplier of data and people for meeting

Oh Almighty God, make me enough lucky to live in such world and allow me to  play my humble part.

letters from Paderu -2

I remember Senthil asking that why pilots are successful and why we fail when we are scaling those successful pilots. The most common answer is that we forget or take it for granted the environmental factors while scaling up. True, but its not complete answer, there are many more intricacies to it.

Ask any of our field staff, and they would start narrating how they worked during the early years of project, how much time they used to spend walking to villages, interacting with the community, eating with them and sleeping in those villages.  I personally came to know about a CC, who used to leave her child in a hotel that was a junction between two villages where she was working and used to feed the child while travelling between those two villages. There are many such incidents. I always wonder, why such motivating incidents happened only during the early 2000.

It was the time when staff had time to talk to other staff, in spite of no CUG. It was the time when our staff used to walk long to reach villages. Perhaps they used to carry one note book with them, rather a scribbling pad. Now there are CUG phones, most of them have bikes and we have computers /laptops/ ebooks but why visit to villages have reduced.

No, the answer is not because now there are many initiatives, the reason is not because our field team was young and single then.

The reason and answer to this is communication and only communication.
Communication in all forms and at/from all levels.
Communication free of egos and free of all power tussles.
Communication that is whole hearted and objective

Its been long time that our staff have been appreciated for the job they are doing. Its been long time, they have been involved in strategy planning. Every thing is planned and then they are given task of implementation due to which we see lack of ownership.

Everything is urgent, so no time for thinking. When there is no time for thinking then when will they discuss among their peers and colleagues.

There is no moral fear of committing a mistake because we do not have a proper mechanism for punishment. For that matter, we do not have  a mechanism for rewards also. So how does it bother if one works or not?

And more importantly, they are not sharing the same vision as envisioned in SERP

( I am not sure if i made myself clear, but there are many thoughts running parallelly in my mind that the writing has become more of jig-jag rather than an order of thoughts)

letters from paderu -1

Ever since that myself and Bhanu have moved to Paderu, there have been various experiences that we wanted to document and share. However it was a conscious decision to slow down , so that our emotions will not overpower the objectivity of views.

Touch wood - everything has been positive so far here. The first two months was more of observing and adapting. Also this period helped me to appreciate the context and complexities of TPMU.

I visited a VO called Kommangi in Chintapally mandal. This VO was just about 15 km away from Mandal Headquarter, but somehow neither the meetings nor the savings were happenings in all the SHGs. During my visit, I had discussion with the SHG women in three shifts in three hamlets. During the meeting I asked them what were their problems. They immediately took me to a check dam about a km or two away from the village and showed how it got stagnated with weeds. Check dam was built on the slope where they used to wash clothes earlier. Due to this stagnation all of them were suffering from rashes.

What made me wondered was

• their immediate problem was something which i expected least.
• No body asked me regarding loans or jobs or something else but this was their first issue.
• How an intervention (here check dam) meant for some other purpose had different externalities, some of which we may not visualize at all.

May not be the same issue, but these kinds of surprises used to pop up in every meetings. It has been and still is, really a challenge to understand their priority issues and interweave them in our agenda. Somehow till today, I could not dare to put aside completely my agenda and go with their's. May be because I am viewing my agenda to be different from theirs or may be it really is.