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.
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.
