Haider
He is a Muslim from a village near Lucknow and looks somewhat oriental, possibly as a result of Central Asian heritage. He has a very gentle, almost diffident manner and a radiantly beautiful smile. His English is rather limited and very quaint – “I am wery happy that all peoples is wery hard-working” – but aspires to jargonese, using words like “attend” and “convey the message” rather than “come to” and “tell” wherever possible, so that “Who is coming to the meeting now?” will be rendered “This time which people is attend the meeting?”, and “Who will tell the youths about the training scheme?” becomes “Which person is convey the message to the youths about the training scheme?”.
Youths and training schemes look set to play a important part of this project. The first day, however, was simply one of orientation. Haider introduced me to other members of the Manch and showed me the one-room Youth Resource Centre (YRC) which was occupied by a pair of desultory-looking youths playing a board game. We also took a tour round the town. To my eyes its streets look drably uniform, but they conceal something exotic: Delwara, quite unlike Maal, is ethnically heterogeneous, and consists of a set of mohallas (neighbourhoods) divided on community lines. There is a Brahmin mohalla, a Rajpiut mohalla, a Muslim mohalla, a Dalit mohalla and so on. There is a significant Jain community which has erected a number of mildly interesting Jain temples throughout the town. All this is so much dross when compared to the town’s real jewel: Devigarh, a fort that has been converted into a luxury hotel.
Devigarh
Devigarh, in a muted echo of Suraj’s degree in History, Politics and Hindi Literature, pricked the balloon of my preconceptions. That there should be a seven star hotel in this provincial backwater is in itself a cause enough for wonder, but it is the fact that Europeans might be roaming carefree in this town whose sole purpose is to play out my back-of-beyond fantasies that really strikes me as beyond the pale! Pale, indeed, is the operative word if the pasty American millionaire couple I saw from a distance yesterday are anything to go by. They were both wearing identical shorts and polo neck tops and had expensive cameras slung ostentatiously round their shoulders. They may have had an official guide, but all I could see was a crowd of delighted youths, probably truanting from the resource centre, wafting the pair round a corner to their fates. The employees of the hotel appear to come from almost anywhere apart from Delwara, as Haider and I confirmed when we bumped into three stylishly-dressed male receptionists returning from a shopping trip in Udaipur. One of them came from Jaipur, another from Calcutta and the third, most bizarrely of all, Madurai in the far south. All were a little supercilious, and none had heard of the Nagrik Vikas Manch.
*
The mantra of the first day was “When Mohan comes back.” Haider said this so frequently and with such quiet reverence that I imagined Mohan, manager of the Manch, to be an old professor-like figure, perhaps a little shabby but nevertheless commanding the respect of his underlings with a gentle wisdom. When I arrived on the second day I remarked “Bahut thanda hai,” (it’s very cold) to the non-descript man with Haider in the office.
“Yes it is,” he replied, a little bemused.
“You are introduction already for Mohan?” asked Haider, looking embarrased.
So much for my wise old professor. Mohan Joshi, a Brahmin from Jaipur, turns out to be only twenty-six and has a background in business. On my discovering his identity, his non-descriptness was quickly replaced by an impressiveness created by his suave command of English and air of quiet authority. He is a little stand-offish and radiates that Indian upper-class trait of not being very concerned with one, but somehow instills in me a feeling that I will like him. He impressed me by cutting straight to the heart and soul of the matter of livelihoods: there is no point getting people to produce something unless there is a market for it. Therefore any newly proposed source of livelihood, or “Income Generating Activity” needs to be bolstered by a market feasibility analysis.
Despite this, it is becoming increasing unclear what I shall be doing for the next few months. It turns out that an NGO called Pradan is expected to come at some unspecified point to conduct a livelihoods analysis, potentially rendering my own efforts in that direction redundant. I have e-mailed Pradan’s director to find out what, if anything, we can do before they come. Meanwhile, the new plan is to encourage young Delwarans to attend training courses in Ahmedabad, run by an organisation called the Dalit Shakti Kendra (DSK). The DSK offers courses in various professional skills including driving, tailoring, electrical engineering, computing, carpentry, motor re-winding and “fabrication” (whatever that may be). So far, Samir, a regular at the Youth Resource Centre, has completed a DSK driving course, and two others are currently in the middle of courses. My role in this will be in promoting the courses and identifying appropriate youths to send.
While on a stroll around the town yesterday I hit on what seemed to be a vital question: the issue of whether we should be giving priority to those youths who are most needy or vulnerable, or whether we should target youths who demonstrate an aptitude for a specific course. I self-importantly regaled Mohan with the question this morning, but he seemed unimpressed and unconvinced that there was much of a distinction between the two approaches. Whatever we decide, I look forward to seeing whether and how this project develops.
No comments:
Post a Comment