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Published: March 30th 2009
So what is it really like to be in a volunteer project in India for two months? Funny you should ask. Just so you don’t think we are not doing any work in India, we are sending this blog to friends and family so you can get the real scoop on our volunteer project and daily life. For purposes of privacy, we left out identifying names. This blog is replacing the private blog which was difficult to access.
WARNING: This is rather long. So if you don't want to read it and just look at the pictures, that's fine. This content of this missive can be summed up in a few words: fascinating, routine, amazing, heart breaking, hopeful, perplexing, boring, challenging, colorful, corrupt, promising, depressing, inspiring and so on. I think you got the picture: Contrasts, ying and yang, up and down, and so it goes in India.
We are working at a non governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to the elimination of all forms of discrimination, exploitation and victimization of marginalized, disadvantaged and under privileged sections of the society. The NGO has a multi-faceted approach to problems using education, outreach, public demonstration, media, legislative advocacy, and legal action. It
has a number of ongoing projects in the areas of education, food, child labor, and other human rights. They have three offices with about 30 employees and everyone is very friendly and helpful. It was founded in 1982 by a person who started out organizing states for independence under Ghandi in the 1940s and he then spent the next 60 years in every major social justice struggle in India. Even at 85, his commitment permeates his every word as he still strongly believes in the non-violent Ghandian principles (a/k/a the Sarvodaya movement).
Our work at our volunteer project is routine in many respects and we are doing things that we did back in America, but in a different context (which was part of the plan). A lot of our time is spent in the office working on the computer and internet, doing research, writing papers, preparing presentations for lawyers. We are working on three major projects:
1. Writing a Public Advocacy Manual - to help train others and publicize the group's work.
2. Working in the Early Child Education Project - Editing a proposal for a comprehensive study and campaign to get the state to mandate early child
education for children under 6. Stan is also drafting proposed legislation to submit to the Indian Parliament which is right up his alley.
3. Conducting Weekly Legal Skills Seminars for the younger lawyers. It’s a lot like the clinical legal education work that Margaret did at Villanova. It's ended up to be more of classes to improve English language skills for all staff members.
Some of the work is hard to do because of the language problems. A lot of the folks here speak English, but with a British and heavy Indian accent. This combination makes it difficult to understand at times. It is challenging, if not impossible, to have in depth discussions of legal intricacies. So this is the big challenge, but we are working at it and it is getting a little easier the longer we are here.
At other times, our work is unpredictable, amazing, and eye opening. We are sometimes taken on field trips, visit other Indian institutions, or go to Indian conferences and meetings. In many of our visits to the slum areas, we are treated like visiting dignitaries which makes us feel a little awkward. We are probably the only Americans who
have ever visited their village or home and it hopefully makes them feel good about themselves. We often travel in different worlds going from a very poor village or slum to a fancy hotel for a conference:
1.International Women’s Day Educational Program at a Poor Rural Village - A local self help group that is trying to start microbusinesses for the women at the village, invited our organization to speak about women’s rights. It was amazing -The community room was filled with about 100 women of every age, dressed in their best saris, and all sitting on the floor listening intently to how they can organize and improve their lives. It was inspiring to see poor women coming together to make change in their poor village.
2. Media Workshop on the Status of the Child in India - This workshop had a lot of international funding behind it with a large network of national and local organizations working on children issues. It was held in a fairly posh hotel in Bruhenawarsar which is the capitol of Orissa and about an hour from Cuttack. It was part of a strategy to get the media to cover children’s stories more.
The media came and the speakers gave them a lot of facts and figures on the plight of children in India. The facts are startling and daunting: e.g. 1 in 15 children in Orissa die before the age of one; 1 in 11 die before the age of 5; 2/3 of children under 5 are anemic; the majority of districts in Orissa have very high rates of malnutrition; and a majority of the state mandated child services centers have no toilet facilities or drinking water. Against these grim statistics is the equally grim situation that India does not even enforce the laws and mandated services it has on the books. The challenges seem overwhelming at times. But there is a pretty impressive array of NGOs who are working in this area. Hopefully, there will be some movement forward.
3.Civil Registration Project and Handing Birth Certificates - This Project helps poor and illiterate people apply for birth certificates and register them with the state. More than 50% of people in Orissa have never received a birth certificate or registered their existence with the state. Without such documentation, people do not have access to education and other governmental services. Stan and
I went to one of the rural slums to hand out about 15 birth certificates to people of all ages from 2 to 60 years of age.
4.Health Clinic in Rural Slum - Although this rural slum is not that far outside the city of Cuttack, this was the first time that this health team visited this particular slum. The villagers lined up to be examined by two doctors who prescribed medication. The next room had a bunch of pharmaceutical samples laid out on the floor which were then given out. This was an all volunteer health visit with no support from the state. These villagers can not afford private health care and do not even have the means to go to a public hospital. A walk through their village showed the cramped living condition with no potable water or electricity and very little means of financial support.
5.Visit to India’s Supreme and High Court - Visiting the highest courts in the nation and state was like taking a trip back to the British Colonial period in 1860. It doesn’t seem that the administration of justice has changed much in the last 150 years. At the entrance was
Stan at computer
We're lucky that the office has wireless internet connectiona row of typists outside using 1920 manual typewriters to type legal documents for 5 rupees (10 cents) a page. Inside this grand pink concrete building were hundreds of lawyers walking around in their advocate robes or waiting in various court rooms for their case to get called. The courtroom is stacked with huge piles of parchment pleadings which are wrapped in cloth and rope, and are transported in and out of the court room by clerks dressed in all white with colorful turbans.
The practice of law in India requires all the lawyers to be in the courthouse from 10 am to 5 pm each day to wait for their case to be called. There are hundreds of cases on each list. If called, their argument may only take a few minutes but they don’t want to miss it because the case may be several years old. Then at night, the lawyers go back to their offices and interview clients, prepare cases for the next day. It seems like a highly inefficient way to practice law but that’s the way it is in India -millions of people; thousands of cases backlogged; and a limited number of judges.
6.Visit
to Urban Slum and School- Stan and I were the honored guests at a School in an urban slum. The school children, about 50 in a one room school house, put on a play, did remarkable Indian dances, and sang. The children were beautiful, talented, and happy. Stan and I toured this urban slum which was built on the sides of the open water drainage system where 80 families lived in space meant for 40 families. Every space was utilized with cooking facilities on the outside ledges of the canal and cloths hanging from the roof. The social worker who was respected in this village, took us to visit all the families in this urban slum. We were warmly greeted and accepted.
It is clear that the family structure is the glue that keeps these societal units together in the slum communities. Extended families live together and take care of each other. There is warmth and caring for the young and old, even though their material wealth is little. As development occurs, hopefully they can maintain the strength which comes from family and community tempered with the benefits of education and better living standards. This is the challenge in
developing countries.
Our living situation is pretty comfortable though. We lucked out because we are staying with a nice middle class Indian family. The father works as a producer for a government TV station and can speak English. The mother and grandmother stay home all day cooking and cleaning and only speak the local dialect of Oriya (each state in India seems to have its own language in addition to the official languages of Hindu and English). Their children are grown and married. We rent a bedroom on the second floor with an attached bathroom and we have access to the general living areas. We can walk to the office everyday which is a real plus. Driving around here creates a lot of anxiety. Our host family is extremely hospitable and we eat with them a few times a week.
Our daily routine is that we get up early, sometimes take a long walk to get exercise, meditate a little, eat breakfast, walk to the office by nine, take an hour off for the big meal, lunch at 2, work in the office until 6 or 7, and then walk home. We read and play cards a lot
at night as there is not much else to do. Then we go early to bed and are often serenaded by a chorus of street dogs that bark throughout most of the night. The dogs sleep during most of the day because it is too hot to do anything else.
We are living in one of the poorest cities in one of the poorest states in India. I think we are the only Americans living in this city. This is not a tourist destination. The city of Cuttack has about 1 and ½ million people with 268 official slum areas. The state of Orissa has an official poverty rate of 40% with the highest concentration of tribal communities living in the rural areas. Cuttack is a millennium city (over 1,000 years old) so it has a lot of old crumbling buildings in various stages of disrepair. There are also pockets of redevelopments but on each block there is usually a wide assortment of dwellings from a fairly clean middle class home to a shack to a business stall, and vacant lots with trash strewn about. India’s trash removal system consists of people literally throwing their garbage out the front
window or in the lot next door. The cows eat the food like products and the rest stays in piles or flies about. There is no such thing as a trash can.
Yet, once we settled into the rhythms of life, this constant rambling, busy metropolis takes on a character of its own -filled with people, bikes, and cows all on the street at the same time vying for space. Due to Cuttack’s poor economic status, there are more bikes than cars in this city (which is good in an environmental sense). The road usually has about 40% bikes (which are used to carry everything from steel rods to children going to school), 40% motorbikes, 10% autorickshaw, and 10% cars. If there were more cars, there would be no way anything could move on these narrow streets. Everyone is always going somewhere. All sorts of daily activities occur on the street from playing and socializing to cooking to washing cloths. Every time we go outside, we are greeted with an array of sights and people which keeps the brain in a constant overload mode.
Passing impressions of India thus far:
Elections: Filled with criminals, personality driven, no issues,
too many parties (250), abandoned by middle class as being too corrupt to be effective
-Indian government: inefficient, corrupt, slow court system, lots of bureaucracy
-Poverty: Huge. India has more than 1/3 of world's chronically malnourished children; low life expectancy; 750 million of 1.1 billion still live in villages where there are non functioning roads and little access to health and education centers; 50% of women illiterate
-People: many, colorful, friendly, polite
-Streets: noisy, chaotic, busy, loud speakers
-Religions: important, diverse, but accepting and tolerant
-Caste System: officially illegal but still remnants in many sectors of society, especially in dalit class (lowest class that does dirtiest work)
-Social Justice Work: huge network of NGOs, very committed people, trying to make a dent in a huge problem
-Cows: everywhere, slow, dung, and always eating
India seems to be on the cusp of some monumental change that will take place in the next generation. Opportunities are improving, although not rapidly. Growth is steady but slow in the 5-8% per year. I am convinced that nothing will be that rapid in India with so many people and the sheer amount of deprivation. It's been interesting so far and I'm sure we still
have lots of learn. But this is the kind of stuff that occupies us on a day to day basis.
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Barbara Lasker
non-member comment
Thanks for the comprehensive report. What an amazing experience. Obviously so different from the US, but you appear to be working on the issues that characterized your work at home.