Subhas Dutta

Subhas Dutta has spent the last three decades perfecting the dying art of active citizenship.

He is the son of refugees from Bangladesh and calls the grand old city of Kolkata his home. One could mistake this unassuming Chartered Accountant for a harmless ‘Aam Admi’ who’s just trying to live his life and ‘get by’. But underneath those thick rimmed glasses, are a pair of ever watchful, resolute eyes. Keenly observing the changing face of the city he lives in.

For thirty years Subhas Dutta has fought to preserve and protect what’s left of Kolkata’s fading environment. In the early nineties, the volume of PILs being filed by Dutta eventually led to a special Green Bench being established in the city’s high court. It was also the first dedicated bench of its kind in India.

Subhas Dutta has filed more court cases on environment and heritage protection issues than anybody else in India. His day job has certainly lent to his meticulous approach to his activism.

“I do all the research my self, I go to every location personally on a fact finding mission, I take pictures, I talk to all the stake holders and then decide what’s in the best interest of the people and the environment before filing each PIL”, he shares. Currently, he has 10 cases in the Kolkata high court.

His dogged determination makes him a formidable foe and favourite punching bag for all those inconvenienced by his stand. Wielding great political and financial resources, they have tried to malign his reputation by insinuating his involvement in a molestation and an attempt to murder case. But the man remains undeterred.

“I’m not bothered by this slander. It’s no surprise that they want to discredit me, it must mean that I’m doing something worthwhile”, he quips.

Each of Dutta’s successes is actually a success for the city of Kolkata. He has ensured the phasing out of 1.2 million old and polluting vehicles from the city’s roads- which caused 2/3 of the city’s air pollution. The annual book fair that used to trample and pollute the main Maidan has now been shifted to a another venue. “The Maidan is Kolkata’s lungs and comprises 60% of city’s green cover. It was littered with filth and uncared for, parts of it were used as parking space and rubbish was being burnt daily”, Dutta explains. His campaign to protect Rabindra Sarobar saw thousands of citizens protesting and writing letters seeking funds and a mandate for its restoration. Dutta’s work also ensured that there shall be no private functions in the Shibpur botanical gardens that leave behind a trail of empty bottles and paper plates.

Dutta laments the poor prioritization of environmental issues by our countries political parties. “No surprises here, since the government is the biggest violator of our country’s natural resources; either to pursue its own short sighted goals or by allowing environmental degradation by the private sector”.

In response to this predicament, Dutta has launched India’s first Green Political Party. He was invited to Brussels and London to learn how a small but dedicated group of Green Party members are safe guarding their country’s environment and the interest of the citizens in the long run.

“Creating a green political party is the best way to tackle the situation nationally. But no one wants to fund or align with a party that might be a stumbling block to their capitalist agendas.” Dutta struggles to keep the green party afloat, even as the citizens of West Bengal pledge their allegiance to him. Internet forums are gushing with support for his work.

The West Bengal Government gives hundreds of crores in kerosene subsidy for the rural poor. Yet, no significant investment is made in solar power. Dutta is also worried about the construction of a Nuclear power plant in an earthquake prone area. “There is a lesson to learn from Japan’s recent disaster. Even in the past we have seen poor disaster management by government authorities with the common man bearing the brunt, how can I support a nuclear power plant given these circumstances”.

Dutta also feels that the nation is failing it’s young with it’s lop sided education. “Education of life, community and service” according to him are topics being taught neither in a classroom or at home. “A child today is taught only to be a competitive, self indulgent professional and the few who do go off the beaten path to study environment (care and management), for example, are unable to find jobs”. Dutta suggests that taking care of the environment needs to become a mandatory part of Corporate Social Responsibility in India.

West Bengal, like the rest of India; is plagued with public apathy and a contagious sense of impotence among citizens, to change the situation. Subhas Dutta is living his life as an example and a cure, powering through every obstacle, equipped only with his moral discernment and a vision for a better India.

Read all articles by Tithiya Sharma here.

Kailash Basfore, 35, is a sweeper by profession. However, he is also an actor. He is part of the Harijan Para Slum Folk Theatre Group that periodically performs plays on the benefits of sanitation in the 52 slums dotting Kalyani, a township located 65 kilometres north of Kolkata in West Bengal.

Motivating Kailash and others of his ilk to initiate a sanitation programme in the Harijan para slum was no mean task but this has been accomplished by a local municipal health officer, Dr Kasturi Bakshi, 53. Next to the tall and hefty Kailash, Dr Kasturi Bakshi stands frail and petite. But to Kailash and friends, “Dr Bakshi is God. She taught us how to live with dignity”. Kailash, who emerged as one of the natural leaders of the initiative, led the movement towards 100 per cent sanitation first within his own slum and later in several slums across Kalyani.

When Dr Bakshi first visited this slum, housing 110 odd sweeper families, the faecal odour was unbearable. She recalls, “It was impossible to even walk past the slum without holding your nose due to the smell caused by open defecation. I took this slum as a challenge to implement the Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) project.”

The first challenge was to motivate this community, primarily comprising sweepers who made a living by keeping other peoples’ toilets clean, to keep their own surroundings sanitary. Says Kailash, “That was the ultimate irony. We toiled to clean toilets in others’ homes but ourselves lived amidst total squalor with no thought of sanitation. When Dr Bakshi explained the ill effects of open defecation, especially how it affected our health, I was convinced. We constantly suffered from diarrhoea and the children were always sick with stomach ailments; they also had worms.”

A play on the theme of sanitation being staged by the talented Harijan Para Slum Folk Theatre Group in a slum in Kolkata's Kalyani township. (Credit: Ajitha Menon\WFS)

According to Dr Bakshi, few people realise that improved sanitation can reduce the disease burden of our country by 50 per cent. “Poor sanitation not only pollutes the environment, it is a hazard for human health and an infringement upon human dignity, safety and privacy, especially of women. It reduces economic benefits and aggravates poverty, weakening the foundation of social development,” she points out.

Under the CLTS project that began in 2006 with the support of the Kolkata Urban Services for the Poor (KUSP), slum dwellers like Kailash were told that there would be no subsidy for the construction of toilets; the goal was not to merely increase the number of toilets but to ensure an open defecation-free environment. “We told them that habits had to change to achieve this goal. It was behavioural change that was important, not the model of the toilet,” elaborates Dr Bakshi.

The concept of sanitary toilets was introduced to the residents. With just an ordinary pan, a pit and a water seal that prevents visibility of excreta, foul smell, access to insects and animals and faecal oral contamination, these toilets can be constructed at a nominal cost of just Rs 250-300 (US$1=Rs 45.2). “The main motivation for us, besides the low cost was the fact that it promised to reduce medical expenditure if everybody used it,” says Kailash.

The audience enjoys the play being put up by the Harijan Para Slum Folk Theatre Group. (Courtesy: Dr Kasturi Bakshi)

He put up the first toilet in his home and then started convincing others, especially the youth in the community. “Basfore and a couple of his friends emerged as natural leaders of the movement. They cajoled and motivated others in the community. The older lot was the most resistant but, finally, almost every household came through within just one month,” recalls Dr Bakshi.

With the success at Harijan Para, Kailash and his friends decided to support Dr Bakshi in her bid to make all the 52 slums – with a population of 48,167 – open defecation free. The project cost was just Rs 2.50 lakh. “The transformation was amazing. Once our neighbours saw the disease rates falling and started feeling proud of having their own toilets, using and maintaining them, they even started to spend more to get better pans, concrete walls and good doors for them,” smiles Deepak Basfore, 28, another community activist.

Deepak recalls how an aged man, Sambhu Basfore, resisted building a toilet till the last. Finally, the slum children took to whistling at him whenever he attempted open defecation. “He was embarrassed and shamed into getting his own toilet,” he says. Other slum dwellers became interested when Harijan Para won an Inter Slum Cleanliness Competition.

“Kalyani was declared an open defecation free (ODF) city in 2008. But this was not enough. Mass awareness to sustain the 100 per cent sanitation was required,” says Dr Bakshi. The toilets were up. Using them and maintaining them became a priority. It was then that the idea of creating a folk theatre group for advocacy emerged. Dr Bakshi got some enthusiastic community members, which includes four talented women, to form the Harijan Para Slum Folk Theatre Group that stages street plays and stage shows to spread awareness on the benefits of sanitation, relief from diseases and ending open defecation.

Local municipal health officer, Dr Kasturi Bakshi, initiated the movement towards 100 per cent sanitation in the slum area. (Courtesy: Dr Kasturi Bakshi)

The group pens the script themselves and also doubles up as actors. Saturday evenings are dedicated to rehearsing. “The plays have been such a success that we decided to incorporate other themes to eradicate social evils like alcoholism and domestic violence and motivate parents to send their children to school,” says Deepak.

However, to maintain this progress some additional incentives have been provided to the slum dwellers. Like giving open defecation free slums priority for other development work, such as building roads, water pumps, drains, and so on, and installing solar street lamps. Community leaders like Kailash have also been taken to see some of the more progressive Mumbai slums.

Even the Kalyani University, that owned the land on which Harijan Para had illegally come up, has donated it to the slum dwellers as an acknowledgement of the community’s efforts in the sanitation drive.

The outcome of these efforts has been significant. The immediate impact was in terms of disease rates, which fell sharply – from 347 cases in 2005-06 the figure came down to 124 cases in 2007-08. It has fallen further in the last two years. “The incidence of anaemia in adolescents has gone down considerably, as found through a school monitoring programme. This can be attributed to improved sanitation in the township,” informs Dr Bakshi.

Now the CLTS team, comprising eight women health workers from each slum, meets every Sunday to share information and discuss solutions under the leadership of Dr Bakshi. “We work as a group to find solutions for any emerging sanitation problems. Several new public toilets have been constructed in the township on our suggestion. A new ward has been incorporated into Kalyani now and we are reviewing the sanitation situation there at present,” shares Sandhya Sarkar, 45, a health worker and team member from the Simanta area.

Dr Kasturi Bakshi got some enthusiastic community members, which includes four talented women, to form the Harijan Para Slum Folk Theatre Group that stages street plays and stage shows to spread awareness on the benefits of sanitation. (Courtesy: Dr Kasturi Bakshi)

Adds Bibha Mondal, 43, from Taltala sub-centre, “Whenever new houses come up in any of the slums, our priority is to check whether a toilet is being put up or not. Sustained awareness campaigns are the only way to ensure that sanitation standards are maintained.”

Of course, for residents like Kailash, Bibha and Sandhya, it was a proud moment when recently a woman researcher from Spain, who came visiting Harijan Para to conduct a survey, told them that their toilets were cleaner than those at the Indian Museum in Kolkata!

More than 1.1 billion people in India have no access to sanitary toilets. Subsidised toilets provided by the government have failed to be a sustainable sanitation model. As Kalyani has just shown, only community participation and community-led initiatives can bring about total sanitation in Indian villages.

Ishika Mondal, 34, works for two hours every day in waist deep water, trying to keep the fragile ‘Gracilaria’ or ‘Seola’ (seaweed) seeds alive at the small experimental seed bank in her village of Harekrishnapur in Sunderbans, West Bengal. “This is our hope for the future. Selling the seaweed every 40 days will bring money for our families,” says Ishika.

In contrast Raushi Singh, 45, wakes up at 4 am and treks for about one-and-half hour along the muddy banks of the river Bidya in the delta region, searching for crab marks. She plunges her hand deep into the crab holes and pulls out these crustaceans. “It’s risky and crab bites are common, but most women in our village forage for crabs like this. We then walk to the market, about two-hours away, to sell them so that we can buy essentials for our family,” says Raushi.

Seola seaweed offers a nutritious dietary alternative and is extremely beneficial for pregnant women. It can be sold to baby food and diet supplement manufacturers. (Credit: Jayanta Pal\WFS)

For Raushi, an alternative means of livelihood, like the seaweed cultivation project, would definitely mean some relief from this dangerous and exhausting struggle for sustenance – a way of life for hundreds living in the Sunderbans.

The continued impact of Cyclone Aila – that hit parts of Eastern India and Bangladesh in 2009 – has taken a heavy toll, both on the environment and the local communities in the Sunderbans. There has been large-scale migration of the men to larger cities in search of work, which has left Ishika, Raushi and many other women to fend for their children and themselves on their own.

Panchanan Das, Chairman, Forest and Land Committee, Basanti Panchayat Samiti observes, “There has been almost no rabi or kharif (winter and summer agricultural seasons) cultivation in the region since Aila because of the salinity in the soil caused by the receding flood waters. Forget paddy, even fruits and vegetables refuse to grow. Prawn and fish cultivation is also at a standstill, as the ‘bheris’ and ponds in which they were reared, were filled with saline water. Incidence of viral disease in fish, post-Aila, has gone up as well. With no livelihood options left, 90 per cent of the male youth and about 20 per cent of the young women here have moved to cities like Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai and even to the Andamans and Gujarat. In most villages only women are left behind with young children.”

The women soon realised that there was no surety that money would arrive at the end of the month from their husbands, sons or brothers, and even if it did, the amount would always remain uncertain. “With no men around, finding work became a priority for us. The panchayats have been unable to find us employment through the MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act). Whatever little work was offered involved hard manual labour like building embankments – impossible for women to do. We suggested poultry, goat-rearing, handicraft, but nothing materialised. Self Help Groups (SHGs) and NGOs have provided some alternative means of livelihood,” says Uma Deb Sharma, 45, of Thakurgheri village under Basanti Block.

Then, with the aim to provide a better means of livelihood to the local women, the Nature Environment Wildlife Society (NEWS) initiated the seaweed project on an experimental basis in three villages on four plots. “We had seen a similar project at Mandapam in Tamil Nadu, where there is a seaweed processing factory as well. Seaweed needs both saline and sweet water to flourish and the Sunderbans is ideal for this, as saline water regularly flows in during high tides,” reveals Barnita Dasgupta, Project Coordinator, Community Development, NEWS.

Adds Aparna Mondal, 35, Secretary of the Saradamoyee SHG under Jyotispur gram panchayat, which runs the Seaweed Project at Harekrishnapur, “‘Seola’ offers a nutritious dietary alternative and is extremely beneficial for pregnant women. It’s excellent food for the people in Sunderbans. We can also sell it to baby food and diet supplement manufacturers. There will be a yield every 40 days if the experiment works.”

If things go according to plan, there are hopes for the production of 15-30 kilograms of seaweed per woman, every 40 days from individual plots. “One kilo will fetch Rs 20. We aim to involve about 800 women in this project,” says Rajnarayan Mondal, 42, Local Project Coordinator, NEWS.

Besides the seaweed initiative, the mangrove nursery project has emerged as another successful means of livelihood for the women in the Basanti block. Anjali Sardar, 45, a widow, whose two sons have left Sunderbans in search of work, says excitedly, “We are cultivating ‘kalobain’ (Black Avicenea) saplings that we’ll sell for one rupee each to the NGO when they are ready. We also plan to plant them along the river banks to earn extra money. In fact, we got paid 35 paise per jute bag we stitched, which are used to collect clay from the river banks and the ‘Kalobain’ seeds from the forest. The seeds have now been planted in the clay. That was hard work. These days we spend two hours every morning and evening watering and caring for these saplings.”

The mangrove nursery project has emerged as another successful means of livelihood for the women in the Basanti block. (Credit: Jayanta Pal\WFS)

Environmental concerns like the need to plant and protect the mangroves in the Sunderbans are also being addressed by the NEWS project. “After Aila, the realisation dawned that areas with greater density of mangroves had remained relatively unscathed. Now these women are not only involved in planting new trees, they also take a keen interest in protecting them,” says Ankita, Project Trainee, NEWS.

Thirty-two year old Kanondolai’s house was submerged when Aila hit the delta. Earlier, her fields yielded about 10 ‘basta’ (One ‘basta’ equals 60 kg) paddy per ‘bigha’. Now the yield is not even three ‘basta’. There is loss in cultivation due to the poor soil situation. Her son is a pipeline worker somewhere near Mumbai and he sends about Rs 300 home, hardly sufficient for Kanondolai, her husband and a young daughter, a student of Class VII. So she diligently works at the nursery.

“Many girls have gone to work in cities as domestic help. I fear many are being trafficked. I don’t want the same for my daughter. The nursery project is my safety net. I made money from the jute bags I stitched and once the saplings are sold, I will have money in hand. My husband is ill but he does odd jobs. We will manage somehow,” she says.

Most families in Sunderbans claim that they have received no compensation yet for building/repairing their houses, post cyclone Aila, let alone any other monetary help from the government. Basanti block authorities say that of the Rs 52 crores due as compensation for repairing dwellings, they have received only Rs 24 crore till 2010-11. Even the sanctioned fortification of embankments has not taken place. At the most, only some superficial work has been done.

It is obvious that hardly any post-cyclone intervention by government agencies has taken place in Sunderbans but it is heartening that the residents, particularly women, are trying to mitigate the financial, social and environmental impact of Aila to some extent, and doing this themselves.

An affordable device that does not need electricity or moving gears but runs only on gravity, is scientist Suprio Das’s answer to water contamination. Nilanjana Nag Pereira reports.

Odd as it may seem, innovation and its usage have become inversely proportionate today. Says scientist Suprio Das, “90 per cent of our leading designs are created only for 10 per cent of the people- those who can afford to benefit from them.” While not interfering with the age-old discrepancies between the haves and the have-nots, Das intends to make something as basic as pure drinking water affordable and accessible to the common man.

ZIMBA being used for providing potable water in Dhaka

In the year 2005, the presence of arsenic in Kolkata’s ground-water caught Das’s attention. He began visiting small villages in Bengal to collect water samples. He then volunteered to work with a local NGO on arsenic mitigation. In 2011, his invention, ZIMBA, an automated chlorine dozer, was installed in a village near Gobardanga, Bengal and consequently in five slums of Dhaka this February. The response from these areas has been quite promising, Das tells us. The device has been lauded for the simplicity of its design and its easy implementation.

How does ZIMBA work? Once installed, it automatically adds chlorine to water in correct proportions, explains Das. It can be fitted to a rural community’s existing water source, such as the hand pump of a well or the tap of a rainwater harvesting cistern.

However, durability of the device was a major concern for Das; moving parts such as hinges and gears are usually the first point of failure, hence designing a product with zero moving parts was the intention from the start. Moreover, ZIMBA does not require electricity to run, which is expensive and unreliable in rural areas; it can be operated using gravity alone. That the source of water in rural areas is often varied proved to be another challenge. Though channelized flow of water in a regular tap was easy to work with, it wasn’t always readily available. Hence the device had to be compatible with any method of input, be it from a tap, a hand pump or even a bottle poured out in batches.

Deriving the correct ratio of chlorine to water, a common problem for most people working with chlorine, required precision and the creator of ZIMBA achieved it after much hard work.

Suprio Das - The innovator of ZIMBA

Naturally, the effort has borne fruit. So far, 5 slums of Bangladesh have used ZIMBA. Soon, Das will choose a few villages in North 24 Parganas to install the instrument with the help of a local NGO. The International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research of Bangladesh, and a team from Standford University, is now carrying out research to determine if ZIMBA would help generate bacteria or arsenic-free water.

Closer home, Das is trying hard to facilitate the implementation of community-based chlorinating devices in Kolkata; he believes that the West Bengal government would benefit a lot from it. He believes,

The state would see fewer diarrhoeal diseases in urban slums and rural areas, he says, “the current data on mortality and disability caused by diarrhoeal diseases in India is alarming – diarrhoea alone causes more than 1,600 deaths daily. This device could also be implemented in emergency situations after floods and earthquakes.

When asked about funds for the project, Das, who gave up a stable career in electrical engineering to innovate independently, says, “It is not just raw material but also tools and manpower that are required for experimenting and prototyping. I start with my own resources and then look for funding to move ahead. Projects die when funds are not available but for ZIMBA I was fortunate to get some funding from a US-based organization.” The relative cost of the device when patented, Das tells us, can be approximately Rs 5000 and one unit can serve more than 50 families. If produced in bulk the cost can be brought down by 50 per cent.

Meanwhile, ZIMBA has fetched Das international recognition. A seminar held last year at Stanford University, USA, also displayed ZIMBA. Das demonstrated how the device worked and addressed the audience on grass-root innovations in general. He also spent a few days working with a group of students on developing a different technology for an automatic chlorine dispenser.

Women in a slum using ZIMBA to get clean water

Would Das ever consider teaching youngsters? “I thought students in India are mainly concerned about getting better grades that may fetch them high-paying jobs,” says the cynical 55-year-old scientist. “They do not have time for anything outside their curriculum and I don’t blame them because creativity is not really nurtured in our present education system.” But there is light at the end of the tunnel for Das. Having enjoyed working with student teams at MIT and Stanford and teaching them the significance of low-cost technologies, Das now has a renewed sense of hope in the future generation. “Being innovative cannot be taught through lectures and text books but can be shared through experiences. I would be more than happy to share mine with those who are interested.”

When asked why his creation is called ZIMBA and if it is an abbreviation of sorts, Das chuckles, “Zimba or Simba means ‘lion’ in Swahili.” Considering the device can handle more than a thousand litres of water per day, thereby catering to the needs of a large majority of people, the name seems apt indeed.

Tribal women of Purulia district in West Bengal have learnt, with the help of several NGOs and SHGs, to implement efficient water management techniques and multi-crop approach and achieved food-sufficiency in a region that was on the ‘drought-hit’ list in spite of heavy rainfalls. They are now tackling social ills in their villages!

It was ironical that Purulia district often found itself on the West Bengal government’s ‘drought-hit’ list when the average rainfall here is 1100mm-1500mm. The failure to conserve water as well as poor agricultural practices meant that despite back-breaking labour in the fields, farmers could only achieve six months’ food sufficiency.

Today, however, all that is changing thanks to a water management revolution led by ordinary village women, a majority of them tribals. “The magic has been worked through our Self Help Group’s (SHGs) water management programme,” says Sadmoni Hembram, 39, of Tilaboni village, who proudly informs that she has a multi-crop land that yields two vegetable and one paddy crop in a year these days.

In an area where development has been stunted due to a weak government machinery and increasing Maoist influence, SHGs like Sadmoni’s ‘Petre Madwa’ have spearheaded developmental initiatives like the Integrated Natural Resource Management (INRM) under the government’s Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojna (SGSY). Of course, this has been achieved with guidance from Pradan, an NGO working on creating sustainable livelihood in the region.

Explains Kuntalika Kumbhakar, Integrator (state unit), Pradan:

Purulia that falls in the Agro-Economical Zone 7 gets adequate rainfall, yet most of the water just flows away, particularly in the hilly areas. Therefore, we train the SHG women to conserve water, increase water harvesting and water table levels, check soil erosion and offer a combination of crops best suited to the category of land and available water resources to improve livelihood

As per Sadmoni, in order to improve access to water for irrigation in her village, they have “made ‘hapas’, or small water tanks, where rain water is collected.” These ‘hapas’ have a technical design, wherein the lowest point of the field is excavated in steps and the rain water flows into the tank. “The size of these tanks varies from 30ftx30ft to 100ftx100ft depending on the area that needs to be irrigated,” she says. Once the water is collected, the next step is to ensure that a minimum amount is used to irrigate the maximum area.

Better water management has led to a remodelling of local agricultural practices with farmers now cultivating short-term crops. The land in Purulia falls into four categories and the tribal population categorises them as: ‘byde’ or upland, ‘kanali’, which refers to surface-level medium upland as well as medium lowland, and ‘bohal’ or low-lying land. Says Sadmoni:

The land holdings among the families of women in the 184 SHGs in Burrabazar block fall under the medium upland category. Today, we first plant a pre-monsoon cash crop like vegetables or creepers such as cucumber or gourds, which use the north-western showers. Later, a short-term paddy crop that is sufficient for our use is sown. This is followed by another vegetable cash crop. There is sufficient water because along with the monsoons, we use the ‘hapas’ water. In extreme dry seasons, we plant mustard for a short term. Almost all farmers now have at least double or three crops.

To celebrate this agricultural turnaround and to compare notes and share strategies on varied concerns in the region, recently around 5,000 women belonging to 350 SHGs, organised under two federations, ‘Jhalda Nari Shakti Mahila Sangh’ and ‘Sabuj Sathi Nari Shakti Sangh’, came together for a ‘mahaadhiveshan’, or mass meeting, held in the Barrabazar and Jhalda blocks of Purulia, respectively. All these women are true change-makers and have shown that by simply ensuring better outcomes from traditional livelihoods like agriculture, achieved through practices like watershed land and water management measures, micro-credit financing, and horticulture, poor village households, too, can lead a life of dignity.

Around 5,000 women belonging to 350 SHGs, organised under two federations, 'Jhalda Nari Shakti Mahila Sangh' and 'Sabuj Sathi Nari Shakti Sangh', came together recently for a 'mahaadhiveshan', or mass meeting, held in the Barrabazar and Jhalda blocks of Purulia. (Credit: Jayanta Pal.WFS)

Like Sadmoni, Sarathi Kumar Bala, 30, who was present at the ‘mahaadhiveshan’, is a happy woman today. In addition to water conservation, she, and other tribal women of the Narayani Mahila Samity in Berada village, has understood the importance of safe drinking water and hygiene. Here, the Water for All intervention, which focuses on safe drinking water and sanitation and on bringing about a change in the attitude of the villager, has made the difference. Effecting change, Sarathi’s group has been conducting house visits to convince villagers to keep their surroundings clean, wash hands regularly and not to defecate in the open. “We also make them aware of the Rs 3,200 government subsidy to build latrines if they contribute Rs 300 themselves,” she says.

As Sarathi’s village group successfully put into practice the Water For All strategy, their tribal sisters in Mohuldi hamlet, which falls under Jhalda I Block, were not far behind. In an area characterised by water scarcity, the Radha Rani SHG, led by Balika Mahato, has pioneered an initiative to provide piped drinking water. “We not only constructed several water harvesting structures for irrigation, but have set up a pipe distribution channel across the village to ensure that water from deep tube wells used for drinking is not wasted,” says Balika, 38.

Even in the hilly terrain of Bagmundi and Ayodhya blocks, tribal women from 65 SHGs now know how to hold on to the rain water that previously used to simply flow away. They have devised low-cost methods like building earthen dams and using the gravitational flow mechanism to carry the water to the site through channels. “The cost is minimal and the women are reaping the benefits in the form of increased agricultural yield,” points out Kuntalika.

In Gokurnagar village, for instance, 8-10 bighas of non-fertile land today is yielding paddy, potato and mustard crops through the year because of the efforts of the Bidhuchandan Mahila Samity, a group of 14 tribal women. “We first built mud banks around the land to prevent soil erosion and allowed the rain water to stagnate for a year. Then we spread cow dung fertiliser to make the soil fertile and dug several ‘hapas’. After the fertiliser dried up, we did a soil test and then planted our first paddy crop. For the last two years, we are also harvesting potato and mustard on the same land,” beams Mangali Mandi, 28, the treasurer of the group.

With a flourishing livelihood prototype in place, the Purulia women are now training their energies on tackling the social problems plaguing them. Partnering this process is Delhi-based women’s resource group, Jagori, under a special gender empowerment project initiated in 2011 and supported by the UN Women’s Fund for Gender Equality. Says Mangali:

During the ‘mahaadhiveshan’ we discussed issues like child marriage and dowry. In Purulia, there are over 40 per cent child marriages and dowry, though non-existent amongst tribals, is a problem for the OBCs. We have also found that female selective abortions are on the rise. Today, we have the strength and solidarity to oppose these social evils and that is our next course of action.

Incidentally, things are already starting to look up. Take Gokurnagar village. Where earlier the women were not allowed to venture out of homes, often prevented from attending SHG meetings and forced to migrate with the family during the harvest season, they now enjoy an equal status in decision making. Of course, it helps that their economic status has improved considerably.

In fact, this is the story across Burrabazar block where the 184 SHGs have a total fund value of one crore ninety lakh rupees, of which they disbursed one crore thirty-five lakh rupees in loans in the last financial year. Such has been the impact of this socio-economic empowerment that Sadmoni says, “Aajkal dada bagale gecche, amra meeting esche (These days men take the cattle for grazing while we attend a meeting)!”

Purulia’s SHG movement is a development initiative without a political umbrella and it has given recognition and dignity to women, who earlier had no significance, presence or voice.

The women of West Bengal’s Purulia district have been striding towards change for the last few years now, transforming the livelihood status and economic condition of hundreds of families. Aided by Pradan, a non-profit working on creating sustainable livelihood in the region, it’s a women-powered Self-Help Group (SHG) revolution that has acted as the catalyst.

Today, for instance, women of 184 SHGs in the Barrabazar Block have managed to build a collective corpus fund of one crore ninety lakh rupees in the bank – no small feat for those who have spent the greater part of their lives living below the poverty line. But with the money coming in another critical concern started plaguing them: As illiterate or semi-literate women, how were they to manage their earnings? How were they to understand the workings of a bank? How were they to sign cheques or deposit cash if they couldn’t read, write or recognise numbers?

Classes being conducted at a Functional Literacy Centre in Purulia. There are 2,413 women learning the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic in 108 such centres across the district. (Credit: Pradan)

Says Sujala Murmu, 35, of village Tuima Baradi, “We feared that we might be cheated. We were making payments, takings loans, paying interest to the bank – all blindly, on trust. This concerned us greatly. We wanted to learn to read and write. To know the numbers.”

Literacy has never been strong around these parts – even the 2011 Census gives Purulia an average literacy rate of 65.38. The female literacy rate is a dismal 51.29 compared to a male literacy rate of 78.85. These SHG women worked hard, had the money, but something was still holding them back. “I am illiterate. Will I be able to participate in the meetings properly? How will I speak in front of strangers?” – these were Sadmoni Hembram’s first thoughts as she was elected to represent the women SHG members of her tribal village, which comes under the Sabuj Sathi Nari Shakti Sangha (SSNSS) Federation. And like this 39-year-old from Tilaboni village, who cringed at the thought that she would end up making a fool of herself, there were many across the district suffering from self-doubt.

That’s when Pradan stepped in and initiated a literacy programme, under which village-level Functional Literacy Centres were set up with a focus on adult literacy. It was launched in June 2009 in Barrabazar, Bagmundi and Kashipur blocks, with the support of the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (SDTT).

Despite a laborious day working in the fields, managing their household chores and collecting firewood from the forest for fuel and for sale, Sujala, Sadmoni, and 2,413 women in 108 centres, religiously attend class. As a result, they can now read and write in Bangla and do basic mathematics. “The learners are a mix of Other Backward Class (OBC), Scheduled Caste (SC) and tribal women. Primarily engaged in agriculture and wage work, they belong to varied age groups, from adolescence to late sixties. As per a baseline survey conducted by us, more than 75 per cent of these women were illiterate or could only sign their name and over 70 per cent belonged to BPL families,” informs Kuntalika Khumbakar, Integrator (state unit), Pradan.

Leaning to recognise numbers to count money - this was the main reason why the women of Purulia decided to become literate in the first place. (Credit: Pradan)

The idea has been to impart literacy and numeral ability to women to make their organisations more relevant for them. “At the same time, we expected the enlightened women to help their respective groups in ensuring greater participation and transparency, adds Khumbakar. That’s exactly what happened.

Take Baramani Maji, 33, the coordinator of Tuima Baradi village. Herself a Class Nine dropout, she is now taking classes for the illiterate women of her SHG, Turla Utnaoi Mahila Samity. She says, “Turla Utnaoi is ‘Alchiki’, meaning ‘for benefit of women’ and I feel that literacy is very useful for all of us. First, I learnt myself; now I teach the women in my group.”

To select teachers for the literacy centres, Pradan conducted a written test. According to Sourangshu Banerjee, Project Executive of Pradan’s Adult Functional Literary Centre Project, the minimum qualification was matriculation. “We found women teachers for all centres in Barrabazar but in Bagmundi block the literacy rate amongst women was so poor that we got only male teachers,” he informs.

Like Baramani Maji, Gurubani Mandi was selected to teach. “I get a salary of Rs 1,200 (US$1=Rs 53) per month and I teach Bengali and mathematics,” she says. Teaching at the centres is a continuous process. The women carry on their studies month after month in phases. Camps are also held in the homes of the teachers or selected places for slow learners.

“Once the basics are through, in the second phase, the women learn to handle calculators, read newspapers and do paragraph writing. They are taught to fill forms as well. So our focus remains functional learning,” points out Banerjee. For training and consulting for this project, Pradan has tied up with Delhi-based women’s resource centre Jagori and Nirantar that empowers women through education.

Murmu started as a student six months ago in her Tuima Baradi village. She says,

Now I know no one can fool me. I understand all the transactions being made by my SHG. I can speak, read and write in Bengali. I have also learnt to do ‘plus’ (addition) and ‘minus’ (subtraction). I am very proud of my abilities. The added advantage is that I can help my children with their schoolwork and maintain family accounts. Earlier, I could not even count!

This basic education has certainly enabled the women to understand money management better. And following the computerisation of their business model, they are able to properly deal with the computer ‘bandhus’ (friends) and ‘munshis’ (accountants). All the 184 SHGs under Barrabazar block have a central computerised accounting system under which the women drop their transaction slips into a box, which is collected by a computer ‘bandhu’, who takes them to the computer centre where the computer ‘munshi’ creates computerised balance sheets. These are delivered back to the SHGs by the computer ‘bandhus’. Explains Maji, “We pay for the sheets and get accounting details, interest calculations, payments, everything on hand. It was necessary that we learnt how to read and write for this.”

But the women don’t plan to depend on them for long. Elaborates Maji, “I am eager to learn how to use the computer. We want to do the work of computer ‘bandhu’ and ‘munshi’ ourselves. This will be the next step for us.”

Women using various learning tools to educate themselves. (Credit: Pradan)

It’s obvious that the literacy programme is gradually strengthening women’s leadership abilities and capacities, which will have a long-term impact on the larger processes of development and governance. Social change is also inevitable. Already through plays, prose and poetry recitations and talks, issues like domestic violence, women trafficking and child marriage are being discussed openly.

Most importantly, the confidence crisis and self-doubt has completely vanished. At the ‘mahaadhiveshan’, or mass meeting, of the two umbrella SHG Federations in the district, held in the Barrabazar and Jhalda blocks of Purulia last month, voices of women like Sadmoni Hembram were heard loud and clear. “Today, I can address the Federation gathering with confidence, detailing our achievements with eloquence in front of the Block Development Officer (BDO) and other dignitaries,” says a proud Hembram.

Education and economic empowerment has made a world of difference to Purulia’s women. Now, it’s the turn of the new generation. Mothers are keen to transfer their prosperity and teachings to their daughters. Here’s how Radhika Murmu, 30, puts it, “I have discovered a new interest after I learnt to read and write – that of reading my daughter’s textbooks to her. She will move forward and do much better in life.”

Elegant black stone pottery from Manipur. Karnataka’s intriguing Chittara paintings. The intricate weaves and stitches of Kashmir. These were some of the items on display and sale at the annual Craft Mela (fair) hosted by Kala Madhyam, a Bangalore based non-governmental organization (NGO) that promotes traditional artisans and their work. This colourful fiesta was held at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, a reputed art and craft institution in the city.

It is a well known fact that human diversity is inherent in India apart from the differences in geography, ecology, flora, fauna et al. Our social and cultural variety is not only visible in the multiple languages spoken, the many faiths that are practised but also in the innumerable arts and crafts of the country. Artisans in each state or region of this vast land have been linked with their unique traditional paintings, sculpture, pottery, weaving, embroidery or printing. They have been producing these works from one or more materials like metal, wood, clay, bamboo, stone or thread for generations. It is important to note that the handiwork is often their only source of livelihood. Although the work does not fetch enough returns and the government does not support most of them through subsidies or incentives, they continue to practice their craft. This is because the knowledge is passed on to them through their family elders and they have been on the job from a young age. Further, they do not possess other skills. Of course, in some instances, the current young generation is seeking other opportunities and avenues for employment while assisting their families in the craft.

A look at some of the people and their lovely work:

Radha Sullur from Sagar taluk in Shimoga district of north western Karnataka has been involved in Chittara art from an early age. This young state awardee learnt the craft by observing and assisting the women in her family. Chittara art consists of drawings from rice paste made on bamboo trays, paper, mud walls, clay containers et al. The designs are sometimes coloured with a natural substance obtained by crushing specific seeds.

An entire mountain region would have been left to deteriorate into a plastic garbage dump. A National Park would have been shamefully left to a degenerate, unable to gain the recognition worth its value. A hill range would have lost an unbelievable amount of soil cover and destroyed the livelihood of thousands of people. All this if Jyotsna Sitling had not done some of the most admirable jobs in public service!

She’s India’s first female tribal IFS officer, genuinely passionate about the environment, who has carried her spirit for work over the years to become the recipient of the paramount honour for environment conservation in India – the Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar. Not many would have expected Jyotsna, hailing from a nondescript village in Bengal, to move the mountains. And she indeed did move the range of Himalayas in Uttarakhand away from the course its fate was fast running into.

The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh presenting the Prime Minister'€™s Awards for Excellence in Public Administration 2006-2007 to Ms. Jyotsna Sitling, IFS, for Effective Management of Protected Areas, on the occasion of "€œCivil Service Day-2008", in New Delhi on April 21, 2008.

It was back in 2002 that Jyotsna joined the Nanda Devi Biosphere in Uttarakhand, as its Director. 5800 acres of land to manage, with two national parks and a sanctuary to revive, and closely intertwined livelihood of people – a short and sweet Jyotsna saw challenges hurled at her in abundance. She had the toughest of jobs in the most beautiful of lands.

The Valley of Flowers National Park, an unmatched landscape with the rarest of flora and fauna, hosts a buffer zone with a 19-km trail that leads to Hemkund Sahib, the highest Gurdwara in the world. The breath-taking trail was literally breath-taking, stinking as it was, with plastic and other dumps that the pilgrims left behind remorselessly for three decades. Jyotsna decided to start vigorous campaigns by involving the local community. She called for a garbage collection initiative by the community and to her surprise they collected 15 truckloads of garbage weighing up to 50 tonnes! The entire mass was sent for recycling and the valley started getting rid of its pollutants.

Now redemption for the past mistakes was achieved, but sustaining this achievement for the future needed some more things to change. The next task was to regulate the 400 odd unorganized shops that massively contributed to polluting the trek trail to the Gurdwara. But the shops couldn’t be ruthlessly removed. And environment conservation is not the easiest of things to speak about when livelihoods are at stake. Adding to it, the forest officials and the local community were not on the best terms. So there Jyotsna was – with the tasks of bridging the animosity to build a relationship with the people, working out the reversal of the damage done to the environment and helping develop the quality of lives of the people.

Jyotsna, speaking with the womenfolk of Bhyundar - one of the villages in the Himalayan region that came under her governance, to motivate them into taking care of their ecological heritage

Jyotsna studied the issue with putting both the environmental conservation and the livelihood of the people at equal priority. And when she combined both, the result was economic gain for the people and conscious and sustainable conservation for the environment.

She sat down with the shop owners for convincing them to reduce the number of shops to one per family. She explained that their incomes were getting grossly divided and the environment was also suffering. She literally spent six to seven continuous days and nights to explain, convince and take people into confidence to finally agree to her plan. There was tremendous difficulty in deciding who gets which land. But at the end of it all, the number of shops came down from 400 to 76 – a huge relief for the Valley of Flowers, and people were happy to see that Jyotsna’s idea worked well for them. Notably, Jyotsna was successful in making the hostility between the forest officials and the people fade away.

The first day of the Cleaning campaign carried out by women of Bhyundar village.

Jyotsna put in many checks so that what was achieved was not lost in the years to come. She put the systems into place for responsible tourism through an Eco Development Committee (EDC) of the local stakeholder villagers. The Eco fee that she introduced helped in bringing funds for cleaning operations and for building systems on green value chain for services to the pilgrims without depending on government funds. She worked out insurance policies for the pilgrims. This generated a continuous influx of money for the sustenance and development of the region. Many small businesses for the service of pilgrims, like renting plastic coats, were introduced such that more income-generating opportunities were created thus linking livelihood concerns of locals with the conservation realities of the area.

Jyotsna distilled her experience on the effect of mountaineering activity on the environment during her tenure as Director, Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve (2002 to 2004) and put together an entire guideline for mountaineering in Uttarakhand in 2004. This guideline is first of its kind in any state in India. She says it’s all about making the markets work for environment and making the community the real stakeholders.

Concurrently, she also carried out many other activities to rejuvenate the face of the Valley of Flowers National Park. The crowning glory came when all these efforts led to the declaration of the Park as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2005.

Another of Jyotsna’s major initiatives between 1997 and 2000 was in the erosion-prone zone of the Shivalik range near the Doon Valley. She mobilized a community of nearly eleven thousand people across 82 villages to spend at least 1 day in a year for the restoration of their villages. Together they planted 3,82,000 plants and sowed over 70 kgs of seeds of various plant species, saving the fate of the villages that lay close to 358 strategic erosion-prone locations. What could be said about the impact of this incredible act of service?

Jyotsna Sitling, India'a first female tribal IFS officer is an eco warrior who's made a difference!

She’s done some of the most incredible works ever for the environment in our country. But she’s not the one who’d take her successes to her head. She’s a powerhouse of unstoppable energy who constantly traverses that extra mile to do extraordinary work. Jyotsna, an alumna of IIM Bangalore, today is the Project Director of Livelihoods Improvement Project for the Himalayas, Uttarakhand. She is 49 and chose to stay single. She has adopted the family of her caretaker maid. The family lives with her and Jyotsna takes great interest in the education of their son.

Last year Jyotsna met with an accident causing her head injuries that left her with 16 stitches and many months for recovery. But this is what she says – ‘It was actually an enriching experience to go through the after-effects of the accident and recovering from it!” She’s unbelievably awesome!

India is estimated to have about 635 indigenous communities. Each of these groups of people have a unique identity, with their very own brand of culture, traditions and folklore. Unfortunately, most of this knowledge is passed on from generation to generation in the oral form, and in the face of dwindling tribal population, advent of modern education and widespread displacement in the name of development, most of this ancient wisdom is getting eroded. This is where a group of individuals calling themselves Acoustic Traditional are making an effort to preserve the precious heritage.

Dear Readers,

“Once upon a time…the kind king got married…together they slayed many demons…and then the king and the queen lived happily ever after…”

Do you relate to similar stories your Grandma would have narrated to you a few years back? I remember listening to fairy tales and mythological stories from my parents and grandparents before switching off to my dream world of imaginations. Then while I was growing I graduated from story listener to book reader and then to a story teller. I guess many of us share a similar upbringing. This time The Better India got a beautiful and extensive opportunity to know, interact and hear stories from Acoustic Traditional (AT).

The Acoustic Traditional Team and Volunteers

It was during the year of 1999 in Nepal, when Mr. Salil Mukhia Kwoica and Ms. Barkha Henry thought about preserving the mountain folk music by documenting and transcribing them into sheet music (staff notations) in the hope that the music would be available for the generations to come. Mr. Salil Mukhia Kwoica says,

I was teaching music at one of the schools in Kathmandu those days and often found time to travel the country side to listen to some old folk tunes which I would send to Barkha (who was in Darjeeling). She would then transcribe it for an instrument (usually Guitar). However, the process of documentation quickly revealed a vast arena of study as we came across the stories, myths and legends on which the music was originally based. The realization that these stories, myths and legends were in fact the bed rock of the community’s identity, culture and heritage and that they were becoming extinct as they were passed down from one generation to another usually through ‘oral storytelling traditions’, led us to study this area and to include a wider community in our work.

There are many indigenous communities, where population is gradually reducing and the only way their history passes on is by oral narration usually from a Shaman to his successor (a Shaman is the head/priest of the community). However with urbanization, such history is becoming lost and remains untold to the younger generations. This is where AT has taken the initiative and works in the area of documenting the oral history, the community stories, and their way of life etc, through research and dissemination projects. Their flagship annual event “the Festival of Indigenous Storytellers” is one such initiative which brings together tribal storytellers from across the country in view of sharing their stories with the world.

A snapshot of the Festival of Indigenous Storytellers 2011 - an annual event held by AT

These narrations are not just stories but have a lot of significance in day to day rituals and are a matter of anthropological study and research. Example: Mr. Salil Mukhia Kwoica, once narrated “For a particular period in the year, some communities worship the river and do not kill the fishes; it is not superstition but actually in this month, fishes swim upstream to reproduce and lay eggs and hence should not be killed.” All such practices are relevant and interwoven by AT. Currently, they have been traveling around Eastern Himalayas – Sikkim region and documenting folklore on Yeti and have come across many people who claim to have seen the Yeti. AT is working day and night, enjoying living with the community members and capturing their stories and planning to extend this research trip to Nepal and Bhutan.

It was an engrossing time discussing stories and obtaining views and opinions of Mr Salil Mukhia Kwoica, Ms Minket Lepcha and Ms Barkha Henry. Below is an excerpt of the interview by the group:

What geographies does Acoustic Traditional cover?

Acoustic looks at working especially with mountain and forest based communities – also those communities which are seemingly vanishing (in terms of population) and where the documentation of oral traditions is nonexistent. Our focus areas have been Eastern Himalayas and the Nilgiris.

But in terms of storyteller identification/participation, we have a national reach (Karnataka/ Tamil Nadu/ Andhra Pradesh/ West Bengal/ Manipur/ Nagaland/ Sikkim/ etc.)

How would you describe your work life? How would a day of yours be like?

Ms Minket Lepcha: “As a documentalist my day involves working around with interviews mostly with the community elders, especially the Shamans. The interviews usually imply gathering of information on the community’s oral mythology and folklore. This depends on the nature of the project, but usually these are the things that I document. My work is mostly based in tribal villages (in Dzongu at the moment) and starts early. I often have to walk long distances to meet up with the people, sometime it takes over a day just to reach a particular community by walk. I usually spend over a week’s time at the informant’s house just to get him/her comfortable with speaking. Since most of the Shamans are old it is difficult for them to recollect stories, myths etc. and many times I join them in their household chores trying to get the story out.

However, documenting in a community is an extensive task and the engagement with the community is for a very long time, sometimes even years as we have to understand them and how they function for them to be comfortable enough to share their stories with us.”

What are the fun aspects and the challenges involved?

It is always fun in the field as the terrain is scenic and at times spiritual. Interacting with the community, being invited to their ceremonies, rituals, sometimes being chased by children and old drunken storytellers is even more fun. At the end, we make up a family.

Acoustics Traditional holds frequent engagements in schools in the Sikkim-Darjeeling belt to sensitize the children about their rich cultural heritage

Accessibility to the villages has been a major concern because the weather changes drastically in the mountains in a short span of time causing landslides. In winters the snowfall is very heavy and that is the time when I have to postpone my scheduled visit to the villages. The other major challenge is to correctly interpret the storytellers because of the language barrier. Though a local translator is also accompanying, however a lot of ethnic words do not have an equal expression in English hence get dissolved in the process of translation.

Tell us something about the Lepcha community.

The Lepchas or the ‘Rongkup’ (being their original tribe name) are the aboriginal people of Sikkim and Darjeeling in the Eastern Himalayas. Their belief system is based on nature worship headed by a ‘Bongthing’ (Male Shaman) or a Mun (Female Shaman). They are also one of the oldest tribes in the region.

It is often quoted that the tribal communities are getting disconnected from the rest of the populace over the years. What is your take on that?

While this might be a popular notion and in many developmental ways true, there is this entire phenomenon of them being de-rooted from their own community structures due to persistent developmental attitudes that governments, educational institutions etc. bring in. Of course they remain marginalized in terms of their bigger picture but what remains true is the fact that their meaningful development can be asserted not by coercive mainstreaming but by understanding them – the relevance of their amazing traditional knowledge, rituals, practices, oral history etc. In fact this is one priority area of Acoustic Traditional work – to bring out their relevance in their urban context.

Ms Barkha Henry’s take on the same: “But I think that disconnect with their own rich traditional base is more critical to take note of. In this regard, we are losing account of mankind’s primitive history and social/ spiritual development; Anthropologically this is a very big loss.

AT travels to remote areas and interacts with the communities, sometimes staying for a week in their homes and helping with chores, in order to understand their culture and record their stories.

It may be surprising to note but the whole notion of mainstreaming them is so intrusive and devastating, that it is making them quite disabled. We need to understand that tribal communities bring in their own “scientific heritage” and knowledge systems. Removing that completely from them and giving them a “new” education has hardly helped anything. In fact, in terms of sustainability and conservation, we still find that their mechanisms are far more effective than what most modern means offer.

As such, the context of integrating them organically is far more critical than merely mainstreaming them using mainstream ideas. I feel that first the general populace needs to understand them.”

Thank you so much for taking time to respond. Is there anything more you would like to share with our readers?

Ms Minket: “While I was listening and documenting stories – which are simple and yet so wise – it made me realize the importance that these stories held for the community. It was these stories that bound them together. The fact that I belonged to the same community and was coming closer to myself through these stories gave me a whole new experience and understanding of the lingering question of ‘why they do things the way they do?’ which I had in my mind. Most of the stories, when studied closely, had a reason to co-exist harmoniously as per my understanding.”

The Big Foot Campaign was run by AT in 2012 in order to raise awareness about the dying myths and legends of our tribes

When we asked the organization about the external support structure, Mr. Salil Mukhia Kwoica shared with us that they greatly valued individual support, where school children and working professionals are involved, and all of them together arrange funds by creating activities (story telling sessions, workshops etc), documenting and publishing stories. They organized a “Big Foot Campaign” in Darjeeling where students actively participated and roamed around in big shoes and the campaign was a huge success. They also receive some amount of Government support.

They are organizing their annual event – A Festival of Indigenous Storytellers, Confluence – III, on a big scale in the month of December. Click here to know more about the event.

All Photos: Courtesy Acoustic Traditional

Saunak Bhattacharyya had an opportunity to meet a 96-year old freedom fighter who changed his outlook on life and made him think deeply on what it is that makes heroes – ordinary men and women who make extraordinary sacrifices so that others around them can live better. Whether through love for his country or love for his fellow human beings, young and old, Mr, Sudhanshu Biswas teaches the values of compassion, perseverance and belief in one’s purpose.

Getting down from a crowded local train at Dakshin Durgapur railway station, I saw dark clouds setting in. I came out of the station and searched for a rickshaw or cycle-van (a popular mode of transport in rural India). Finding none, I began walking through the village roads. I am in a village of South 24 Paragans district, 35 kms from Kolkata. This district and the neighbouring Sunderbans are some of the poorest districts of India. After walking 2kms in the mild rain, I reached ‘Sri Ramakrisha Sevashram’ (SRKS) to meet Mr. Sudhanshu Biswas.

Mr. Sudhanshu Biswas – Freedom Fighter, and Founder of SRKS

Drying myself with a towel, I inquired why there was no transportation from the station. Mr. Biswas replied with a smile “When there is no demand, there is no supply”! His simple reply, or rather its inverse, also answered my unasked question as to why this 95 year old freedom fighter chose to spend his last four decades here. Instead I asked him what was the main objective of SRKS. His kindly eyes met mine directly and he said “To impart man-making education”. The depth of conviction came from his own first-hand experience of being arrested from the examination hall by the British police during his childhood; a memory that has driven him since to help educate the less privileged—backed by his understanding of the importance and meaning of education.

As the conversation went on I learnt that he had left home while still in his teens to fight for India’s freedom. He successfully carried ‘live bombs’ to lodge an attack on the British Administration. Mr. Biswas dodged death a number of times in gun battles. He was caught by the British and jailed for several years. The simple man before me has been a part of the famous revolutionary group – Anushilan Samity.

After independence, enthused by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda – “Service to man is service to God”, Mr. Biswas founded SRKS. No wonder he had chosen this poverty stricken village where I was surprised to see that neither any temple nor mosque existed – an unusual occurrence in India.

In the last four decades, he has set up 18 free schools for the poor children in remote villages in the nearby Sunderban area. The teachers of the schools belong to the same village and hence an ownership is created. Till date, thousands of orphans have stayed and studied in SRKS and currently he is bringing up 67 orphan students who study and take care of all the work of SRKS.

Till date, thousands of orphans have stayed and studied in SRKS and currently there are 67 being taken care of in the facility.

Owing to urbanization, old people get deserted by their family. The hermitage provides shelter to 29 senior citizens from the nearby villages. A charitable dispensary is also run as a part SRKS. To top it all, well into his seventies, Mr. Biswas studied general medicine and Homeopathy, observing the irregularities of doctors in villages. He collects medicine samples from physicians and distributes them among the sick.

He sits straight, glows bright while talking about the past with deep eyes revealing his knowledge about ancient religious scriptures. He talks and hears well, as he showed me the ashram which has a pond, small agricultural tracks and fruit trees. Every day he takes Mathematics classes in the school. I truly believe now – “This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.”

Even at the age of 95, Mr. Biswas teaches 10th standard Mathematics to the students in his school.

I met a person who is superior to me in all aspects. Physique: At 95 he does more physical work than me. Work: A visionary and does more significant work than myself. Sacrifice: I sacrifice little money and few hours for the down-trodden, his entire life is for and among the poor. Love: I married my school mate after 10 years of courtship; he still carries the bullet marks he received due to his love for his own country and billion countrymen. Academics: He still teaches 10th class mathematics, without the help of calculator. Scripture knowledge: I have the holy thread around me and he has the ageless wisdom around himself.

A standard eighth student came to close the gate. Seeing the never ending rain and after enquiring that I have no umbrella with me, he thought for a while and opened his cap. His cap was an old free cap from a popular health drink provider. It was as prized for him as our premium branded watch or new i-pod is. He offered his cap and insisted that I wore this, to protect my head from the shower. I was indeed touched by his gestures. Mr. Biswas is right; I was taken aback with the man-making value education infused in these kids. Although it was raining, I saw the dark clouds flying by.

SRKS has given a new hope to the many children learning and residing in its campus.

You could visit their website for more information on their work, and how you could help them in this. While monetary assistance is needed, even donations in kind are appreciated. Due to the poor access to the place, it is not easy to attract and retain primary teachers and mentors. Also, they are unable to offer very lucrative packages for good teachers to live there. To solve this, we are exploring the feasibility of holding virtual classes. This will be possible if we can manage to get desktops, webcams and internet connectivity.

In addition to this, stationery items, groceries, woolen clothes and blankets would be highly appreciated. When I visited them second time, during December it was a pity to see these kids in half pants! They would also highly value individuals who could give them some time and support to help them reach out to more people with their work and sustain themselves with revenue-generating activities. Do contact them or the author at saunak123@gmail.com for further details.

It is unfortunate that the normal human procedure of menstruation has been regarded as ‘impure’ and considered taboo for generations of Indians. However, things are changing now, and it is hearty to know that India is at the forefront of disruptive innovations in menstrual hygiene. Here we bring you a ‘Bong’ duo doing fabulous work in breaking stereotypes and creating a sanitary revolution.

That ‘time of the month’ – for most urban women in this country it amounts to minor discomfort and a rather welcome excuse to consume chocolate. I had never really paid much attention to the fact that menstruation drastically affects the lives of millions of women across rural India every single month. That’s until I found myself, as part of my training under the ICICI Fellowship, with my period in Dhoan – a little village nestled in the Western Ghats and 3 hours away from the closest town or district headquarters.

My search for menstrual hygiene products at the time opened my eyes to the reality of the 300 million women in India who do not use sanitary napkins during menstruation – that’s more than the entire female population of 27 European Union countries (255 million) and almost the total population of the United States (311 million). The reasons for this dire situation are a lack of awareness, availability, and affordability; not to mention issues that arise with disposal (AC Nielson report, 2011). All of these are coupled with the cultural taboo attached to menstruation in our country where menstruating women are considered to be ‘impure’.

In the absence of menstrual hygiene products, women and adolescent girls in this country make use of dirty rags, bark, ash and mud instead. This abysmal dearth of menstrual hygiene translates into a loss of 5 years of work days over a lifetime and is a leading cause for the 23 percent school dropout rate among pubescent girls.

However, hoping to change this situation are the very Bong duo of Jaydeep Mandal and Sombodhi Ghosh – the founders of Aakar Innovations – who have developed a low-cost sanitary napkin manufacturing machine that produces bio-degradable pulp fibre sanitary napkins comparable in quality to MNC products.

Community awareness training underway.

Aakar is a platform integrator where, through the setting up of sanitary napkin production units, it offers livelihood opportunities to rural women and also creates sales and distribution models through village-level women entrepreneurs. The Aakar model thereby addresses 6 of the 8 Millennium Development Goals i.e. MDG 1,2,3,5,7 and 8.

The Beginnings:
Despite being initially hesitant to work on an issue seen intrinsically as a ‘female problem’, Jaydeep and Sombodhi, realising the scope of the problem, were determined to find solutions. Sombodhi says:

When we first thought of starting Aakar everyone told us we were out of our minds. How could two men work on such a sensitive issue, especially when we will never experience the problems and discomfort for ourselves? Also in the Indian society menstrual hygiene is an extremely difficult topic to broach – even doctors find it uncomfortable to talk about! All of this bolstered us to face these challenges head on and to experiment and arrive at a lasting viable solution.

They were inspired by India’s very own ‘sanitary pad man’ Arunachalam Muruganantham, and supported by Prof. Anil Gupta and the National Innovation Foundation (NIF). Collaborating with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and NIF, after several rounds of experimentation they devised a machine which manufactures bio-degradable sanitary napkins using agri-wastes such as banana fiber, bagasse, bamboo and water hyacinth as raw materials.

Sale of ‘Anandi’ pads through SHG run Kirana stores

At just Rs. 2 per napkin; the sanitary napkins marketed under the brand name ‘Anandi’ (meaning joy and happiness) are available at a price point 40% lower than the lowest market competitor. These napkins are UV rays sterilized and adhere to BIS standards for sanitary napkins, making them an ideal and reliable solution to the current unhygienic alternatives that women and pubescent girls in the country resort to.

Growth and Support:
Aakar successfully pilot-tested its model in Uttarakhand, providing employment opportunities to 32 village level women entrepreneurs and creating access to menstrual hygiene products for 3000 women. Based on the success of its pilot, the Gujarat Livelihood Promotion Ltd (Govt of Gujarat) signed an MOU with Aakar in early 2013 to enable them to scale up their technology across Gujarat.

The Millennium Alliance; a joint initiative by FICCI, the Department of Science and Technology (GOI) and USAID have recommended Aakar Innovations as one of the top five Indian innovations in the family planning and reproductive health sector. Its biodegradable fibre technology has been recognised as one of the top three innovations in the DST Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Programme 2013.

Aakar is also supported by the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM Ahmedabad.

Challenges:
However, despite the current recognition coming its way, the going was tough for Aakar in its early days. The enterprise, in the course of piloting various innovations, found itself almost at the brink of bankruptcy. A small loan by NIF through its Micro Venture Innovation fund in 2010 allowed it to tide over this period and set up a small unit in Khatima, Uttarakhand.

Aakar’s experience in Uttarakhand taught them many lessons, foremost among them being the need to critically work on empowering women and creating community awareness regarding menstruation and menstrual hygiene. Both Jaydeep and Sombodhi believed that for the women in these communities to accept and adopt ‘Anandi’ pads, the communities they were a part of needed to embrace gender equality – and that this cannot be done if women and girls who are at the core of these communities are ostracised for a week every month.

Community awareness training – These take place at night for the convenience of the women

While hoping to learn of the expectations of women and girls regarding menstrual hygiene products and to get their feedback on ‘Anandi’ pads, Aakar’s founders found that creating community awareness was the key as no awareness of this kind of product even existed in these communities. They sought the help of community doctors, key influencers in the community as well as developed champions out of women from the community. These even went on to become mascots of ‘Anandi’ pads in these communities.

According to Shashank Rastogi, Director, Aarohan Ventures – CIIE:

Aakar is one of the rare social enterprises leveraging lean startup techniques to come up with better solutions. Through an iterative process of product testing, customer feedback assimilation and refinement, Aakar is creating apt solutions to address one of India’s key development challenges.

Today, the founders of Aakar find themselves on the threshold of setting up their first commercial unit in their home state at Behrampore in West Bengal.

Over the next five years, Aakar looks to expand operations to Afghanistan, Philippines and other countries in south-east Asia and Africa, catering to the needs of 6 million women while directly employing 11,000 women. It hopes to resist 720,000 school dropouts, recover 370 million working days and prevent 40,000 maternal deaths. Aakar believes that lives of millions of women can be free.

Read our previous stories on breaking menstrual taboos here.

Self-sufficient farming gives women in Alipurduar food, health and confidence! At a time when chemicals have virtually replaced nutrients in food, women in this tiny area of West Bengal are growing food in a natural way – a method that is not just organic but uses ways to combine nature’s cycles and elements, creating a complementary ensemble. This is a way in which plants, animals, insects and all the elements of nature come together in harmony and leave little waste. Read further to know how they achieve this.

Till a few decades ago, most people in India grew vegetables and fruits in their own gardens. Then something changed. We shifted from ‘farming for food’ to ‘farming for money’. The start of the ‘green revolution’ meant that production increased but so did the farmer’s dependency on chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides. This shift in farming – from lifestyle to livelihood – also resulted in women keeping away from most farming decisions even though they were involved in the various tasks of sowing, reaping, harvesting and filling up the granaries. They aren’t called ‘farmers’ and they don’t benefit from training on farming concepts and schemes. But some women in villages in Alipurduar, West Bengal have managed to change this for themselves.

Self-sufficient farming gives women in Alipurduar food, health and confidence!TB

Bimala Barman from Paschim Borochowki village is an enthusiastic member of the Annapurna women’s self-help group. She looks after the group’s rice bank that is set up in her house. This 14-member group is futuristic to say the least. They collect surplus rice from each of their members’ rice produce and save it in their rice bank. They give this to people in the village, including their members, during the lean season when people don’t have enough to eat. The same is returned after the harvest. The Annapurna self-help group grows a range of vegetables together using self-prepared vermi-compost. Well aware of its benefits, the members show strong aversion towards chemicals. They are confident that their faith in the natural ways of keeping the soil healthy and fertile will pay off.

Bimala’s neighbour Kalpana Sutradhar has a farm, which mirrors a natural/forest ecosystem – where there is enough food for both man and animals. She grows multiple crops that complement each other so she has food year-round. On a small plot of land, she has placed several pots of water buried under the ground, which supply constant regulated moisture to the soil. The rest of the farm is irrigated with rainwater, which she catches in a pond that is also home to many kinds of fish. She also prepares compost using special earthworms (vermi), called vermicompost. All this and more has contributed to her confidence – she has managed to feed her family wholesome healthy food without having to depend much on the market.

This confidence is backed by sound knowledge too. With whatever little resources they have, these women are making sure that their efforts are sustainable. They grow fruits and vegetables following the principles of ecological or sustainable agriculture. At the heart of ecological agriculture is the economic, cultural and environmental well-being of all involved. It looks at the relationship of living beings with each other and with their habitat – ‘Vastu Tantra’ or ecology – and creates a system where they can mutually benefit. For example, paddy needs water, nutrition (fertilizer), weed control and manure. If you have 1-2 ducks in your paddy field, they would eat the weeds in the water and prevent them from forming again due to their constant paddling. Their excrete can be the food for the paddy. That reduces your labour and increases yield and the best part is that all this is achieved without using chemicals!

You can also grow your own healthy food by following the principles below.

Diversify your crops like you see in nature

• Grow two or more crops that help each other
• Plant crops that grow in the shade under the ones that demand sunlight. Similarly, mix crops of different water or fertilizer demand or root depth.
• Rotate your crops; this kind of cropping system replenishes the soil of what it has lost in the previous crop. For example, after a heavy feeding crop such as maize, you can plant legumes like beans, which would fix the nitrogen in the soil and build it back up again. Creating a cropping sequence and combination like this can help the soil’s fertility and also yield better produce.
• Relay-cropping, which is when a second crop is planted or sown before the first crop is harvested, is another variation of this. For example, you can grow lentils in a rice field just around a month before the rice harvest. At that time the residual water in the rice field is sufficient to help the lentil grow. So two crops can be harvested using the same resources of water and soil.
• Integrate – combine perennial and seasonal crops with animals and insects. This will ensure food availability at all times and the innate behaviour of the animals/insects in the farm can be used, too. Suppose, you have a fruit orchard, you could introduce a few hens. They will, by design or default, clear up weeds and pests for you. Their droppings would fertilize the soil as well.
• Create a multistoried arrangement by growing layers of crops in notches. For example, you can use big fruit or arecanut trees as poles to create a platform (machaan) using bamboo sticks. Some creepers like pumpkin, gourds or beans can grow on this platform. Climbers can be planted to grow on the tree trunks itself. Below the platform, herbs such as coriander or mint or such plants that need shade can be grown. This will use all the space and sunlight well and yield multiple crops.

Increase use of renewable resources

Garden irrigated by a single pot of water

Plant waste can feed birds or animals while their excreta can be used to make biogas. Further, the slurry, a by-product of bio-gas, can feed the earthworms or animals. Recycling helps in increasing energy efficiency in your production system.

Also, you can create a place for birds in your farm. A lot of birds feed on insects and not on fruits. Having a bamboo stick standing in the rice field where the birds could sit can help matters and you would not need to use chemicals to drive away the pests.

Conserve soil and water

• Use rains to water your plants. You can have a small reservoir to collect rainwater.
• Try pot irrigation by sealing a pot under the soil in your field after making a small hole at the bottom. You can also fix a little cotton on the hole to prevent water from leaking heavily. Now fill this pot once a week depending on your weather conditions and keep it covered. One such pot can easily irrigate 3×5 foot patch of land.
• Use compost/vermi-compost pits or heaps for manure
• Reduce the use of synthetic input

Use limited bio-resources several times

You can have your duck farm over your pond. The duck excrete will fall on the pond and become food for the fishe or the cow dung can be used to produce biogas for your kitchen. The slurry that it produces can become food for your fish, worms for vermin-compost, mushrooms or ducks. Nothing goes to waste at all!

Don’t spread poison/pollution

Keep your soil healthy. You can do that without chemicals by using natural, renewable methods instead. Those are healthy and also free!

Grow multipurpose and local plants

Trees such as pigeon pea or bamboo enrich the soil by their high nutrient content and serve as fodder for livestock. These may also be used as firewood. Local plants are naturally suited for the existing conditions of an area and grow without much external support. Using local varieties of plants also is easy on the pocket.

Use volunteer plants

Use volunteer plants, which are plants that grown on their own and those which are un/under-utilized. For example water hyacinth can be used to grow oyster mushrooms or to grow a short-duration vegetable on a pile made of water hyacinth and soil. The attached manual ‘Integrated farming system – concept and farm design’ contains more information about the concept of ecological agriculture, its features, principles and farm designs.

This is a sustainable way of farming in which plants, animals, insects and all the elements of nature come together in harmony and leave little waste.

Using such methods reduces our dependency over time and helps with social and economic welfare. Ardhendu Chatterjee, Executive Director of Development Research Communication and Services Centre in West Bengal, an organisation that focuses on ecological agriculture, is a dedicated ecological scientist. He says, “The more chemical farming is used, the more dependent we become. That’s why it is not just an environmental issue but a development issue”.

I came across a quote – “Growing your own food is like printing your own money”. By practicing self-sufficient farming, the women in these villages have done just that

In a remote corner of the country, children of the unique and endangered Toto tribe are waiting for their school to open. The building is ready and the classes are about to begin. The good samaritans who have come from various parts of the world to help complete this project have used up all of their funds. Now you can help run the school for a whole year. Know more about this wonderful effort.

Totopara is a marginalized tribal village in the jungles of North Bengal, situated on the border of Bhutan. The Toto tribe is one of the smallest communities in India, having a population of about 1500, who maintain their own spoken language. In 2009, one of the leaders of the Toto tribe, Bukul Toto, approached Lissa Davies and emphasized the need for a project that would address the problems faced by children in Totopara, especially with regard to the poor standard of education that they had been receiving. In order to co-ordinate and spearhead the setting up of a self-sustainable education center, Lissa set up the BEGAP or the Bright Eyes Global Action Project. Since then, through expert consult and community participation, BEGAP has been able to set up a cultural heritage and education center in Totopara.

The main centre of the Totopara village in West Bengal

About BEGAP
BEGAP partners with locally run grassroots organizations and communities, and creates a platform to help them achieve their goals and reach out of their normal sphere of influence. They assist them by conducting research, providing consultation, helping with project management, fundraising and also providing them with skilled volunteers for their projects. By generating self-sustainable projects and activities, they have been successfully providing quality education to children from marginalized communities. They are also working with communities in Cambodia and North West India.

The foundation for the school was laid exactly a year ago

The Beginnings of the School
Several years ago the tribe leaders generously donated a piece of land to BEGAP to build a school and heritage center. Since then the project has been coming up really well and they have already built a traditional bamboo house which serves as a heritage site. The education center is also in its final stages of construction. The center can accommodate about 50 children during the day and the space can utilized for cultural activities during evenings. Children from 2-7 years of age would be admitted and would be taught in preschool, nursery and KG classes. This facility is one of its kind in the entire village.

Watch this interesting video showcasing the journey so far (click here if you cannot view the link below):

Headstart Totopara – Project Video from mikey bramich on Vimeo.

The school aims to teach the local children in their mother-tongue, which includes Toto, Bengali, Nepali and Hindi. They are currently running a multi-linguistic curriculum in a small temporary classroom. Their ongoing project activities also include scripting the endangered Toto language, providing jobs to the community, preserving the identity of the Toto culture and help this society create a self-sustainable future.

And here is the completed school building!

The Linguistic Project
The Toto language is unscripted and listed as endangered by the government. Keeping this in mind, the project aims to work towards scripting the language for the first time. This would not only prove to be invaluable to young Toto’s education but will also strengthen and preserve the identity of the tribe. To complement the language preservation program efforts are also being directed towards collection of songs, poems and stories from the tribal elders and youth. . None of the elders’ traditional songs have been recorded in their entirety and will be likely disappear unless preserved. Professional film and audio equipment are used to create high quality recordings which will be given to the Toto community in DVD, CD or MP3 form.

To get a glimpse into their beautiful culture, watch this interesting video of the making of a traditional Toto house (click here if you cannot watch it below):

The Team
The people behind this project is a small, non-religious group of friends, volunteers and locals who are in love with Toto culture and it’s folk. Lissa Davies, the project director, is also an educator and anthropologist. Mikey Bramich is the Project Manager and also a teacher at the Totopara School. Prakash Toto happens to be a teacher, animator and project assistant. And, Mr Adam Pearson from the Cambridge University, is the Ethical Business Coordinator of the Totopara Project. They also have a large number of skilled volunteers and a number of partner NGOs that help in teaching, drama, linguistic activities and volunteer’s co-ordination.

Toto children are enthusiastically participating in completing their school building

What’s going on now
However, only recently, the single donation on which the entire project was relying on has unfortunately fallen through, leaving them at a very critical juncture after five years of hard-work. Your contributions will help in the completion of the Chitaranjan Toto Education Center and help them run the project successfully for one complete year. The community and people behind this project have faced numerous challenges in setting up of this school. They have also faced theft by some local NGOs and have not received any help or assistance from anyone in this regard, in this remote tribal village. Despite such odds, the project has been moving ahead with significant momentum and has scheduled the opening of the school later this month. The funds generated would not only directly impact the education of this community, but will also help preserve the language and identity of the Toto tribe, which is struggling with poverty and cultural endangerment.

Can you do something here?
This project has been successfully running for about 5 years and the impact on the community has already been very positive. You can help them by exploring the various volunteering opportunities that BEGAP offers, such as, project managers, volunteer coordinators, applied anthropologists and experienced educators. You can also support them by engaging with them on their Facebook page and spreading awareness about their activities and programs.

In addition to this, you can aid their fundraising efforts on their Indiegogo campaign which is on till 20th Feb 2014: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/headstart-totopara-save-our-school-and-preserve-the-culture-of-a-unique-tribe

Waiting to go to school!

You can know more about them through their website.

So go ahead – save a school AND preserve the culture of a unique tribe!

An affordable device that does not need electricity or moving gears but runs only on gravity, is scientist Suprio Das’s answer to water contamination. Nilanjana Nag Pereira reports.

Odd as it may seem, innovation and its usage have become inversely proportionate today. Says scientist Suprio Das, “90 per cent of our leading designs are created only for 10 per cent of the people- those who can afford to benefit from them.” While not interfering with the age-old discrepancies between the haves and the have-nots, Das intends to make something as basic as pure drinking water affordable and accessible to the common man.

ZIMBA being used for providing potable water in Dhaka

In the year 2005, the presence of arsenic in Kolkata’s ground-water caught Das’s attention. He began visiting small villages in Bengal to collect water samples. He then volunteered to work with a local NGO on arsenic mitigation. In 2011, his invention, ZIMBA, an automated chlorine dozer, was installed in a village near Gobardanga, Bengal and consequently in five slums of Dhaka this February. The response from these areas has been quite promising, Das tells us. The device has been lauded for the simplicity of its design and its easy implementation.

How does ZIMBA work? Once installed, it automatically adds chlorine to water in correct proportions, explains Das. It can be fitted to a rural community’s existing water source, such as the hand pump of a well or the tap of a rainwater harvesting cistern.

However, durability of the device was a major concern for Das; moving parts such as hinges and gears are usually the first point of failure, hence designing a product with zero moving parts was the intention from the start. Moreover, ZIMBA does not require electricity to run, which is expensive and unreliable in rural areas; it can be operated using gravity alone. That the source of water in rural areas is often varied proved to be another challenge. Though channelized flow of water in a regular tap was easy to work with, it wasn’t always readily available. Hence the device had to be compatible with any method of input, be it from a tap, a hand pump or even a bottle poured out in batches.

Deriving the correct ratio of chlorine to water, a common problem for most people working with chlorine, required precision and the creator of ZIMBA achieved it after much hard work.

Suprio Das - The innovator of ZIMBA

Naturally, the effort has borne fruit. So far, 5 slums of Bangladesh have used ZIMBA. Soon, Das will choose a few villages in North 24 Parganas to install the instrument with the help of a local NGO. The International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research of Bangladesh, and a team from Standford University, is now carrying out research to determine if ZIMBA would help generate bacteria or arsenic-free water.

Closer home, Das is trying hard to facilitate the implementation of community-based chlorinating devices in Kolkata; he believes that the West Bengal government would benefit a lot from it. He believes,

The state would see fewer diarrhoeal diseases in urban slums and rural areas, he says, “the current data on mortality and disability caused by diarrhoeal diseases in India is alarming – diarrhoea alone causes more than 1,600 deaths daily. This device could also be implemented in emergency situations after floods and earthquakes.

When asked about funds for the project, Das, who gave up a stable career in electrical engineering to innovate independently, says, “It is not just raw material but also tools and manpower that are required for experimenting and prototyping. I start with my own resources and then look for funding to move ahead. Projects die when funds are not available but for ZIMBA I was fortunate to get some funding from a US-based organization.” The relative cost of the device when patented, Das tells us, can be approximately Rs 5000 and one unit can serve more than 50 families. If produced in bulk the cost can be brought down by 50 per cent.

Meanwhile, ZIMBA has fetched Das international recognition. A seminar held last year at Stanford University, USA, also displayed ZIMBA. Das demonstrated how the device worked and addressed the audience on grass-root innovations in general. He also spent a few days working with a group of students on developing a different technology for an automatic chlorine dispenser.

Women in a slum using ZIMBA to get clean water

Would Das ever consider teaching youngsters? “I thought students in India are mainly concerned about getting better grades that may fetch them high-paying jobs,” says the cynical 55-year-old scientist. “They do not have time for anything outside their curriculum and I don’t blame them because creativity is not really nurtured in our present education system.” But there is light at the end of the tunnel for Das. Having enjoyed working with student teams at MIT and Stanford and teaching them the significance of low-cost technologies, Das now has a renewed sense of hope in the future generation. “Being innovative cannot be taught through lectures and text books but can be shared through experiences. I would be more than happy to share mine with those who are interested.”

When asked why his creation is called ZIMBA and if it is an abbreviation of sorts, Das chuckles, “Zimba or Simba means ‘lion’ in Swahili.” Considering the device can handle more than a thousand litres of water per day, thereby catering to the needs of a large majority of people, the name seems apt indeed.

Since his childhood, Saunak’s school art teacher fascinated not only him but the whole school. He was a multi-talented person. However, after leaving school Saunak met him after years and learnt other facets to his life. Instead of the canvas, he was sketching beautiful villages and better lives for the Santhals. Here is the story of his beloved and respected Art sir – Mr. Debabrata Ghosh.

The Santhal is the largest tribal community (adivasi, adi = old; vasi = inhabitants) in India. West Bengal is the second largest (38% of the total Santal population) home to these indigenous set of people. Be it the 1855 ‘Santhal Uprising’, or Pandit Raghunath Murmu’s Ol Chiki script in 1925 or pre-independence Santhali agricultural techniques or their unique music, this tribe has contributed to India’s history and culture in a number of ways. However, in the era of globalization – the Santhals have found themselves increasingly outcast from the core society. Here is Debabrata Ghosh, a good samaritan working with these tribal people for the last 25 years and making the change happen in their lives.

Santhals mixing with the city folks and getting a change in attire

Mr. Ghosh, an ex-teacher by profession has many facets as he is an artist, journalist and a sportsman. A resident of the industrial town Asansol in West Bengal, in 1988 he went to look after his ancestral land at Bonogram nearby to the group of Santhal villages of Dihika, Jorpara & Haramdihi. These villages are 8 kms away from Asansol on the banks of Damodar river. Mr. Ghosh could not stay away from the land because of the heart-melting void of basic facilities like education, health, hygiene, etc. Above all, the love of the people and warmth of the soil gave him an inner calling to become one of the Santhals. This alumnus of Narendrapur Ramakrishna Mission School started walking in the path laid by Shri Ramakrishna.

Coming back to 2014, Mr. Ghosh is working with the larger chunk of Dihika block comprising of 8 to 9 villages and thousands of its inhabitants. I was struck by the depth and practicality of his work and vision. These tribal families are away from the mainstream development owing to lack of government machinery and the usual suspicion towards the new and the unknown by the Santhals. As a forward thinker and learner of society, he was quick to address the bridge between the urban people and these tribal. Witnessing the Naxalite-Maoist revolution – he understood that the only way to keep away those elements is to improve their livelihood and give them a better environment to live in.

Thus started the journey of ‘Damodar Adibasi Development Society’, with the sole objective of social and cultural evolution, and disbanding the easy path of revolution. Once, the curtains of suspicion rolled over, the Santhals treated Mr. Ghosh as one among them. Mr. Ghosh recalls that his first project with these poor tribal people was to address the infrastructure issues. By 1990, he himself, along with the immense tribal labour power, constructed a bridge. The bridge shortened the journey to reach the nearby Damodar station and the bus route to the towns of Burnpur and Asansol.

Next, being an artist – he truly understood and patronized the rural forms of art & craft of the villagers. He taught them the modern techniques of painting and usage of colour. Also, to create rural women empowerment he started teaching craft work using jute. After decades of hard work, hundreds of young girls are preparing carpets, jute bag and masks. The scale is yet to be reached – but the products are creating a huge demand in the neighboring states and with city people. Mr. Ghosh is now mulling on new go-to-market plans for these products.

A young student creates a jute carpet.

Back in the 90’s illiteracy was at its peak. Mr. Ghosh took time out from his teaching profession for counselling the Santhals and showcasing the usefulness of education. Next, he started mentoring a few educated youths and started running tuition centers in the villages. Now each year, before the Santal girls are married off they have studies at least up to the 10th or 12th grade. Few are showing even higher ambitions, like Bani Hembram who dreams to be the first graduate of the entire block. She is looking for financial assistance to pursue the graduation stream of her choice in the renowned Vishwa Bharati University in Shantiniketan.

To encourage and ease the journey to school – each year Mr. Ghosh and a handful of his friends have gifted cycle to these girls. Owing to the rising literacy, for the last few years Mr. Ghosh has encouraged them to start Santhali Little Magazine. This is helping to revive the rich Santali language, which is also being encouraged through translation work and some book publications.

To grow culturally, the Santhals have formed formal groups of Folk Play (locally ‘Jatra’) and performed in the nearby districts. Riding on the popularity of the Santhali dance, Mr. Ghosh had offered platforms to perform in the cultural hubs like Rabindra Bhavan or at famous book fairs. These villagers are slowly witnessing the enthusiasm and mingling with city people. Further, these cultural troops are not only participating in but also winning sub-divisional level cultural competitions.

The villagers performs at the Asansol Book Fair

After trying his persuasion skills for the last two decades, Mr. Ghosh succeeded in gaining clothing independence for the women. Now, young girls do wear clothes other than Sari in the village and while travelling. Also, to discard social taboos, villagers are going out on picnics and touring nearby places. Further, he is training a couple of girls to drive a car. Mr. Ghosh wishes to widen their horizons through these initiatives.

Football being the favourite sport of Bengal, Mr. Ghosh used it as a means of exchange and communication. The village team coached by him recently won the Madhukonda Shield tournament. Now, annual sports day is a regular affair for the inhabitants of Dihika block. To preserve nature, Mr. Ghosh has started tree planation with the kids. This is making them and their parent’s eco-sensitive in their day to day lives.

The kids have taken keen interest on plant cultivation

When I expressed my curiosity on the work in the health front, Mr. Ghosh shared a story. Twenty years ago, the Santhals were against blood donation. As an outsider back then, he could not just merely counsel them and expect them to change their views. He found high infant mortality because of a shortage of blood. So he suggested only grouping of blood, so that blood could be arranged from the district hospital. Next, after the grouping of blood groups, when the villagers found shortage of blood in the hospital – someone among the Santals came forward to donate blood. Mr. Ghosh smiled from a distance, as it saved life and served the purpose.

Now, till date dozens of blood camps have been held and hundreds of villagers, irrespective of gender, have taken part. To take care of emergency situations – Mr. Ghosh has gifted the villagers an ambulance. He also conducted counselling classes along with the local police so that the alcoholics could get rehabilitated.

Display of art work on the walls of the community hall by the Santhals

In the above picture, using only village resources – starting from raw materials to civil technique to artisans – Mr. Ghosh and his Santhal family is constructing a hall. This would be used in the coming days as a workshop and community center. The center is coming up in the spirit of the Santhalis. This center would be used as a marketplace for their craft work, host tuition classes, awareness sessions and be used for other projects. Last but not the least, in a state where chit funds do rampant business – Mr. Ghosh’s financial literacy classes and awareness programs have kept these greedy fund owners at bay.

All these 26 years, Mr. Ghosh has funded and tried to make most of the projects self-sustaining through his individual mammoth effort. This karma-yogi finds guidance in the words of Swami Vivekananda. Mr. Ghosh has treated the Santals in the light of his master – ‘Daridra Deva Bhavo’ (seeing God in all while serving). This one man’s effort not only created a physical bridge in the past, but a stronger connection between two cultures of our nation – bringing down social and superstitious boundaries.

Mr. Debabrata Ghosh can be contacted for this project at dbrata2005@yahoo.co.in.

Kolkata. The city of joy. The city where the ancient and the modern blend in effortlessly. Where the trams and hand-pulled rickshaws co-exist with the metro trains and fancy cars. Where thousands of artists have found inspiration through the ages. Where dreams have been born, found wings, and even died prematurely. Where pathos can be found on every street corner and the rich-poor divide will blow your mind away. Watch this video to experience the melancholic beauty of Kolkata in just 96 seconds!

The video was originally published by Nitin Das. Watch his other published videos here.

From empowering youth, farmers, women and everyone else in the village to working towards good healthcare system and livelihood options, MUKTI is bringing a holistic development to Sunderbans through its various initiatives. Read along to know how they manage to do so many things simultaneously.

The Sundarbans, to most Indians and people across the globe, epitomise the largest mangrove forest in the world. Hundreds of thousands of tourists throng the forest each year for a mere sight of the Royal Bengal Tiger and the deadly crocodiles.

This beautiful (Sundar) forest (Ban) is also home to four million human beings. For the inhabitants here, life is extremely dangerous. The Government’s welfare policies hardly reach the villages. The place is under threat from tidal floods, coastal cyclones and other natural and ecological calamities.

Hence, the Sundarban inhabitants suffer from poverty, illiteracy, poor healthcare facilities, a lack of good infrastructure and common awareness. However, a son-of-the-soil Sankar Halder and his team are slowly showing the ways of MUKTI (liberation) from poverty in these villages.

Roads are Luxury: One of the main roads of the village. Think of monsoon or a travel by patients

MUKTI truly believes and works for the ‘Right to Education’

Halder, from one of the villages of Sundarban, went on to study in the prestigious Jadavpur University and is now working as an IT Manager at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). He remembers how he struggled to get text books during his school days. He wanted to end this burning issue and thus in 2004-05, he started the Book Bank project.

MUKTI provides text books to underprivileged students for free. Till date, it has distributed books to 7,000 students in 22 higher secondary schools. The Book Bank is the resource for all the course books for class 5 to class 12 students. It provides all enrolled students with course books for a year.

MUKTI Book Bank at Ambika Nagar Haripriya high school, Maipith, Sundarban.

Making the school lessons easy

Most of the youth in the Sundarbans are yet to complete their 10th grade education. It is not a lack of interest; but without the help of a mentor, they find the lessons difficult.

MUKTI’s coaching center program was started to solve this issue. Morning and evening classes are conducted throughout the week in makeshift classrooms at eight centers. At present, nearly 1,600 students are benefiting from this program. It charges Rs. 10 per month from a student upholding the ancient values of ‘Guru Dakshina’.

Watch this video to know more about the initiative –

Nurturing bright students

Talented Students Sponsorship (TSS) is a sponsorship program, in effect since 2006, through which students across several districts in West Bengal are provided with the support required for higher education.

The selection is based on both the merit of the student and his/her financial situation. MUKTI believes that being sponsored by a kind person will make better human beings out of the students themselves, and that someday they will reciprocate with kindness to another needy person. In 2013, MUKTI was able to gather financial help for 650 students.

Annual TSS event organized by MUKTI

In the education front, to bridge the gap of modern education, MUKTI has started the Village Computer Literacy Program. This project helps students to know more about various computer courses and gives them a chance to prepare themselves for competitive jobs.

Making food taste the way it is supposed to

In 2009, MUKTI Organic Farmers Association (MOFA) was formed. It is part of the worldwide revolt against the harmful yet common inorganic farming. 852 farmers have joined hands, and with the help of MUKTI, have brought 2,000 acres of land under organic cultivation.

MUKTI is working on the market linkages of the organic products, supplying the much needed cow dung for organic farming and making people aware of the benefits. Till date it has granted Rs. 1 lakh to organic farmers. Very soon, this project will become profitable for these ‘natural farmers’.

An organic farmer shows brinjals from his field. They may look smaller but are tastier and healthier than inorganic brinjals.

MUKTI Coconut Project NaRKEL (Natural Revolution with Koconut for Ecology and Livelihood). MUKTI is promoting Coconut planting in Sundarban, to fight against climate change and global warming and to promote livelihood of the common people. The NaRKEL project is a real success and the idea of planting coconut trees on clay roads was brilliant. Indeed, coconut trees avoid soil erosion and this is a better way to avoid broken clay roads after heavy rains. Learn more about it here: SaveTheSunderban.

I saw hundreds of Coconut trees planted by MUKTI under the NARKEL project.

Using RTI as a development weapon

In Rights and Governance program, MUKTI has been operating a Right to Information project funded by AID since 2011-2012, covering grassroots people in Nagendrapur, Kankandighi, Ramganga and Laxmijanardanpur GP Area of Mathurapur-II Block in South 24 Parganas district.

It has conducted 60 to 70 camps till date to spread awareness about health issues and smart solutions. The functional areas MUKTI has tackled using RTI are: stopped public distribution scheme, mid-day meals, senior citizen rights, BPL benefits, 100 days of work, SSC exam results, health department absence, etc. Till date it has filed successfully more than 60 RTI applications. Through this program, 2,000 people have benefited so far. Know more and support this initiative here.

The ground level RTI activists enabling ‘Mukti’ from injustice and poor service at Sunderban.

Bridging international borders for the betterment of the people

MUKTI, in partnership with CUTS International and with support from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is exploring bilateral trade possibilities of HYV rice seeds between India and Bangladesh.

Project RISTE (Addressing Barriers to Rice Seeds Trade Between India and Bangladesh) is being implemented in four states in eastern India (Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal) and three regions in Bangladesh in partnership with different NGOs.

Project RISTE analyzes the barriers of seed supply and paves the way for involving farmers in production and marketing, and promotes rice seeds entrepreneurship which would ensure economic empowerment of the poor, who MUKTI stands for.

RISTE – where old friends bring down the obstacles for rice trade.

Paving a Healthy Sunderban

MUKTI has a strong focus on the health and hygiene domain. Under the Village Sanitation Project, Sankar Halder and his friends have taken up the challenge of providing low-cost latrines for the needy.

Watch a video to understand their work better-

Further, MUKTI conducts medical camps on an ongoing basis. The program is aimed at awareness building on health and sanitation issues and public-private-partnership development for provisioning health, water and sanitation support.

Mukti from Darkness

MUKTI, in collaboration with TERI and Bangiya Parishad Qatar, started a successful campaign towards bringing solar-based lighting into the lives of the rural masses in the Sunderban area. They established a sustainable model for distribution of solar lanterns to villagers at a very low cost for replacing kerosene consumption. Use of solar lanterns has found enormous potential in these areas as they are very low cost (expenditure on lighting is just Rs 60 per month instead of Rs 280 p.m. which was spent on kerosene previously). Students can study for more hours and housewives can work on handicraft work for more hours increasing the household income. Shop owners are finding it easier to extend their business hours into late in the evenings, thus increasing their revenues.

Watch this video to understand about their solar programme-

Thus, the village boy Sankar Halder and his enthusiastic group of friends in MUKTI have brought an air of optimism around the inhabitants of the Sunderbans.

MUKTI has termed its all-round development for the community as HEALER. The 360 degree programs encompasses H – Health, Water and Sanitation, E – Education & Empowerment, A – Agricultural Reforms, L – Livelihood & Economic Security, E – Environment Economy and R – Rights & Governance.

MUKTI brightening lives and bringing smiles among the rural folks in the Sunderban.

To know more and to support their work, please visit the website here, Like or Follow.

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The biggest problem that people in rural areas face is the lack of livelihood options. The Mukti organization, through its Mukti Community Development Fund, is changing the lives of the villagers in a simple way. Here is the big impact these small loans have been creating in the lives of people in the Sunderbans.

Mukti in the Sunderban area of West Bengal has been creating quite a bit of impact in the lives of people there (read our previous article on Mukti here). One of their initiatives that is creating entrepreneurs out of women is the Mukti Community Development Fund (MCDF) program. MCDF is targeted at women empowerment as it strongly believes that an ideal village is one where women have a significant role to play in decision making. And to make sure that women are not economically idle, MCDF was launched which enables women to pursue their own small businesses.

Currently, MCDF is working in 10 villages at Raidhighi in Sunderban, West Bengal. This area belongs to one of the poorest districts of India, lacking basic amenities and infrastructure.

How Mukti MCDF works.

People here face a lot of financial troubles as microcredit tends to have high interest rates here as the microfinance institutions (MFIs) that fund these loans borrow from banks at high interest rates. Apart from this, loans for basic necessities like sanitation, drinking water and vocational training are not easily available as they need to be at low interest rates. Hence, there is an urgent need for availing low-cost loans.

MCDF came up with an interesting solution by asking individuals to become social investors instead of donors. Firstly, by sourcing funds from all over the world, MCDF can provide cheaper credit (half of the existing interest rate) to  rural women. Secondly, the money they get as a form of loan does not hurt their dignity – as it is not a donation. Lastly, they tend to become more serious and passionate for their business as they have to repay the loan – which sometimes lacks in the case of donations. You can read more on the model of MCDF here.

Till date, more than 120 families have benefited from these low cost loans and training from Mukti’s MCDF programme which touches various sectors like:

Food Business

Brihaspati & Sannyasi Bag

Brihaspati and Sannyasi Bag took a Rs. 10,000 loan through Mukti’s MCDF programme for making rice out of rice grain. The entire process is done at home instead of going to a rice mill. In local language, the process is known as ‘Bhanakuto’. At first, rice grain is bought from the market and boiled in huge earthen pots. Then it is dried and removed from the shaft. This business requires space, labour and a non-rainy weather.

The Sunderban being a rice-consuming belt, Mrs. Bag’s average weekly turnover is close Rs. 11,000. Advised by Mukti’s field officers, they have stocked rice grains at a lower price for the monsoon. Thus, with the seed capital, this couple booked nearly 100 percent gains in six months. As a next step, the Bag duo is planning to open a motor garage for their son from the business profit.

Transport Business

Mrs Pratima Dey and Uttam Dey got a driving van with help of the money they received as loan.

The Sunderban is a difficult terrain. The government does not provide transport facilities into the interiors of this area. From the nearest bus stand, one has to travel another 12 to 15 kms to reach their village. Hence, to tap the demand for local transport, Mrs. Pratima Dey and Uttam Dey took a loan of Rs. 10,000 from the MCDF project. With the money, they have bought a motor driven van. This van carries villagers of Purba Sridharpur village to and from Raidighi bus stand. After incurring expenses, their monthly savings h as been nearly Rs. 6,000 for the last 18 months.

Poultry Business

Mrs Mira Bhandari is happily running her poultry business.

Mrs. Mira Bhandari took up cattle rearing and fishery business with the help of MCDF. She took training from the self-help group organised by Mukti. With the borrowed amount of Rs. 8,000 she purchased six goats and spent on their up-keep. This business did not just break even in six months but she also made Rs. 4,000 profit by selling the older goats. There is zero investment in the second cycle other than the food for the goats. In the fishery business, ably helped by her husband and children, she is making Rs. 40,000 to Rs. 45,000 profit each year. MCDF is really turning out to be an ‘angel investor’ for these villagers.

Agriculture

to Mr Biswanath Mondal has started following organic farming.

For MCDF, giving out money is dependent on the strategic and long-term benefits to the community. This is why it lent money to Mr. Biswanath Mondal for organic farming. By using cow-dung, jaggery and besan (Bengal gram flour) as the inputs to the soil, he is growing organic brinjal and rice in his fields. He might not be getting the same margins he was enjoying earlier by using pesticides – but it gives him satisfaction. He is working on the shortcomings of the agricultural products but is happy producing natural things. He is earning Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 5,500 every month with the seed capital from MCDF. Now, this organic farmer is planning to take more loans from MCDF in order to scale up.

Textile Business

Sahida Seikh no longer requires external funding for her business.

Sahida Seikh took a loan of Rs. 5,000 for creating Zari work on sarees. For processing, a wooden frame with some accessories needs to be procured and that costs about Rs.5000. The sarees, zari and stitching materials are supplied by the vendors/shop-keepers. The labour charges vary from Rs.800 to Rs.1500 depending on workmanship, and 4-6 sarees can be completed in a month. In the second year itself Ms. Seikh no longer requires external funding.

How Mukti MCDF Loans Work

So, it can be seen that MCDF has guided profitable ventures across sectors. However, not all businesses were profitable. A couple of women who took loans for poultry business suffered a loss. The reason being night attacks by foxes and hyenas and the extreme temperatures in the Sunderban belt. This event has been a learning for the Self-Help Group. The poultry business requires scale. As a solution, MCDF is now imparting loans in the poultry business to groups and not to individuals.

Under this program, 100% of the lending amount goes to the borrower. The principal is used by the borrower and the interest is used by the Self Help Group to meet the administration costs. Once the tenure is over, the social investor gets back the principal amount. If one wishes to keep the principal invested, the same amount can be repeatedly used to fund more borrowers. That’s how a small amount of money goes a long, long way.

Various economic studies have revealed that these cheaper credits have helped families and villages come out of the poverty trap. Successful borrowers brimming with confidence are approaching MCDF for higher denomination loans, even amounting to Rs. 1 lakh!

The MCDF program officers state that this is satisfying, but not something they encourage. Mukti wishes to partner with these poor families till the time they come out of poverty. Once they stand on their feet, for expansion and commercialization, they can contact government agencies and banks. MCDF funds projects to the magnitude of Rs. 15,000 for a year. Rather than giving a loan of Rs. 1 lakh to single individual or group, they would rather touch 10 different families by distributing Rs. 10,000 each to them.

Final Words

Mukti, through its MCDF project, has brought together the right areas of economics, risk management, environmental sustainability, sociology and social media to change hundreds of poor lives in the Sunderban area. Sankar Halder, the President of Mukti, recounts having sugarcane juice at a roadside stall during a visit to one of the villages served by Mukti. The shop-keeper divulged to him that he had spent the first 30 years of his life being unemployed and doing menial jobs occasionally. Now, with an MCDF loan and technical help from them, he grows sugarcane, sells the juice and above all, can stay with his family in the village. For Mr Halder, the juice became sweeter.

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With increasing population and limited resources, emergency healthcare sure needs immediate attention in India. In an emergency situation, when both patients and their families are clueless, we need a centralized system that could bridge the information gap between hospitals and patients. Started by four friends, KMES helps you get access to the right medical care at the right time.

India is a densely populated country and often when it comes to the healthcare system, patients and their families are found confused and clueless about what to do in case of emergencies. Usually a patient needs to wait for an ambulance and sometimes, due to lack of time, is transported in a vehicle without proper paramedic support.

The real trouble starts when the patient reaches the hospital. As not all hospitals have special units like the ICU, the patient has to be accommodated in the general room. Another big issue arises when it comes to getting the required blood. Most of the hospitals are always short of blood and blood products, an issue further complicated by many formalities and paper work leading to a lot of time being wasted to arrange for certain blood groups. Due to all this confusion, the golden hour of saving the patient is wasted, resulting in the loss of life.

KMES aims at bringing medical help just a call away.

In a country like India, which does not have a centralized emergency healthcare system, it becomes difficult to solve the issue and we have become accustomed to leaving everything to fate.

Four friends decided to change that. They embarked on improving the condition of Indian emergency healthcare system through their non-profit organization, Mission Aarogya. Rajib Sengupta, his wife Rita Bhattacharya, Dr. Tanmoy Mahapatra and his wife Dr. Sanchita Mahapatra old friends from school, met in the US after many years and decided to come together for a better cause.

“Initially the idea was very simple – to provide an ICT (Information and Communication Technology) platform where practice-based information would be collected for generating health evidences. This would also ensure continuity of care for individuals,” Sengupta says.

The start

After much research, they came to the conclusion that the US-based model of 911 emergency healthcare which is controlled and financed by the government, wouldn’t work in India due to the diversity of the population here.

The centralized system makes access to paramedic help, ambulances and required blood group easier.

“The only way our organization could have an impact in social issues was by making our (tech) innovations have a direct impact in the daily life of the general public. At the same time, it needed to be something that was easily accessible by all, irrespective of their economic and social status, otherwise it would be another “rich man’s toy”,” Sengupta says.

A medical emergency system consists of three stages: “Sense”, “Reach” and “Care”. The “sense” is to locate the nearest facilities, “reach” is to get to the facility under proper care, and the “care” is handled by the respective facilities upon arrival – often the “sense” and “reach” happens together.

“It became very evident to us that in Kolkata, the hospitals were doing a great job in the “care” part, but the “sense” and “reach” aspects were severely lagging,” he says.

Gradually the Kolkata Medical Emergency System (KMES model) was developed which was based on the following two key concepts:

• Instead of introducing a new emergency service, enhance and strengthen the existing one
• Empower citizens for a crowd-sourced, quick response

How does it work?

KMES is a self-sustainable model as it is not introducing any new services but is an enhancement of the existing emergency services. A 24×7 emergency inquiry center will integrate and enhance the isolated emergency providers in urban areas, both public & private, to create a standardized, centralized and integrated, real-time Medical Emergency System.

With KMES’s intervention, the crucial and “golden hour” of saving is utilized.

KMES is gathering and broadcasting the fundamentals of urgent care, the availability of Critical Care Unit (CCU) & blood products, to all, irrespective of social & economic status. Healthcare providers, emergency respondents and disaster management agencies will all get the same information.

“As explained above, KMES relies on a very simple assumption – instead of competition, let’s collaborate. And not only collaborate among institutions but bring the general public in the mix too. When proper tools (such as information) are provided to the general public, they can do wonders,” Sengupta says.

KMES helps the patient and his/her family to access the data from various sources like SMS, phone, internet, etc. This results in quicker actions and helps in saving more lives.

The challenges

Bringing a centralized system was not that easy.  “Each hospital has different workflow and it is very difficult to standardize Bed Management,” Sengupta says.

The hospital information management systems are proprietary, closed and isolated. Several of them do not have any in-house IT staff to integrate the internal systems. Also, they do not want any automated interface between their internal system and KMES due to fear of theft of patient list. These makes KMES’s task more uphill.

The future

Sengupta and his team plans to take KMES to other parts of West Bengal. They will concentrate more on making available Critical Care Units, ambulances and blood at the nearest location. In the next phase, they will also be strengthening the existing ambulance services in Kolkata and making blood bank information easily available.

The ambulances will be equipped with GPS tracking software to capture real-time location & availability information. Next, paramedic training will be provided to the networked ambulance staff and then, a multi-lingual emergency response centre will help in dispatching the nearest networked ambulance & paramedic, who, after stabilizing the patient, will transport him/her to the nearest facility.

Another step the team wants to take is to launch a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) platform, and share the best practices for implementing an emergency medical system in densely populated urban areas.

KMES which currently operates in Kolkata plans to expand to other cities of India.

“With minimal changes, it is likely that the system can be implemented in other cities in India as well as across South-East Asia, Africa, and Latin America. KMES can help other civic bodies and governments to implement this system in their respective cities based on the best practices learned during the pilot implementation. We are already in discussion with an NGO in Cairo, Egypt,” Sengupta says.

Awards and Recognition

KMES was one of the eight winners of the 2012 Innovation Challenge organised by the Rockefeller Foundation and received a grant of $100,000 to set up FOSS. KMES also bagged second prize for healthcare innovation in the Emergency Service Award programme conducted by AIIMS, New Delhi. In addition to this, they have been winners in the Innovation Category of Ashoka Changemakers ‘Safer Roads Safer India’ contest and awarded by Grand Challenge Canada in its Stars in Global Health program.

KMES aims to become a reliable model that could change the current medical condition of the country. Sengupta and his team have come up with a solution that can do wonders with the existing resources. It does seem like if you actually think it through, there isn’t any problem that cannot be solved.

To know more about this initiative, visit their website or contact Rajib Sengupta at – rajibs123@yahoo.com
They also have an android app which can be downloaded from here. Other mobile users can get information at this link.

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