Cover Photo: PDM 21 Inauguration photo – lighting the lamp signifying the start of their journey towards serving the community
From Editorial Desk,
These issue articles are written by the students from the batch of Programme in Development Management (PDM) – 21. This issue mainly covers the student field segments, class assignments and lab segments experience. This is the first attempt for all the students in writing articles and case studies. This issue covers our unique subject assignments, lab segments experiences and events at the academy. Also, this issue has book reviews, photo stories and poems of the students done during the course of their first term classroom segment. This also shows our first thought process of understanding the development sector and how it resonates with our experience and thought process.
Hope this issue is informative and interesting to our readers !
Niranjan and Soma Bhunia, PDM 21, Student Editorial Committee
As Padma Shree Chinaapillai, entered our class for a guest lecture (for the subject MOVE I), the first impression of her is her simplicity. She looked like one of the common persons, I see in my village. But her life story was very inspirational and I am happy that I have met and interacted with her. Her age now is more than 70, I think. For our class and interact with us, she came all the way from her village and at this age she is continuously thinking about poor and still working as mush as possible. She didn’t have a huge education, but her continued hard work and determination have helped her work for her village and women’s community across India through DHAN Foundation’s Kalanjiam Programme. I realized to serve the community and to do social work, we don’t need much education, all that we need is spirit and determination like her. She was born in Kallandari, Madurai, Tamil Nadu. Her mother died when she was very young. She has two brothers and two sisters. Her father and brother worked as agriculture labour. She also works as agriculture labour doing weeding, transplanting, grazing, etc. She got married at an early age as quickly after she attained puberty. They had a debt with landlord in that place, where herself and her husband worked until their debt was paid off. She conceived six children and she had one miscarriage, she delivered two boys and three girls. Her many children did not live long. One girl died just twenty-two days after birth, another girl died at age of four and half year due to brain fever. She educated their child bur her son not interested so left third standard class and her daughter studied up to high school. She had undergone many hardships both in personal and in her social life. She worked as Kothanar (construction worker). She joined DHAN’s Kalanjjiam (Women Self Help Group). She was immediately identified as unique leader because of her character and skills. With the help of Kalanjiam, she helped many women in the village to improve their savings and livelihood. She also helped in Village common issues and brought various development activities. She got many awards and recognitions from state and central government but she was very humble. And even though she was sometimes regard in the image of political matters. She never involved herself in the politics and favored any one. She is a very straight forward woman and never afraid to speak against any the wrong things. She shared her experience and life story over the years. Finally, she advised us that “An uneducated person like me can do this much, you guys have good education, so use that to help poor. Don’t go behind money. Go to your village, help the vulnerable and poor.”
Even though, I didn’t understand her words, while she was speaking, I could able to see the care and determination in her words. After my friend translated, it was very inspiring for me. In her Case study, I read one thing that her happiness always attached to her work it shows the dedication for her work as a leader it influences me most. I learned that the social work is not like any other job to do with mind, it’s the job that can be done only from the heart.
This movie was given as assignment for us in the course ‘Basics of Development’ to understand the Poverty and Inequality situation. This article focusses on review of the movie and India’s poverty situation.
The movie Pather Panchali is written by a great film maker Satyajit Roy in 1955. The story of the film was inspired from the Novel of Bibhutibhusan Banerjee. This movie tells a story about the poor Indian family struggling to live in an honest way. The movie Pather Panchali is a story of a poor Brahmin family. There are four family members. The head of the family is Harihar who was a poet and Play writer, his wife Sarbajaya take care of his children, one daughter named Durga and one son Apu, and one old sister. Durga’s mother don’t like her. The father is a Dreamer and an Idealist man. He has given the orchard to settle his brother’s debt even though his whole family is in very vulnerable situation. Since dreams can’t feed the family, he joins in his work at the salary of eight rupees. Mother is very real who is responsible for managing the family. The condition of the house was not good. The salary is not sufficient to fulfill their basic need like food and cloths.
Durga go to her uncle house to play the girl with her age who get new clothes and ornament but she never asked her parents to buy her new clothes or ornaments, she knows their family condition. But sometime she cannot hold her emotion and stole Then the Durga puja come they get some new clothes. After some days Durga’s uncle daughter got married she thought that her father was so poor so she never got married. In this time her aunt was died. Harihar went to Bisnupur for earn some money and he has to suffer for job. At that time the condition of the family was so bad, they have no money for food after some days. Sarbajaya started to mortgage their utensils to the local moneylender but it was not sufficient. Even though her condition is poor, she has pride so she never asked any relative to help them. One day it was heavy rainfall Durga and Apu stuck in the rain. After returning home Durga become ill. Her neighbor called a local doctor and but said nothing to worry. But on that ill fetched night again it was a very bad storm. Their house condition was so bad, so the cold wind and water directly affected the Durga and she cannot survive. She lost the war before sunshine. Harihar cannot got the news of Durga’s death. After somedays Harihar come back with lot of gifts and money but Durga was not there. So, they decided to leave the place and went to Kasi (Benaras).
Though this movie, the film shows how the poverty affect the happiness of the family. Each character exhibits a poverty situation in a different manner. Family caring for boy’s education than the girl child education. I can also relate this to my village’s condition. My village is a little developed village. In one of my neighbouring families, where they are separated from their grandfather, they didn’t have any land to work. Father soon went into depression and become mentally ill. He was also addicted to alcohol. They had only one daughter. Mother only does very hard work to keep the family running. She also makes sure that her daughter gets an education. Like in the movie, she is working very hard and also maintains her self-respect. The daughter comes to me for help in her studies. Her family situation always had a great impact on me.
Like this, in India, many villages are suffering from absolute poverty as portrayed in the movie. India’s economy has grown steadily over the last two decades. Its growth has been uneven when comparing social groups, economic groups, geographic regions and rural and urban areas. Many government and non-government organisations try to reduce poverty by providing basic needs and reducing the inequality between the people. Still there are many problems which needs to be rectified. Its each one of our duty to reduce this inequality and make sure everyone gets their basic needs.
“My only wish is to sleep peacefully at night without crying”
statement by a Mrs. Malimala.
I along with my three group members went to SMP colony as part of SEED field visit to understand basic social structure. When we were walking on street of SMP colony, I felt that colony have everything and all facilities are provided by government. During transect walk, we met one woman named Malimala. She invited us to her house and that time we needed to complete our transect walk so, we said we visit later. After completing transect walk, we visited there and saw her saw preparing garland from Jasmine flower. When I first met her, I felt that she is cheerful lady as she welcomed us with warm smile and offered food also. That time I could not even guess how much problem she facing in her personal life.
We visited her house and asked her about her income, expenditure, livelihood and husband job. She works as a scavenger in a government hospital and her husband work as a private labor in a construction site. Seven members of the family are living in a small two rooms allotted by the government. Although her husband was earning okay but due to alcohol addiction, they were struggling to meet day end. Her husband beat her in influence of alcohol every day, she said due this they fight every day. I asked that why she is not taking help of anyone to stop him, that time she defended him that it is not his fault because he works as manual scavenger and he cannot work without alcohol consumption.
I asked her 16-year young boy “In which standard are you in?”, he replied that he didn’t go school. The more I asked the more I got surprised. He was also addicted to alcohol. He was initially addicted to consumption of glue and some other solutions. Even though, it was not good in taste and got burning sensation while consumption. Even with that, he didn’t stop. He continued consuming. Later, he started to consume the alcohol left by his father in the home. As both parents go to work for full day. Rohan started to drink at the early age of 12. When he was 13, two of his friends introduce him with other forms of drugs and solution.
Belonging to a scavenger family he always goes through discrimination at school. At school, children and his classmates don’t like to sit with him. They won’t even talk with him, because of this discrimination, he dropped out of his school. He kept all these bad experiences to himself which resulted in anxiety and depression then resulted in his alcohol addiction.
By the age of 15 Rohan started to take solution and drinks in front of his parents. His parents could not say anything as they themselves were regular consumer of alcohol. Then his grandparents intervened as their relationship was strong with him. With the help of them and SHG (Kalanjiam), they got the alcohol deaddiction counselor. After regular counseling, Rohan began to see that he was a young man with promise and potential. He began to understand that if he did not have started this alcohol and have shared his school experiences with any of his family member, he could have a bright future. He told that as he was becoming alcohol free, he was getting clear view on what he wants to become. He shared that he regrets his past actions. He recognizes that substances such as solution, alcohol and drugs were both spiritually and physically killing him.
Since my childhood, I saw that how alcoholism can break a family. It has severe impact on social, physical and mental health. Even though, our country is developing in various sectors, social discrimination and poverty is still there and generation to generation, it goes on and the cycle continues. Education system and social understanding of the society needs to be improved. It’s the duty of everyone to protect our young generation from going in cultch of alcoholism due to any reason especially social discrimination.
Madurai is called as the temple town. And our culture always regarded Cows as God and holy. In Tamil Nadu, Cows and Bulls have a special place which was witnessed in the recent Jalikattu protest. They also celebrate one special day called ‘Mattu Pongal’ signifying the importance of cows as part of their life. But it is witnessed not only here but across the country in the cities everywhere where many cows were roaming the road eating garbage due to migration and change of occupation from agriculture to others.
Isn’t it our duty to avoid this indignity towards the species that our culture regards it as God?
The poem is about self. When we are conscious of our problems then we feel the pain. Our blood become like hot lava and all our feelings started burning. We have to make ourselves able to catch the fire of problems. If they burn our feelings then we have to make something new, creative from that ash.
The author, P. Sainath, wants to give a live experience of the village people’s sufferings through his book “Everybody Loves Good Drought”. It is full of short accounts of Palagummi Sainath’s travels around rural India, with a focus on the lives of some of the hundreds of millions of people living below the poverty line in the country in the late nineties. The development of a country takes part in the hands of each and every small and marginal sector. The failure of the development of a nation is because of multiple factors since the author wants to bring the root cause and reflects those factors in this book. This book is divided into ten chapters. Each chapter has picked up different issues relating to health, education, displacement, rural debt, litigation, land issues, tribal identity, water and drought. Different issues raised in different chapters depict different dimensions of poverty. It is not a book of secondary data or some random stories. This gives a picture of development, problems in the system and how it is impacting the lives of the poor from the story of a person to macro perspectives of the country. This book tells us the voice of the last person in society with data and emotion in a balanced way.
In the chapter “This is the way we go to school” the author talks about how education becomes a crime and the purpose for what education brought up has completely transformed into a new evolution. The last line of this chapter talks about the core message “Give them a chance and you will see”. Here the author captured how an opportunity of a person has been hijacked in form of power, position and money.
After reading the book, my understanding of the sector and development practitioners has improved in a great way. It is a must-read for all the persons who want to do development work.
While reading the book the vulnerability and difficulty of the poor drive them to go for inhuman action. In a particular story, he talks about the selling and getting of one lady’s sister-in-law for the sake of survival. The cruelty of this world and the selfishness of individual bears the cost of one’s life. But to get to the hard reality one has to just turn the time clock by a few months. Stream of pages telling the stories of farmers’ suicides in several states. The money lenders and middlemen become a key part in rural areas it is the big phenomenon where farmers couldn’t get out of the trap and the debt burden.
This book tells us that Rural development is to make a village self-sufficient by the involvement of the community and sustainable use of the resources in those areas. It is a process to improve the quality of life and economic well-being. Even a huge number of entitlements are given by the government for improvement but the lack of implementation leads the poor to be poor and rich to be rich. This gap between the rich and the poor was very well portrayed in this book. Tribal are integral part of Indian village therefore integrated village development need to be focused more for the development of the country. After the view on the Rural India, P. Sainath directs us toward the rights of the poor people. In this context, he added three main stories one is of tribal and the remaining two are about the life of the village people. The impact created by the government scheme and officials under the process of development. The chapter reflects the unawareness and the needs of the poor people triggered by the officials. A section of humanity just moves it doesn’t live but somehow it survives. The worst part of the story is that the system flourishes on the sadness of the people.
Finally, he talks about the fightback power of the poor in the chapter “With their own weapons” when the poor people started to fight for their rights there is no force in the world to stop them, he gave a better example of women empowerment and the practices through strategies followed by the women to come out of a situation. Unity is a part of bringing the poor together under a common umbrella or for a good cause. The line “Balloon can hold the air it can capable of” tells the immense power of the poor when they got suppressed beyond a limit. From this book, I can able to see the steps taken by the people of different contexts and livelihoods take to ensure their survival. Especially, the chapter on ‘Survival strategies of poor’ talks about the mechanisms and ways in which the people cope the development problems by their own and how they fall back into a cycle of poverty. Finally I was reminded of Vivekanada’s quote “Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached.”. We have a duty and responsibility to bring about sustainable development and better quality of life for each and everyone in the country
This article is about my experience during one of the Academy’s unique events – ‘Ethnic Dinner’. India is a country of ‘Unity in Diversity with different languages, religions, castes, community, etc. Food pattern is one of the key elements and heart of our Indian diversity. Indian cuisine is known for the art of using the right spices in every dish, not just for its flavor but also for its nutritional and medical value. Each state has its unique flavour and technique of cooking. When I got selected in TDA and came, I noticed the diversity of India in our batch. Each of us is from a different state and background. I was very happy to be part of this batch and course as I get to experience different state way of life. We all come together for the reason of helping the poor community. There are many unique events in TDA. Among them, ‘Ethnic Dinner’ is one such event, where the students will prepare their own state dishes. Many of us didn’t know much about the preparation of the dishes. We called our mother and got the ingredients and recipe list. As a group along with our senior batch, we have decided the menu list for the day.
From our state Jharkhand, myself and my senior, Ananya joined together and prepared a snack item called ‘Momo’. I chose an easy dish since I don’t have experience in cooking. The mom hearing that I was cooking, felt very happy and helped me throughout the process. Ananya also helped and she was involved in preparing other dishes also. Together we prepared of 15 dishes representing states from Uttrakhand to Tamil Nadu consisting of main dishes, snacks, sweets, etc. We have helped each other and learned from each other of preparing the cuisines of different states.
We served our dishes to the guests from DHAN (Staff, Field and TDA faculty). We have also displayed a short brief about the dish we prepared with the ingredients and its health benefits. It was a very fun experience, we became tasters of food than cooking, especially most of us were around the fish dish prepared by West Bengal students, waiting for the fish fry. Everyone has enjoyed and worked as a team along with seniors. This ethnic dinner is not just a simple function for us, it’s also a part of our learning. The whole year, our faculty, TDA workers, and DHAN employees serve us with knowledge and help us to share our attitude, skill and knowledge. This event is a way for us to say thank you to all of them with our food. Even though we are from diverse backgrounds and culture, we are united through this event and understand each other’s culture a little better.
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam is one of the inspiring personalities in my life. In this article, I have covered about his life, how he helped me to improve myself and the inspiring thoughts which created an impact in me. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam was born on 15th October 1931 in Rameshwaram, Tamil Nadu. His father played a great role in his values and belief system and taught him honesty, discipline and patriotism. He is from a fisherman community.
Kalam got a degree in aeronautical engineering from the Madras Institute of Technology and in 1958 joined the Defense Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). In 1969, he moved to the Indian Space Research Organisation, where he was project director of the SLV-III, the first satellite launch vehicle that was both designed and produced in India. Rejoining DRDO in 1982, Kalam planned the program that produced several successful missiles, which helped earn him the nickname “Missile Man.” He was the 11th President of India and most favourite president of the people of India for the period of 2002 to 2007. He wrote many books such as ‘Wings of fire’, ‘My journey’ and ‘Ignited Minds – Unleashing the power within India”, “Indomitable Spirit’, etc. In 1998, He wrote a book which name is “India 2020 – A Vision for the New Millennium” in which he discus about what is the strength and weakness of India and gave a vision about India becoming one of the top 4 economic country in the world and become a developed country by 2020. He was also honored with Padma Bhushan (1981) and Padma Vibhushan (1990) and the highest civilian award Bharat Ratna (1997).
His work, way of life and his words inspired thousands of young minds to dream bigger. As he quoted once,
“Dream is not that you see in sleep,
Dream is something that does not let you sleep”
These words made an impact in me. Like him, I also come from a poor agricultural family in West Bengal. Seeing him, achieve this much, I can also dream to achieve more rather than simple domestic life. He inspired not a few people but a whole generation like us to dream bigger.
Mainly, I am inspired by his ‘Five Value System’, which he asked everyone to follow,
Be Prepared,
Be Courageous and Think Differently,
Be Humble,
Have a Goal and
Connect with people
This value system I always try to adopt in my life. After hearing his speeches, I have set a goal to work for Children’s Education sector. And any kind of work, from small to big activity, I always try to prepare for it as much as possible. As I am starting my carrier now in the direction of social work, I believe that this value system will help me to a greater extent.
Finally, I want to share the below thoughts of him,
What is the secret of success? –Right decision.
How do you make right decision? – Experience.
How do you gain experience? – Wrong decision.
These lines make me do the work without considering the benefit out of it and by making mistakes only we can learn. This also conveys that through grassroots work only we can gain experience, make the right decision and achieve success in our life.
He has dedicated his entire life to the service of this nation and inspired young minds. The event at the last minutes of his life, He was delivering a lecture at the Indian Institute of Management, Shillong. On July 27, 2015, he collapsed and was pronounced dead from cardiac arrest soon afterwards. His journey was a great inspiration for me to take up the life of a social worker and work towards the upliftment of the country as envisioned by him.
As our country celebrates 75 years of independence, we (PDM 20, PCM 02 and PCM21) have taken the topic of LGBTQ+ topic, a section of the community that is not enjoying any freedom.
They are hiding their identity in the same nation, afraid to speak out because of societal attitudes towards them. When I think about this topic, I remember in my childhood days, my parents have asked me to avoid them even they forbid me to go to one street where transgender was living. It was one path to my school with less distance but because of the stigma, I usually take the longer route. Because of this, I usually have fear towards them. When I was 21 years old, I attended a lecture on this topic by one Transgender activist. Then only I could able to understand their way of lives, their struggles, challenges even in doing a simple activity. They are disrespected on a daily basis. From that day onwards, my perspective and thought process were totally changed. After hearing her story, I wanted to help those people and increase awareness about them to remove the stigma about them in the society. I am happy to discuss this topic and synthesis the perspectives of the discussion.
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ+) people face tremendous difficulties growing up in a society where heterosexuality is often presented as the only acceptable orientation and homosexuality are considered as Sin. Even in developed countries, homophobic violence and abuse targeting LGBTQ+ people occur regularly. In most of our country, same-sex couples do not enjoy the same rights and protections as opposite-sex couples and accordingly suffer from discrimination and disadvantage in access to social protection schemes, such as health care and pensions. In the labour market, a majority of LGBTQ+ people continue to hide their sexual orientation or endure harassment out of fear of losing their job. Particularly, young people are more vulnerable, who are facing separation from family at a very young age, friendship networks, harassment at school etc. These are leading serious impacts such as underachievement, drop-out, depression, drug addiction, being forced to move out of the families, etc. Even in the developed countries, where there is acceptance, there is also a lack of proper marriage laws, child adoption laws, etc.
Nowadays people are depending on movies, tv serials and social media for society perceptions and adapt same in their real life also. In most of those platforms, LGBTQ+ characters are portrayed as a comedian personality or negative or like some untouchable characters. Few movies talked about LGBTQ status and how they facing problems in our society, that movies such as “Lakshmi – transgender, Fire, Girlfriend (movie was banned), Super deluxe, Hand-Medan, Shubhamangal Jyada Savadhan”. They are also human beings and need to be treated in the same respectable manner.
At the end of discussion few way forward has been discussed such as
More understanding is needed rather than sympathy.
Proper laws and policies need to be in place for enabling their legal status, penal laws for violence/abuse against them
Media need to portray properly and authentically their life and ways
Sex education to be taught inclusive of LGBTQ+, not only to students but also to the parents
Everyone should feel safe and comfortable to live their lives peacefully.
Let’s work towards betterment of the various communities and towards an equitable society.
The DHAN Academy 