TATA INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

SCHOOL OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT, TULJAPUR FIELD WORK REPORT SUMMARY Title of the report Failure of state behind the beauty of Melghat

NAME- NITIN ROLL No. - 26 CLASS- MASW (RD) 1st YEAR FEILDWORK SUPERVISOR- Dr. NILADRI SEKHAR DHAR

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Acknowledgement

I feel privileged to have worked under the guidance of our fieldwork supervisor Dr. NILADRI SEKHAR DHAR and with Mrs. PURNIMA TAI, an eminent activist. It is because of them and my team members, namely, Kakasaheb Sontake, Upendra Sonpimple, Pinki Kumari and Kumari Ekta that I successfully returned from my first field work. I would also like to thank all the person who helped us in gathering information without any trouble in the restricted premises in all the four villages.

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INTRODUCTION:
This report explains what trainee did, what he had learned in his fieldwork placement at Melghat Region in Amravati, Maharashtra with Khoj organisation. The report mainly focuses on the experience, learning, observation and practical activity under taken in four villages of Melghat as the part of Micro planning that he and his co-trainee were expected to work on. It shows limitation that he came across during his field work and performing tasks that were assigned to him by the college. I hope that this report would be able to describe the tasks under taken by the trainee during his field work and the knowledge he gained.

Targeted area:
It is a hilly forested area in the Satpura range of central India inhabited primarily Korku tribes. Melghat region is rich in Biodiversity and known for the presence of endangered national animal (Tiger). Melghat has been in the news for the death of hundreds of children every year due to malnutrition. The problem of malnutrition is an offshoot of systematic breakdown in the traditional pattern of livelihood and challenges in social, legal and economic sectors that have affected the entire lifestyle of the inhabitants of the region without much effort for their inclusion in the process. Caught amidst in the dilemma to retain their own cultural values practices or to participate in the mainstream development, the people of Melghat have been to a situation of improvement. Trainee is provided a learning space through the agency named KHOJ in Melghat region. Melghat comprises of mainly two tehsils of Amravati District namely 1. Dharani 2. Chikhaldara.

Placement area

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Background of organisation:
Established by three friends in 1995. Birth of Khoj was not as the others. The inception of idea behind Khoj was came when the currently founders of Khoj was sitting in a tea shop near Garchiroli and thinking of what to do next after the completion of an assignment with Search. They were very much influenced by the assignment and its name also. Then and there they decided to name it as Khoj. The foundation stone was laid in 1995, but they didnt register it as organisation till 1997. In starting they used to work in only days and leave for Mumbai on weekends to collect funds. Khoj has grown up as an organization changing the lives of marginalised, underprivileged and tribals living in the area who have been deprived justice and equality for reasons of caste, ethnicity, gender etc. Now Khoj is currently working on issues related to health, livelihood and education mainly for Adivasi people (schedule tribe). Khoj also files applications for villages in Melghat region to provide Community Forest Right under Forest Right Act 2006. (Khoj leaflet)

Micro planning: Region Specific

Micro planning is a very useful and difficult process in the development area at grassroot level because it consist of finding local resources and tries to utilize it properly for the development of people. In the region like Melghat where the most of the villages are isolated and disconnected from its neighbouring villages, blocks and districts where source of employment is only agriculture and its condition is also not good enough the people of Melghat can survive or run their households. It is necessary to generate livelihood in that region so that people stop migrating and suffering in their life will reduce. Khoj is also working on the same concept of generating livelihood there so that they become self-reliant and their dependency on the government reduce. Their strategy is to provide them livelihood so that they will spend money on their needs for their development themselves. They thinks that if they have income then they can spend capital on food, clothing, health services, education and all the things they needed to survive there and wanted to reduce the dependency on the cosmetics of development(welfare programs and services) which are usually mentioned at every level of development process to show how India is shining. These cosmetics are resulting many problems in poverty alleviation, health & diseases, land alienation, criminalization and etc. in the last few decades the centralized mega projects of irrigation and power shown more inhuman face of displacing poor and generating revolts. The life sustaining strategies adopted by poor are now criminalized which were not criminalized before, thanks to the policy and schemes started by government. As Melghat is Tiger reserve forest people are now being criminalized under these forest. Here it was observed that the firewood collector is a criminal, thanks to forest policies. Also, fishermen are now criminals once the dams are build and trespassers are prohibited. Not in the remote areas only this practice in increasing but also in cities also beggars and squatters are treated as eyesores and nuisance to the vision of city planners and therefore they are thrown out the boundaries of city.

Student Work Plan (Objectives): To develop the understanding of village society and its dynamics etc. To improve
observation, recording, presentation, micro planning and developing village plan skills. To develop confidence to work in the village with different groups and communities.

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Planning
Before going for any task and to do it in most effective and efficient manner one has to make an effective plan to make it successful. Our plan as a group was to first understand the conditions and activities of the village and then to prepare our plan for next few days in a way that we can get the maximum support from the village people as our primary aim of the field work was to exercise PRA tolls in which we require maximum support from the village people. We made tentative plan to complete the organisation survey and practice PRA tools. So to get the maximum support and to implement our plan effectively at the beginning we had started building rapport in the village by interacting with the village people, participating in the various activities, finding key persons of the village and acknowledge them our main motive for being there in the village. We planned to visit maximum households and to interact with the maximum persons in the village and heads of the family.

Actual activities:
Trainee performed some activities during his field work as the part of his field work objectives which are as follows: I attended the orientation sessions which was organised to get to know about the PRA tools and its importance and how to apply them during our field visit to various villages. Practiced PRA tools: The primary objective of our first field work was to practice, exercise and apply PRA tools to understand and know the state of functioning of the various bodies in the village and up to what level the people of the village are satisfied with their functioning. PRA tools like Seasonal map, Timeline, Resource map, Chapatti diagram helped us to understand about on which kind of activities does the people of the village depend upon, what kind of problems are faced by them during various seasons of the village, about the availability and scarcity of the resources in the village. PRA tools helped to identify and intervene these kind of problems. Meeting with Gram-Panchayat Body Members and well-wishers of the village:It is very important to know and interact with Gram-Panchayat body members for our stay in the village and Sarpanch is the first person in the village and very influencing person too. This helped us to have interaction with various people in the village and have comfortable home visits. Many of the body members were interested and helped us during our stay in the village. Visit to Schools:There were school in every village and we had made visits to these schools. Visits to school helped us to know the education related problems in the village and quality of education. Home Visit:Home visits were the most important part of our field work. In a group people feel shy and they are less comfortable to share their problems and feelings. This is very common in
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women related issues. So, home visits helped us to understand the dynamics in the village. It was observed that people were more comfortable and they found it very easy to share their problem during home visits. It helped us to go deeper into various issues of the village which cant be told in public like caste discrimination, domestic violence and so on. Survey:Survey is also a part of PRA tools which helps in micro planning because in survey we collect data related to all aspects of society i.e. social, economic, believes, livestock, etc. Survey provides us individual level of data which help us to create frame of village that what are the problems and issues to be concerned. After which we can draft a plan of action. Interaction with People Interaction with people is very important for understanding the dynamics in the village. We interacted with the people in meeting and Durga Pooja festival helped us to get closer to the youth and people in the village. We went to the festivals and take part in celebration which It was observed that people who are self-dependent were less interested in discussing village or public problems whereas people with poor economic background were more interactive and shared their views about the village dynamics.

Challenges:
During fieldwork days major challenges were lack of communication sources, electricity, proper drinking water, health facilities and sanitation.

Relation between wild life and human population in tiger reserve areas
Increasing activity of human in the consumption war of natural resources and our world is also becoming increasingly crowded. Due to these reason many wildlife species are facing problem in survival. There is a belief that human cant exist with some wildlife species, largely carnivores and this belief also provide a rational to various resettling programs in which human communities are resettle outside the protected areas. In tiger reserves the human presence was ubiquitous and abundant and tiger density was also high. Major conflict between wildlife and humans is for food. Rodents and insects impacts on agricultural products and thus economic. Large carnivores kill and eat domestic livestock. Wildlife may also possess danger not to human livelihoods, but also to lives of human and their wellbeing. But we cant blame only wildlife for the human- wildlife conflict because animals are doing what they do. On the other hand if we view wildlife as pests, as damaging to our lives and livelihood, then wildlife is going to lose.

How the MCP can affect other villages as it working in other villages Pivihir village
It is the village where the trainee was send to see the impact of micro planning on development process that how micro planning is effective and after that how village become self-sustained, to see the collectivism and we feeling. In Pivihr village people first start working on the issue of water and sanitation. They build up certain rules in their village that
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there must be a dustbin in front of every household and some plants were also planted in the premises of all houses and all house looks neat and clean. Mostly people in Pivihir village are schedule tribe and a minor part are of schedule castes. All Male members had gone the field and forests. People in that village were more aware there rights given under JFM and they were practicing it in well manner. They had formed a committee with village people in 2012 named as Sanukta Van Vyasttha committee this committee was working with the collaboration of MNREGA. There had planted more 2000 plants in the forest and protecting them under MNREGA the job was for 3 years. They were also working on another work of plantation in different part of forest. Some people were also engaged in selling and distribution Sitaphal (custard apple). They had also taken money on Tendu leaves for building up water tank and improving the water supply connection. After this visit trainee have made some observation that forest plays a major role in livelihood of Adivasi areas (Schedule areas). But they mostly depends on agriculture whether they have land or not, they do agriculture on both owned and encroachment In this village situation of education was that they have a school up to 4 th standard and enrolment ratio is same for both boys and girls. Feedback about the teacher from people was good. Condition of school building was also good. These changes shows that this village is changing, people are starting taking part collectively in any program organised at their village level now they are capable in taking their own decision for the development of their village. They take help from agency only when they need any advice in their development work and for advocacy at some points. So after the visit of this village trainee found that development is process of working to uplift the society/ place where people living in it. They are now very much independent to think that what is good for them and for the whole society they are living in. They had also set an example for it that they refuses to take wood from forest to protect their forest so they demand for the bio-gas plant to produce cooking gas. Which is a cleaner fuel then wood. They protested for this cause because there is no such provision for any this purpose. These all changes are the result of micro planning process. More the people supports and participate in the process more they came to know about the problems in their village and they started realizing the cause and tries to find the solution of their problems themselves.

Demographical profile of Khadimal

This is difficult to find out the history of a tribal villages because there are not any written document which states background of the village that how it emerge and grown there some old people of age around 70 to 75 years they told that they are living here from their grandparents time. So according to this fact we can find that this village is around 200 years old. Khadimal village is situated in Melghat Tiger Reserve, Amravati. Its population is 910, consisting of 498 male and 412 female. In this village 90% of the population are Korku and 10% of Balai. Economic aspect: Primarily its economy is an agricultural economy and secondary occupation are cattle rearing and labouring in fields, forest and construction work under MGNREGA. They majorly sow Kharif seasons crops like Soya bean, Tur, Kutki, Paddy and etc. due to lack of water they dont sow crops in summer season. Landless people totally depended on daily wage work. Resources:
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They had two community well situated at the boundaries of household from there they fetch water. It has primary school up to 7th standard, 2 Aganwadi, 1 PHC sub centre, Ration shop. Problem faced People face problem of water in summer season mainly for drinking and domestic purpose. They have two community well and these are not appropriate in summer seasons. They dries up and people have to fetch water from river which in the forest and also very far. Migration is also a major problem.

Demographic profile of Nawalgaon

Population of Nawalgaon is 430 consisting of 230 male and 200 female. Here every one were from Korku tribe. Economic aspect: It is an agriculture based economy and some were also indulge in other activities like animal husbandry, jobs and private work. Resources They had just one hand pump for fetching drinking water and for other domestic use they have small water stream. They majorly sow Soya bean, Jwari and Kutki. Problem faced Water scarcity in summer, transportation, communication and migration.

Demographic profile of Bichukheda

Bichukheda is a village is situated on a hill whose population is 230 consisting of 116 male and 114 female. In this village 80% were from Korku tribe, 10% from Gond and left 10% from Balai. It is also an agriculture based economy and secondary occupations are animal husbandry, milk production, jobs and labour Only one hand pump for fulfilling the need of water which situated down the hill. People living in that village facing some problems such as fetching water, electricity, transportation, communication problems and so on.

Demographic profile of Ghana

Ghana village is situated at the out skirt of tiger reserve. Its population was 394 including 204 male and 190 female. Korku, Gond, Balai lives there but the majority of them was of Korku. Ghana village has primarily an agriculture economy and secondarily unskilled labouring, milk production and cattle rearing. Major crops were Soya bean, Jawar and Tur. Village people takes two crops a year as they river behind their village and for drinking water one hand pump was there.

Observations and Analysis:

In all four villages the situation of women not so good, they mostly do household work and their problems starts from early morning. Open defecation is the first
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problem they face. They can go early in the morning before the sunrises and then they have to fetch water from community well. After that they mostly stays in home doing household work like preparing food, child rearing and sometimes labour also. They can be seen only at the time when they are either going to fetching water, to wash clothes or to work in the field. Because they were not allowed to do chit chat outside the house. They were only forced to this and that they were just puppet of their husbands. They were mostly illiterate and cant take part in decision making process. Because of the status of women in society and the power and authority of family is in the hand of male members only. Mean to say patriarchy system of society. After having toilets facilities people were practicing open defecation till now due to less availability of water and they think it is impuring their house and they did not want to use it they just build it because government is giving fund for it. Most of the toilets were found locked by locks so that nobody will access these toilet in their absence. They have a feeling that it is a property. There was nothing available in all four villages on name of transportation even condition of roads are also not good due this they stay disconnected from the neighbouring villages. If there would any emergence then nothing was there to take it from village to nearest PHC which is 40 to 50 km. In all four villages Khadimal was only a village where the PHC sub centre was available only for the name purpose because there was not any ANM present and the other village had not even that. ANM stays in Chunkhadi PHC because her home is near to Chunkhadi PHC. So due to this they had to go to the Churni PHC which was 20 to 30 km there. Situation of communication was bad. There was no connectivity between these villages and the remaining world. Because theses villages are surrounded by hill so it is difficult to provide communication services. Forest area is also playing a role in this problem. Khadimal has worst situation of education system in comparison to all other three villages. There were two school teachers and one of them remains always drunk and other came very rarely to schools. Nawalgaon had better condition of education system because that school teacher is working for them by his heart he daily comes house to house to call the students and take them with him. In Bichukheda there were only 6 students enrolled in the village school and other all were studying in ashrams and hostel in Paratwada, Churni and Katkum because parents did not want any loss to their childrens education. Ghanas condition was little good because the teacher was coming to school but always late due this children would go to field with their parents or in the forest. Every village have majority of Korku (schedule tribe) people but they are suppressed by Balia (schedule caste) people. Balai people exploits Korku and discriminates with them during the community programmes, like Ganpati pooja, Durga pooja, they have different temple in each street. This also results that the 10% (Balal) is suppressing the 90% (Korku) of people because of hierarchy in the society according to which Balais are upper than Korkus. Aganwadis was working quite good they provide food on time and arrange meetings check up on regular basis. They didnt had any complaint to working of aganwadi because the aganwadi workers were of their own villages due to which they feels a sense of responsibility towards its village people. Major problem in this region is availability of water and fetching of water. Issue is same for all four villages but the type is different. In Khadimal, water was not available in summer season and to fulfil the demand water tankers were send but only
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one water tanker in a day which is not appropriate for the village of population 920. In other three water was available but problem was bringing water. In Nawalgaon, they had to take water from a single hand pump which was far away from the village and in Bichukheda, there was only one hand pump down the hill. Major reason behind this problem is soil of this region. This soil has less capacity of holding water for long time and the rainfall is also remains below than the average. Majorly people were migrating from those village is search of work because they dont have enough work to earn that much money they need to run their household. Now they have started moving other villages, nearby districts in search of employment. Irrigation facilities were not available to these villages due to this they did not cultivate in Rabi season because Rabi crops need lot of water. Some people do seasonal migration but many have permanently settled in cities. People have some belief in superstitions (Bhagat, Bhumka). They always took treatment from Bhagats because going to doctor is expensive and they have lack of many things which they need to go to them i.e. money , transport. So to escape from the hassles they prefer to go to Bhumkas instead of going to doctors and they alsofound most of the time ill person starts recovering. Going to doctor is last stand to them. After the treatment they also offers goats and cocks to their local god. Ghana was the only village where the electricity was provided by govt. for few hours because it was situated near the border of tiger reserves buffer area. But the left three village have solar panels but not in working condition. If there any street lights solar panel is people had taken those connection to their houses.

Learning
Working as a group is an enriching experience, since if you have good co-ordination and understanding amongst the team members, PRA can really be effectively implemented. Clear division of work amongst the group during the entire activity helped a lot. In this respect, the scripts prepared for each tool were valuable. People expect a lot from the group and our field work stay, since they also devote a lot of time for us. Hence it is better to give them a clear idea about the intentions of the activity our objectives right at the beginning. Some activities need just initial push / guidance then people enthusiastically carry forward the process. E.g.: Resource Map. Tools or activities like resource/social mapping and youth meetings should be done in places where everybody feels free to participate. For conducting all the PRA tools properly the group needs an active participation of the villagers. But it is not necessary that the villagers will be available in the time favourable to the group, due to their personal and professional commitments. Longer time duration of activity will facilitate a detailed analysis of the issue. Flexibility in the schedule should be maintained so as to make the activity timings convenient to the villagers. Interventions suggested by villagers need to be validated, since they may really prove useful due to the rich local knowledge. Not understanding the local language i.e. Marathi, Korku and Gond, put the trainee aside during the activities time since once the discussion with villagers catches pace,
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it becomes difficult to stop the conversation in between and translate to the other members of the group. Good communication skills and ability to make people involved in the conversation and interaction need to be developed for conducting any activity in the village. Knowing the language of the villagers is extremely important; otherwise one cannot participate fully in the participatory activities or communicate with the villagers properly. Respecting the culture and commitment of the villagers is extremely important as that encourages the villagers to participate in the participatory activities. It is important to maintain the attitude of a learner rather than acting like an expert. Villagers should never feel offended due to any of our action. An important learning is to respect the peoples knowledge and learning from them rather than imposing decisions on them.

Review of field work planning:

We made our plan very flexible as at the time of our field work the harvesting of the crop was going on and the people were very busy in their farms and we cannot apply PRA tools without the participation of the village people and without their cooperation and coordination. To attain their full involvement, on the zero day we observed their daily activities and talk to the village people and the key persons of the village and told them our intention for being in the village. Some of our plan delayed due to the rain and unavailability of the people. We also done the individual task like survey etc. to complete it in the given period of time. By the team work spirit and by working together we completed all our tasks which were assigned to us in a very effective, efficient, and positive manner.

Conclusion
Development, what is development. Is it the process of fitting people in the frame of government schemes or the schemes should according to those people whose development is to be done? It is found during field work experience that people of Paivihir village in Melghat Tiger Reserve region got Forest rights and they were allotted land for grazing and income generation through the local and small natural resources so that they can generate income for their development themselves. But after realizing the importance of forest they refuse to take wood from the forest and they had gone to government office for talking about Bio gas plant to reduce the harassment and loss forest resources. But there were no programs, polices and schemes in which there demand can be fulfil. Now what they should do? After that they mobilised all the villagers for movement and protest for this purpose. After this struggle what is the use and benefit of development is left if they tolerate this much. They had to come on the streets and roads to send their voices to the higher authorities for their development. So what is development all about struggles, toleration and facing problems which at present facing the same then what is point of development? After this point I would say development process should be by the people itself for whom development is proposed. The overall fieldwork experience brought a lot of insights about the water issue, agriculture related problems, women issues, and education related problems as well as the implementation of different Panchayati raj institutions. Stay in rural village helped me to understand the dynamics in rural society, different cultural practices and I learned to adjust. I learned a lot from people, from village community and even my group.
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My future plan for next module is to initiate some problem solving programme with the help of PRA tools and create awareness among people about identified issues. Will try contacting some resource person and will organise one workshop related with those issue in villages. It helped me to gain a lot of confidence and Im sure that will help in my future life.

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