My Rustic Journal

A women's cooperative, started off with an aim to reduce the usage of plastic in Balrampur, is slowly taking wings for a flight that we hope will lead to freedom - both economic and social.  It was in October, 2014 that the District Balrampur, located further north - east from Surajpur on the border with  Jharkhand, became my second district of posting. The district, apart from being much more disconnected and backward than Surajpur, is also one of the first 4 resource districts for National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) in Chhattisgarh. Thus, we have a young hard working team of District and Block Programme Managers who have taken it upon themselves the task of women empowerment and poverty alleviation by organizing women in Self Help Groups (SHGs) since 2012. It was with this background, that I was assigned the task of overseeing implementation of the scheme when I joined. The scheme had been intensively running in three of the six blocks with almost 1800 SHGs a...

Azolla? What's that? the question reverberated in my mind for quite some time before I actively started searching for answers. The government, as per the latest provisions under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), had included construction of ' Azolla ' tanks along with cow sheds in villages. The search for answers led me to Google and then, some videos and blogs posted across the web. The Wikipedia suggested that Azolla ( sc. name Azolla caroliniana ), is a type of fern with very small leaves that is mostly found floating over still water bodies - lakes & ponds. Its nitrogen fixation properties make it useful as a bio fertilizer and fodder for animals. So that's where everything connected. Azolla tanks were to be constructed along with cow sheds to provide for additional fodder for the milch animals. That cleared some air about what we were trying to do. Further exploration on the internet brought me across some videos (mostly from South India)...

Its been almost two years since I became a fellow and was posted in one of these so called backward districts - Surajpur. Time and again I have been asked questions like what am I here for what is the agenda that I'll pursue here. Some have probably gone far ahead and labelled me as the crazy guy to leave home to spend time a 1000 miles away. But there is something about the job that we do as fellows that makes waking up every morning and slogging it out very addictive. May be its the power that we derive out of our knowledge. This isn't a generalization, but most of the mid level and lower level staff in the government have low educational qualifications and haven't had anyone to guide them or teach them efficient ways of doing everyday work. Teaching new tricks for analyzing data on excel or using cloud computing for syncing files or even basic techniques in any software makes the staff look at you in awe and the more interested youngsters are always eager to learn the...

18th August 2012: All bags were packed and I was suddenly traveling to a district whose name i had only heard a couple of days back - the Surajpur district in North Chattisgarh! After our two day state orientation in Raipur, we were asked to report to our districts by 21st August (Monday being a holiday for Eid). But, having no place to stay in Raipur, we decided to leave for our districts on Saturday itself.With the other five in our group having departed to their districts in South Chattisgarh by busses, i took my train to Surajpur with great uncertainty of what i was about to discover. The train route to Surajpur is mesmerising - and no less so than the Rayagada - Koraput Route or even the Konkan route sans the tunnels. Bright green paddy fields with dark green trees dotting the landscape meet the eyes for as far as they can wander. And you immediately fall in love with the place that invites you to its fold with such a view early in the morning. I landed in Surajpur on  ...