Site visit report of project Baikunthapur Tarun Sangha (BTS)

The 1^st round of troubleshooting:

The troubles came in from Mother Nature, because a serious tide “Sha(n)rashari’r Ban” (almost like a flood) was expected to hit Kultali (the region/island where this project is) very near to the date of my visit. Also Susanta did not call back the day he was supposed to! But the next day, Sept 11, he called & came to our place on 12^th to finalize the trip.

The journey:

It turned out that he didn’t have the best estimates of time or width of the river or even fares! On Sept 13, 2001 we, my dad & I, went to Baikunthapur. We1^st took a local train from Ballygunge station to Mathurapur. Susanta got up at Subhashgram & at Mathurapur we met each other. (We could have easily taken the earlier train.)

From there we took an auto from there to Raidighi. The road was ok because the politicians had recently paid a visit to this area; hence the road had been taken care off! At Raidighi we had lunch at a hotel Susanta knew. But then we had to wait as it was pouring outside.

After the rain ceased we got into a motorboat. As expected it took 2.5 hours to Moipith. The boat ride was fun. Susanta & I had a lot of discussion on many things including his plans/attempts at coming to Washington DC for a workshop on leader ship building while working with NGO’s. This actually put me off quite a bit (after the very loose time-estimates). I felt that he should concentrate more on BTS. On the other hand he was just looking at it from his own personal angle. Definitely he is also thinking about his career in the long run! (More on this later.)

Then from Moipith we started walking. Fortunately it hadn’t rained there after early morning & the sun was up. Otherwise the muddy road wouldn’t have been walk-able! Even then at places every step had to chosen very carefully. Contrary to the earlier site-visit report there were few pacca houses. We also passed by the govt schools. Finally we reached BTS club just 5 minutes after the school had ended! It was very frustrating & I could not help feeling that we could have made it in time only if Susanta had told us an earlier train. (More on this issue later.)

Note: Nobody in BTS knew we would be coming other than of course Susanta.

At Kultali:

They called few of the kids who were still playing around. They did some physical exercise that day. So I asked them to show what they did. They happily repeated those exercises. They showed the earlier mud school building, which had collapsed one day just after the kids had gone due to a cyclone. Now the school is running in a ‘dawoa’. Adjacent to that is a children’s park with swings & slides. Then I asked them to write their names & what they like doing. They became pretty busy with that & I left the notebook with them. Some of them drew beautiful pictures (to be scanned this week!), One even corrected a spelling mistake someone else had made earlier! Some of the mothers & some teachers were there. So we had some discussion with them. Then after tea we went out for a brief trip of the locality. The roads were really bad. BTS people (other than Susanta) were glad to have us. During this walk they told us a lot about this area, about them, the common problems & their efforts to counter those. While coming back it was already dark. We saw the solar panel streetlights in action & a very clear sky above!

1^st round observations:

1. The mothers support Patha Bhavan (PB), because it started when
   1. The govt schools stopped English
   2. The teacher: student ratio in govt school = 1:100 vs. 1:40 -ish in PB.

2. The activities of ‘Basketful of fun’ at the school have not started yet since they don’t have a proper school building yet & the classes are held in a crowded ‘dawoa’. What initially disturbed me was that one mother mentioned paying Rs. 15/- whereas the proposal mentions only Rs. 5/-. Later I brought this up at the meeting & Susanta explained that Rs. 5/- is the minimum & that’s for the youngest kids. The level goes up as follows:

But please note this is very much as a token since most parents can’t afford to pay. But it really bugged me that we got a very different picture from the earlier communications with this project.

3. The children are not allowed to play at the park during the school hours since it distracts those in class. But after school the park is well utilized by all! Once the school building is done the park will be open for all 24 hours.

4. The children:
1. Have learnt a lot of rhymes.
2. Some of them are very good at drawing.
3. They were pretty expressive about what they like & happily jotted it down in my notebook.
4. Some also corrected spelling of others!
5. They also have physical education at school. They were very eager to show what all they did that day & didn’t stop till they were asked to!

5. The teachers appeared to be motivated. BTS selects/appoints them through interviews & it includes:
   1. Motivation for teaching
   2. Spirit of volunteerism & dedication
   3. It they are ok with less money
   4. If they are ok/interested in doing other community work besides teaching.

Note: though the BTS proposal said they are going to give Rs. 800/- per month to the teachers, Susanta mentioned (in front of the teachers) that they are not going to give them that much at the beginning. They are going to start with a lower salary, which will gradually increase. Susanta is supposed to email the details of this salary scheme sometimes in Nov 2001.

6. BTS is running 3 simultaneous projects with kids:
   1. PB – 2 classes below class I & classes I-IV (finding by Asha)
   2. A day care center for 2-5 year old kids – govt funding
   3. Another project for girl children who have dropped out of school. In this one they teach the girls the 3 R’s & also some vocational training. These girls typically dropped out after class VIII. This is also govt funding.

Note: in the last 2 projects BTS is facing a lot of embarrassment since the govt is not very regular with teacher salaries & that’s why BTS is unable to pay the them.  

7. More than anything else what is really hampering the development of this area is lack of infrastructure especially in case of communication. They have:

a.      No pacca road: in fact there is only one brick road in the whole island! All the rest a muddy ones which become really bad in monsoon. Due to this they can’t even paddle their vans but have to pull & push. This is the main reason why they can’t start work on the remaining 3 classrooms before monsoon ends. This also makes it hard for kids, specially the young ones, to come to schools, which are a little far off (few kilometers).

2. No electricity: the comparatively well off people have put solar panels on their roofs. Otherwise the rest of the locality is in dark. Fortunately however, govt has set up solar-paneled streetlights at every cross street. The BTS club also has some of these lights. (I took most notes under one such!) The positive features of these lights are:

2.                                         Needs very little maintenance

ii.                  Set up cost is just one time

iii.                 Switches on automatically at dusk or whenever the light becomes insufficient for the panels to get charged & then at dawn as soon as there is enough light the panels start charging up.

iv.                The lights are on till around 2 am at night

3. No phone: this leaves the people with only postal system & slows down all communication with outer world.

Note: some positive development might happen in near future. Govt has set up a relay tower & they are expecting phone connecting via satellite within a year.

4. Poor connection to main land: for anything these people have to walk 30/40 minutes to the river, & then catch a motorboat, which reaches Raidighi (Main land) after 2.5 hours. So even if someone gets snakebite, the earliest medical attention comes only after more than 3 hours late! Also, snakebite is not that uncommon in those muddy roads. This again cuts them off from the rest of the world.

Note: again some positive development is taking place. Govt is building some bridges & a pacca road which when finished will connect this island to Jaynagar (main land) via bus route & auto rickshaws. This again, the people there hope will be complete soon.

Susanta mentioned that govt has & is doing more in the last 5 years than they did in the past 20 years.

8. They have some video parlor type of things mushrooming in the area. This is done by the few relatively well off. But the ill effects of audiovisual media (specially the movie effect) are much less pronounced thanks to a strong cultural atmosphere created by BTS people. They (BTS) have & are organizing street theaters & other cultural programs very regularly with the adults & the children. Some these theaters & programs also address important local issues (example later). The children are really involved & they enjoy it. Some wrote that they enjoy taking part in drama/play. BTS people write drama/plays especially for the kids to perform. Later that evening we had a musical program, which was fabulous. BTS also used these cultural talents in raising funds for various activities.

9. Main problems of this region:
1. Sunderban is a mono crop area.

è   In addition to that sometimes even that harvest do not come home due to some natural disaster or other reasons.

è   Then, to supplement their earning, the people go to the forest to collect fire wood/honey etc or to the river to collect fish/prawn

è   Then they get attacked by tiger in the forest or crocodiles in the river & they are either killed or severely wounded/maimed for life.

è   This leads to a growing number of orphans (both parents lost) & semi-orphans in this area (one parent lost/handicapped by severe wounds/loss of limb)

2. The people here often try using chemical fertilizers, which cost a lot. So after harvest 75% goes off just to pay the price of the fertilizers & the remaining is barely enough to sustain them. BTS is trying to raise awareness in this matter & turn people to organic farming once again.
3. Most of the water around is saline & hence not suitable for agriculture. One good thing they did is that they cut off part of a river by building 2 dams (not big ones but just to block the water!) on either side. Now this water body has become sweet & they use it for irrigation. We saw it during the walk around the area. But it’s not enough.

The cultural/musical evening:

In spite of my emphasis on the meeting to be held 1^st followed by the musical night they decided to do it the other way. The reason on their part was that some of the performers have to return home. As mentioned earlier BTS people (other than Susanta) did not know that we were coming that day. So they were neither prepared for the meeting nor the program. But since they practice regularly (daily before the BTS activities picked up) it was easier for them to organize the music hands in a short time.

From the notes I took then: 

“Apart from the singers, the tabla & another percussion was superb. (But now that it has started I doubt when the discussion will begin!) The climax – in a flute, harmonium, tabla & the other percussion combo! I can’t help thinking about a fundraising tour with these 4!!”

The president Kamal Ranjan Das (who is also the head master at the local primary school) deserves special mention because even though he is past his middle age he has strong control of his voice & plays the flute equally well. He has never gone through any formal training in music. But now he teaches few others. As a group BTS has raised fund through this type program.

2^nd round discussions:

Attendees (other than me!):

Managing committee: Nabakanta Mandal, Susanta Giri, Latika Das, Haradhan Sahu, Kamal Ranjan Maity (President), Horipada Jana (treasurer)

Acting committee: Renupada Giri, Kartik Chandra Das, and Prashanta Giri

All these discussions, especially 4-6, started in the boat & continued till we reached BTS.

1. At the very beginning I mentioned that Susanta is single handedly doing everything related to the outside world & it’s not a good idea to put so much responsibility on one person. Susanta then & there seconded me adding that “see, I was telling you people, some of you have to come fwd & join me in these matters.”
2. Susanta gave me the following deadlines by which they want to finish certain infrastructure-sub projects:

3. They are working with PPI (agriculture) & AID (health). Susanta got their contact from Asha’s website!

4. Due to reasons mentioned in 9a, they desperately need a lot of vocational training in various fields so that the local people can benefit from alternative means of income. To move in that direction:
1.  They are going to get 2 paddled presses (don’t run on electricity) instead of the 2 Gestetner duplicating machines (as in the original proposal). These presses will provide employment to 2 village youth & will be used for the school (for printing khata etc.) & also for printing anything else (handbill, notice etc.) by anybody in the village. They also want to pump back the money generated through these extra printing into the school – a good idea!
2. They are going to go for the bee keeping training soon. They were waiting for Sandeep’s coming back to India.
3. Also, as per Anirban’s suggestion, they are going to get 2 sewing machines & stitch the school uniforms instead of buying them – more employment.

5. Susanta wants to have a tutorial/resource center in each of 6 neighboring villages, on near by islands. I mentioned that they can start with some tutor/resource persons in each of these villages & once it starts rolling we can expand them into resource centers. Points to note:
   1. Need to identify these resource person/tutor
   2. Need to find some place where the tutoring can happen regularly (everyday/few times a week)
   3. When should these tutoring take place? The options were:

                                                                                       i.           In the morning before school

                                                                                     ii.           In the afternoon

Susanta suggested the later but I suggested the 1^st one because:

                                                         i.           In the morning there won’t be any problem of light.

                                                       ii.           They can go to school better prepared

Where as if we go for the other option no electricity may make it hard to study late. They all agreed to my suggestion.

6. The next thing was having a book bank/central library for the children. This is because most of the time they don’t get the text books in time. Very poor situation regarding govt circulating the free textbooks! To this I suggested that the tutor in part 2 can act as a contact for the central library in the sense, he/she can take a note of who wants which book & then bring those books to the children & make sure they are returned in due time.

7. Susanta also wanted some teacher training (which is always important). He had the training given by Loreto (a school in Kolkata) because they do similar joyful learning type of thing. I recommended Vikramshila. He said he would contact both & see which one is the better.

8. He was also interested in creating an orphanage, a serious need of the region. We discussed exploring this through Support A Child (SAC). Also this is not going to be in very near future.

Comments & concerns:

These are all I observed & felt. Note, many of these are from a very skeptical point of view & might not be so in reality.

1. The people of BTS are in general very hospitable, friendly & eager to talk. But as soon as the meeting started all except Susanta became very silent! This is in spite of the fact that the conversation took place in their mother tongue Bengali. They seem to depend too much on him in the technical aspects of ‘meeting’ or anything technical with the world outside. Though Susanta seconded my suggestion, the problems are:
   1. Lack of confidence due to this seclusion
   2. They have also becomes sort of laid back living in so much seclusion & lack the temperament to go fwd & break this habit of dependency.
   3. Lack of confidence because they are not fluent in English.
   4.  It takes both money & time to invest & grow these people so that they get use to going out into the mainland them selves.

2. The women members didn’t seem to be actively involved but more for the sake of having some female representatives. I might be very wrong, because they didn’t have the time to call a proper meeting with everybody. The meeting was arranged in a very short time.

About Susanta:

3. He seemed to have a strong potential of knowingly or unknowingly controlling most of BTS. After all he is the only channel of communication between BTS & any other funding agency. Since his efforts have now brought about so much (Asha, PPI, AID, etc.), naturally there will be a tendency of BTS to lean on him, his comments & opinions.

4. After observing many things I couldn’t help feel that he might have on purpose delayed our journey (starting with a vague train time) so that we miss the school hours. Later I found out that the person who did the earlier site visit also did not see the school in action.

5. Also when I told him that he should have told us about the earlier trains & then we would have not missed the school hour, his excuse (that’s what it appeared to me then!) was that whoever else came for site visit had problem catching earlier trains so he forgot to mention it. I didn’t believe him fully. But after a talking to the Asha volunteer who had been there, I believe Susanta was telling the truth. 

6. I really got bugged when he mentioned about the workshop in DC. This ahs 2 reasons:

a.      Given the situation, his leaving BTS for few months mean the communication channel with mainland & outside world being totally cutoff for that period. I don’t think BTS can or should afford that. He has every right to think about his own career but I think he should 1^st try to find a substitute for himself & then think of leaving BTS for a long period of time.

b.     The workshop was about developing leadership while working with NGO’s. I couldn’t help feeling that anyway he has a lot of say in BTS, so why does he want to get more training in this matter. Also how effective will the training be.

But we should also try to see things from his side.

                     i.           He is the only one who can at all go for this workshop.

                   ii.           BTS has to handle a lot of things at the same time. As they are trying to do so, some training in organizational skill development might be of great help.

                  iii.           After all, he is just searching the net & stumbled across this. May be he hasn’t had enough experience to realize what is far-fetched & what is more practical.

Suggestions & To-dos:

1.     Though Susanta is trying, we (Asha) should work more proactively with these people, in particular write to them in Bengali & make sure we grow other channels of communication.

2.     Whoever visits BTS next should try to go unannounced & see the school in action. This is a must!

3.     Follow up closely with them at every step. Please note: we should work hand in hand. It’s not ‘looking at them very skeptically to see if they are misusing any resources’.

4. I’m glad to add that we have started a yahoo groups asha_bts consisting of Asha volunteers who have visited BTS, has been the project steward & the project volunteer for BTS.

5. Susanta showed me a folder with a lot of documents about BTS. We should ask him to send us a copy. Hard copy should by fine also since we would be able to scan it & make soft versions.

Directions to BTS:

1.     Take a train of Lakshmikantapur line from Kolkata to Mathurapur.

2.     From Mathurapur take an auto rickshaw to Raidighi. Note: The auto starts only when it gets as many passengers as it can take. So after getting down from the train, head straight for the auto stand & don’t stop for tea or any other break!

Alternate route to Raidighi: take a bus from Esplanade to Raidighi.

3.     Have lunch break at Raidighi. Catch a motorboat to Moipith. You get the ticket in the boat only. So no line there J

4.     Get down at Moipith & ask for direction to Baikunthapur. 30-40 minute walk!

Swati (sircar@math.washington.edu),

Asha-Seattle

14 Oct. 2001