Monday, 1 October 2001.

Guruswamy Kumaraswamy
Contact: Polymer Chemistry Division, National Chemical Laboratory, Pune 411008.
Email: guruswamy_k@hotmail.com

Niranjan Kanvinde
Contact:
Email: niranjanrk@vsnl.com

Visit to Talavlichi Dandwadi and Isambevadi

Summary:

Mahendra Singh (TISS-graduate) and a few other social activists have been working on what they describe as a "people's movement" for the improvement of the Katkari adivasis in an area off Panvel. Their movement encompasses many aspects of development: education, dealing with government officials such as the forestry people, the police, the Gram Panchayat and Zilla Parishad etc.

Detailed:

We visited the Katkari settlements of Talavlichi Dandvadi and Isambevadi, which are about 20km from Panvel (these are about an hours drive from Panvel – alternately, these places can be reached by taking an ST bus from Panvel to Vashivili and by taking a 6-seater from there to Lobh.These settlements are a few kilometers from the Reliance plant and other chemical industries in Patalganga).  The vadis are satellite settlements a little outside the villages (Isambevadi is the settlement or "vadi" outside Isambe village) and consist of about 70 families living in roughly 50-odd huts.  Some of the huts have brick walls, while about an equal number appeared to have thatched walls.  The vadis have electricity, but when we visited Talavlichi Dandvadi, we were told that the power supply had resumed that day after nearly two weeks.The power supply in the other vadi was supposedly more regular.A few of the houses had TV-antennas sticking out of them.The adivasis live in the vadis while the people in the villages are typically Maratha.The Katkaris are a scheduled tribe (Mahendra said that they were classified under a narrower category of “primitive” tribes – this means that the people in the government who make these lists were especially concerned about them).They speak their own language, Katkari. Most of the Katkaris are wage-labourers and don’t have a fixed source of income.Talavlichi Dandvadi is located on a small hill and is not linked by a motorable road (we needed to walk about 10-15 mins up the hill), while Isambevadi (just at the bottom of the hill) is served by a narrow concretized road (constructed one year ago: according to a person from the vadi).Talavlichi Dandvadi has a hand-pump at the bottom of the hill – the water needs to be carried up to the houses.Mahendra informed us that the gram panchayat had recently sanctioned some money (approx Rs. 5.6 lakhs) for the construction of a tank and a pump house at the bottom of the hill so that water can be pumped up to the top.Talavlichi Dandvadi has one member in the gram panchayat as does Isambevadi.

There is a Std I to IV government school in Vashivili (approximately 1 km from Tavavlichi Dandvadi), and a few of the
children from the settlements go there.This school apparently has just one teacher for the entire population of 200-odd students.For schooling beyond the IVth, the students have to go to a village further away (about 3-4 km).I saw a number of students in government school uniforms, and saw a few of them walking to and from Vashivili where the schools are located.The “people’s movement” volunteers have established “alternate education” schools in Talavlichi Dandvadi and in Isambevadi.What they feel is that the people in the vadis have not benefitted from the mainstream education imparted in government schools as it has very little relevance to their lives.They contend that this lack of involvement is responsible for the high drop-out rate.Their “alternate education” schools are located in the vadis, and have a higher teacher to student ratio.Instruction is in both Marathi and Katkari.They teach reading-writing-language comprehension by a combination of blackboard techniques and singing songs.The songs also teach them about their own culture, history and traditions.Arithmetic (counting, addition, subtraction) is taught by getting the children to “trade” stones – a math lesson was in progress when we visited the school in Isambevadi.The children are taken to the nearby forests once a week and are taught about the local vegetation and their applications to traditional folk medicine.On the day we visited, the children had had a drawing lesson and had drawn pictures of the village and the vadi.

The school in Talavlichi Dandvadi has been running since early 2001 while the school in Isambevadi is more recent (about 2 months).The “Samaj Mandir” (community center) is used as the school building in Talavlichi Dandvadi, and school is conducted in a house in Isambevadi.There were a few posters on the walls of the Samaj Mandir with the Devnagiri alphabet and a canvas blackboard.We were told that there were plans to paint the bottom part of the walls and to use that as a black board on which the children could write.The teachers are drawn from the more educated members of the local community (the teachers had studied up to between IV and VII standard) and are trained by Mahendra and others.There are also TISS students who come there for their field work as part of their degree requirement (4 students, 2 in each vadi, twice a week) and ex-TISS students such as Mahendra who spend more time there.Each vadi has a “shikshan” (education) committee comprised of the teacher and 4 other people (men and women) from the vadi.The shikshan committee meets every week and puts down what needs to be taught in the next week.We saw the notes from one of their meetings, and were told that they were planning to evolve these notes into a “syllabus” at the end of their first year.The training of the teachers has been done partly by the TISS people: we were told that there were plans to send the teachers to a training camp in alternative education techniques in Bangalore (Rishi Valley) for a 2 week course in December.They plan to pay the teachers a honararium, but I don’t think that has happened as yet.The community has taken the responsibility of feeding the teachers.The families in the vadi take turns feeding the teachers who eat in a different house every day.We were told that the intention underlying this was two-fold: one was obviously to ensure the subsistence of the teachers and to build deeper ties between students, their families and the teachers and the other was to give the people in the vadi a greater sense of ownership of the process of education.We were told that, between the two vadis, they currently have 5 teachers (4 men and one woman).The teachers appeared to be well respected by the community.

Schools are held in Talavlichi Dandvadi in the morning (9-11am) for young children (7-10 years old), and in the evenings for drop outs from the government school (7-8 pm) and for adult women (8-9 pm).The school sessions in the evenings have problems when there is no electricity and they then have to sing songs, tell stories and instruct orally rather than write.When we visited Talavlichi Dandvadi, the roll call was in progress for the young children and there were 3 teachers (one lady from TISS, and two locals: Baburao and Devaki, click here for a picture).There were about 15 children and they seemed enthusiastic and spirited.The school in Isambevadi is in the afternoon (11am-1pm and 2pm-4pm) and is for older children (they looked about 10-13 years old).We spoke to some of the children here and they were shy initially, but spoke to us later and obviously comprehended Marathi.The children in both schools included a few in government school uniform.We were told that some of them attended both schools are received coaching in the vadi schools to help them cope with the government school.As the schools were relatively recent, they probably don’t have good numbers on retention/drop-out rates – however, the teacher for the adult-women program told us that they had started with 30-33 women and that they had about 25-27 women attending their classes regularly.Right now, the school system only has classes for younger children, older children and adults.These classes are not recognized by the formal education system, but the children/their parents have the option of switching over to the mainstream by taking the Xth or XIIth examination – Mahendra feels that the training that they receive at these schools will strengthen their basics and better their chances of faring well at the board exams.

In addition to the education activities, Mahendra’s group and the residents of the vadi are in the process of documenting the local vegetation and compiling information about what medicinal/other applications they have been traditionally used for.They showed us a collection of leaves that they had dried and labelled and a write-up that they had begun putting together with details of the applications of the labelled leaves.Mahendra and his co-workers also help the people of the vadi deal with governmental paperwork.When we were there, some people came up to Mahendra asking him to help them with changing their ration card to a below-poverty-line ration card.Part of the “political” awareness of the adivasis (with regards to getting representation at the gram panchayat level, being more strident in demanding services such as the water tank and pump, dealing with the local health, forestry and police officials) is probably due to the work of Mahendra and his co-workers.Due to their good relations with the forestry officials, they have recently acquired seeds for various fruit trees which they have planted in land that they have cleared and tend to near the vadi.The water tank being built is supposed to provide water for these trees in the dry season in addition to other things.Mahendra and Bharat (both of whom live in Isambevadi) were also explaining their plans to build a dam to stop a small stream near the plant clearings to create a fishery to provide a few jobs as well as generate a source of income for the vadi.They also have plans to expand the reach of their movement (education and awareness) to nearby vadis (such as Thakurvadi on a nearby hill).

Mahendra Singh appears to be the main motivator behind this movement.He appeared to be well known to the residents of the vadi (he lives in Isambevadi) and is called “bhau” (brother).People approached him to ask for help on various things while we were there, and appeared to esteem his advice.He appears very committed and sincere. Some of the activities of his group don’t seem entirely above-board though.For example, it is not apparent who has ownership rights to the land which have been cleared for the tree plantation.He claims that the adivasis have a customary right to it since they have lived in that area for a very long time and since no one has claimed it since but admits that it might have been purchased by someone not from the area who has not bothered to check on it.He says that the Katkaris have taken over that land and that it will legally revert to their possesion once they have farmed it for some time.  Anyway, everything related to education seems above board and well-thought out.

What he told us about himself was this: He came to the region while he was a student at TISS, and was part of a group that opposed the construction of the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and the “Megacities” planned near it on the basis that they were economically unviable, would cause major environmental damage and the displacement of indigenous adivasis.Their group filed petitions against the construction in court and lost the case against the Expressway but got a stay order on the megacity project and finally managed to convince the Maharashtra government to scrap it.During this he managed to fall foul of the Maharashtra government who took him to court accusing him of being an anti-national Naxalite.However, this charge was thrown out by the courts.Since then he has been working in the region educating the Katkaris in several vadis including ones established for those who had been displaced by the Expressway.