PROJECT:
Katkari Education Centers
ORGANIZATION:
SAC (Students Action Committee)
Report by:
Vijay Mokashi
Date:
September, 2002
Note:
This was conducted a month after Asha-Pune
volunteers Guru and Premnath had conducted a visit.
I
reached Panvel at around 11 in the morning and met Mahendra outside the bus stand.
He had a rickety scooter in which he put in 2 litres of petrol, I insisted on
paying for the gas. We drove on the Mumbai Pune highway for a while before
taking a side road to a village called Chowk where we were supposed to meet the
activists. I met the activists and said hi to all of them. We drove off towards
the site.
On the way we were talking about the
expressway project (I asked him how he got started and it led to this topic).
According to Mahendra the expressway is financially unsustainable and he knew
this when the agitation began. Because of their agitation SAC was able to get
the govt to shelve the mega cities project (Townships for NRIs to recover the
cost of the freeway) but could not stop the expressway construction. He said
that he done a study of the financial, legal and environmental aspects of this
project and found it to be unviable. I asked him how he managed to do this
(does the govt make these documents available to the public?). The govt does
not make public any of the financial and legal documents public and he had to
find ways to get around. It seemed that Mahendra knew how to work with the real
world, for example, over a course of time he learned that certain judges were
sympathetic/favorably disposed toward the plight of the Katkaris and since
everyone knows the high court calendar, he would file a case only when one of
these judges held session. On the way to the site he showed me a small dam
under construction, he said that when the dam would be fully built a few
hamlets would have to be abandoned. The govt has not conducted any hearing on
this construction yet (one of the struggles on his agenda).
We
parked the scooter in a village called Koyna (so called because it has people
displaced by the building of the Koyna dam in Satara dist). This is a Maratha
village. We trekked for about 45 mts through very picturesque hills and we
reached one of the sites (Thakar tribe, not Katkari but one of the places where
they have started a school). Another interesting thing I learnt was something
called an “Eco-zone”. Apparently if the govt declares an area an eco zone, any
human populace in that area is an encroachment and guess what, this area has
been declared one. So that’s one more fight these tribals have on their hands.
At
the site we had lunch (cabbage curry and rice) at a house and I watched a
discussion between the tribals and Mahendra. I could see that the people
respected him a lot but were conversing very freely with him. Mahendra was
trying to explain to them details of a case they were going to fight. I could
see why it would be easy for any official to take advantage of these people.
Their worldview is very simple (They asked him questions like ‘Are we not right
in this case’, ‘If we are right then why is there a problem’, this was
something to do with forestry produce). I went to the school after lunch.
The school consisted of two rooms for two age groups. I had a talk with the teacher (Guruji). The teacher was very motivated and other than teaching he had trained the teachers in the other schools. He spoke to me for about a half-hour on what and how he taught the children. The same teacher was also running the school for adults in the evening. He was teaching the children Marathi (they were still learning the alphabet), arithmetic, Katkari songs, drawing. He said that the students could not still associate numbers with their symbols, so he used actual objects like match sticks for them to get the idea (if he just wrote ‘3’ they didn’t quite understand it, he had to show them 3 match sticks). He used the same tools to teach them addition and subtraction. The students all seemed very enthusiastic and eager to learn. There didn’t seem any point my trying to find out if they had learned anything because all of them were first generation learners, probably the first year of their education. I had taken a bag of candy with me, which I gave away.
One
of the parents described to me the state of the govt primary school. It was
Wednesday and the teacher had not been seen in school yet from the beginning of
the week. During the month of Holi he had gone on (unauthorised) vacation for
about a month or so. The students come from different hamlets and walk anywhere
between 1-2 hours to reach school (I can vouch for this distance, some of the
hamlets were really specks in the hills) only to find no teacher. No wonder
most of them drop out. This particular parent told me that his son had been
going to the Govt School for more than a year without learning anything, but
now since he had started attending this school he had learned the Marathi
alphabet. I asked Mahendra if the children should get into the mainstream
system once they had reached a certain level, he replied that he left that
decision to the parent though he personally felt that there was no point in
taking an alternative path only to join the main one later. (This depends on
what objective you had in the first place for taking the alternative path, but
I did not argue with him).
We
began our trek down hill with one of the activists and on the way I learned the
process of extracting ‘oil’ from pythons which has some medicinal value. I
finally broached the topic of the accounts with him. I told him that it would
be difficult for Asha to sponsor SAC if a significant portion of the funds went
to his activism and not education. I suggested that he should submit a proposal
to Asha for his educational activities and try to raise funds for other stuff
elsewhere (I told him I’d help him find the right organisation for this
purpose, so if any of you guys can help). Again, I said that I did not speak
for Asha and the decision would be taken by Asha-MIT.
There
is not much Asha can do to help him manage funds. He is very short of funds and
is basically living in day-to-day mode.
We
had tea at a stall where I asked him about the tribal culture (was it like
mainstream ‘Hinduism’ etc). He said that it was totally different. When I
pointed out that one of the Katkaris was named Vishnu, he said that contact
with mainstream Maratha people was gradually resulting in ‘Sanskritization’ of
the tribals.
Next
we went to the Katkari settlement and I visited the school there. A woman
called Devka ran it. She was trained by Guruji and had taken over the teaching
after her husband had died of snakebite last year. This was a larger, better
room. One wall was painted black and acted as a blackboard. BTW I must point
out that there was no blackboard in the first school and I did not feel there
was anything odd/wrong about that. (Because I remember one of the ‘blacklisted’
projects was blacklisted because there was no blackboard).
Mahendra
has a small library of books here for the activists. I spent some time here and
headed back. On the way back we discussed Gujarat, how the BJP govt was doing
wrt foreign policy, Kashmir etc. I was pleasantly surprised to hear his views
on defence (I have very conservative
views about this and I associate social activists with
impractical/naïve/foolish ideas on this subject, Sandeep Pandey being a case in
point).
My
impression of Mahendra is that he is an intelligent and well-informed person
(not because his views on defense match mine). His main thrust is on tribal
rights. Education is one of the tools to achieve this end and so does not
consume most of his funds. I have not read the site visit by Premnath, so I
don’t know what his perception is, but I think we should wait for him to submit
his proposal next year and evaluate it with an open mind. I am convinced that
the proposal will not be doctored to suit Asha. Things may change in another
six months and maybe so much activism might not be necessary. Also he does have
plans for more schools in this region and his educational budget will increase.