Report on site visit to Vishwamandal Sevashram, Shirpur,
and Jansewa Ashram, Nandurbar.

Dates of visit: July 16-17, 2007.

Visit undertaken by: Navin Kashyap, Asha-Canada, nkcynic@gmail.com


I took an overnight bus from Pune to Shirpur. There are several private 
bus lines that run on that route, most of which leave Pune around 9:00-9:30pm 
and arrive Shirpur at 7:00-7:30am the next morning. The journey costs 
Rs. 300 (one-way) and is reasonably comfortable (as comfortable as you 
can get on a bus, anyway). The highways in Maharashtra are quite well 
maintained, so the ride itself is smooth. The main problem with the 
journey for me was the fact that the bus operators can be over-enthusiastic 
with the air-conditioning, so frost-bite becomes a serious concern. 
My advice to future travellers: take along a decent blanket.

I reached Shirpur bright and early on Monday, July 17. The bus drops you off 
at Anand Sadan, a clinic plus girls' hostel run by nuns, which is 
directly across the road from Vishwamandal Sevashram. Anand Sadan
is far better known among townspeople as a landmark than Vishwamandal. 
I was met at breakfast by Fr. James, Fr. Augustin and Br. Ashish. 
They (along with Fr. James Francis, whom I did not meet) are now 
responsible for the activities undertaken by the Sevashram. 
Fr. James is a lawyer originally from Bombay, and is an 
adviser to the Supreme Court of India on the Right to Food 
campaign. Fr. Augustin looks after watershed development and management
activities in the Shirpur region, and has also taken over from 
Fr. Godfrey D'Lima (who has moved to Jansewa Ashram in Nandurbar)
the management of the learning centres for 
primary school children in the villages around Shirpur. Br. Ashish, who  
is the junior member of their team, happened to be fighting a bout 
of fever at the time.

Fr. Godfrey drove in from Nandurbar after we had had our breakfast. He 
was accompanied by Br. Vijay, who is also based in Nandurbar. Immediately
upon their arrival, Frs. Godfrey, James and Augustin, Br. Vijay and myself 
set out on a round of the neighbouring villages. Before giving an account 
of what we saw, it would be useful to briefly describe the Shirpur 
region and the activities that the Jesuits undertake there.

Shirpur is in Dhule district of Maharashtra, and lies close to the 
Madhya Pradesh border. It is adjacent to the foothills of the Satpura 
ranges, which are home to several adivasi (tribal) peoples. The villages 
around Shirpur are dominated by Pawara tribals, who mainly practise farming.
They speak a tongue that is a Marathi-Hindi mix. The government schools
in the area (it being Maharashtra) are all Marathi-medium. This is often
a problem for the Pawara children as the medium of instruction in their 
schools differs significantly from their mother tongue. 

The villages in this region also have remarkably little infrastructure. 
Some of these villages are very poorly connected by roads 
(there are often no tarred roads leading to the villages), 
and officially have no electricity supply (in practice, 
villagers get their electricity by illegally tapping power lines). 
There are relatively few government schools and clinics in the region. 
(This is not simply the norm for rural Maharashtra -- the situation in 
the villages around Nandurbar is very different, as we describe later.)
The reason for this is that most of the Pawara settlements are built
on encroached land, land that officially belongs to the forestry department.
The government naturally cannot legitimize this encroachment by 
providing infrastructure, so development in the region lags behind.

The Jesuits are responsible for coordinating the following activities 
in the Shirpur region: 
 - running of approximately 30 learning centres that supplement 
the government school system; these learning centres are for primary school
(I-IV Std) children; teachers are from the local community, and
can speak the Pawara language
 - running a boys' hostel, which accommodates 50 boys, in Shirpur at 
the Vishwamandal Sevashram; the purpose is to allow Pawara boys to
attend the schools in Shirpur town
 - promotion of organic farming methods and practices, e.g., use of
organic fertilizers instead of urea
 - watershed development and management
 - maintenance of nurseries for testing new varieties of plants and seeds
 - maintenance of herbariums for growing herbs for medicinal and 
other traditional purposes
 - organizing local savings-and-loan collectives
 - providing legal advice and awareness of rights to the villagers
 - finding ways to implement the ambitious National Rural Employment 
Guarantee Act
 - providing training in vocations (carpentry, motorcycle repair 
& maintenance, computer skills) that may provide added income to villagers

Fr. Godfrey also mentioned to me his dream of having non-formal education
centres in the area, where collective knowledge, say, of good agricultural 
practices, acquired by the adivasi communities could be passed down the 
generations in a structured fashion. This is nowhere close to being 
reality yet.

Returning to the narrative of the site visit, the first order of business 
was to attend a farmers' council meeting in Kodeed village, at the
house of a farmer named Netram. Prior to the meeting, we visited the 
local plant nursery (see pictures "village_plant_nursery.jpg"
and "fr_augustin+netram_at_nursery.jpg"). The meeting was organized
by the Fathers, and was attended by about 25 farmers, mainly from 
Kodeed, although there were a few from neighbouring villages as well. 
Among the items on the agenda was the use of a new kind of organic fertilizer,
and a plan for planting of trees in villages for soil and water management.
The entire process was very orderly and democratic, and the farmers
showed a lot of interest and involvement in the discussions. 

After the meeting, we set off to see if we could catch some activity 
at a learning centre in nearby TelyaMuh (aka TelyaMulya) village. 
"Nearby" as the crow flies anyway. It was a long and very bumpy ride 
along the narrow strips of raised land whose main purpose would be to act 
as field boundaries, but which also passed as the local roads. 
It was after noon by the time we got there, and there was nothing 
happening there anyway. Some of the local children were quickly 
rounded up by the villagers, and despatched to meet us 
(picture "children_telyamuh.jpg"). We were told that the teacher, 
Atmaram Master (all teachers are given the title "Master"), 
had not yet started classes for the school year. 
It was just a couple of weeks into the new school year, and many of 
the children would still not have returned from their summer trips 
(to visit relatives and such) or their summertime work in the fields.
In any case, we wouldn't have seen much even if the teacher had started
classes, since classes are usually held for a couple of hours in the morning, 
and are usually done by 11am. 

A point of note about the learning centres in the Pawara belt is in order. 
As already noted above, since Pawara settlements are often built on
encroached forestry land, there are relatively few government schools
in the region. So children often have to walk to neighbouring
villages to attend school, and the effort of having to do so causes 
poor attendance and high dropout rates, even at the primary school level. 
The learning centres run by the Jesuit Fathers not only supplement
the government school system, but also help keep many children within
an environment of learning. The parents of these children seem to be
quite happy that this is the case. 

I was also struck by the stories of dedication I heard about the 
teachers at these centres. I heard in particular about one teacher 
who has to make an hour-long trek across a steep hill, each way, 
between the village where he lived and the centre where he taught. 
He has managed to do this every day (or nearly every day -- 
who can blame him for wanting to take the occasional day off) for
the last four years. Of course, it was the Fathers who told me
these stories; I did not attempt to independently verify them, 
nor do I have any reason to doubt their veracity. It must also be pointed 
out that this dedication is in large part a result of the efforts
of Fr. Godfrey and his team over the last sixteen years. The interest
that they show in the activities of these learning centres, and the regular
visits that they make to these centres go a long way in securing the loyalty 
of the teachers. It is very important for the teachers to feel that someone
cares about what they are doing. The government school system, on the
other hand, is notorious for making teachers in remote areas feel like
there is no one that takes an interest in what they do.

We returned to Netram's house for lunch -- a traditional Pawara meal of 
jowar bhakar (a rough bread), chicken (which being vegetarian, 
I didn't indulge in), rice and dal. After lunch, we set out to 
Nimbari village, to visit another learning centre. 
This one was housed in a much better building, a government 
(Zilla Parishad) construction. There was no activity going on
there as well, as it was 3pm in the afternoon. But we did attract 
some children (see pictures "children_nimbari.jpg") 
who told us that classes had indeed started (that very day) in that centre. 

That was the end of the Shirpur portion of my visit, as we then 
went back to the Sevashram, and after a brief rest, Fr. Godfrey, Br. Vijay 
and myself left for Nandurbar. After a drive of about 90 minutes 
(a distance of about 80km), we reached the Jansewa Ashram in Nandurbar 
around 7pm. Dinner and sleep, in that order, were the only other events 
of note that evening. 

Tha Jansewa Ashram is organized much along the same lines as the 
Vishwamandal Sevashram in Shirpur. It is managed by two Fathers -- Godfrey
and John -- along with Br. Vijay. Having only just taken over 
the reins of the institution, they were busy trying to stem some of the
rot that had begun to set in over the last few years. 

Jansewa is to Nandurbar what Vishwamandal is to Shirpur. 
There is a boys' hostel at Jansewa (see the "jansewa_*.jpg" pictures). 
The community development activities that the Jesuits coordinate out 
of Jansewa are basically the Nandurbar equivalents of those 
undertaken in Shirpur. The main difference is that their target community 
here is that of Bhil tribals. The Bhili language is an amalgam of Marathi 
and Gujarati. Nandurbar town is the district headquarters of Nandurbar 
district, which adjoins Gujarat.

Despite the short 80-km distance between them, the situations at
Nandurbar and Shirpur are dramatically different. The infrastructure
in the villages around Nandurbar is clearly much better than that in
the villages around Shirpur. Most houses seem to be permanent 
cement-and-brick constructions in the rural areas here, as opposed to 
the makeshift mud-and-thatch huts that are typical outside Shirpur. 
The roads are much nicer -- tarred and usually well-maintained. 
There are government schools to be seen in every village. 
It just seems to be a more prosperous area.
And it also shows in the general attitude of the people towards education.
The local adivasis (Bhils) here seem to value their children's education
much more than the Pawaras do in Shirpur. You see children going to 
school in large numbers, wearing clean uniforms, carrying slates and 
school bags full of books. Contrast the pictures of the children taken
in the learning centres outside Shirpur (Telyamuh, Nimbari)
to those taken in Nandurbar (Karanjwe, Sejwa, Vyahur). Fr. Godfrey's 
experiences in the two regions also corroborated these observations. 
He mentioned how they were able to collect nominal fees from most of 
the children at the Nandurbar-area learning centres, but that they
had trouble collecting fees from children in the Shirpur centres.
This showed that most parents in the Nandurbar area valued their 
children's education enough to pay fees for it.

I visited three learning centres with Fr. Godfrey on the morning of 
Tuesday, July 18. The first was at Karanjwe village. The centre here
used the frontyard of the teacher, Mohan Guruji's, house as its premises. 
The centre had about 25 children. The second centre was in Sejwa 
village, 1km from the Gujarat border. Classes here were held on
Zilla Parishad school premises, a solid construction, with a nice 
chalkboard, and charts and other learning aids all over the walls. 
The teacher here was Subhash Guruji, and his class had about 50 children. 
My final visit was to the learning centre, also on Zilla Parishad school 
premises, in Vyahur village, also literally on the Gujarat border. 
This class had about 60 children, under the tutelage of Karan Singh master. 
I didn't stay at any of the centres long enough to assess the quality of 
the education being imparted. The children weren't very responsive to my
questions in Hindi, but showed better response when Fr. Godfrey would 
ask them something in Marathi. As usual, in any class, there would only 
be two or three children confident enough to volunteer their responses 
to questions posed to the class. 

Fr. Godfrey told me that there were 27 such learning centres around 
Nandurbar that he coordinated. They were all handling primary school
students (I-IV Std.) only. The teachers were usually locals 
fluent in the Bhili dialect. The centres typically operated 
for two hours in the morning, from 8/8:30 to 10/10:30 or so. After these
classes, the children would go off to the government schools, which 
ran from 11am (or at some point thereafter when the teacher actually
showed up) until 5pm. Between the end of the learning centre class and the 
beginning of school, the children were free to roam around and play.

I asked Fr. Godfrey a question that Ashwini Gillen wanted me to ask: 
    are there a couple of small areas that if funded would
    significantly increase the impact of education? 
His response was that the project would significantly benefit from 
an infusion of funds into learning/teaching aids. He has an idea for a
mobile platform (say, a jeep) that could be equipped with audio-visual
equipment (CD/DVD player, TV, projector) and used to show educational
films and programmes to children and adults in remote villages. 
It would also be useful to have the funds to create more educational charts 
that depict good environmental and health practices in a rural setting. 
These charts would have to contain information that makes sense to the
children, and is relevant to the environment with which the children 
are familiar.

He also mentioned the computer centre at Jansewa, Nandurbar, that Fr. John
is currently setting up. It is meant for the use of children in the
Jansewa boys' hostel, and also for those in the nearby girls' hostel
run by Sisters. This computer centre could always benefit from 
additional funding.

That about wraps up my account of my trip. After spending the
afternoon back in Jansewa Ashram, I took a bus back to Pune in 
the evening. 

I have a couple of notes for future visitors to the project(s).
Accommodation at both Vishwamandal Sevashram, Shirpur, and Jansewa Ashram, 
Nandurbar, is clean. Toilets at Vishwamandal are shared, while I had a 
toilet in my room at Jansewa. The hospitality of the Fathers is excellent. 

I was asked several times by friends and relatives, before I left for these
areas, if Shirpur/Nandurbar is a Naxalite hotspot. The answer is a firm "No". 
Naxalite activities have not been reported in Dhule and Nandurbar districts.
There is a problem with dacoits in Dhule. Dacoities do happen at night 
along isolated stretches of road in the Shirpur area. Fr. Godfrey told me
that he stopped going out of Shirpur town at night, after having been 
waylaid by dacoits three times (during his sixteen years at Shirpur).

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