From: Chitta Baral [mailto:chitta@asu.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2000 2:46 PM
To: mishrad@rocla.com.au
Cc: seeds@cs.columbia.edu
Subject: Re: Proposal for reconstruction of Madhusuddan
Vidyapitha,Ganganarayanpur

I would like to make a suggestion. If SEEDS funds any building activity (such
as say reconstruction of the school in this proposal) may be it should require
that the `activity' of building is done by the villagers. Here, i don't mean
that they only carry bricks and do labourer work but rather each of
them takes part in most of the different aspects of building and uses
this opportunity to learn higher building skills such as masonery (doing
`palastara' etc.)

These days there is a lot of building activity and a shortage of
`raja mistris', and based on the quality of finishing in buildings in
Orissa and India, a larger pool will definitely be useful.
Moreover, by knowing the different steps of building a pucca house
people will be less intimidated and the cost of building their own
house will be much less than hiring raja mistris. One fact to note
here is that, there is usually no school where one can go to learn this,
and as is still prevalent in Orissa, such trades are handed down
through family links. So, unless one's family member knows this trade,
it is hard for a person to get the opportunity to learn such a trade.

In this regard I was very much influenced by the book
`Up from slavery'; the autobiography of Booker T Washington.
Its published by Dover, costs $2 (two dollars), and is available in
Amazon.com. I would higly reccomend it to every one and even would suggest
that we distribute this book to some of the people in India involved in SEEDS
projects. It really has a lot of relevance with SEEDS goals.

cheers
Chitta

Dhanada Mishra wrote:


> I am posting this message again, since there has been no response to this
> that I have seen so far. I am not sure if it got through or not. Same is
> true of the proposal from Debesh for blank Utkalika style greeting cards
> with pattachitra paintings as well as his idea on an online information
> database of all our projects. Feedback will be appreciated.
>
> Dhanada
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> Hi all,
>
> I have managed to upload the pictures and the scanned images of the proposal
> which I received a couple of days ago. Please take a look at the following
> web page http://www.geocities.com/dhanadam/seeds_props.html.. Sorry about
> the messy background.. Will fix it when I find some time.
>
> Regarding the proposal, it is the first of many I was hoping we will receive
> following my many interactions with NGOs/individuals during my visit to
> Orissa. This particular request comes through somebody (Sri Brahmananda
> Mishra - a fellow disciple of my father)I know very well. In spite of my
> best efforts and many requests from I couldn't visit this village.
>
> I would like to request you all to take a look at the proposal and give your
> feedback.
>
> Dhanada
>
> p.s. Since we still don't have a set procedure for considering proposals,
> may be it is time to devise one. Can we follow the AID model, where there is
> a certain period of time set aside for discussions and then a vote is taken.
> We can have requirements for quorum and majority etc.
>