For our village fieldwork we went to the village Sarusinangia of G. Udayagiri block of district Kandhamal of Orissa. Our host organ isation was the District Rural Development Agency, Kandhamal. They attached us to an NGO working in that area called Samanwita. Samanwita is active in the field of human resources development of the tribal people.  It does this by organising

I have been born and brought up in cities. Prior to my coming to IRMA I had never stayed in a village for more than two days. Therefore on the eve of field work I was apprehensive about the whole thing. I am not habituated to doing my daily rituals in the open air and that weighed heavily in my mind.

First we went to the district headquarters at Phulbani and reported to the Project Director, DRDA. I felt that he was not very enthusiastic about our fieldwork. May be because he was very busy, he could not talk properly with us and I got that impression. He introduced us to the Project Director of Samanwita, the NGO that was to make arrangements for our stay in the village                           .

In our village we had expected that we shall have electrical power. But to our dismay we could not get that facility. So we had to do with lanterns. We cooked our own food during our stay. It was a learning experience. Earlier I knew nothing about cooking, but now I think I am a reasonably good cook.

The people don’t know how much power is there in their own hands. The Self Help Groups have amply demonstrated this. They save as little as Rs 10 per month in some villages and they have deposits of 7000-8000 in the banks. For people whose entire monthly expenditure is in the region of Rs 400-500 (it is even less) this is a very big amount. Their dependence on the money lenders has been reduced. But not all the people are members of these thrift groups. They are very much afraid to talk with educated people. They become self conscious and keep quiet.
 

So many development schemes are started by the central government but by the time they reach the beneficiaries they are distorted to benefit the people who don’t need it anymore. In the IAY it has been directed that no work should be given to the contractors. Whatever construction job should be done by the beneficiaries themselves. But here we saw the work being done by contractors. The officials at DRDA say that the people take the money for building houses and spend money on other things instead of constructing houses.So what they have done is that first the house should be built then they release the amount. This defeats the very purpose, as the person who has been allotted the house does not

  any money even to start the construction. So he has to take a loan to construct his house. This is a glaring example of how policies fail.
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I feel that the greatest help that one can provide the people is the confidence that they are capable of doing better things than what they have been doing till now. It is not necessary for them to have degrees to have good lives. A person with a reasonable amount of education also can do better things in life provided he thinks he can do it. It more to do with a state of mind. One has to facilitate their thinking along this direction. They have to be made literate first. For them literacy means being able to sign their names. But literacy should go beyond it. At least they should be able to read newspapers and printed documents and comprehend them. Then they can become masters of their fates.

The atmosphere is so clear and peaceful. There are no complexities in village life. I feel one of the reasons is that they are so removed from the external world. If development takes place and communication improves then along with modern amenities the evils of modern civilisation will also reach them. These are the two sides to the coin of development. 
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