SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2007 Edition
Who are our leaders? Are they the select few who normally hog the headlines and keep popping up in TV shows? Are they billionaire captains of business, celebrity activists, argumentative politicians, bull operators, glib physicians and talkative film industry types? Or are our leaders to be found burrowing deep in society working on things that make our lives better, far from the limelight of national prominence?
At Civil Society we have spent four years telling the stories of those who make a difference, but can’t easily be found in the day’s headlines. These are people who exist at ground level in more ways than one. In them we have invariably seen much hope for the country’s future.
The Civil Society Hall of Fame seeks to go beyond our journalism. It hopes to be able to identify people through other public spirited individuals who are friends of this magazine. Our jury will remain anonymous. But let us assure you that they are, like the people they have chosen, some of the best hearts and minds in the country. How representative is the Hall of Fame? Do we have too many leaders from one region? Are their concerns too narrow, their solutions too area specific? Frankly we aren’t bothered by such issues. We would like our selection process to be flexible and honest and not premeditated.
WHEN Farhad Contractor finished school, he didn’t want to pore over dull books in some university. Neither did he want to stay in Ahmedabad and savour city life. Farhad wanted to live in rural India. It was his father, Firoze Contractor, who inculcated in him a love for village life. Farhad spent six and half of his formative years growing up in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Barmer in west Rajasthan. He worked as an activist in Janavikas. For the past five years, Farhad has headed a social service organisation, Sambhaav. He read Anupam Mishra’s classic book on traditional water systems, Aj bhi khare hain talaab, 12 times after he first came across it in 1993.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
GIRISH Bharadwaj, an engineer who runs a fabrication unit at Sullia, in Dakshina Kannada district, is famous for his Suspension Footbridges (SFBs), or 'hanging bridges' that connect remote villages. “We bridge the gap between places, people and hearts,” says Girish. Such villages become isolated islands during the monsoon. The bridges are a big relief for the villagers since their persistent demand for a pucca bridge was never met by the government. Now, they can cross the hanging bridge and return home any time.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
FROM a very young age, Chhatar Singh, 48, wanted to work for his desert society. So he joined many social institutions, movements and NGOs but he did not find the right path. Chhatar Singh is from a traditional family in Ramgarh, district Jaisalmer. He returned to his village and started working with his own community. He is reviving water harvesting with traditional tools of social engineering. He has revived a system called Lhas where almost everybody participates in reconstructing the village.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
MALLANNA S. Nagaral belongs to the third generation of farmers who have been spreading awareness about drought-proofing in the water-scarce Hungund taluk of Bagalkot district in Karnataka. Inspired by a 170- year- old book, 'Krushi Jnaana Pradeepike', written by Ghanamatha Shivayogi Swamiji, Sanganabasappa Nagaral, his grandfather, started farming by following soil and water conservation measures described in the book. These methods proved to be so successful that he soon started a mission to spread these ideas. His son, Shankaranna Nagaral, wrote vachanas (poetry) highlighting the importance of such drought-proofing techniques.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rural Karnataka’s ‘native seed man' is G. Krishna Prasad. Since 15 years, he’s been leading a movement to conserve indigenous varieties of seeds. An important outcome of his movement is the establishment of 34 seed banks in collaboration with 12 NGOs in Karnataka. He has written prolifically on seed conservation. Both Beeja bangara in Prajavani, and Tenegoodiballa in Adike Patrike are avidly read.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
HE calls himself a farmer by profession and a journalist by obsession, but Shree Padre has really merged the two. He is the guru of farm journalism or ‘self-help’ journalism as he calls it. Agriculture is in the doldrums, everyone agrees. But there is also a new economy of agriculture emerging which is very inventive and traditional. Shree Padre belongs here. He is from Vaninagar, a village in Kerala bordering Karnataka. In 1985 when the price of arecanut fell,
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SINCE five years, Shivananda Kalave, a farmer and development journalist, has been fervently spreading knowledge of rainwater harvesting and afforestation. A big fight started when municipal authorities of Sirsi, in southern Karnataka tried to construct a dam at Kengre village, to supply water to Sirsi town.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
ALMOST from nowhere Bhuvaneswari jumped into the tsunami recovery and response process, with verve and commitment, to work with coastal agriculturists all the way down from Nagapattinam to Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu. The agriculturists were badly hit by the tsunami but their needs were largely unrecognised. Within months Bhuvaneswari found her feet and created an active federation of 3,000 coastal farmers. Interestingly, Bhuvaneswari is not a farmer. It wasn’t easy for her to lead poor coastal farmers and to think of salinity ingress as an opportunity.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
ASHOK Tungal a civil engineer, was the technical genius behind the 430 metre historic people's barrage built at Chikkapadasalagi across the Krishna at Jamakhandi in the Bagalkot district of Karnataka in 1987. His barrage has inspired people to build another three barrages across the Ghataprabha river. The one at Mudhol, for instance, is 390 feet long and 12 feet high. It has cost Rs 40 lakhs and was completed in just 92 days.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SHIVARAM Pailoor and his wife Anitha, both from farming families, dedicate most of their time to farm journalism. Six years ago they started the Centre for Alternative Agriculture Media and a website to fulfill their dream. Every year CAAM gives awards for the best features on agriculture in two categories. The first is awarded to stories written by farmers and the second is for nonfarmers.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
CHEWANG Norphael makes artificial glaciers so that farmers can get water when they need it. He is a retired engineer from Leh in Ladakh. This area gets only 50 mm of rain. For irrigation, farmers would depend on melting ice from the Himalayas. But by the time water from the ice-melt reached their fields,
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SADHUBHAI, as he is popularly known, set up an innovative urban initiative among the victims of the 2001 Gujarat earthquake in the slums of Bhuj. At a time when a quick assessment and timely response are crucial, Sadhubhai stepped forward to help Muslims, Dalits, and casual labour. He took great pains to enable poor victims who had no access to any means of communication to locate and contact lost relatives with the help of UK’s Department for International Development team. He did not hesitate to use hightech tools like the SAT phone to serve the poor from day two of the disaster.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
G Gnanamani, 52, is a model grassroots leader who has dedicated his life to serving village communities in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu. After finishing school he formed a youth group in his village, Padavedu, to carry out programmes for cleanliness, remarriage of widows and eradiation of illicit distillation of arrack. When he became a panchayat ward member from 1973 to 1983 he built 100 individual toilets, 20 bore-wells for potable drinking water and he bought for villagers 100 cross-bred milch animals with government subsidy.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
GOPADKAR, a professional teacher, has invented an amazing method of learning. It’s called self- education. Since 13 years, his Vathara at Mangalore is open to all children. There are no application forms, interviews or fees. He believes in making it really easy for children to learn. Gopadkar knows many things: mimicry, nail art, memory techniques, you name it. He spots latent talent in children and creates situations by which their talents can blossom and flower without restrictions and rules.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
PS Venkatrama, a civil engineer, comes from a family that practised herbal medicine for three generations. They belonged to the famed Panaje Vaidya’ tradition. Venkatrama knows a lot about herbs. Yet, for the past 30 years he has been travelling all over to increase his knowledge. Today, in the districts adjoining his village, he is an authority on identifying herbs.Apart from providing free consultation, he encourages his patients to identify and use herbs growing around their homes. Whenever somebody points...
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
DURING the January 26, 2001, earthquake in Gujarat, Paulomee Mistry, chose to help people who are often left out. She worked with tribal construction workers in Gujarat’s villages, especially their children. Paulomee, who studied at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), brought concerned citizens together and formed a strong state network against child labour.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
BHARATIBEN, as she is known, has brought natural resource management into the hands of poor landless women at Ganeshpura village in Gujarat. With her quiet determination and vision, she has helped farm women transform their arid plots of land into profitable green fields which yield an income. The women have formed a farmworkers’ union, the Mahila Khedu Mandal, which has given them visibility and strength.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
KATTANABHAVI, a village in Belgaum district, Karnataka, once had dense forests where tigers roamed wild. Then, some 20 years ago it became treeless. Reason? The 160 families who live here were mostly poor. So they started selling firewood to earn a little money. The result was that drinking water became scarce in all five community wells. Shivaji Kaganekar rescued the village from this crisis. A Gandhian, Kaganekar was born into a poor shepherd's family.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Want to give feedback on this article |
Disclaimer
The views expressed here are strictly personal and civilsocietyonline.com does not necessarily subscribe to them. We shall endeavour to upload/publish as many of the comments that are submitted as possible within a reasonable span of time, but we do not guarantee that all comments that are submitted will be uploaded/published. Messages that harass, abuse or threaten other members; have obscene, unlawful, defamatory, libellous, hateful, or otherwise objectionable content; or have spam, commercial or advertising content or links are liable to be removed by the editors. We also reserve the right to edit the comments that do get published. Please do not post any private information unless you want it to be available publicly.
Your Feedback on this story...
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
About Us | Site Map | Privacy Policy | Contact Us | ©2007 Civil Society
.
........................................Webmaster Vishwanathan ( vishu4@rediffmail.com )