THE OTHER INDIA

29/06/12 Challenges to inclusive growth

India economy has made giant strides in the last decade or so, however

the economic growth has benefitted only few sections of the population.

Rural India where sixty percent of the population of India lives is still

languishing in problems abound. Lop sided growth is the main culprit

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behind the woes of rural India. Policy makers and public in general

have slowly begun to realize that inclusive growth is the only way

through which India can progress, however, inclusive growth is fraught

with several challenges. As part of the village exposure program at

XLRI, Jamshedpur our team of six students conducted a survey of tribal

village called Nungdi situated in the West Singhbhum district of

Jharkhand state to understand how rural India works. We were assisted

in conducting the survey by the staff of an NGO called TRTC (Tribal

Research and Training Center) working for the development of tribal

villages near the town of Chaibasa. In the process of survey we

students had the opportunity to closely observe the socio-economic

conditions in the village and understand the problems that exist in the

village.

The other India C H A L L E N G E S T O I N C L U S I V E G R O W T H

Nungdi village – survey report

Socio-economic conditions

Nungdi village is a tribal hamlet situated in the forest-covered hills near Chaibasa town in

the state of Jharkhand. The population of the village is about 400 people. The villagers belong

to “Ho” tribe, which incidentally is also the name of language the villager’s speak. Most of the

houses are built of mud-clay with roofs made of burnt bricks.

Villagers of Nungdi primarily depend on agriculture for their livelihood. The main crops of

Nungdi are rice, rahar (a type of pulse) and vegetables. Villagers avoid growing wheat since

Wheat attracts elephants from nearby jungles, which destroy the crops. There are two crop

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seasons per year and agriculture is completely dependent on rains. Lack or shortage of rainfall

in a year implies crop failure and food scarcity for villagers. Only five out of the fifty-five

families in the village had enough food stock to last for a year. Villagers mostly use the

agricultural products that they grow for self-consumption and store any surplus for the next year,

as a safeguard against drought. In case there is a need for money, villagers sell their agricultural

produce in markets of Chaibasa town. Villagers are aware of kisan credit card and crop

insurance however information about when the insurance is open for subscription each year does

not reach villagers on time. As a result, many a times villagers are unable to avail the benefits of

crop insurance. There is a concern about deforestation activities of the villagers as they try to

bring more land under agriculture.

Picture 1 – Typical house in the village

Another source of income for villagers is animal husbandry. Villagers rear hens and goats,

which are sold in the local village fair. The villagers walk miles together to attend these village

fairs in which people from nearby villages also participate. This fair is held every two days and

is a major source of shopping for the villagers. Seasonal occupation of villagers is the collection

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of “Mahua” flowers and “Beedi patta” (Tendu leaves). Mahua flowers are used for

manufacturing local arrack while beedi patta leaves are used for manufacturing beedi. Villagers

collect and sell these two forest products to earn cash. Villagers also engage themselves in cutting

firewood from the forest and selling it in Chaibasa town. Selling firewood can provide a daily

income of around Rs100. Few villagers also take up petty government contracts such as laying

roads and projects that fall under MNREGA scheme. The income of an average village household

falls between 1000-3000 Rupees a month.

A few educated villagers have bank accounts but a majority of the villagers do not own

a bank account as a result of which villagers do not seem to have a sense of savings. We

happened to speak to a man who was educated and financially sound and he mentioned that if

there were a sudden need for money, the villagers would go to the local moneylender and

borrow money at exorbitant interest rates. There is a need to educate the villagers about money

matters and savings this will help the villagers spend judiciously and also develop a habit of

saving money for better purposes such as education & health care.

Picture 2 – A village fair

The local arrack “Hadiya” is a major part of everyday life for the village men. It was

apparent that the villager men spent their hard-earned money mostly on 'hadiya' at the end of a

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hard day’s work. There were many “Hadiya” joints around the village crowded with men. Due to

the training given by TRTC, women of the village are aware of the ill effects of drinking

“Hadiya” and they discourage their men from drinking. Unfortunately, the villagers still indulge in

this habit.

Most families in the village belonged to either the “Jamuda” or “Kayam” family lineage. The

families are typically large joint families and each household consists of 10-15 members on an

average. Most women do not contribute to the earnings of the family and spend most of the time

in domestic activities. A major complaint of the womenfolk was that once children from the village

get educated and graduate from colleges in the nearby town they tend to move out of the

village in search of a better life and are generally reluctant to come back and contribute

towards developing the village.

Nungdi does not have self-help groups (SHG). The women of the village were interested in

getting vocational training, but there were no means of getting trained. Since the women of the

village were married at an early age they could not complete their education. One woman was

interested in learning sewing, but the village did not have training facilities. There seemed to be

a lot of scope for vocational training and setting up self help groups. Local NGO’s such as

Kalamandir can train the villagers in making handicrafts using the natural resources available in

their village and sell the crafts in the market. This can become a good source of income for the

villagers.

The village also lacks sanitation facilities. We observed that even though some of the

villagers had the means to construct lavatories, they were unwilling to do so. They thought that

the money could be utilized for some other activity in a better way. Inter caste marriages is a

common phenomenon among the younger generation of the tribe. This is an indication of the

progressive nature of the tribe.

One of the highlights of the trip was the lunch we had in a villager’s home. It was a

sumptuous meal consisting of dal, rice, 2 vegetable curries and meat. We were amazed at the

cleanliness and hygiene conditions followed by the villagers in preparing the food. We observed

that a few better off village households had televisions and had satellite TV connections. There is

a considerable mobile phone usage among the villagers and apparently most of the villagers use

the phone to listen to songs.

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Education

The village had a primary school with classes from one to five, but for secondary

education, the students were forced to travel to the nearby towns of Chakradharpur or

Chaibasa. The school had only one teacher, who was the whole and sole in charge of the school.

The teacher’s view was that it was a challenge to make the children come to school as they

usually went to work in the fields helping their families during day time. The teacher sighed that a

lot of his time was spent on non-teaching activities such as preparing reports asked by the

government, attending meetings and bringing supplies for the mid-day meal scheme. He was of

the opinion that that the meetings were ineffective and government was more interested in

statistics than really educating the children.

It was observed that the adults in the villagers weren't educated and were not skilled to

take up jobs outside the village. The reasons for this are, firstly, the villagers lacked the

awareness of the positive change that education and employment can bring about in their lives.

Secondly, neither could the villagers learn new skills all by themselves nor could they afford to

pay for getting trained outside. The TRTC's community college is creating the awareness among

villagers and encourages them to undergo vocational training in order to become employable.

The elders in the village have to somehow understand the importance of education so that they

save money to get their children's educated. Though the villagers seemed to understand the

importance of education, they strongly feel the government is not interested in educating the

people as there are very few government schools in the region and the number of teachers

allocated to the schools is too low (1 teacher per 100 students). The remoteness of the village

also poses a problem in terms of getting additional teachers to work there.

The Jesuit run St John’s school, which runs classes from Standard 1 to10 in the nearby

Tipasai village, was quite good and the school was doing a good job in the region. However, the

question of how the students will pursue their further education after completing high school from

there remains a puzzle. The children’s parents lack the financial means to educate the child

beyond 10th standard and as a result most of the students drop out after completing their basic

education. This does not help them, as they do not find employment with the level of education

they possess and as a result they have to return to their villages. Children in the school were

trained to do all chores by themselves. We found a distinct contrast between the awareness and

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aspirations of boys and girls. While most boys were interested in learning about higher

education, the girls were reluctant to study beyond 10th standard. We interacted with the girls to

get an insight into their lives. We played a few fun games with them including singing and

quizzing for girls aged 9-14 years of age. Most of them were adept at domestic chores such as

cooking, stitching, and sewing. Although most girls were bright, they were not aware of many

career options. Most girls dropped out of school after 10th standard, as they could not travel

outside the village for higher education. Students were aware of the happenings around the

world through newspaper. The boys love to play football and are quite knowledgeable about

the game as well. On the whole it seemed that the students could do a great job with a little

guidance and help.

Infrastructure: The village lacked proper health care facilities. In case of an emergency, the villagers

have to take the patient to the nearest town, Chaibasa that is nearly 2 hours away by road.

Some households in the villages stocked medicines for frequent diseases, such as vaccines against

malaria. These medicines were provided by TRTC. This helped villagers to get some access to

health care. Superstitions were also prevalent to some extent in the village. The villagers

believed that if a person could not be cured by medicines, sacrificing three different colored hens

would cure the patient. The health care workers whose job is provide the villagers with basic

medicines were not doing a great job.

The villagers recently got electricity, but most of the times, they lived in darkness. Power

cuts were frequent and the villagers had no idea whom to complaint to. Water was plentiful in

the village, but safe drinking water is a major issue. Some of the houses in the village owned

hand pumps, which were shared amongst a few households. Few houses had solar panels

installed too, which were provided by TRTC.

There are no public transportation facilities except for the lone private bus, which plies

between Chaibasa and surrounding towns twice a day. For basic necessities such as milk or

vegetables, the villagers were forced to go to Chaibasa incurring high expense. The lack of

good connectivity meant that the villagers had no choice but to sell their farm produce in the

markets of Chaibasa town the same day for very low prices. Cold storage facilities are very

much the need of the hour if these villagers have to gain from their agricultural produce.

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Food distribution happens through PDS and each family gets 35 kg of rice irrespective of

the size of the family based on the ration cards. Many a time the food grain is rotten as well.

Availability of irrigation facilities would improve the agricultural output of the village.

Farmers have the opportunity to get an agricultural well sanctioned under the MNREGS program.

Villagers generally draw water from the wells using water pumps and irrigate the land. Villagers

are aware that with better irrigation facilities, they can grow vegetables and sell them in the

markets of the nearby towns. A newly constructed all season road laid between Chaibasa town

and Nungdi holds a lot of promise in this regard.

Summary There is a sense of dejection and helplessness on the villager's part towards the

government as they feel the government is not doing enough for developing these backward

regions. Endemic Corruption and lack of education amongst the villagers is at root cause of

several problems that the village is facing today. Several government-sponsored schemes such as

MNREGS have been in effective; we came to know of several instances of non-payment of

wages to the villagers in lieu of the work done under MNREGS. Getting a work sanctioned under

MNREGS itself is a difficult task and more often than not involves the greasing of palms of the

Govt. officials. Most of the times the work under MNREGS is poorly planned (ex: Constructing a

well or road just before the rainy season) leading to incomplete work and loss of reimbursement

for the villagers.

Lack of proper roads and electricity is crippling the village and during heavy rains the villagers

totally lose connectivity with the rest of the world. The contracts for building roads run into

several crores of rupees but there is not much to show for it.

Maoist activity in these regions is another major roadblock in the path of development.

Govt. officials and police rarely visit these remote villages due to the threat from Maoists. There

have been several instances where innocent villagers have become targets of police brutality due

to suspected connections with Maoists. Though the villagers seemed to sympathize with the cause

that the Maoists are fighting for, they are fully aware of the fact that there is no contribution

from the Maoists towards uplifting their lives.

The work that Tribal Research & Training Center (TRTC) is doing in the villages around

Chaibasa town is truly commendable. During our interaction with villagers we found out that

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recent developments such as roads, electricity were partly because of TRTC's efforts in bringing

force upon the concerned authorities. TRTC also helps villagers on legal matters by providing

them legal assistance.

Unless the fundamental issues of education, health, banking and basic infrastructure are

tackled, villages such as Nungdi will continue to be excluded from the growth story of India. The

key lies in creating awareness and educating villagers about their rights.