First things first, India has approximately 70% rural population living in the villages, and yes India is the second largest populous country in the world, next to China. Now China has been able to mitigate the response efforts and apparently…
As with any crisis and emergency situation, those who are directly affected do not have the time to tweet or update their Facebook status. Which means there is a majority of the population who is not directly affected and has…
View this post on Instagram Emotional Playground and Experimental Subject for the First World Kids. So subhuman, so poor, much wow. A post shared by 𝒜𝒿𝒶𝓎 / ॐजय / Ajay (@rural.human) on Nov 23, 2019 at 2:33pm PST It is…
The year is 2020 and people are looking for new jobs and new ways to follow their passion to reality while making it fun. I thought I shall (re)start my writing by sharing some insights I have gathered while being…
Putting everything that is “life” aside I look at my PhD journey, the quest for finding answers. Answers to a burning question, or too many burning questions. That’s probably how every PhD journey is like. Or maybe not. To each their own.
But I am sure we all can agree, everything in life is pretty much scary and confusing and all the other things we cluster into the word complex.
Probably because things go way beyond human comprehension and language.
With all that in mind, I have been thinking a lot on why I have been really scared to dig up into my data and do the needful to push my PhD project forward. One of the answers I found while looking back at all the conversations in person, online in Aid communities and in general is.
People. Emotional. Personal.
(That’s really not an answer but..)
Human dignity is a very simplistic term that appears in almost very often in discussions around humanity or in day-to-day life. However, when we look at the governments and how our nation states endorse it as an important value for our society, we see it appear as “Article 1 – Human dignity” or the well known Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). It is very clear that everyone understands the concept of worth of a human person naturally, however, we also make a very common mistake of assuming that the world revolves around us, and the “I” is very important. Somehow the “I” is so important that we are constantly fighting to keep the “I” very special, unique and most of the times “better” than the “other” person. It is very easy to give in to our emotional state and fall prey to discrimination, alienation and distance from what is different to us, i.e. the other. Emotions, Identity, Collective worth etc. all matter here.
During one of my fieldwork visits last year, I was doing a daylong interactive discussion with NGO staff and community representatives. At some point we had a tea break, and the tea arrived in plastic cups. Obviously, I was not an expert in how plastic can damage our environment and all the ill effects of having that around us so prominently, because as an Indian, I was accustomed to seeing plastic being used for everything. From protecting our TV remotes, to covering anything possible with plastic as a mechanism to protect it from dust. Then it hit me that, this is a sacred land. India is what it is today, primarily because of our agricultural revolution in part. The land is also sacred, because it is where our food comes from. Moreover, the farmers are the protectors of these lands and the caregivers, not just the caretakers, of our land. These lands are also the main source of income and livelihoods for our farmers, either who own these lands or are just working as labourers to feed their families on a daily basis.
Reflecting on some of my past projects, and trying to study the thought process of some of the projects that I have worked on, I thought of laying out some questions which can act as a set of “tips” for my future projects.
As a part of the ongoing efforts by the government, the task of reaching out to families seeking information about their relatives has been on top priority by the government officials. I was amazed at the government’s quick deployment of the “people finder” on the Disaster Management portal of the Uttarakhand government which initially had information about tracking rescued people, since army was involved in evacuation or search & rescue. Progressively the site kept being updated with more information and data being gathered and managed by the Uttarakhand government. When I saw a lot of people online volunteering to help with data collection and putting everything at one place and have their own versions of the same task which was already done by the government round the clock, I was just worried about this whole duplication of effort as something that was adding to the chaos. While I was traveling back to India and was in London, I just called the District Information Officer of Rudra Prayag, to check information and convey that some of the documents of rescued people that was being uploaded on their website were actually printed and scanned documents (some word documents but still printed and scanned and some hand written, both in English and Hindi – ref: Screenshot) are not easy to search and ask them if they can upload at least in some searchable format. That is when he informed me that although some of the documents being collected at district offices are scans, there is a separate team that is also translating (from Hindi to English) all the data and putting it online on their own DMS site in searchable format. Now on the same website, you see all the information being managed by any of the offices being put at one place. Like the website says: “This search module has been provided to track a person as per the information provided by concerned District Administration. The original list provided by District Administration has been re-entered/converted in English at State control room to facilitate its users.Kindly refer original list of District Administration to confirm the information provided through this website.” Ref: Screenshot here & Direct website link here.
(originally posted on the PowerCutsIN Blog)
September 16, 2011: This is the house of Mr. Sukhdev from Karcha Village, Banda, Uttar Pradesh where I had a chance to visit during one of my work visits.