The life and issues of Adaptiveness in Bharat or Rural India

What does one do in a village, if you come from a city and not a village?

Wif your PhD thesis takes you there .. there is enough to figure out and time is always short. This is precisely what has been happening with me while i tell people about how i accomplish very little work in a day of fieldwork. let us look at how this unfolds.. why? well cause i want to explore the pace of life in a village..even for an urbanite like me who is overplanned lols!!! yes Over planned and you will see how.

Today, like usual, i started on time but my partners got delayed. The reason was simple. The bus they had to take was cancelled. the first reality of "Bharat" within India hits you. there are two things which get cancelled so easily these days - the flights of Kingfisher and Jet Airways and the Buses to rural India. No wonder the airplanes are called "air"- "buses"...lols..

I decided to make the "most" of time on my hands and i decided to pay a friendly visit to the Visnagar office of Development Support Centre (DSC) . i was met there by Shri Vijaybhai and it was a more than welcome reception and i tried my best to cooperate with him as well. i got some good information as in the name and location of a few villages which coudl posisbly be my sample unit villages for data collection and also the names of main contacts. That was more than what i had bargained for as i landed in without prior information. If you have'nt wondered how i reached the visnagar DSC office unplanned is not cause i carry a list of contacts with me or because the internet penetration in Gujarat is very good and i have used the internet in Visnagar and trust me the internet cafe there has better speed than the sify iWay in lucknow:) sad :( but true. i had the DSC ahmedabad number and i called them up to get to DSC visnagar . That brought me to vijaybhai who connected me to mohan bhai and rajandra bhai :) phew already too many characters and offices and location..well this Gala-head story is just beginning to take shape.

My mobile got a charger easily in the DSC officer but it fell and it stopped working . The repair shop guys were more polite for my more than 5 year old mobile phone there than i could ever find in the city. I was happy at that. I rushed to village Kansa and was met there by the Secretary of the irrigation cooperative called the "shri kansa Irrigation Cooperative for the sale of Canal Irrigation Water". I wonder who named that...

I was met by Gowdabhai . a very helpful gentelman who also doubles up as the operator of the irrigation cooperative. i decided not to "waste" time and i requested him if i could interview him as a farmer member of the cooperative. I was almost through when i was joined by my partners and then we tried to catch others in the village.

we searched on institutions and farmers for our sample and as we searched we got to know they were gone to a meeting for the irrigaiton canal. some others were gone out on personal or family errands. from one to four we talked about the irrigation cooperative to the secretary and corrected the information that i had collected earlier. a critical part of this was understanding new services like the washing ghat for women which i had mistaken as an activity of the irrigation cooperative. it is only tactfully supported by them.

beyond four we had no option the secretary was showing the laurels won by the cooperative and himself. Soon we realised the world is a small place. my IRMA juniors Shweta Kolluri and Shweta Prasad had visited Babubhai and we discussed sweet melodious memories from thier visit to his name. the next hour was spent on this.

We were forced to decide further work was not happening today. and we decided to move out of the village. While we made the plan for the next day i got a friendly visitor on the road and i decided to help myself.

so at the end of the day in a Indian village you can click a Peacock in its glory :) if not anything else. If you agree with this you miss that i was living the slow rural life for a day and trying to understand the changing needs and aspirations of people and hence the need of the Water Management Institutions to adapt and be successfull by fulfiling the expectations of the farmer-members. I was exploring the rate of adaptiveness that existed in the institution. In such a village the institution can respond to any exigency like a breach of the canal minor in less than two hours and a change of rule or procedure in less than two days where the decision is with the consensus of all the members of the institution. ..so now think twice about whats fast... whats slow.. and how important it is know the context before we conclude something as fast or slow.