Balam lives in a village far far away from the metropolitan cities of India She has a husband who works hard during the day, joining bricks together with cement, puts all his effort in building this mansion for a wealthy couple who would someday call it their home. He comes back tired and exhausted in the evening and decides to reward himself for his hard-work by deriving some pleasure from his glass of moonshine. Of course , being a husband and a father he understands both, his power and responsibility towards his family. Ergo, he gives his wife one-fourth of the day's earning and gets infuriated when she complains it to be insufficient for the five sons they have. After all, who is she to complain, he is the one greasing his elbows, how dare she judge his rationality? Being "the man" he feels he needs to show her the respect she deserves. With a face bruised like a peach, Balam decides to call it a day and sleeps. Next day her youngest son starts coughing, complains of weakness....'you probably didn't sleep well, don't go to play today'..she says. He develops fever by night, doesn't stop coughing. The oldest and most wise lady in the village comes to rescue..'evil spirits are hovering around your house Balam, these clouds , these rains..and your son's condition. Its no coincidence...all women shall be alerted, no child shall come near yours, you can't cure him, the spirits have him now'.
This article is not about statistics, data analyzing our nation's poverty, developing tools and methods to emancipate India out of its darkness. We want our nation to grow , we want to put our best effort for our country but there are people whose lives and mental status are completely disjoint from ours. We are dealing with these people, we are dealing with their system, their beliefs. They don't see social workers as people who have come to help them, they see social workers as visitors. They come, talk to the locals, take a few pictures, and head home: their home which provides them with everything they need and want, in abundance. I am not undermining or judging the work and initiatives by social workers here. NO, I am highlighting the people that are dealt with here. The actual difficulty people face in reaching out to them. However, Its not irreparable and very much within our control. We see community workers, public health workers working in a specified region for months and years, only after spending more than five years do they start seeing change. Change, they record not only in the figures of infant mortality rate, female literacy, modern family planning methods etc but also in the changing minds. When people believe medicine more than they believe hitting a spoon near the ears of a convulsing child, that's when community workers start seeing some light. Once there is some continuity in the action of community workers, they tend to break down the deep yet false beliefs that these villagers hung on to for decades. Once we succeed in breaking down those beliefs, they are ready to understand new techniques, new methods of improving their lives, they are ready to learn. They feel they have liberated themselves from their earlier lifestyle which had no meaning. It takes a while to achieve results in this sector, but once achieved, the graph is then marginally increasing.
Nobody welcomes strangers to come and make changes in their home. Workers spent months and years living with these people, gain their trust, their confidence and that's when their work starts to show results. There are varied techniques to achieve the universal goal- elimination of poverty. The road to recovery is never easy, one can't simply give money and expect them to gain rationality out of it. I have read stories of workers in Maharashtra, Liberia, Mozambique, Cambodia and then I came to the conclusion that it is not irreparable at all. There was a time where the entire nation of Liberia had just 51 doctors, they were wrecked by war, the official numbers just makes it worse. But they did get back on their feet...yes it took a while, but it did happen. There were supplies for the citizens in warehouses, but no authority to direct them to the cities, hence people died. The worst part is that people died of diseases, of conditions which were easily preventable, that is the case in most places. If it is easily preventable, well let's prevent it then. The government will come out with schemes to give a subsidy on anything and everything. Subsidies just makes it easier for them, easier to stick to their routine blinded life. Subsidies are just an incentive to get more votes. They always have been, they always will be. It makes the people below poverty line more dependent which contradicts the whole point of development.
I don't sympathize with the poor. I'd rather help them fight and gain a decent livelihood for themselves. Orthodox views are a deadweight on the society, on our nation. It is the root cause of the current predicament of rural India. The biggest challenge has always been identifying these notions and views. Once broken down to reason and logic, the road to recovery is pretty much straight.
No one can see the evil spirits in the darkness of their closed mind after all.
