| first person |
Michelle Chawla
Co-Founder & Trustee,
Tamarind Tree
may 2014
|
magis
11
|
Chawla, along with her husband
Hemant Babu, founded Tamarind Tree,
located in Dahanu, Maharashtra. Tama-
rind Tree works on developmental and
environmental issues in Dahanu, and
is based on a threefold approach for an
integrated development – Education,
Environment Protection and Commu-
nity Media.
Is the current education system
helping the tribal community?
The tribal community has a history of
oppression and suppression and the com-
modification of forests have made them
leave their homes. So they have been
removed from the mainstream and pushed
to the margins.
Now their concerns are different from
ours and the government’s education plan
is a complete failure in helping these mar-
ginalised sections. The education system is
prejudiced to say that you are low and we
have to bring you up through our educa-
tion system. The present education system
is further ruining them. As it does not help
them in learning rural requirements — like
farming — and the mainstream is so tough
for them that they cannot compete with oth-
ers. So the education is taking away their
interest from their usual livelihood style
— which is agro-based — and also not
giving them enough support and facilities
to compete in the mainstream. So they are
stuck in the middle.
What are the challenges of
working with the tribal
community?
Where ever we could intervene we did and
where ever we couldn’t we didn’t. Our idea
is to assimilate with them and not change
them according to our perspective of de-
velopment. You have to feel like them and
make them feel like you. You need to build
acceptance for yourself. We wanted to have
an informal relation with them rather than
having an organisational approach. Living
in the village makes me as much a part of
their community as they themselves are.
And as a member of the tribal community I
seek changes, which can prove beneficial to
the entire community.
The challenge was more in how do we
use our knowledge and the technology to
build equity in them. They require some ba-
sic knowledge resources to be able to help
themselves. So our approach was how to
provide them this knowledge without main-
streaming it. We didn’t want to give them
education the mainstream style, because
it is not doing them any good. The current
education system does not speak about
their culture or their history so it is totally
disconnected. We wanted to give them
education that they could associate with.
My own children are studying in the same
school so now the responsibility is even
more — to disseminate a good education.
So we have tried to look at the problem –
whether education or environment — from
a personal perspective.
What does development mean to
the people of Dahanu?
Development for them according to
me would mean a better livelihood.
Social, financial and ideological upliftment.
Their aspiration is certainly an increase
in economic livelihood. Traveling miles
for water, doing extreme manual work,
slogging on fields is drudgery for them. We
might romanticise this idea of rural but for
them it is pure drudgery.
Thekaekara first became
involved in social activism
through a national student
movement in India. He went
on to live in a tribal village
in Bihar for a couple of years.
Subsequently he founded a
number of grassroots NGOs
in various parts of India. In
1986 he and his wife Mari
co-founded ACCORD, and
have spent the past 20 years
mobilising the adivasis of
Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu to
fight for their social, political
and human rights.
Challenges faced in
picking up tribal-
centric initiatives?
The mainstream culture is
deeply rooted in capitalism and
consumerism. And this way of
living (capitalist and consum-
erist) is the problem that has
widened the divide between
tribals and the mainstream.
Then again why do we have
to bring them to the mainstream
which does not understand the
tribal perspective, their needs
and their idea of growth and
development. Today the tribal
identity is in conflict with the
mainstream.
Is this gap being widened
by inappropriate media
coverage
?
What media today puts forward
is a Western consumerist
idea. The rape in Delhi was
sensationalised (nothing
wrong with creating that kind
of awareness) but why don’t
they talk enough about caste
system. Because that would
mean attacking the power
structure.
What does sustainable
development mean to
you?
As long as we have the
consumption model to decide
growth (because that is what
decides the GDP) we cannot
have sustainable development.
Stan
Thekaekara
Founder, Just
Change India
