You know that one or more member of your neighbor’s family will not survive because of the drought that happened in the village this year. You and your family somehow played it safe and will survive the year and also have some money to lend them. However, there is uncertainty in your mind about next year in terms of rains. Less rains might result in your family being in danger. What will you do? Will you give them money on no conditions applied and gamble on your family’s life? Will you ask some sort of security in terms of land, cows etc which makes you an exploiter? (Open to your opinions and answers)

This is just one situation which our farmers all over the country face year after year. They gamble; to survive.

Before coming to the fellowship, I had a myopic vision of how things can be done in order to improve the life of the people living in rural India. I had no clue that their issues are very much real, complex and do not have simple solutions which a person sitting behind the table might think. The past 6 days of extensive but brilliant orientation programme for SBI Youth for India has shown us, the group of 28 fellows from all around the country and with diverse backgrounds, that there exists a world which is actually struggling for its identity. This world has been portrayed in a completely different light from what it actually is. The village that you might see in a movie or to an extent in local/national media is not the real image of rural India.

Let us take a scenario. We come across a child in one family who is not going to the school and instead working in the field with his father. What is our reaction to that will be? Most of us might think it as a case of child labour and would feel that the child should definitely be sent to the school in order to continue his studies. But, if we dig deeper into the realities, the child is working on the field because his family is hungry. If his father does not have an extra working hand on the field, some members of the family will die. Did we ever think about this?

Let us take another scenario. What is the first thing which comes in our mind when we talk about the term Education? Many of us would think that teaching the future generation will solve most of the problem. Right? But, have we asked the following questions?

Do only kids need to be taught? What about teaching the teachers? What about the quality of education? What about the teaching methodologies? Is there any focus on creativity and innovation involved in the process?  Are we promoting rote learning? What is the drop-out rate in the schools?  These are just some of the questions which we need to ponder upon. There might be many more.

The point I am trying to make from all this is that we, people sitting behind the desk, need to broaden our vision and see that there are people in this world who are really struggling to make their ends meet. Just because we are born in one way and they in the other way does not mean we are the better ones. We might not be able to change the lives of all of them in a fortnight but, we can at least try to be sensitive towards their issues. This is the least we can do.

Post Written on: 10/Oct/2015

PS: Posting regularly on the blog is a challenge as I am pretty low on the networks and have been travelling a lot. Please be patient and keep interacting.

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