are we MAD?

Bridging the divide…

Twelve noon on a Sunday - a time at which I normally get out of bed. This Sunday was a little different though… I was sitting in the courtyard of a small school in Halenijgal, excited about having rolled a six on both dice in a game of Chausar.

Halenijgal is a small village on Tumkur Road, a little over 50 km from Bangalore. Most of the 700 people in the village are involved in farming. We were in this village as a part of a day trip organized by Ruralzing.

The day started relatively early. Within an hour of starting, it was time for us to get off the comfort of the tempo traveler; the tractor was waiting on the side of the highway to take us on a bumpy ride, away from the broad tarred road…

Breakfast was followed by a walk in the village. Passing by men, women and cattle, we reached a small village school. After consistently spinning the top on the wrong side, and missing the marble I was trying to hit, I decided to try my hand at the game that probably caused the Mahabharata.

After a while, we wrapped up the game. We walked around the village, discovering the culture. We visited the Lakshmi Narasimha temple and spent some quiet time there. We walked through the fields, tasting farm produce and drinking tender coconut on the way. We also helped ourselves to some tamarind, and saw the place where the Panchayat used to be held.

There I was, in the heart of the village, but it was pretty clear that I was far, far away from it. I had, at best, only superficial understanding of a village life. I did not really know what made them happy, what made them sad, what made them afraid, what made them angry; in short, I did not really know their human side.

This is the gap Ruralzing has set out to bridge. Here is what a Ruralzing member, Dhaval Sharma had to say about it…

“We do not want urban infrastructure to be stressed by the excess movement of the youth from rural India to urban India. And more than that, we want people to come back and contribute. We thought we should start something but we felt that preaching or educating would not be the right way of going ahead. So we wanted to start something which is fun, something which is enjoyable, and something which is not directly educational.”

“Then we got this idea of tourism as the first mode of connect where people get to see each other, meet each other and talk to each other. The urban people will feel they are having a fun day while the rural people will get to showcase their hospitality.”

“It is going to be a sustainable model. It is not based on charity. We are tired of charity. We want these people to have their sustainability. Understand that it can be commercialized. This is something for which people are willing to pay money. This concept of commercialization is not there in rural India. We have to get back the youth, the youth which is disillusioned, the youth which thinks that farming, or the village, is not the right place for them. What we want to tell them and to show to them is that here itself there is a chance for you to earn that extra income without the struggle.”

By conducting the trip every weekend, Ruralzing wants to build trust amongst the villagers. Once the villagers trust Ruralzing, and believe that it is interested in really doing something for them, Ruralzing can start understanding the problems of the village better and offering suggestions. Many ideas currently wait in the pipeline, which will take shape once the rapport is built.

“Not all of the people here have the concept of saving. We want to create a corpus for them. With it we will be able to do some large scale development. We give them the day cost and hundred percent initially. After that, once we have the corpus, we will find out villages which are really in need of it. The simple things that could come out of it could be building sanitation, or educating people on hygiene - things which they take for granted.”

The trip ended with a visit to the Kodi Siddheshwara Temple. Close to the temple was a small hill. From the top of the hill, one could see the lake amidst the lush green. The tranquility of the scene, in spite of the harsh sun, summarized the village for me. At the end of the day, I was glad to have seen from a little closer, the India with which I had lost touch.

“We are connecting to people from all over India. We are telling them, this is the idea, take it up, and customize it to your local environment. We want this to be happening in each and every place.”

Would you like to give the experience a try, and help Ruralzing in their endeavour? Click here to find out more.