Village Independence - The Importance of Rangaswamy Elango

[Guest guest]

>Bal Ram Singh <bsingh

>bsingh

>Village Independence - The Importance of Rangaswamy Elango

>Fri, 20 Jun 2003 09:35:24 -0400

>

>Dear Friends,

>

>Many wonder loudly, especially those of us who are well 'educated', how

>could India with myriad of differences, diversity, and distributed groups,

>living in villages could ever be a prosperous nation pointed out in

>literary and Puranic sources. I think India remained prosperous, and more

>importantly virtuous, sanguine, and resilient, primarily because of

>extensive the village system, perhaps the most distinctive feature of

>Indian society.

>

>However, currently India's 700,000 villages remain neglected by the

>successive governments, without basic education, amenities such as

>electricity or roads, and of all things dignity. A country with 80% of its

>population still living in villages calls its people 'citizen', not

>villagers. In fact, villager in local language, ganwaar, is an epithet.

>Most people in India do not have even basic understanding of the

>successful operations of villages on many fronts, including freedom, social

>harmony, generousity, environmentally sound practices, etc. 'Educated'

>class under crushing burden of stress, corruption, slavery, dishonesty,

>pollution, social evils such as dowry, pregnancy out of wedlock, etc.,

>mental and behavioral diseases, continues to ignore adopting sound

>practices based on proven Indic philosophies. More ominously, the citiclass

>wants to impose their experiences on the villages of India, just because

>economic state of the villages have not improved.

>

>Resurgence of India's values are bound to originate in the villages. The

>two stories below are about one person in one village, but hopefully the

>first of 700,000.

>

>Bal Ram

>

>___________

>Dalit village in TN thrives as signpost for development

>Author: Vani Doraswamy

>Publication: The Indian Express

>June 7, 2003

>

>

>Introduction: A model of sustainable development, this village in Tamil

>Nadu has harnessed water, eradicated hunger and done away with huts

>

>

>President Abdul J Kalam has described this village as the signpost for

>modern India. About 30 km from Chennai in Tiruvallur dis­trict, the

>predominantly Dalit village of Kuthambakkam is a text­book example of

>what Gram Swaraj can do to make sustain­able development meaningful with

>the help of technology.

>

>

>On March 10 this year, when panchayat president Ilango Ran­gasamy (42)

>met Kalam in New Delhi and told him about the rev­olution brewing in his

>village, the President remarked, "Ilango, this country needs many more

>like you," and promised a visit.

>

>

>Ilango was the first Dalit from the village to obtain an engineering

>degree. He landed a job with the Council for Scientific and In­dustrial

>Research but gave it all up because his village needed him.

>

>

>Nearly seven years later, Kuthambakkam is self-sufficient in water and

>fast moving towards achieving zero-hunger and hut­less-village status.

>

>

>Kuthambakkam's success flows from its homegrown wis­dom - optimise the

>use of lo­cally available resources through technology, make grassroots

>em­powerment the key to commu­nity development, respect the en­vironment

>you live in and everything else will follow. It's one of the very few

>villages that has a website - www.modelvil­lageindia.org - that the

>rural community uses to both improve its resources and sell its produce.

>

>

>But it's in optimising environ­mental resources that Kutham­bakkam

>stands out. Through an intricate series of check-dams and rainwater

>harvesting struc­tures, it has managed to dra­matically increase the

>groundwater level -potable water is available at a depth of less than 10

>feet. Seven water tanks and pumping stations have been built and all

>nine village ponds de-­silted.

>

>

>The result - 2000 acres of the village's wetland now sport a lush green

>look and the village is moving towards optimising dry­-land farming.

>

>

>"My aim is to ensure food se­curity for my village and cent per cent

>access to food for all my people through the Gandhian model of rural

>economy," says Ilango.

>

>

>Organic farming is all set to receive a big push and the pio­neering

>eco-friendly 'hut­less village' concept is catching up.

>

>

>To satisfy rural housing needs, Ilango came up with the idea of using

>locally manufac­tured compressed mud and ce­ment blocks for building

>houses under the state government's 'Namakku Name' and 'Samathuvapuram'

>schemes. It was cost-­effective and provided employment to the

>villagers.

>

>

>"The idea was to provide the villagers decent, structurally sta­ble

>accommodation and it struck me that the solution lay within the village.

>Next month, under the Union Ministry of Rural Devel­opment's Innovative

>Habitat De­velopment Scheme, the hutless concept will be expanded even

>further," informs Ilango.

>

>

>The self-help group (SHG) movement is close to Ilango's heart. About 16

>SHGS, covering 250 men and women, are now get­ting a hands-on experience

>on vil­lage networking, co-operative banking, thrift and credit.

>

>

>Next month, a fully-equipped rural technology resource centre - complete

>with a soap mould­ing machine, oilseed press, mini oil-mill, milk

>processing unit and a bakery -will begin functioning.

>

>

>"This will be our prototype for a networked village economy, based on

>the concept that villages themselves are considerably big marketplaces,

>and by interlinking them and sourcing and selling products locally, we

>will be able to maintain demand and supply.

>

>

>I see the internet playing a huge role in village self-gover­nance,"

>says Ilango. A brand new internet marketing centre will open its doors

>to the public next month.

>

>______

>http://www.goodnewsindia.com/Pages/content/transitions/elango.html

>

>THE IMPORTANCE OF RANGASWAMY ELANGO

>

>--------

>

> Elango's development strategy is to bring invisible people over the

>line and make them participants.

>

> In a nation where collective finger pointing at politicians,

>grieving at the slowness of democracy and deriding India itself is

>fashionable, Rangaswamy Elango is an object lesson. He is an engineer for

>whom the outer world lay open. He chose to return to his village. He was

>born a Dalit, a people who have many justified grievances with Indian

>society. He chose to harmonise passions. He had choices enough to stay away

>from the rough and tumble of politics, as most educated Indians are wont

>to. He chose it as the means to lead his village, Kuthambakkam to

>prosperity. He can spend his life basking in the successes he has wrought

>so far in Kuthambakkam. But he has chosen to evangelise village centred

>development. He is a family man with longings for his loved ones. But he

>lives a solitary life for his cause, Gram Swaraj [--the Autonomous

>Village]. Most of all, at a time when it is the vogue to belittle Gandhi,

>he adores the great man as the one who truly understood India. The career

>path of Rangaswamy Ela

>

> Well to do but ill at ease:

>

> Elango was born on Nov 12,1960 in Kuthambakkam where his family has

>lived for close to a thousand years at least. They cherish the association

>an ancestor of theirs had with the great reformer philosopher Sri

>Ramanujar, who was born in Sriperumbudur, nearby. Despite being Dalit they

>have not felt alienated from mainstream Indian thought. Village realities

>of ghettoised living however, had seemed inevitable. Elango's family owned

>some lands and his father was a Government employee. So they were

>reasonably well to do, but young Elango grew up amidst squalor and

>hopelessness in the Harijan 'colony'. Drunken brawls, wife beating and

>wails of women and children were nightly fares in houses around his. An

>academically inclined Elango could not quite shut these out nor ignore the

>filth and the bogs as he picked his way to his school. His mind however

>filed these away.

>

> "At lunch I saw my mates had nothing to eat," he recalls. "They

>would gulp glasses of water and pretend they were alright. I always shared

>my lunch box. But, there was never enough not did it seem a solution." His

>mind filed that away too. Walking back from school on hot days, through

>upper caste streets he found people were willing give him water but not to

>his mates. Was it because they knew he came from a sober family, was well

>washed and studious? His mind did some sums with this and the filed

>information and came to a rough conclusion at an early age. Later as he

>grew up, he redid those sums and realised what it added up to: there can be

>no individual happiness if there is misery all around.

>

> Elango was a good student and so entered the A C College of

>Technology, Chennai to study Chemical Engineering. He tried staying in the

>hostel for a few months. But was disturbed by thoughts of running away from

>his reality. He began to commute the 40 km from his village by changing

>many buses each way. In the village he teamed up with his old mates to try

>and put some hope and dignity in their lives. They formed youth clubs,

>stuck wall posters with reformist messages, organised study groups, gave

>special tuitions and tried a number of other heart-achingly inadequate

>activities. Elango seems to have intuitively understood the importance of

>human development but was lost for a platform.

>

> Flying on reluctant wings:

>

> The first technical graduate from Kuthambakkam was grabbed from the

>campus in 1982 by Oil India and posted in an exploration site in Orissa.

>For most young men in India to be on such a promising career belt is dream

>come true but Elango found himself tethered to his village. A brief holiday

>revealed his youth club members were drifting away. He quit his job and

>joined the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research [CSIR] in Chennai.

>Commutes to his village began again. His youth club revived.

>

> In a while Elango was married to a young lady who was a chemistry

>graduate. Two baby girls arrived in quick succession. By then Elango had

>visualised a long term road map. He and Sumathy had many conversations and

>agreed on a plan. They would make a home in Chennai, he would take care of

>the children and she would do her Masters in chemistry. Then she would find

>a job and provide for the family and he would return full time to the

>village. He speaks feelingly of her: "I can't quite estimate her

>contribution in whatever I have done. Until I began getting some money from

>an Ashoka Fellowship in 2002, she has been the bread winner. She has

>supported the family for over a decade without a murmur and raised our two

>girls."

>

> In 1994, Sumathy got a job in the Oil and Natural Gas Commission

>[ONGC] and Elango promptly quit his job. Two years earlier there had been

>caste riots in the village. Kuthambakkam is a Dalit majority village. There

>had been upper caste taunts and mob fury in response. Vanniars fled the

>village. After about a week when they did not return, Elango began to make

>many trips seeking the scattered Vanniars and persuading them to return. He

>was but a young man in his early thirties.

>

> Village Republics :

>

> Not many Indians are sufficiently aware of the impact of the 73rd

>Constitutional Amendment spear-headed by Rajiv Gandhi in 1993. It sought to

>create totally self governing villages with far reaching powers. A plenary

>of village people [Gram Sabha] was mandated to meet every quarter and

>elections to the office of Panchayat President [sarpanch] was mandated for

>every five years. The intention was to create village level Republics.

>Tamil Nadu ratified it in 1994 and elections were announced soon after.

>

> Elango threw his hat in and won. But despite his long term

>commitment to the village and work with harmonising it, he found the margin

>of victory disappointing. But he understood the powers at his disposal. He

>rolled up his sleeves. His objectives were two: create jobs and bring in

>hope.

>

> He did not know his Gandhi formally, but seemed in accord. He would

>build drains in the poorer ghettos and show them the difference. At the

>outskirts of the village was a factory that polished granite slabs. It had

>a huge disposal problem with its random off cuts. It was willing to pay for

>it to be carried away. Engineer,President Elango was delighted. He employed

>local labour, and built a drain which had smooth granite mosaic walls. The

>'colony' drained fast down the slick 2 km long works. Of the budgeted Rs.15

>Lakhs for this project Elango had spent just Rs. 4L, half of which went in

>wages for local folks. But, the specification was to build the drain with

>rubble stones from a nearby hill. He had violated 'prescribed norms'. In

>other words, he had deprived transporters their ferrying opportunity and

>contractors their civil works one. Vested interests worked overtime. Elango

>was suspended from office under Section 205 of the Tamil Nadu Panchayat Act

>[TNPA].

>

> He was devastated. He thought he had made a novel environmental,

>economic and development statement -- and he had been thrown out and

>humiliated for his pains. Why had he not heeded those that had said

>politics was a cess-pool? Why had he abandoned a promising career? What had

>he to show for Sumathy's support? He went into a deep depression. He

>thought of quitting.

>

> The Gandhi moment:

>

> Sumathy left him alone for a few days and then made one of her rare

>visits to Kuthambakkam. She held him and asked him if that was the end of

>his passions? 'Are you going to give up because of this one set back?'. She

>had brought a book for him, 'Satthia Sodhanai', a Tamil version of Gandhi's

>'My Experiments with Truth'. She left him alone again.

>

> Elango says though he had heard of the book he had not read it. His

>predicament gave it an immediacy as he read it now. It seemed written for

>him. He understood the mind of a dogged man who had faced greater odds. The

>book taught him grit. Within a few days he was in Chennai calmly telling

>the Secretary to the Government: "No, I will not sue you but sit in protest

>until you convene a plenary session of my village. Let your charges be read

>out, my defence heard and the villagers decide my fate." He contacted the

>press. On Jan 10, 1999, 1300 people gathered and Elango defended himself.

>Before the sun set on the day long trial, the Government sent in an order

>revoking the suspension. The entire village had rallied behind him. "I

>understood Gandhi that day," he says. "First be truthful, then be

>fearless."

>

> There has been no looking back since then. Elango was re-elected

>with a huge majority at the end of five years. The graft mafia ran away.

>Officials backed his approach of cutting out contractors and employing

>locals instead. As he created jobs, liquor menace receded. He had always

>paid above the market average, currently Rs.70 per day; and most

>revolutionarily, precisely the same for women.

>

> He mastered the TNPA and availed of every scheme for the village.

>"There are enough well meaning schemes announced by the Government. It is

>up to the local leadership to go and get them," he says. He has been an

>efficient conduit between his people and available opportunities.

>

> One of the housing concepts that the Tamil Nadu Government promoted

>was Samathuvapurams [Harmony Estates]. The idea was to make different

>castes and religions to live together in a campus of about 50 dwellings

>each. Over 150 came up all over the State. Most were shoddily built

>mockeries left to fast buck contractors in cahoots with local leadership.

>Elango demanded --and got-- a say in the design and execution. He got HUDCO

>to design a soulful campus. Local soil was pressed by people into mud

>blocks to build the houses. The community hall was designed to be an

>activity centre where now vocational courses and village businesses are

>run. The money set aside for that darling of the Government --a

>commemorative arch-- was used to build a meeting place. Of the Rs.88 Lakhs

>that the project cost, over a fourth was spent on wages for villagers. More

>was saved by using local materials. Villagers assimilated many cost

>effective building technologies. Houses in this Samathuvapuram are about

>40% larger and are be

>

> So it is with all activities in Kuthambakkam. Extensive water

>management works, processing of agricultural produce, collective businesses

>run by women, all emphasise local involvement.

>

> Economics for village clusters:

>

> This approach recurs in Elango's economic thinking which is deeply

>influenced by J C Kumarappa. "If you bring in the contractors you are

>exporting jobs," he says. He got a door-to-door survey done in the village

>and found the village consumes Rs.60 Lakhs worth of goods and services per

>month. Elango discovered to his astonishment, that nearly Rs 50 L of that

>can be produced at the village level. Since then, he has been evolving an

>economic theory of village clusters. In simple terms about seven or eight

>villages form a free trade zone. They identify and produce goods and

>services without overlap. They consume each other's produce. And the money

>stays back and gets invested in human development. Ever the Gandhian and a

>Kumarappa acolyte, he challenges the theory of competition as being good at

>all levels. For villages it is co-operation that holds the key. Extreme

>Competition Theorists are heartless. 'People have to be able to begin

>again," says Elango. "especially if they are able to see where things

>

> So he is building these village federations now. He has an

>appropriate technology development centre in the village. Over 21 schemes

>are ready. A few weeks ago, he made a presentation to 40 Panchayat leaders

>who are likely to form 3 federations. The District Collector attended. They

>are talking of budgets of Rs. 5 and 6 crores per cluster.

>

> Elango is optimistic for India. What does he think of the recent

>attempts to nibble away Panchayat's powers? "Look, the system will come up

>with the necessary resistance," he says. "In Tamil Nadu alone I have

>personally identified 1000 honest, successful Presidents. We have begun to

>network and stay connected. This number will only increase. I am sure

>similar is the case in other States. I am starting a Panchayat Academy to

>teach the Presidents their powers and villages' entitlement. All these will

>rouse people's expectations. There is an emerging force not visible to the

>media and most people. It is at work changing India from below. This force

>cannot be stemmed."

>

> It is 8 am. People are astir all over Kuthambakkam. They are all at

>some task. The streets are clean, the fields green and strangely in these

>times of drought, ducks are cavorting in its several ponds. Young men on

>swift motorbikes are racing out of the village on errands, with goods, to

>jobs. Signs of prosperity in village India? You are counting the bikes as

>they zing past, one, two... ten.

>

> Keep counting --and wish: "Won't a few have Elango on their minds?"

>

>

>

>

>

>

>=================================================================

>Please email mw_mod if you want to

>from this group or change mailing options.

>=================================================================

>archives - media_monitor2/messages

>=================================================================

>

>

>Your use of is subject to

>

>Bal Ram Singh, Ph.D.

>Director, Center for Indic Studies

>University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

>285 Old Westport Road

>Dartmouth, MA 02747

>

>Phone: 508-999-8588

>Fax: 508-999-8451

>Email: bsingh

>

>Internet address: http://www.umassd.edu/indic

 

_______________

Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*

http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail