The stage: A large hall in Takhel, a remote village about 15KM from Imphal, the capital of Manipur – a small state in North-Eastern India

The actors: A young woman of 27 years by the name of Arambam Romita and an educated farmer Keisham Biren, both news readers for an unassuming news channel

The props: A crude loudspeaker, a PA system, a long wooden bench by the window which serves as a news desk

The scene: The young lady is trying to fix the microphone to its stand, as it had been borrowed the previous day for a farmer’s meering.

This is the setup of the tiny Paothang Channel, the sole people’s broadcast initiative in Manipur. At present, it serves as the trusted news source for many of Takhel’s 5000 residents.

This informative article from Kangla Online, written by Thingnam Anjulika Samom, tells the interesting story of Paothang (meaning ‘news relay’ in the local dialect of Meiteilon) Channel and the people behind its creation.

“It is basically our own interest – not profit – that guides us, otherwise we’d have stopped long ago,” Biren adds. The dilapidated hall is the station’s third ‘studio’ – the first was in a hotel for about a year, then the second at his house for a brief while.

Here’s an example of the two newsreaders, Romita and Biren, presenting a daily news relay:

“Paothang Channel welcomes all its listeners. We are on air,” says Biren. “In this world full of differences of caste, colour, and creed, let’s not be divided by these artificial walls,” he adds.

And then he makes an announcement – the local Communist Party of India branch will be meeting the next day and all its members are asked to attend.

Romita takes over, speaking in a soft voice. There are many good stories today.
Twelve suspected militants were captured with arms in the official quarters of five MLAs. The signing of a memorandum by seven elected people’s representatives of Manipur – one to the Indian Parliament and six to the state legislative assembly – expressing their support for Naga integration. There are more than 20 insurgent groups operating in Manipur, waging an armed struggle against the government of India, mostly for the right to self-determination…

In an isolated village with hardly any disposable income as well as need/ intention to spend on newspapers or TVs and radios, this project created by the local member of the zila parishad Tensubam Ratan, allows the village folk to keep abreast of current affairs in the vast country that they are a part of, however far removed they might be.

It is also good to know that this is not a lone star. There are similar community media initiatives being undertaken in other parts of the country.

According to Sevanti Ninan, journalist, author, columnist and media critic, “such an initiative is actually the forerunner of local community radio, which has recently been permitted by the Indian government. It offers news that the local community needs for its day to day functioning, also news that connects it to the rest of the country and state.”

“The way Romita and Biren respond to a local need is similar to what communities are doing in other parts of the country. In Kurnool and Medak districts of Andhra Pradesh, in Daltnganj in Bihar, in Karnataka and in the Rann of Kutch. They all write their news using conventional news sources, and then find ways to transmit it to their community.

“In some places they record a bulletin and pay the state-run All India Radio’s (AIR) local station to transmit it. In other places they record a relevant local discussion on a tape recorder and move around villages playing it back.

This is indeed a laudable enterprise, and we hope that many will be influenced by the willingness and good intentions of the few who are taking on such responsibilities and bringing about change and progress in entire communities.

Link Credit: Vinay Sreenivasa via Ashwini Bharadwaj

A government hostel for girls belonging to the backward castes and minority communities given a face-lift! Is that possible, you ask? Well, at a post-SSLC hostel in Davangere, a small town in Karnataka, this is exactly what has happened. This article translated by Veena Pradeep for the Deccan Herald tells us more:

In the past one year, many hostels for students of the Backward Castes and Minority Community have been given a face-lift. Students who had to bathe in cold water even in freezing winters now have the luxury of a hot water bath. Nineteen hostels have been provided with solar power at a cost of Rs 40 lakh, which means even in times of a power crisis students are able to study without any hindrance.

There’s more!

The new hostels have a sprawling dining hall, high quality study rooms and a well-stocked library. All rooms are properly ventilated. Water purifiers have also been installed. All girls hostels have been provided with a sewing machine so that girls can stitch their own clothes.

And what’s more, this renovation work has been carried out without the sanction of special grants. This is truly an inspiration for all government hostels around the country, and should serve to change our outlook on the conditions of government facilities and intentions of those serving them. The dedication of a handful of people can positively affect the lives of millions.

Abdus Sabur is a man on a unique mission. As founder and genera-secretary of AMAN – the Asian Muslim Action Network, aptly named to depict peace in Arabic and its derivatives, he has taken up the cause of promoting social justice and inter-faith dialogue among Asian muslims, especially in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Thailand.

Hailing from a small village in current Bangladesh, he has been a witness to the war of partition and its aftermath. He got involved in helping several Hindu families who were victims of the ravages of war, and this brought him in contact with the Bangkok-based organization Asian Cultural Forum on Development (ACFD). Eventually he moved to Bangkok, and spent several years working on promoting Asian religious values in trying to solve singularly Asian problems.

During his years at ACFD, he noticed that while most Muslims donated to charity in the form of helping madrassas and mosques, there were very few who tried to perceive the depth of the problem and helped in directly uplifting the society. This was in contrast to several Buddhist, Christian and Hindu organizations that he saw around him. It inspired him to set up AMAN, with the aim of instilling progressive Islamic ideas in the Muslim youth. Noted Mumbai-based Islamic scholar Asghar Ali Engineer was chosen the convener of the network.

The well-written article by Yoginder Sikand also talks about the difficulty that AMAN has faced in generating funds for its cause:

With limited funds at its disposal, it has not been an easy journey for AMAN. Involving the traditional ulema of the madrasas in its work, which Sabur sees as essential, given the influence that they enjoy among many Muslim communities, has yet to happen in a significant way. ‘Madrasas are important, I agree, but their students need to have a broader social vision and a deeper insight into a host of social issues of contemporary concern, which many of them lack’, he comments. He cites the instance of several Christian groups, each inspired by what they regard as the values of Christianity, that are actively engaged in struggles for social justice and inter-community solidarity. ‘Islam, properly understood, teaches us all this as well. It stands for equality and fraternity, not just within the mosque, but in society outside too, but this is hardly how it is interpreted today. It stands for human rights, for all human beings, and not just for Muslims alone. It teaches us to respect diversity. The Quran states that God made people into different communities, so that they could understand one another, not so that they should fight and kill each other. We need to revise many of our traditional understandings, to recover what I believe to be the essential social message of Islam’. And that is where the need to reach out to and work with the traditional ulema comes into the picture, for many of them continue to miss the liberating message of the Quran, properly understood, particularly as it applies to women, the poor and the oppressed and to people of other faiths.

 

AMAN has organized a number of activities including an annual three-week peace-building course in Bangkok. It awards annual scholarships to Muslim students from South-East Asia to study the lives and concerns of Muslim communities in the region. Three years ago it also launched a quarterly magazine called AMANA, which is published in five languages and deals with several social issues like women’s rights, justice, causes, inter-faith dialogues and learnings, among others.

 

Sabur also talks about other on-going work that AMAN is engaged in: helping out refugees from neighbouring South-East Asian countries who now live and eke out a living in Bangkok, galvanizing funds for mosques destroyed in the recent deadly quake in southern China and for families devastated by a killer cyclone in Myanmar and working with a Buddhist group in war-torn southern Thailand to promote understanding between Muslims and Buddhists. He excitedly tells me about AMAN’s plans of shortly launching a Master’s degree in peace studies in association with an Indonesian university.

It is commendable in these days of religious and communal strife to see an organization striving to promote inter-faith and inter-cultural understanding and peace. Sabur is a man who does not hesitate in adopting all that he finds good in every faith, including his own, and highlighting it in his work and service. Such work needs to be endorsed and promoted.

We often wonder what happen to government schemes which are released with huge fanfare and publicity, but somewhere along the way get discreetly swept into neglect, until no trace remains. While there are many schemes that can be cited in the above category, Bharat Nirman, a rural development program announced in 2005 by the Congress Government in power, seems to be still chugging along.

Bharat Nirman is a time bound plan and focuses on 6 main components of rural infrastructure development. These are Irrigation, Roads, Rural Housing, Water Supply, Rural Electrification and Rural Telecommunication connectivity. While the time lines have been largely flouted, it is still comforting to know that the plan is slowly being executed.

While you can (and should) read about the tenets of the Bharat Nirman plan here, we would like to focus on one of the goals of the plan, namely, Telephone connectivity in all the remaining 66,822 villages by November 2007. Here is an article from CIOL Network that confirms the inclusion of 54,700 villages under the umbrella of BSNL connectivity. While this is lower than the set target, and behind time, we still appreciate that there is progress. I’m sure the villages that have benefited agree with us.

Excerpts from the article:

The Central Government has provided Village Public Telephones (VPTs) in about 54,700 uncovered villages under Bharat Nirman Programme through subsidy support from the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).

With this, the State owned BSNL has provided telephones to five and half lakh villages across the country said an official press release. The telecom giant has also brought 30,500 villages under the reach of Broadband.

Not all is going great with the scheme though. This article in The Hindu reviews the progress till December 2007, and states that apart from rural telephony, the scheme has displayed unsatisfactory progress in all other sectors of interest.

It is true that we have a long way to go before we can sit back and heave a sigh of contentment on the progress made in improving lives of the Indian rural populace. However, we do believe that every drop in the ocean deserves recognition and accolade.

Think Post Office and you more often than not think haphazard counters with long queues. Any work to be done at this offices have been linked to being tedious and cumbersome. However, this is now in for a huge change. Nisha Nambiar, in this article of the Indian Express, writes about a model Post Office being introduced in Baramati. This PO will boast installation of latest technology in addition to automated kiosks and electronic token systems.

Excerpt:

Union communications minister Jyotiraditya Scindia had launched the project to upgrade and modernize 500 post offices in 10 selected postal circles in two phases. In the first phase, 50 post offices were identified for their physical appearance and for their work environment.

Jarodia, who will inaugurate the post office, said, “In the state circle five post offices have been identified for the first phase. Besides Baramati in Pune region, the others are Nanded, Bhandara, Calangute and Jawahar.”

The article also lists the following salient features of this modern Post Office:
* Citizens will receive mail earlier, with delivery from 10 am instead of 11.30 am
* Letters to be dispatched the same day even after 4.30 pm
* Postmaster can be contacted by email at spmbaramati@gmail.com
* No queue, electronic token display
* Fully computerised
* Separate counter for senior citizens
* Generator backup, no load shedding
* Post forum of residents

Considering the fact that a lot of information still travels via snail mail in our country, it is a welcome initiative to revamp and improve our Post Offices. This model PO will hopefully pave the way for all other post offices of the country to follow suit.

Read the complete article here.

Do you own a blog or a website? Wouldn’t you just love to have content of The Better India updated live on your website for all your readers to see? Yes, of course! That is why we have now made it easy for you to plug-in our live feeds on your blog/website.
Just copy the following code on your blog/website (perhaps on that prominent sidebar on your site?) and get live updates instantly:

Ensure that you copy the entire code within the shaded area above and paste it on your site.

And a big thanks for helping spread the word!

When the US dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, nobody would have imagined that more than half a century later it could have an effect in bettering the lives of a couple of hundred women in the Gulbarga district of Karnataka. But this is the case under a new scheme called “Pass on Gift” launched by the ‘Bayalu Seeme Rural Development organization’ (BSRDS), inspired by a similar initiative launched by an organization named Hyper after America received widespread criticism for its actions.

This unique and innovative has been introduced in 6 villages in the poor districts of Gulbarga. Under the scheme, 3 groups of six women have been identified in each village. The first group in each village was gifted a goat in the first year. Within a year, the goats gave birth to 7-8 lambs each. Each of the women beneficiaries then gifted a lamb to one of the identified members of the next group the following year. This is to continue year after year, so that at the end of 3 years, 108 families have already benefited by this Gift of Goat.
The improvement in the financial conditions of these women and their families has been tremendous. This can be guaged from Anand Teertha Pyati’s report in Deccan Herald, which says:

Gangu Bai, who had got a goat in the first year, now owns more than 25 goats. By selling some of them, she has bought a buffalo. “Don’t tell anyone. I’ve purchased one tola gold also,” she says, sounding very secretive!
Spending thousands of rupees on children’s school fees, text books and uniforms, Sangeetha has bought a cow worth Rs 10,000.
…
With the help of the ‘Pass on Gift’ scheme, 108 families in six villages are getting a regular income now. Their livelihood has been taken care of. BSRDS has spent about Rs 82,000 to gift goats to the first batch. Now the business has reached lakhs of rupees. Observing this success, the State Bank of Hyderabad has come forward to give loans to these women to start construction of a cow shed, a stitching centre, and so on.

Read more about this brilliant scheme and its resounding success here.
Image courtesy: Deccan Herald Gallery

The Dream School Foundation ( DSF ) is an Indian non-profit registered organisation working to enhance the quality of education through voluntary efforts of individuals and groups by engaging with various stakeholders and mobilising communities to take responsibility of our education system. I have been a part of this wonderful organization and they are doing some great work in the area of spreading education in various diverse communities of India. As part of their agenda, DSF conducts Notebook drives periodically whereby they distribute notebooks to students of various government schools, especially those who cannot afford to buy them.

A month ago, DSF conducted their notebook drive at H D Kote, which is around 200 kms from Bangalore. The books were distributed to some of the most needy children of this remote taluk. The Notebook drive was conducted in a marriage hall at H D Kote, with the aid of another NGO, Swam Vivekanda Youth Movement.

You can read more about this event at Sandeep’s blog to whom we are also grateful for allowing us to display this photo.

As per some unconfirmed reports, there are more than 25 lakh Small and Medium scale Enterprises in India. These enterprises offer a diverse range of services and products. However, one of the main issues facing these industries is the lack of exposure to international level best practices. Practices that could help them achieve better efficiency and scale. For such enterprises, now there is some good news. The Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras along with Shobishiba, a Japanese management consultant have come together to devise a training program for these Indian SMEs. According to this article in The Mint, the program will help the enterprises in identifying the gaps in their practices in comparison to those in the developed nations and will train them in how they could bridge these gaps and attain better standards.
Excerpt:

The programme would start with 15 firms initially and the volume of participation would grow later depending on the success of the maiden run.

“Our aim is to help Indian SMEs understand why they trail the best SMEs in the world, and what they could do to achieve the same standards,” said Ramesh Datla, chairman, CII MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises) Council.

We at The Better India believe that such a training program was long due. It will help us not only to scale greater heights, but will also ensure that the entrepreneurial spirit of these workers will now get a better and organized channel to harness their own talent.

Read the complete article here.

This article in CNN follows students from the University of Southern California as they implement a pilot project in an under-served community in Hubli. The project aims to introduce better water treatment and purification processes in the community to improve local health and prevent deaths due to unsafe drinking water and inadequate hygiene conditions. The team also intends to build awareness about importance of clean drinking water and sanitation in the community, and bring about change that is both scalable and sustainable.

Excerpts:

The team of six students, visiting from the University of Southern California, will guide a pilot project in the under-served community of S.M. Krishna Nagar.Over the course of the next year, the Team will employ local college students to maintain the program and monitor the efficiency of the water purification technology.

And by subsidizing the cost for those living within S.M Krishna Nagar, the Team will be providing state-of-the-art purification systems at affordable prices, creating an important sense of ownership and empowerment for the people.

It is indeed laudable that students from universities take such an interest in improving the quality of life of the needy. We hope this will increase awareness among the youth in India and elsewhere also to wake up to the conditions of these communities, and undertake reforms.

Read the complete article here.
Credit: Link provided by Ashwini