(Written on behalf of Prakash, email: prakashshiva@yahoo.com)
The Asha team in Chitradurga is a young energetic team of village youth who are
very keen on development work within our own community. We are a group of
10 youth who hail from an area with a strong entrenched caste system. We are
working to improve conditions within own communities. This proposal has been
put together by discussions between the team in Chitradurga and Asha
volunteers. Shanmuga has been interacting with us for several months. Sandeep,
Lokesh and Jayashree have been interacting with us for a few months. They
have also visited us in Chitradurga have provided us much encouragement.
We formed the Asha team in Chitradurga through interactions with Shanmuga. Our
team co-ordinator is Prakash who hails from the village Shivaganga in
Holalakere taluka in Chitradurga district. Shanmuga has been one of the persons
involved in encouraging us in our activities. He has been traveling with us to
meet different activists in Karnataka as well as other states in India. We feel
that this type of support has been good learning for our team. We now have
several ideas on what we can do based on our observations of several groups.
Prakash has been mentored by several people including his aunt Siddamma, who is
very involved with the Bharati trust working for the Irula community. This is
an effort currently supported by several Asha stars and chapters. Prakash has
also been influenced by strong leaders fighting for the rights of construction
as well as daily wageworkers such as Geeta Ramakrishnan and several other grass
roots activists.
Prakash has for many years wanted to pursue development work within our
village. Shivaganga and adjoining villages are dominated by Lingayats who are
the "upper" class. The Dalits, Lambanis, Bovis, AdiKannada (Aks),
Kuruba and Devangas form the "lower" castes. For many years the
Lingayats have dominated in land ownerships and manage to get most of the land
allocated to their community. The Dalits work as coolies (daily wage workers)
and don't own much land. They are not even paid government of Karnataka minimum
wages.
Within a strong caste system each caste lives in a segregated manner in
different settlements. Lower caste villagers are not allowed to eat with the
upper caste and face several forms of discrimination - cannot eat on the same
plate, drink from the same cup. They cannot stay in the same hotels or get
their hair cut from an upper caste barber. Strongly entrenched and widely
accepted discrimination exists in this area.
Our initial group of Prakash, Devarajan, Soma, Lokesh wanted to break the
caste barriers that are strongly present in this part of Karnataka. We wanted
the Dalits (in saying Dalits the reference is to all the communities mentioned
above who belong to the "lower" caste) to avail of at least a life
style, which many of the Lingayats enjoy. Each youth comes from a
different caste background. Prakash initiated the idea of starting evening
classes to supplement the poor quality education the children receive from
nearby government schools. We did this voluntarily - with no money involved. We
realized the importance of our work. Small school requirements are bought with
our own means. The schools are conducted in existing village structures - a
cowshed, temple and bare minimum structures.
Eight months ago our team rallied a lot of the villagers and formed an
organization called 'Dalit Sangharsha Samiti' with a membership of 55 to
address some of the problems faced by the Dalits. While the Lingayat's, the
dominant community in the area, have an average land holding of 25 acres per
family, the Dalits don't even have 2 acres each and in number of cases don't
have possession of the land which belongs to them. So, as the most important
task of the Samiti, we have decided to get at least 2 acres to each family and
have already approached the administration for this purpose.
Prakash who actually is a Lingayat himself has got the support of Lingayat
youth of our village for this purpose. Most of the dalits depend on daily wage
agricultural labor work and earn Rs 15 (women) and Rs. 30 (men) per day, much
below the legal minimum wage fixed by the government.
Our team is also exploring possibilities of starting cottage industry work in
the area of mat making from coconut coir. We have recently acquired
screen-printing equipment and will be starting training of village youth in this
area and hope to start income generation with this. Possibility of making
recyclable/reusable plates and cups for sale with beetle-nut leaves is being
explored. Beetle-nut is widely grown in this area. Our group has involved youth
of all communities in our work. We hope to form a co-operative and depending on
the scale of operations could potentially create employment for many from their
village.
Currently the team is working on different fronts at the same time - building a
local organization of Dalits, education of the children, securing ongoing
support of their community, taking administrative help, thinking of creative
solutions in the field of education and employment, etc. and thus demonstrate a
broad vision.
Recently we have started a union of daily wage and construction workers who are
in large numbers in the Chitradurga area. We are hoping to avail of the demands
made by the National campaign committee for the following: better wages,
medical assistance, pensions, injury compensation for any job related injury
(currently they get fired with no compensation), pregnancy benefits of 2 months
wages after child birth, crèches. In their words - "we build houses and
roads for others but have none of our own". Geeta Ramakrishnan is
mentoring this team in this area.
We request you to get involved with us in the following
ways:
1. Give encouragement and support to us in initial stages so that we can carry
out our educational and overall developmental work.
2. Provide financial support for the current teachers for the first few years.
3. Help in getting the key volunteers of the team self-sufficient.
4. Training for capacity building.
We, a group of ten youth, got together, six months back, to work for the
deprived children of Shivaganga. Keeping education as entry point, we
hope to work towards social activities at grass root level.
We have identified five groups of children, who need proper education. The
first group of children is those who attend school on irregular basis.
The reason being, these children have younger siblings to take care of.
There are times when these children have no food at home and they are unable to
attend school. The second group of children belongs to the migratory
group. The parents of these children go away to far off places to seek
work and settle temporary at the new work place. The children move along
with their parents and miss out on school. The third group of children is the
school dropout. These children have gone through 5 years of schooling but had
to discontinue because of economic pressures. Their parents need the
assistance of the children in the fields as coolie workers. Most of these
children are absorbed in this manner others drop out because of the
discrimination made in the class room, between the higher caste students and
lower caste, as the school drop out are lower caste children. The fourth group
of children is bonded laborers. The parents of this group of children
sell them to landlords, who don't allow them to attend schools. But
fortunately they are allowed to go back home in the evening after work. The
fifth group of children is X STD pass but have no future plans, but to work as
coolie workers like their parents.
The above-mentioned groups of children need support to continue some form of
education. Ideally speaking, we would like to help them all, but we know
it’s not possible for the moment. We decided to work with students who
are attending government school, but irregularly (the first group).
We have started a night school, where we help them with their weak subjects and
encourage them to attend school regularly. To motivate them to enjoy
schooling and our night school, we provide activities like games, story
telling, singing and dancing. We keep track of their attendance in Govt.
schools by meeting with the schoolteachers. To have better understanding
with these Govt. teachers we have decided to involve them in our work. We
also want to form a parent committee by involving the parents of the school
children. We want to conduct meetings between teachers and parents, to air
their problems and find a solution.
The schools started by our team have now expanded from 4 villages to 9. We are
9 village youth involved in teaching currently on a voluntary basis. We each
earn our living via daily wages and are struggling to make ends meet. We would
really benefit from getting a small allowance, which will alleviate our
financial strain and allow us to concentrate on developing our activities. We
are also hoping to expand our activities by adding one more school. So we will
be a total of 10 youth. We are requesting Rs1000.00 per month each The teachers
will both teach as well as do development work in 5 villages each. Our goal is
to mobilize and gradually start a Dalit movement in additional to
providing the children in our community access to better education.
Total: Stipend amount requested:
Rs1000 per month x 10 = Rs 10,000/-
Annual amount Rs120000/- per year.
Note: The background caste is being given only because this is how the villages
are divided currently. It will take a while to change the existing caste
structure.
Place: Shivaganga
Schools: AK Hatti and Lambani (2 schools one within each settlement)
Strength: 30+25 students from SC, AK and Lambani backgrounds.
Teacher's names: Devaraj N, Devaraj H, Lokesh
Main occupation of each of these castes is leather making and wood cutting.
Place: Horakeredevarapura
Schools: Two schools
Strength: 30+30 students from SC, ST, Nayakas, Kurumba, Devanga backgrounds
Teacher's names: Rangaswami
Main occupation: Cloth and blanket making.
Place: Dasaihnahatti
Schools: One school
Strength: 35 students from SC, AK backgrounds
Teacher's names: Somashekar
Main occupation: Stone cutting
Place: Dumni
Schools: One school
Strength: 30 students from SC, ST, Nayakas, Kurumba backgrounds
Teacher's names: Nagaratna
Main occupation: Leather and blanket making.
Place: Hullooru
Schools: One school
Strength: 25 students from SC, AK backgrounds
Teacher's names: Krishna
Main occupation: Leather making.
Place: Halehalli
Schools: One school
Strength: 25 students from SC, AK backgrounds
Main occupation: Leather making.
Place: Nagaraghatta
Schools: One school
Strength: 30 students from SC, ST, AK, Nayaka backgrounds
Main occupation: Leather and blanket making.
Place: Lambanihatti, Kanave
Schools: One school
Strength: 25 students from SC, Lambani backgrounds
Main occupation: Stone cutters.
We are requesting you to provide us with means of transport to move between
villages. We currently walk and this is very time consuming. We request you to
provide us with bi-cycles for each worker for better mobility. We would also
like one 2 wheeler to be shared amongst us for any longer distance travel. We
would also like to request some basic material for our school supplies such as
black boards, playing materials, teaching materials and cooking utensils.
Transport
1. Two Wheeler - M/80 - 4 stroke/Max 100 R - Rs.
35,000.00
2. Bicycle for 9 workers - @ Rs. 2,000/- per cycle - 9 No's - Rs. 18,000.00
3. Vehicle maintenance - Rs. 4,000/- p.m. for 12 months - Rs 48,000.00
TOTAL NON RECURRING TRANSPORT EXPENDITURE Rs
53,000.00
TOTAL RECURRING TRANSPORT EXPENDITURE Rs
48,000.00
School expenses
1. Salaries of the teachers -10 Workers - Rs.1000/- p.m for 12 months - Rs. 1,20,000.00
2. Health drink - Rs. 2 per day for 292 children for 30 days and for 12 months
Rs. 2*30*12*292) Rs.
2,10,240.00
3. School Utensils ( Rs. 500 for 9 Schools) - Rs 4,500.00
4. Teaching Materials (Rs. 1,000 for 9 Schools) - Rs 9,000.00
5. Play Materials (Rs. 2000 for 9 Schools) - Rs 18,000.00
6. Electricity Charges (Rs. 100 for 9 Schools for 12 mts) - Rs 10,800.00
7. Books and periodicals - Rs
5,000.00
8. Printing and stationary/tel expenses - Rs. 500 p.m. for 12mo. - Rs 6,000.00
Total non recurring expenditure - (4500 + 9000 + 18000 + 5000) = Rs 36500.0
Total recurring expenditure - (1,20000 + 210240 + 10800 + 6000) = Rs 347040
Consolidated budget for travel and school (53000 + 48000 + 36500 + 347040)
= Rs
484540