ज़िन्दगीनामा

IDEA First Fellowship Distribution: Report from Sandip Naik It was a cool and rainy day of July 3, 2007 when I and Dr R. N. Syag along with visited Eklera village of Dewas district in state of M.P. The village is approximately 135 km from the district head quarter and falls under Khategaon block. We had taken a SUV from Bhopal and started in the early morning, the road was full of ranges of hills and dense forest. I had a long chat with Dr Syag about the perspectives of education, role of community and how children can be tapped for higher education considering constrains of their family background, financial strata and their own interests of enhancing skills and competencies. When we reached Eklera, it was about 11 AM and we were given a warm welcome by the children, parents and some influential persons of the village like ex Sarpanch (Village Head). The children were very enthusiastic about the fellowship and wanted to know more about it. We started discussing about the present scena...

This article shows the status of Women Leadership in Madhya Pradesh. This is jointly prepared by Sachin Jain, Raju Kumar and Sandip Naik Women leadership in Madhya Pradesh The MP government has done a commendable work by politically empowering the women by providing 50 percent reservation to women in local civic bodies, but this reservation did not come easily and the women had to wait for long period for this to happen. MP was pioneer state in implementing local self-governance after the 73rd and 74th amendments were made to the Indian constitution in 1993. But is the impact of this process visible at ground level in the remote and rural parts of the country. The state faces a number of challenges regarding leadership of women – whether the leadership is at the level of political parties, administrative posts or at municipalities or Panchayat level. There are big claims and some efforts towards empowerment of women in state, but the ground reality is totally opposite. Even 13 years af...

Recently I had been to Katthiwada in Jahbua district. This place is known as the kashmir of MP and the full area is surrounded with greenery and hills. Gujrat is very close by and the tribes of Katthiwafda are very much influesnced byt he gujrati culture as they are often found in Chhto Udaipur for any work. Kalyani, an institute for community development is working in the area since 2000. Ms Sadhana and Herwig Shritibul are two wonderful persons working here with full devotion and enthusaism with local tribes. They are primarily working in the fields of livelihood and health. "Very often we get trained social workers here but after some days they just run away as there are no facilities and connectivity in the area, hence we decide to train local tribal youths and now we have a good trained team with us who is shapping out the area and actively working for the betterment of the people. We are also trying to strengthen the PRIs and women leadership so that in stipulated time we ge...