rally pictures

On Saturday, several NGO's doing rights-based work in Calcutta staged a rally for education rights for slum and pavement dwellers.  It was organized by Right Track (funded by Action Aid India International).  The Calcutta Samaritans was one of several participating NGOs.

I've put up a little photographic essay here.

Calcutta Samaritans field work

Most of my orientation to The Calcutta Samaritans (TCS) has come from a social worker named Shamim (on the right). She has been working at TCS for 6 years; before that she actually used to attend one of their sewing and embroidery classes for women. The other woman in the picture, Rupa, is also a social worker. They both deal with homeless, pavement-dwelling populations.

So today I did a field visit with Shamim and Rupa. Before going into the details, I just want to note three things that surprised me about the day:

1. We went to visit homeless women, at the spot of pavement where they stay. AND THEY SERVED US TEA.

2. Earlier in the day, Shamim and I paid 37 rupees total for a very hearty lunch of several tandoori rotis, a vegetable dish and kebabs. And two drinks. I continue to be astounded at the price of food. When will I get used to it? And I have to try not to be amused/ impatient when, despite the low cost, people still get into arguments about who will treat who. The food isn't just cheap for me because I think in dollars... its pretty cheap for the social workers as well. Still... Shamim thought that I was joking when I told her a soda in the US costs 50 rupees. It took like 5 minutes of vending machine descriptions and having to produce a dollar bill from my wallet for me to convince her I was being serious.

3. The West Bengal government and the Kolkata Municipal Corporation routinely burn the identity documents (voter cards, ration cards, etc) of the homeless when they come to destroy their sidewalk settlements. According to several TCS social workers, it is an unofficial but widespread policy of stripping people of their citizenship rights. The standard explanation is that the homeless are Bangladeshi, which is sometimes true but not usually. The burning of documents surprises me because I think I have fallen into the trap of thinking of the CPM as advocates of poor people. (CPM is the ruling party in West Bengal). I'm a victim of political billboards! I also think that way because people tend to emphasize that the CPM does not exploit migrant-native cleavages in its electoral politics. But the act of burning citizenship documents is such an active and public rejection of a certain group of people (who are mostly Indian migrants, and in any case, labeled as illegal immigrants by the government).

And one thing that didn't surprise me: homeless people are about as poor as it gets, and yet, all the women I met were wearing some amount of gold. Most homeless people do have an income. As Rupa said, its not like they don't have anything. Its just that they have no awareness about their rights, or possible avenues for changing their situation. For example, they haven't been taught rules of basic nutrition... for them it is not obvious that vegetables are healthier than rice. Plus, there's no place for them to go.  In their terms, you need quite a bit of money and some insider contacts to even have a room in a slum.

So much for the surprises. I also want to write a quick description of the work I witnessed today. All the social workers (there are 12 total in TCS's campaign and advocacy office) spend work days either doing paperwork in the office, or out in the field working with marginalized populations. About six years ago, Action Aid India sponsored a large-scale survey of Calcutta's homeless. Surveyors went all over the city, recording the names, origin, occupations, ages, etc of pavement dwellers in most districts and sub-districts.  One thing they found out is that it is not so unsual to find families who have occupied the same patch of sidewalk for decades.  Once they got a handle on the numbers and location of the homeless population, TCS's social workers went out to try and organize/ educate them about their rights.

I accompanied Rupa and Shamim on a field visit to pavement dwellers in the Ballygunge area. Its actually a pretty posh area, but there are plenty of homeless people in some side alleys.  The current mission is to get a women's group started among the 25 or so families that TCS keeps track of in this area. These groups are being formed all over the city, to educate the families (through the women) about their basic rights and in some cases, to help them get identity documents like voter cards and ration cards. They also aim to educate the women about domestic violence (and how to get help), health, family planning and related issues.

Its painstaking work... the social workers do some variation of the following on almost a daily basis: They visit the sidewalks of their various assigned districts in the city. They interact with very small groups of people-- often 5 to 20ish-- who they train to disseminate information. Today, Rupa and Shamim came to the Ballygunge area and found a couple of the women they work with (pavement dwellers) resting behind a bus stop. They sent one of them to gather two or three more women. Then we all sat on woven straw mats behind the bus stop, and I listened to them work out the details of their women's group. They discussed who might be a good leader, and Rupa took down names of the interested parties. The group leader will be the primary point of contact for TCS's workshops on rights, violence, etc.

We stayed with this group of women for about half an hour, and then Shamim and Rupa moved on to another area in their portfolio. In total, Shamim's assignments encompass about 1,000 families in a handful of Calcutta neighborhoods... a really staggering amount.

shopping and cooking

There's a kitchen in our apartment, but I haven't cooked a thing (does tea count?) since I've been in Calcutta... I get home-cooked meals from our landlord, or eat out. 

But Rekha (my roommate) woke up this morning and decided that we must make chicken biryani today.  One of her friends, Shreyashi, had slept over. So the three of us set out to the market.  We walked to a fish and chicken market, which was smelly, bloody and crowded, but also kind of orderly and interesting.  It was the first time I have bought meat in India... and I think also the first time I have had live chickens at my feet while buying freshly butchered chicken.  It was a bit uncomfortable for all of us... the other two girls were also not used to buying their own meat.  Besides that, we also bought all sorts of produce.

The onions were 3.5 rupees, tomatoes were 4.  A bunch of cilantro for 2 rupees. We paid 115 rupees for a kg of chicken.  And we also picked up half a dozen eggs (15 rupees) and several guavas (20 rupees) for breakfast.  The exchange rate is around 50 rupees to a dollar, so all that food was a bit over 3 dollars.  Plus we bought rice, yogurt, ginger paste, garlic paste and spices... and kept our total under 5 dollars.  Our biryani was enough for a hearty lunch for four people... three women with reasonable appetites and one guy with an oversized appetite.  (Another of Rekha's friends, Shashank, joined us for lunch).

The biryani making operation was quite haphazard, to be honest.  Once we had the ingredients amassed, we realized that none of us actually know how to make biryani.  Rekha was all about winging it... so we just started combining things.  She turned out to be a marinade master... she came up with an excellent concoction of yogurt and spices for the chicken, using about half a small packet of chicken masala in the mix.  Shreyashi horrified both of us when she proceeded to dump in another packet and a half of the stuff.  But it turned out to be an excellent move--the dish was really flavorful. 

In the end, our chicken to rice ratio was probably a bit high, and our biryani looked... uncoventional.  Partly because its color was questionable, and partly due to the fact that we bought the wrong kind of rice.  But it was surprisingly awesome.

Rekha said many of the ingredients we bought would have been about four times as expensive in Bangalore (but not the chicken).  None of us knew why food is so cheap in Calcutta.  I don't think produce in a regular market is government subsidized, but I'd like to find out for sure.

my musical wanderings

The classical music season in Calcutta is famous.  The most concerts are scheduled during the winter.  But even now, during the off-season, the Telegraph usually advertises a few music programs every day.  I've found that music--and the poetry of music--is an outward and important part of Bengali culture. 

I experienced this especially on the Bengali new year, when dozens of societies, mandirs and associations were holding concerts.  In the morning I attended a pretty small devotional performance at a mandir.  And in the evening, I went to a famous annual open-air concert.  There, while I was buying popular Bengali music, I met an American musician, Timothy Hill, who is in Calcutta for a couple of weeks to continue his classical Indian musical education.  He met an ustaad (master) in New York who lives in Calcutta, and is studying under his direction.

So interestingly, I learned about the sensibilities and conventions of Indian classical music from an extremely talented American musician.  The central concept that he explained (and I was totally unfamiliar with) is that of a raaga.  I think it can be described as the base on which complex melodies and rhythms are built.  Its kind of a signature that forms the basic essence of a song, but an artist is expected to play with, and improvise from, any particular raaga.  Raagas are both flexible and very rule-driven.  They are also deeply and specifically evocative of various seasons, times of day, feelings or events.

In addition to getting to hear Timothy practice ragaas while walking around, I actually went to a raaga-centered performance tonight.  Timothy's ustaad invited him to a concert this evening, and he took me along.  The show was hosted by an organization called Sangeet Ashram.  We heard two famous vocalists-- Ustaads Mohammed Sayeed Khan and Amir Mohammed Khan.  I could tell that they were virtuosos.  Their voices were amazing and their technical skills on full display. And I could also tell that much of what there was to appreciate about their vocal feats was totally lost on me.

I'm surprised to have this musical introduction, and very happy about it.  Besides being fun and kind of challenging, I feel like it is giving me a sense of a part of this city's cultural personality.  Which, ultimately, will probably help my research and writing somehow?  Or maybe that's a bit of a stretch :)

inside view into 'sponsoring a child'

I had a kind-of-annoying, kind-of-amusing experience today.  I was supposed to accompany some NGO workers on a voter registration drive among the city's homeless population.  There's an Indian law that says a person's residence is wherever they sleep... so technically, homeless people also have a residence.  And voting is a primary way that people can prove that they continue to reside at a certain place.  Having your name on a voter roll, and having an election card, is a powerful way of documenting your identity.  Which in turn can lead to access to services like education and health care, as well as food and shelter provisions.  So the sequence that Americans are used to is kind of turned on its head.  You don't become a citizen and then vote... as a poor migrant, you vote to become a citizen.  There is a lot more to say about this... I hope to write about it again soon.

But this has already been a lengthy digression because I did not actually do a voter registration drive today.  It got rescheduled.  Instead, I helped out in this NGO's Campaign and Advocacy office.  The NGO--called Calcutta Samaritans-- is funded by ActionAid.  And among other things, ActionAid runs one of those programs where Westerners sponsor children, and get biannual reports on that child's progress in school, family life, etc.

The money funds a "Nonformal Education Center" which is a place where the NGO workers take care of homeless kids and teach them a little.  Its a really important service.  The kids do learn stuff like writing their name and the English and Bengali alphabets.  They also get to draw, hear and tell stories, and play a lot... wholesome devleopmental activities that are WAY better than the trouble they could get into on the streets.  A lot of the boys that come to this place are 6-12 years old, work as rag pickers, incense sellers, or some other such thing, and find all sorts of things to inhale, sniff or smoke.  They often have to go through a detox before they are enrolled at the education center. 

And besides all that, the NGO spends a lot of energy teaching the kids and their families about their basic rights, how/where they can get subsidized food, hygiene instructions, and so on.  So it seems to me like a wholly valuable program.

So now I am ready to describe my temporarily role in all this.  Twice a year, the workers have to write these two paragraph "reports" on the child's progress, for the benefit of the sponsors.  Its kind of an ordeal because few of them have fluent English skills, and also because a handful of people have to do 700 of these things.  So since I was around, I helped out. 

The kids draw a picture on one side of the paper.  And on the other side, the NGO employees must write a description of the picture, and a general update.  I sat down with one of them to do this... she didn't speak English and knew her kids inside and out.  She would tell me about their home life, their hygiene skills, their social skills, whether or not they are learning the alphabet or just spending as much time as possible shooting things with a slingshot.  And I would write little sentence-long summaries on the paper, to send to the sponsor.  She was especially interested in letting the sponsor know how much work the NGO has done to educate the children about child trafficking, trying to get them to understand how to guard their own safety.  And when a child was having trouble at home, or not really focusing on studies, we wrote that too.

After we wrote all these things for a few of the kids, her supervisor had a look.  And she said, "This won't do."  It turns out we weren't allowed to write anything negative.  She said that the sponsors wouldn't want to hear all of those details, and especially instructed us not to use negative language like "problems" "kidnap" "drugs" and "trafficking."  My partner argued with her for a little while... she really wanted to actually explain the kids' situations, and she was proud of the work she was doing with them.  But in the end, she gave in. 

And so we wrote these really generic paragraphs... "Your child enjoys drawing and story-telling.  She recently took a school picnic to the Science Center."  For each kid, we wrote that he/she is learning how to spell, regardless of whether or not it was true.  One of the kids had recently gotten admitted to a boarding school, and wasn't in the Nonformal Education Center anymore... but that also was not a fact to be divulged to the sponsors, so we wrote that he was at the education center anyway. 

And more trivially... I had to use up a certain amount of space writing about the kid's drawing on the other side of the paper.  "Your child has drawn a picture of a potted plant.  The flowers are red, green and orange."  Every once in a while the picture was interesting and there was actually a back story to tell, but for the most part, it was these innane descriptions... and we had to fill up the whole 'description' space on the paper, because those are the bureaucratic rules of the NGO's funding agency.  We couldn't use that space to say anything more informative about the kid... just the drawing.

I guess ActionAid has its rules for good reasons... they need some sort of starndardization and want to produce a good product for the sponsors.   And they really are funding excellent work.  From what I have seen so far, I think the sponsors' money is being put to good use.  Its just... they are afraid of too much reality I guess.  Maybe they think the sponsors will be skeptical of their work if they know that their child is fighting a drug addiction, or isn't focusing on learning because he's too busy earning money, or has behavioral problems.  I wonder if that is an accurate perception or not... if I were a sponsor, I would want real details over rosy generalizations.