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Deepak is to get married this year. It will be an arranged marriage, a woman sought by his father, verified by his family and the final OK given by Deepak. Deepak’s family are very nice people, and very open. They asked him if he’d like to choose his wife, but he decided he is happy to go with the traditional arranged form.

What that means for him and Educate for Life is that he may not be able to stay with us. If his wife’s family are no happy with living in the area Hunar Ghar is in, which is generally because of caste reasons, they Deepak would not be able to stay because it would cause tension between the families. Marriage in India is, after all, about the coming together of two families, not two people (much as it was in Pride and Prejudice days).

Up until now this has been an area of consternation for Ash and I. Not because of the arranged marriage (we are of course happy for Deepak to get married in any matter that he so wishes) but because he was taking a very passive role. We feel that arranged marriage needn’t necessarily be passive, and that it is important to take measures, if possible and without detracting from the usual traditional methods, to ensure (at least increase the likelihood) that the marriage will be comfortable. For us that also includes Hunar Ghar, and Deepak too. He wants to stay at Hunar Ghar but didn’t want to introduce it as a selection requirement for his wife-to-be.

This week though something changed. I spoke to him about it again on Saturday. I’m not sure if that had any particular influence, but when Deepak went home for a few days on the Sunday to visit his brother and family they ended up discussing the situation. Ash and I both get on very well with Deepak’s mother and father, and they like us. They would prefer it if Deepak continues to work with us. Deepak would also prefer it, as would Ash and I. So this time Deepak asked his father if when he is looking for a wife for him he could find out a woman whose family are liberal and decent enough to be happy for her to live wherever, and Deepak’s father Shantilal was happy to agree to try. This is fantastic news for us. It doesn’t mean that Deepak is definitely staying. It means that Deepak is taking an active approach to staying at Hunar Ghar while keeping his family and himself happy, and it means that we are much more likely to find a way that Deepak can stay, rather than just taking pot luck after the wedding. families can still deceive and Deepak can still go, but we’ve taken a strong step towards it not having to be so. So we’re happy, thank you Deepak!

It is with great misfortune that Ina, our new coordinator who was due to start on Monday, had to phone up on Saturday and inform us that she would not be able to join the team, not at the present time at least. There were one or two issues that needed her support at her home which she wasn’t aware of until very shortly before she was due to come and join us and, upon finding out, found herself with only one decision she could make.

It is a great shame. Ina would have been fantastic at Hunar Ghar. She may yet still be, but not in the foreseeable future. Ina was to be the first employee to join us because she wanted to take part in something she believed in rather than joining because she needed a job. In her lies the kind of intrinsic motivation and  desire to learn and work hard that we are looking for in Educate for Life. We do see it in some of our staff that joined for the sake of work rather than ideas, such as Deepak, and we’d like to see it a more pervasive theme within the motivation of our staff.

So the search goes on. And on. And on. I have every confidence that in the end we will succeed, just this time it didn’t happen in quite the way we envisioned. It is very important for us to (1) have someone through whom we can diversify how Hunar Ghar interacts with the community, (2) find someone to support Deepak in the work he does and (3) break our dependence on Deepak 0n whom so much is based.

Deepak has show yet further marked improvements in his abilities of understanding, organisation, time keeping and communication so I am now much more confident in his ability to take a lower-standard employee and to train them to be well comptenent at Hunar Ghar. Before this was not the case, so I had reservations about taking on ‘un-inquiring’ individuals, such as Deepak once was himself, without Ash or myself there to guide them appropriately. It is strong testament to Deepak’s personal achievements that that is now no longer the case, so I’d better get on the phone to Sharmaji to see if he can’t sort us out with such a person. The exciting thing here is that if we do take on such a person and they are motivated sufficiently by Deepak and the rest of our support system to develop their work ethic and understanding, then it is a very positive thing for the potential growth of Educate for Life beyond one school. If that personal development is achievable without the physical presence of Ash or myself, that our ‘employee’ and resource structure is sufficient in generating it, then it means perhaps that Educate for Life can grow using the existing stock of excess bog-standard employees rather than needing people with initial special motivation. This gives far greater scope for broad implementation of our work than if we are dependent on ‘special’ people. As they say over here, let us see.

Having been stopped for five weeks, work is back on at Hunar Ghar. I phoned Deepak at lunch time and he didn’t know how many people there were there, he just said ‘a lot’.

I’m really proud that work has started again in a positive way. Even Dhanji, who was previously refusing to sign the agreement published in the previous post, is now ready to sign his support. When he signs, other reluctant people will also sign. I may be reading too much into the situation, but I feel that this is a very strong step towards the establishment of stronger democratic processes within the village. Once there is more equitable social representation, from both genders, we can start to discuss and implement broader village development schemes.

What is important here is to build on what we have achieved in the last few weeks. We need to follow up this meeting with a series of other positive meetings. We can set agendas with simple uncontroversial outcomes to build a little momentum, and begin to establish a few requirements and rules of conduct for meetings which will form the basis of full representation in the village.

As a part of this, I want to explore the potential of women’s groups in the village. There are already ‘traditional’ ways in which women meet, such as going to a particular well to wash clothes. We may be able to take advantage of such situations to provide informal support or ideas to the women which will benefit them and the family, such as boiling water to prevent illness in the rainy season or teaching them to read and write. We could do skills training to increase home income, or teach them to make solar cookers which will reduce their need to collect firewood, thus freeing up time for other work or further skills training. Such initiatives would increase the women’s value in the household, which would naturally increase their value when it comes to fair representation in the village. They are also more likely to be proactive when it comes to issues such as child health and, given a little knowledge, for example knowledge about health-care that the men don’t have, they will find themselves in a stronger position, which can help generate feelings of worth and mobility, which enables further action.

Ash has a much better understanding us such posibilities than I do, helped by his time over January with Ekjut, an organisation that has apparently used exisiting women’s groups with great effect to increase community health levels. It goes to show the necessary integrated nature of development – the health depends on the education which depends on equal social opportunities which relies on political represenation and economic opportunity which is linked to skills or perhaps water or fuel access. Organisations need to work holistically, or work to create conditions where their set-up and specifics skills promote collaboration with other organisations to ensure that any work is efficient and complimnetary.

Well, they are on paper, as the following agreement has been taken with 31 signatories from the community:

1. Children came come from anywhere for study at Hunar Ghar
2. Community is agreed to allow 4 mason from Kharavali
3. Per day payment rate for labour and mason will increase as per the organization norms
4. No one will repeat the word in future “close hunar ghar”
5. No one in the village will say abuse word to Hunar ghar staff
6. In future outside staff can be appoint at Hunar Ghar but if someone is eligible he / she will be given priority as per the norms.
7. If there is any problem in the village that can solve only by organize meeting.
8. If any guest will come in future at village, community will welcome that person.
9. If villagers say any wrong word or have some dispute with any hunar ghar staff then community will take action against him.
10. If any Hunar Ghar staff do misbehavior then organization RBKS will take action against him.
11. No political or social meeting will organized at Hunar Ghar.
12. Village Development Committee will  be reformed.
13. All community members will have a meeting on monthly basis.
14. It will be taken care that all family’s will receive labour work at Hunar Ghar construction work
15. If any dispute will be in the hamlet Andat, Ratnat, Dholi Magri, then they can ask help of the staff  and staff will assist to solve the conflict.
16. All decision, agreement taken for Hunar Ghar till date will be continue as they are and all are agreed by the community.
17. A committee will form of five members who will decide rules regarding the use of  Hunar Ghar material for the social purpose. A nominal fees will be charged for that and that will be used for the maintenance of the materials.
18. Three room construction work will start from Monday 19^th April 2010
19. New Well construction work will initiated after receiving report from the agency. [sic]

When this decision was taken though, two of the key players of the village were not present. They were invited but did not come. We will now see how well this agreement holds once they have had their opportunity to exert influence on the community. Despite the potential conflicts that can still result, I feel very positive. We were able to hold a meeting and come to a series of decisions without the traditional village decision makers present. It is a tricky situation, as we don’t want to be undermining anyone’s authority. At the same time, if those decision makers are taking decisions that are biased in their favour, we have a responsibility to work to ensure that political or social freedom is accessible to all members of the community.

That social freedom is very important in our village, it creates or prevents access to education and work, the latter being of particular importance in the short term as a lot of families have very low food security and access to work strengthens this.

At MGIS these last few weeks I’ve been learning huge amounts about democratic processes, and this has helped me see where we can improve our processes in the village. I hope to now take steps towards making those improvements so we can have better representation for all in the community. From there we will then have, in time, a strong basis by which we can start to have community decided development.

In MGIS group formation in the class is a very important pedagogical tool for co-learning. That is hard enough with just 24 people. In the village we have over a thousand with such histories as murder and large-scale fighting, theft and land issues, so it is a big task! But one I think we can do if not perfectly then at least to a great enough extent that we can enable true community-led development.

I’m starting to get a little tired of conflict resolution. I’ve had it going on this week at MIGs witha problem with one of the student and at Hunar Ghar, where labour still refuses to go back to work. We even got as far as getting Sharmaji to the village, but the situation went unresolved. It is frustrating. Everything should have resolved one way or another, but it was left in the same situation as before, so it was a wasted trip. I don’t think that as much attention and care was given to the meeting as was necessary.

It turned out that there was some kind of conflict between certain hamlets a number of years ago, and since then there has been an agreement that people from that hamlet wouldn’t work in the one where Hunar Ghar is, and visa versa. Ash questioned why we were putting so much emphasis in getting people from this hamlet, so we agreed that we wouldn’t in the short term, so just why this issue wasn’t sorted I have no idea. Deepak has explained it to me what happened, but to me it seems that there is some kind of break in the logical sequences which doesn’t make sense, so I must ask him again.

Add to this that Bhuriya is refusing to sign a contract stating that he will do work as required and everything is a bit of a shambles there are the moment. I think that I may need to go up and sort it, but I’m loathed to. Firstly because I’m incredibly busy down here and secondly because I don’t feel it is my responsibility. I will support in whatever way I can from afar, and have, but these things should be sorted locally.

One difficulty (I don;t know if you’ll agree with me Deepak?) is that Deepak doesn’t like to upset people, even at the cost of getting things sorted. On the one hand, with this labour work, he doesn’t mind, but when I come to closer more personal relationships he puts short-term good relationship in from of long-term healthy relationship. For instance, twice this week he has phoned me up to ask Sharmaji to do something for him rather than creating that relationship with Sharmaji, painful in the beginning, that Sharmaji should pay better respect to him. He has also done the same thing with Bhuriya – when he kicks up a fuss he refers him to me to deal with. I think that sometimes we have to allow for a bit of bad feeling to come, but get necessary work done, than just let things stay peaceful the whole time, but as a result let ourselves down and make our relationship with people less genuine as a result.