The Shirpur visit

During the course of our sessions for the first batch which was conducted at the St.Xaviers college, we came across various opportunities to extend our services to different places and for different people. One such opportunity was the possibility of trying to do something in the area of Spoken English & Communication skills for the youth in a place called Shirpur.

When we first got together to start something like what we are currently onto, the audience that we intended to target was essentially educated people in areas of no or very less opportunities. Hence we all were very excited to have something like Shirpur come our way.

Four from the team started for Shirpur on Saturday, February 23rd. For most of us this was the first time we were ever visiting a village, hence that much more excitement to begin with. Shirpur is 400 kms from Mumbai and comes in the Dhule district. It was an almost 12 hours bus drive. Our halt at Shirpur was at a beautiful place called Shirpur Vishwa Mandal (SVM) . Our host for the visit was a wonderful man named Fr. Godfrey.
SVM is a small campus consisting of 2 hostels - one for the college students & one for the high school students, quarters for staff and guests and a big area where experimental farming is practised.

After a good breakfast we got into our first meeting for the day at 10:00 am. The meeting was with a group of young college going/went men. 19 students had turned up for the meeting. 16 of these stayed on the campus while 3 had come from nearby villages (25-30 kms).

We started with a brief introduction. Most students were in their second year of senior college, couple had completed their M.A but only one of them was working. He was a teacher at a secondary school. The striking point from this whole discussion was almost all had opted for Arts. When we probed more we realised that this could be because of two reasons:
a) The medium of instruction for the Arts & Commerce streams was Marathi. One had to be fairly conversant in English to opt for science
b) Everyone present there wanted to become a lecturer. They apparently were not aware of other employment opportunities. Most decisions were driven based on what others were doing.

Two amongst this group had completed their MA but were unemployed. They said that they had tried looking for teaching jobs, but there weren't many vacancies in the government jobs. And possibly if something didn't work out soon, they would end up working on farms.

We thought of doing a small reading test. Unfortunately the only magazine that we carried was Business Today. We identified the easiest articles from this magazine and made each of one of them read it. We were really surprised to find that most of them managed to read those articles. The pronunciation was not good, pace was extremely slow nonetheless the performance was beyond our expectations. Personally i felt that as far as reading was concerned the average level was better than the average level of the students at St.Xaviers, Mumbai

So, the good thing was they could attempt to read, but the bad thing was they could not comprehend even a word of what they had read. Possibly this is the state of most if not all students, who are taught english in a vernacular environment. Efforts are generally put to ensure that a person can read, however without the ability of comprehension one cannot communicate in English.

Nonetheless it was a good meeting to attend. We now understand the existing levels of these students, their expectations from us, the amount of time that they have at their disposal. This will help us in working out our contents and identifying the delivery mechanism.

Post this meeting Fr.Godfrey took us around the farms where experimental farming is practiced. There were few women workers on the field harvesting the rice fields. Apparently the crops that they grow on these farms is mostly for internal use, and only if there is excess do they sell in the market. For all of us to be out on the farms was a novelty and we enjoyed our hour in the sun.

Post our lunch, we met a group of high school girls in a place called Anand Sadan. Anand Sadan like SVM is again a campus (though small) which houses school going girls from villages in Dhule district. This was a bunch of very enthusiastic students - i found them bolder than the boys we had met earlier. This meeting was arranged to explore the possibility of doing a course in Basic Spoken English for these students. We had a general chat (with no specific agenda) with the girls. Unlike the boys these girls had varying aspirations - teacher, doctor, nurses, pilots, nuns. They were very enthusiatic and each actively participated in the discussion.

One more meeting was planned which unfortunately could not materialise. We were exploring the opportunity of working on a "Train The Trainer" concept, and we were supposed to meet one of the teachers in the area. However because of some reasons this meeting did not take place.

Nonetheless i thought that this was a fruitful visit. We started back for Mumbai in the evening - yet another 12 hour bus drive. However before starting we visited a Balaji Temple in Shirpur and I sought the blessings of Balaji to help the team successfully execute our Shirpur responsibilities.

There were lots of take aways from this visit.

a) Opportunities are a direct function of awareness & Awareness is a direct function of where you come from (city, state, family, financial condition). You create awareness and people would not want to settle for less (Only Teachers)

b) We in Mumbai or in any other metro have taken some facilities as granted, most common is electricity. All through the day while we were in Shirpur there was no electricity, and there are times we learnt when there is no power for 4 consecutive days. In order to bring about awareness effectively basic infrastructure needs to be in place.

c) The students are deserving, and they want to do good.

d) The students that we met were all Adivasis, and apparently there are many sub tribes in Shirpur. The village adjacent to Shirpur is Nandurbar which is closer to the state of Gujarat and hence people tend to speak Gujarati while Shirpur being closer to Madhya Pradesh Hindi is preferred next to Marathi. Point is that, there is Diversity Magnified. Its really mind blowing to see such vivid difference in dialects, looks even amongst people from the same village.

There is lot of potential outside of Mumbai in the interiors. The biggest challenge is to reach them. With all the shortcomings i believe that our government has done good enough to atleast have these villages accessible by road. The roads in Shirpur that we walked were very good. Another pleasantly surprising thing to know was, there are 2 senior colleges, quite a big feat in a place like Shirpur.

The biggest challenge confronting us is the delivery mechanism with all the infrastructural impediments. However with challenges cometh solutions. Shirpur is our first pilot project outside the city limits, and if we are able to deliver effectively to the young wo/men there, reaching other places should only be a matter of time. We are eyeing the month of May to begin our Shirpur operations. With good men like Fr.Godfrey by our side we are really positive of executing this assignment.

Once again, in the hope of a better tommorrow "Let Insanity Prevail"

All you guys take care.

Cheers,
Pranil