Joe Madiath
It Takes a Faucet
Realizing Village Development Through
Water and Sanitation Initiatives
Fallbeispiel „Innovationen“.:
Gram Vikas
An often-quoted proverb states that “it takes a village to raise a child.” At Gram
Vikas, which means “village development,” we have for a number of years struggled
with a different question: how can one raise a village, not into maturity, but out of
poverty and despair. We engage in activities aimed at improving the living condi-
tions and economic standards among these impoverished and social marginalized
Menschen, particularly the area’s indigenous groups, called adivasis; those belonging
to India’s lowest caste, known as dalits; small farmers; and landless laborers.
Since I founded Gram Vikas with a group of friends thirty years ago we have
experimented with a variety of approaches. Over time we came to understand that
we can use water and sanitation projects as points of entry for whole-village devel-
opment, which brings pride and dignity to the villagers’ lives. By overcoming bar-
riers of class, caste, and gender, we seek to nurture truly unified communities
wherever we work. This then empowers and motivates the community to further
develop themselves and thus start to take their destinies into their own hands and
work to improve their lives.
At Gram Vikas we base our activities on Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of sustain-
able “village republics” as the foundation of India’s political system. We seek to do
this by developing institutional capabilities and harnessing resources to augment
the economic strength of villages. Self-reliance and sustainable long-term develop-
ment guide all our activities. We do not initiate any projects without the consent,
support, and active participation of the communities themselves. We accomplish
this during the initial phases of implementation through education, Ausbildung, Und
participatory planning, and by establishing contributory village funds. This may
seem counter-intuitive, at least in comparison to dominant development para-
Joe Madiath is the founder and executive director of Gram Vikas. Madiath was select-
ed by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship as an Outstanding Social
Entrepreneur in 2001, 2002 Und 2003. In 2007 he was the recipient of a Skoll Award
for Social Entrepreneurship.
© 2009 Joe Madiath
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Joe Madiath
digms based on a fundamentally charitable model. Jedoch, our insistence on a
community contribution ensures that the community develops a sense of owner-
ship of the project, and therefore ensures long-term sustainability. We firmly
believe people can and will pay for beneficial development services; Jedoch, Dort
is also a social cost, which society at large should meet.
In der Zwischenzeit, this approach contends with other dominant development para-
digms also associated with charitable giving. Low-cost and low-quality solutions to
problems of poverty, as opposed to workable, sustainable ones, further embed into
the national psyche the idea that the poor are of little value. This idea has con-
tributed immensely to their low self-esteem and lack of dignity, and we seek to
address this feeling of being
sub-human. We need
Zu
demonstrate repeatedly that
the cheapest solution does
necessarily result in the most
economical outcome, welche
we illustrate with creative
Problemlösung, appropriate
uses of technology, and first-
hand knowledge of the needs
of the villagers with whom we
arbeiten.
We use water and sanitation
projects as points of entry for
whole-village development,
which brings pride and dignity
to the villagers’ lives. Von
overcoming barriers of class,
caste, and gender, we seek to
nurture truly unified
communities wherever we work.
Before we put our current
programs into place, we devel-
oped solutions that encapsu-
lated the above commitments
through our core activities in
Die
Tribal
Integrated
Programm
Development
(ITDP), the Biogas Program, and the Rural Health and Environment Program
(RHEP). We began to enter into villages with the ITDP program platform, und es
served as our laboratory for experimenting with new development strategies. Wir
began by mobilizing and organizing the adivasi people to demand their rights; Das
work evolved into initiatives to support livelihoods, Ausbildung, and health. Über
the years it shifted from a welfare-driven and service-oriented focus towards a pro-
gram emphasizing people’s personal ownership of their resources and endeavors
and more clearly defined what one means by quality of life. Parallel to ITDP’s
Entwicklung, Gram Vikas promoted the use of biogas as a cooking fuel in homes.
Over the decade from 1983 Zu 1993, we helped to establish over 54,000 biogas
plants across Orissa, in conjunction with the development of a substantial engi-
neering training program. This program helped to train masons, construct local-
ly-run brick kilns to help provide construction materials, and build capacity
among local people as biogas technicians and supervisors.
In the early 1990’s, Gram Vikas began to take stock of its development strate-
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It Takes a Faucet
gies and the effects on communities. Poor living conditions and a lack of sustain-
able livelihood options often recurred as an obstacle to the development we sought
to facilitate. Our observations convinced us in the organization that unless every
family in the village had healthy living practices and the overall “quality of life”
improved, there was no hope of total development. This conviction formed the
backbone of the Rural Health and Environment Program (RHEP). Here the focus
was on quality-of-life issues, such as quality education, sustainable livelihoods,
health services, and a minimum level of infrastructure. Although we had already
established programs advocating for the rights and representation of adivasi com-
munities and linked them to educational and health resources, the sense that qual-
ity-of-life issues are related to economic development took hold. The water and
sanitation program to which this sensitivity gave birth would come to serve as the
primary point of entry into new villages, and the model we used to implement it
would come to form the cornerstone of our entire approach to village and com-
munity development.
With the successes experienced through the RHEP program and the strategies
we used to employ it, in addition to the programs already in place through the
ITDP and Biogas programs, we overhauled the organization according to goals for
the new millennium and brought all of our village interventions under a single
umbrella. We call this unified,
integrated approach to village development
MANTRA, or the Movement and Action Network for the Transformation of Rural
Areas. Through this, we intended not only to refocus all of our myriad programs
on a single set of goals but to integrate them into a single habitat-development
strategy.
Though our model is replicable, Gram Vikas still manages to design all com-
munity interventions in context, based on the needs and priorities of the people
with whom we engage. Given the diverse social and economic situation of the peo-
ple who form a part of this process, the relative importance of one kind of activi-
ty over another varies from one community to another. Jedoch, using what we
had learned made us more effective in everything we did, and each intervention
would build on a similar method that made so many things possible, based entire-
ly on the five tenets of 100% inclusion, social equity, gender equity, Nachhaltigkeit,
and cost sharing.
According to 2001 census data, 86% of Orissa’s 38 million people lives in vil-
lages, und über 60% of the population lives below the poverty line of INR 12000
per family per annum. As of 31 Marsch, 2009, 48,091 families across 698 villages,
mostly in Orissa, have developed and continue to develop according to Gram
Vikas’s MANTRA method. Frauen, and parents of young women, from villages
with piped drinking water and toilets in their homes now insist that they marry
into families from villages with similar facilities. Instead of us pushing into new
villages, telling local populations about the benefits of this kind of development,
the villages neighboring those where we have already worked will ask us to come
In. Als solche, Gram Vikas, in partnerships with other NGOs working in the area who
replicate the MANTRA method, pushes to form a critical mass of villages. Over the
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Joe Madiath
next decade, we aspire to work with 1% of Orissa’s population (um 80,000 Zu
100,000 Familien), through direct outreach and in collaboration with other non-
Regierungsorganisationen. Das 1% of the population would form a critical mass,
i.e. the proportion of the population who can influence and pressure local govern-
ment bodies so that democratic ways of working within these bodies take strong
root and things like corruption and nepotism are avoided. The process of clustered
expansion will occur around current areas of our operation, and will mobilize the
many villages with which we began working as long as thirty years ago.
In the future, Gram Vikas will continue the expansion program, working with
partner NGOs to implement MANTRA in other states throughout India, Und
indeed other countries with a continued focus on the poorest and most marginal-
ized communities. The exclusion of these populations throughout history and into
the present has burdened our society and hindered true development for our soci-
ety at large.
FROM EMPATHY TO ACTION (1971-1979)
I was born in a poor place, but not to a poor family. My father was the owner of a
large rubber estate. I grew up in the presence of exploitation, but was not a victim
of it myself.
When I was still a boy I came to the realization that my own father was exploit-
ing his workers. One day, when I was eleven years old, I went to the laborers who
worked on my father’s rubber estate, and asked if they should organize themselves
so they could demand better facilities from my father. They agreed, and asked if I
would act as their union leader. Naturally, I was thrilled to accept their invitation.
We organized an informal union and staged a strike outside my father’s house. Er
saw me, and didn’t say a word … but he soon suggested that I would fit in very well
at boarding school. Two months later, that’s where I was.
Years later, when I was a student at Madras University, I founded the Young
Students Movement for Development (YSMD), and led a group from YSMD to
West Bengal to help those affected by the war in Bangladesh. While I was assisting
with aid there, a terrible cyclone caused a tidal wave to hit the coast of Orissa. Der
suffering was enormous and widespread, affecting over a million people. Der
refugee crisis had stretched thin the government’s resources for disaster relief, Und
a group of forty YSMD volunteers travelled to the Cuttack district of Orissa to
assist in whatever way we could. I was among that group, and among those who
stayed for over a year after the initial assistance efforts to help locals rebuild roads
and desalinate agricultural land.
While there, we learned a great deal about Orissa and its people, specifically the
poorest groups who resided there. These groups are largely composed of what the
Indian constitution calls “scheduled” castes: dalits (untouchables), and tribes,
called the adivasis. For centuries, administrative authorities have considered these
groups to reside at the lowest levels of society. During this time we became acute-
ly aware of the poverty and underdevelopment these people face. No NGOs or
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It Takes a Faucet
other development agencies were working there, except for some missionary and
Gandhian groups mainly focused on health issues. Over the next few years, Wir
experimented with projects to help build the economic capacity of these poorest
communities, making agreements between land owners and workers and forming
co-operative production schemes. Jedoch, it soon became clear that the prob-
lems were very deep-rooted and we needed a different approach. A problem we
experienced was that few groups had worked exclusively with tribal people, so no
one had much knowledge about or access to information on the best ways of work-
ing with them. The poverty of the region’s most poor ran very deep, and any sense
of social equity or healthy living conditions for them simply did not exist. As we
saw it, their problems
also reached to broader
themes of
identity and
Integration. We began to
ask ourselves if there was
not something we could
do to support these peo-
ple in an effort to bring
them out of their social
exclusion and into the
life of the district.
Land and indebtedness have long
been closely interlinked, and they
still are. Access to credit, welche
these impoverished people needed
for almost everything outside of
normal everyday expenses (Und
even some of those), came almost
exclusively from local money
lenders, called sahukars.
We began to pay
close attention to the adi-
vasis of the region, whose
plight exemplified the
condition of the poorest
and most marginalized
groups of
local society.
Though they were initial-
ly very distrustful of outsiders like us, we began to make entries into adivasi com-
munities through the local health clinics. Once inside the communities and able to
speak to their members, we learned that what most held them back was the loss of
land and indebtedness. One cannot understand the plight of tribal people without
considering the fundamental question of land rights. The very term tribal or
indigenous group connotes that these people originally inhabited the lands where
they reside now. For centuries, they lived in harmony with the forests, relying on
them for food, shelter, and fuel, and to practice their religion. Their peaceful way
of life and belief in community ownership of land has made them especially vul-
nerable to acts of aggression.
Land and indebtedness have long been closely interlinked, and they still are.
Access to credit, which these impoverished people needed for almost everything
outside of normal everyday expenses (and even some of those), came almost exclu-
sively from local money lenders, called sahukars. Community members would
mortgage what little land they might own, the products of fruit trees found on that
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Joe Madiath
Land, and virtually anything else they might possess. The terms of the mortgages
were egregious and wide-reaching, spanning over several years and trapping
debtors in an inescapable spiral of poverty. Schlimmer noch, the presence of liquor pro-
ducers, called shundis, in many of the villages created more sources of debt, taking
property in payment for liquor. Fathers even offered the unpaid labor of their chil-
dren in exchange for the liquor produced by the shundis.
To counteract this phenomenon, In 1978 the government of India had declared
a moratorium on rural indebtedness. This policy provided the legal support to
launch a campaign to mobilize the tribal people around the issue of land mortgag-
ing. My colleagues and I began the process of organizing communities, helping
individual debtors to acquire strength in numbers and get from the government
what it had declared to be their right. Working within the legal confines laid out by
the new moratorium on indebtedness, we discovered that many of those who held
mortgages had no right to further repayment because the produce had been col-
lected from the land or the debts were already paid off. The adivasis formed them-
selves into an independent advocacy group, called the Kerandimal Gana
Sangathan, and created a tribal court to hear each debtor’s case against their lender.
The tribal court, on behalf of all the adivasis, served notices on all the sahukars that
all the tribal property they had previously mortgaged or otherwise appropriated
would return to the possession of its original owner unless the sahukar presented
a counter-claim. Bis zum Ende 1979, the court had settled nearly all the cases in the
Kerandimal region in favor of the tribal people.
The impact of an organized community resonated beyond money-lending
schemes. The shundis, who had themselves become involved in debt cases, began
to feel the anger of those whose families they had trapped in their cycle of impov-
erishing addiction. Women’s groups, wives of those who had indebted their fami-
lies and whose children’s labor had become collateral for debts, ran many of the
shundis out of their villages, entirely destroying their liquor manufacturing equip-
ment and making a clear statement that the residents of the villages, not the
shundis or sahukars, had control over their lives and communities. During this
Zeit, as we lived among the adivasis, and persistently pursued a trial-and-error
Ansatz, we realized the time had come to create a new identity separate from our
Madras-based parent organization. We realized we had developed our own local
vision and character with specific aims related to our local context. Therefore on
22 Januar 1979, Gram Vikas was officially established and registered as a society.
SEEKING INITIATIVES TO BRING ABOUT REAL CHANGE (1979-1992)
We organized our efforts to bring development to the tribal peoples through
Integrated Tribal Development Program, creating partnerships with government
funders and other NGOs in any field we could to improve the quality of life and
the income-generating activities of the adivasis. Gram Vikas and the tribal peoples
took a major step forward in the campaign to recover mortgaged land. Though we
had all reached a significant milestone, the movement quickly reached a plateau.
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It Takes a Faucet
Long decades of bonded labor had eroded any sense of initiative among most of
the tribal people. To the adivasis, getting back all that they had was bigger than life,
but this also meant having to own their own resources, protect them, and behave
in a responsible way. Infolge, providing support for them to manage their own
resources became a key task. We realized that we could not simply win the battle;
we had to consolidate it and bring them to a level where they could handle their
own affairs, and prevent them from slipping back into old disruptive ways.
In the years after independence, Die
government wrested all initiative
from the people in practically all
spheres of life … Limited
development resources and an
apparently huge demand have
meant that only a few benefit, often
not the most deserving. Im
absence of reliable measures for
assessing poverty, the system must
make subjective assessments, driven
largely by political patronage and
bureaucratic concessions.
Surely in spirit this perspective made sense, but finding initiatives that would
bring about real change presented new challenges. The problems in this scenario
were compounded, Und
perhaps created by, A
historic fact. In the years
after independence, Die
government wrested all
initiative from the peo-
ple in practically all
spheres of life: Kontrolle
over forests, wastelands,
Infrastruktur, develop-
ment, health systems,
revenue generation and
Limited
utilization.
development resources
and an apparently huge
demand have meant
that only a few benefit,
the most
often not
deserving.
Die
In
reliable
absence of
measures for assessing
Armut,
System
Die
must make subjective
driven
assessments,
largely by political
patronage and bureaucratic concessions. This said, most development interven-
tions tend to address individual rather than collective needs. Take, for instance,
interventions towards economic development. Livelihood assistance, ob
from the government or from development organizations, targets enterprising
people in the community, and not necessarily those who are economically weak-
est. The leaders decide who should get housing and other assistance. Rarely do the
crafters of government development initiatives hear the voice of the very poorest,
nor do they invest the time or energy necessary to make that voice heard.
As such, people must first have an awareness of their rights before they can
assert them. The fight against the all-pervading monster called corruption, welche
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Joe Madiath
over time has become integral to the system’s functioning, makes this imperative
far greater. Pressure groups must organize themselves to demand transparency and
accountability from elected representatives and government functionaries.
Effective community action requires that people have first reached a threshold
level of quality of life. Communities should have satisfied their most basic life
needs and have the capacity to dream of further improvements. Effectively
addressing issues like food and income security, health and medical care, Ausbildung
and literacy, safe and hygienic habitations, and basic infrastructure all help to reach
that critical threshold.
It was under the auspices of the ITDP that we experimented with programs
devoted to all these issues, initially paying special attention to health and educa-
tion. At the village level, we provided non-formal education for children in the 6-
14 age group. In retrospect we realize that offering non-formal education, als
opposed to the formal pedagogy recognized by the mainstream, only reinforced
the divide between the marginalized and their cultural counterparts. Trotzdem, many of
the schools we established during this time did develop into formal educational
institutions that operate today. Many of them utilize mechanisms that we have
developed over time to ensure that schools operate in every village and encourage
female students to attend with reduced or even waived fees. Now channels exist to
reward successful students and teachers, and we consistently reach out to those
who have trouble and whom we must bring back into the fold. These schools, In
addition to the network of high-quality clinics we established, characterize many
of the activities of ITDP on the village level.
Over the years, ITDP began to shift toward new programs that took account of
the larger societal issues facing marginalized people and their ownership stake in
their environment. These programs began to integrate strategies for Gram Vikas’
withdrawal and adopted more measures of sustainability. In addition to our village
interventions in education and health, we started a campaign for community
forestry: we encouraged people to plant fuel, fodder, fruit and timber species over
private and common lands, many of which had been reclaimed after the new gov-
ernment policy allowed tribal people to reclaim their mortgaged land. Between
1985 Und 1996,
in collaboration with the National Program for Wasteland
Development, we assisted in redeveloping over 10,000 acres of wasteland. Gram
Vikas also helped communities to obtain legal titles over the revenue-producing
wastelands they regenerated and protected. In this way we began to move toward
being facilitators and catalysts, linking the indigenous people’s organizations with
government and private-sector services.
Parallel to the ITDP program, in the early 1980’s we became involved with
issues related to energy poverty in remote homes and villages. This issue came to
my attention as early as 1975 when I had worked in Mohuda, and saw no access to
electricity or energy sources other than timber from surrounding forests. Gram
Vikas’s Biogas Program, and the engineering and masonry programs that devel-
oped as offshoots of it, came as a result of this awareness and problem. Der Profi-
gram and its offshoots focused on demystifying helpful technologies on the village
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It Takes a Faucet
level and making them available to village inhabitants. Gesamt, the programs
emphasized technologies that we could train village inhabitants to build and main-
tain themselves.
For the Biogas Program, we helped households build their own simple biogas
plant, which used cattle manure. The manure is placed in the biogas plant, Und
mixed with water; as it decomposes, it produces gas which is then used for cook-
ing. As this reduces the amount of wood needed, it not only reduces the pressure
on local resources, but also removes the burden on women of having to collect fire-
wood for cooking. During the process, the waste overflows as slurry, which can
then be added to the fields, providing several benefits. It adds moisture to the field,
it forms a layer on top that prevents too much moisture from escaping, and it is an
extremely good fertilizer. The government of India had spearheaded a program to
construct individual household biogas plants all over India, but with only mixed
success. A key reason for this lack of success was the poor construction. The qual-
ity of masonry was very poor, and it often cracked, so that gas escaped. Soon the
plants became unusable, and people abandoned them. As a result broken plants lie
scattered across Orissa, stark reminders of failure across already depressed areas.
To build confidence in the people, I knew it was necessary to put all the defective
and defunct plants back in order. New plants also had to meet an appropriate stan-
dard of quality and required an infrastructure and people with some technical skill
to support it.
At Gram Vikas, we modified the program the government established to con-
tinue promoting biogas technology. We helped to find financing for those willing
to own and operate biogas plants, and trained a cadre of local barefoot engineers
in masonry and in ‘barefoot engineering,’ therefore ensuring local knowledge to
construct and maintain the biogas plants in districts throughout Orissa. Diese
barefoot engineers would not only provide a valuable service to those using this
important technology, but would acquire new marketable skills and the potential
to earn an income. We also began to promote the masonry trade, so that more of
those trained in construction would be available to build new plants. We also
encouraged women to take part in training, although getting them to participate
has been challenging. This new group of trained persons, supported by Gram
Vikas, would also be offered work on our projects for at least one year, but many
go on to secure lucrative urban contracts, often earning more than three times the
salary they earned before training. We began promoting the construction of local
kilns to produce bricks, utilizing the team of engineers we had available to provide
the necessary expertise for such endeavors. To date, around 6000 men and women
have been trained as qualified masons.
All these programs sought to demystify technologies appropriate for rural vil-
lage development, providing better access to materials and skilled technicians, als
well as providing important new sources of income and the goods those income-
generating enterprises produced. We branched out to promoting other new tech-
nologies throughout Orissa, such as micro-hydropower plants and other types of
renewable energy technologies. We have always favored sustainability, not cutting-
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Joe Madiath
edge technologies for which local communities had no use, and eschewed the low-
quality equipment the government often provided simply because it cost the least.
Often we do not need any heavy R&D, just some creativity, encouragement, Und
the courage to take risks. Basic solutions like fitting a ball bearing to a water-lifting
device to draw water from a well, or a designing a better bullock cart, can make
incremental changes in
the way poor people live
and work. Jedoch, unser
experiences with govern-
ment programs to imple-
ment new technologies
have also taught us les-
sons. The liberal use of
appropriate technology
in development parlance
has often reduced it to
outdated and outmoded
Technologie. The poor
need appropriate tech-
nology, that most suited
for their situation and
not necessarily whatever
is cheapest. If it costs lit-
tle, that is an additional
advantage,
Das
should not be the precon-
dition.
Women had the most to gain from
having clean water piped directly
into their homes, not only for
purposes of hygiene, but also
because they had to bring in the
clean water the family needed every
day. In some areas, women would
trek 3 Zu 4 hours each day to visit
wells or streams where they could
collect water and bring it back to
the village. Nor were girls excluded
from this duty. They either carried
water or stayed at home to care for
younger siblings, which meant they
had to miss school.
dichotomy—
between providing tech-
nologically-based tools to
rural communities and
searching for the most
appropriate and helpful
versions of them—has led to a conflict in current development paradigms. Gram
Vikas addresses this problem by improving technology, demystifying processes,
and directly applying improvements in food and livelihood security, as well as alle-
viating poverty. In these poor and rural areas, access to grid electricity seems very
remote, so we have electricity produced locally: to light homes, to provide power
for lift irrigation, and to generally enable people to generate an income. Here inter-
ventions like micro-hydropower, biomass-based gasifiers, and solar photovoltaic
power can open up possibilities for economic development. We continue to sup-
port these programs that explore and implement these options, and experiment
with new programs in LED lighting and biodiesel production from under-utilized
local oil-bearing seeds.
Das
Aber
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It Takes a Faucet
We have always struggled to support the many biogas and technology promo-
tion programs across the state, but over time we have managed to create the mech-
anisms for self-sustenance. In 1994, we started the process of spinning off the
Biogas Program. We hoped that our supervisors and trained masons could func-
tion as independent turnkey operators and entrepreneurs with little difficulty.
They could help interested farmers access loans and subsidies for constructing
plants and provide the necessary technical support. The large pool of skilled and
experienced personnel would work independently or with other local voluntary
Organisationen, to promote biogas projects all over the state. We encouraged the
supervisors and masons to become entrepreneurs, either individually, in small
groups, or in association with other local bodies. Gram Vikas could continue to
provide the technical backup support and the credibility they needed to establish
their enterprises. We also made an offer to each one of them that they could return
to Gram Vikas should they fail in their effort. At the end of two years, out of the
600 supervisors who left at the time, only six came back.
RURAL SANITATION AS AN ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE (1993-2001)
Started in the early ‘90s, the Rural Health and Environment Program aims to find
ways in which the community as a whole has a stake in development. We began by
dealing with the immediate problem of sanitation practices. We became involved
with the sanitation and water issue as we began to explore how best to improve the
living conditions of village dwellers: creating a clean environment and safe, healthy
housing. Tatsächlich, in our approach to housing we did not initially promote toilets
and bathing rooms, or a supply of protected water to all families. But as we became
more closely associated with rural communities, we realized that a large percent-
age of women were suffering from reproductive and gynecological ailments: als
they were forced to bathe in the same pond as the rest of the village, they had an
especially hard time keeping clean during their periods. For them, it was a real
boon to have a secluded space for bathing in addition to toilet facilities, and it rec-
ognized their need for privacy and dignity.
Women had the most to gain from having clean water piped directly into their
Häuser, not only for purposes of hygiene, but also because they had to bring in the
clean water the family needed every day. In some areas, women would trek 3 Zu 4
hours each day to visit wells or streams where they could collect water and bring it
back to the village. Nor were girls excluded from this duty. They either carried
water or stayed at home to care for younger siblings, which meant they had to miss
Schule. Certainly, for these poor communities to lack clean water, one of the most
basic necessities of life, was closely connected with the other social and gender
equities that constrained rural residents from even marginal development.
I had encountered the connection between gender inequity and the problem
of sanitation many times before, beginning back in 1978. I had worked on a proj-
ect in the Cuttack District of Orissa which provided quality toilets for every fami-
ly in the village. We assumed that everyone would bring the water they needed for
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Joe Madiath
the toilets from nearby hand-pumps. Jedoch, this job was relegated to the wife,
daughter, or daughter-in-law. One day, one daughter “accidentally” dropped a
small stone in the U-trap of the toilet, making it unusable. Pretty soon, ähnlich
accidents were taking place in other households, and it wasn’t long before people
went back to using
open fields for their
sanitation needs. Der
lesson was clear: if we
wanted water-based
toilets to function, Wir
needed to make run-
ning water available.
The concept of developing villages
by building toilet and sanitation
units was a difficult one for anyone
to accept. In order to ensure
effective protection of water and
sanitation in any habitat, 100%
coverage is essential. Even if one
family were left out, that would
result in continued pollution of the
Umfeld, most immediately of
the surrounding water bodies they
used for bathing or for other
personal needs.
The concept of
developing villages by
building toilet and san-
itation units was a dif-
ficult one for anyone to
accept.
In order to
ensure effective protec-
tion of water and sani-
tation in any habitat,
Ist
100%
essential. Even if one
family were left out,
that would result in
continued pollution of
die Umgebung, most
immediately of the sur-
rounding water bodies
they used for bathing or for other personal needs. Because those bodies of water
had to be clean, any pollution would further feed into the cycle of morbidity, mor-
tality, and loss of productivity. Taking this into account, we would have to ensure
that every member of the village, male and female, would comply with the pro-
Gramm, and commit fully to this program and to one another.
coverage
Zusätzlich, we felt strongly that villages should have an ownership stake in
the project: they would willingly buy in, and have a reason to maintain the facili-
ties and remain committed to new sanitary habits. This would overcome the major
hurdles already facing many health and sanitation programs. Only because of the
lack of water, toilet blocks converted into storage units riddle underdeveloped
areas of India, rather than being used as intended. Jedoch, even water supply sys-
tems fall into disuse with the slightest of defects, if people do not bother to repair
ihnen. This happens because users do not value the service enough. It became clear
to us that an effective sanitation development project required three things: it had
to use running water piped directly into the toilet block, it needed the full consen-
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It Takes a Faucet
sus participation of each resident in the village, and everyone had to have an own-
ership stake. Everyone would have to save money and contribute to a general cor-
pus fund that would cover at least some of the cost of the materials and construc-
tion. The village would have to manage the fund, and villages would have to make
future provisions for new houses constructed in the village. Early on, we knew
about the possibilities extending well beyond sanitation and water that would
become available if villages could reach the measure of participation and cooper-
ation necessary for such a program.
The program that we developed to
meet these challenges would become
the centerpiece of RHEP. The prepara-
tory process of developing the organi-
zational structure within the village
begins with a series of negotiations
with the communities. This mobiliza-
tion phase ensures that all families in
the village have access to the same
level of products and services arising
from the intervention: piped water
supply from a central community
water tank, and a private toilet and
bathing room for each household,
providing privacy and dignity, impor-
tant especially for the women in the household. This necessitates engagement in a
difficult process of resolving intra-village conflicts, and the willing participation of
everyone in a village-wide program. People have to communicate with one anoth-
er and work across generations-old societal barriers and family feuds.
Only because of the lack
of water, toilet blocks
converted into storage
units riddle
underdeveloped areas of
Indien, rather than being
used as intended.
Außerdem, our insistence on women participating in community-level deci-
sion making delayed the process considerably. Tackling this, the most pervasive of
inequities, would challenge us tremendously. Gram Vikas had experience in deal-
ing with these issues through the ITDP program when we were organizing village
women to combat the influence of shundis in adivasi communities. Women would
again play a strong, if not central, role in the RHEP program. In order to ease the
community into this kind of active participation, men and women meet separate-
ly at first to discuss and deliberate. This helps women to find their voices and feel
comfortable expressing their views in front of others. These bodies then combine
into a single group, where people of both genders actively discuss the proposed
benefits and necessary steps.
This preparatory phase has taken two to three years in some villages, but it pro-
vides the foundation for the process towards village-wide development. Once the
villagers reach a consensus, a typical sequence of events begins to unfold, beginnend
with the formation of a village committee to oversee the work and the collection
of funds for the village corpus. The poor can and do pay for necessary services, Und
Gram Vikas provides training to those on the committee to manage the funds and
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Joe Madiath
maintain balanced accounts. This corpus fund is invested in a high-interest bank
account, and the interest from it is used to buy the external materials needed to
extend the same facilities to new families entering the village, thereby ensuing
100% inclusion at all times, regardless of whether Gram Vikas is still present in the
Dorf. Although we believe fully in the necessity of villagers paying for much of
die Arbeit, we also believe that basic infrastructure like water and sanitation has a
social value, the recognition that access to water and sanitary facilities is a basic
human right.
The program uses water and
sanitation as entry-point
Aktivitäten, mobilizing
communities to come together
across social barriers to plan,
build and manage water and
sanitation systems through an
innovative set of integrated
sozial, institutional and financial
processes that enable a wide
range of other pursuits.
Through our barefoot engineers program and our decades of work training
masons through the biogas and ITDP programs, we have local technicians avail-
able to build the facilities.
We recruit additional mem-
bers of the village to train in
other trades such as plumb-
ing, wiring, bar-bending,
and stone dressing; this pro-
vides the necessary capacity
within the villages to main-
tain the system, and it gen-
erates additional income.
With the help of these new
tradesmen, the village gets a
water collection unit and
water distribution system,
and each household gets a
toilet, a washroom, and run-
ning water piped into the
house for the family’s use.
The toilets and bathrooms
with running water have
two leach or soak pits per
toilet. Once the first pit fills,
the family turns the waste over into the second pit. Households plant bananas or
papaya near these leach pits to absorb excess water, reducing any need to empty
ihnen. The solid waste in the leach pit decomposes safely in the time it takes for the
second pit to fill, and can then be safely removed and used as a fertilizer.
The program uses water and sanitation as entry-point activities, mobilizing
communities to come together across social barriers to plan, build and manage
water and sanitation systems through an innovative set of integrated social, insti-
tutional and financial processes that enable a wide range of other pursuits.
Suddenly, wasted resources become new income generators, as fields and ponds
produce fruits and fish. Villages undertake new programs to develop the water-
shed, bring small electrical generators into the town, and develop community
grain banks administered in the same manner as the financial corpus. For new
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It Takes a Faucet
housing, Gram Vikas’ role was to help villagers access loans from the Housing
Development Finance Corporation, a private housing bank, and to act as guaran-
tor of those loans, while local masons assist in the construction.
The experiences of Gram Vikas in development over the two decades leading
up to the RHEP made us believe that people recognize their power and believe in
their abilities when they reach a threshold quality of life. With the water and sani-
tation intervention, many new ways emerged for people to take control of their
Leben. Von 2005 we were working with 400 villages. Most of these villages consist only
of adivasi and dalit residents, really the poorest of the poor, which makes their suc-
cess all the more remarkable. In none of these villages has the system collapsed,
and Gram Vikas never had to pay for any maintenance. Given the relative success
of this model in our effort to improve the quality of life for adivasis and other
excluded classes of people, RHEP began to drive the organization in a more
focused direction by the turn of the millennium.
TOWARD AN INTEGRATED HABITAT DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
(2001 TO THE PRESENT)
The village organizations developed in the communities where Gram Vikas works
have transformed them, and created a network of communities empowered to
pursue greater improvements and begin to challenge the barriers to further
progress. As of 31 Marsch 2009, über 48,000 families in 698 villages have recognized
their collective strength, playing an influential role not only in their own villages,
but also in the panchayats of which they play a part. The unity in the villages helps
community members take stronger political stances, particularly in the area of
local self-governance. In recent elections to the panchayati raj, the lowest rung of
elected people at the village level for a cluster of villages, many of these villagers
made informed and considered choices for their representatives. They have begun
to access government funding and resources from financial institutions for other
development activities such as community halls, Straßen, and the development of
ponds where they can farm fish. Zusammen, these communities have also worked
towards effective functioning of government-run schools and health services.
As the twentieth century came to a close, Gram Vikas sought to consolidate its
efforts that had facilitated these positive and transformative pursuits, refocusing
our many programs toward a single set of goals and reorganizing our group to
ensure we could more effectively execute all our projects. Seeing what empowered
and organized communities could accomplish, Gram Vikas began to take steps to
replicate the RHEP model. First we enhanced the program with additional, sus-
tainable, community development projects that villages could undertake, and then
we rolled it in together with the ITDP program. An integrated habitat develop-
ment program, known now as the Movement and Action Network for the
Transformation of Rural Areas (MANTRA), resulted from this reorganization.
MANTRA evolved as the participatory, equitable and replicable approach of
RHEP combined with the lessons learned from ITDP, as well as the experiences of
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Joe Madiath
staff and the organization working with rural communities in Orissa for more
than twenty-five years. The key values of MANTRA are 100% inclusion, social and
gender equity, environmental sustainability, and cost sharing: elements of the
model that had worked so well while in development under the RHEP. Sanitation
infrastructure and the supply of drinking water all through the year to all houses
would remain the entry and core rallying element to bring people together, cutting
through barriers of patriarchal systems, caste, Politik, and economic differences.
With MANTRA, Gram Vikas has given rise to an integrated habitat development
program with a holistic approach based on villagers’ needs, but retaining a replic-
able method to ensure that the program would continue to expand.
Existing projects were rolled into MANTRA’s new model for village interven-
tion, and began to work on every side and angle of village development. Villages
could work within any of the new program areas for their village’s improvement
based on their community’s particular needs. Gram Vikas administers these proj-
ects under the following four area headings: enabling infrastructure, livelihoods
and food security, education and health, and self-governing people’s institutions.
Each program fundamentally deals with the administration and development of
the village’s resources, through developing existing lands and forests, teaching peo-
ple to read well enough to participate in local government, finding new income-
generating endeavors for village inhabitants, and ensuring that a formerly margin-
alized and excluded population takes its place in the society at large and partici-
pates. Village dwellers are beginning to claim what the government promises them,
and actually begin to make changes in a largely corrupt and ineffective government
bureaucracy that has failed to provide the people with what they need.
REACHING A CRITICAL MASS TO BRING ABOUT NATIONAL CHANGE
As rural residents begin projects to provide themselves with the most basic servic-
es like health, Ausbildung, and power, they must take the last crucial step in assert-
ing themselves. The 73rd amendment to the Indian constitution speaks of precise-
ly this: allowing the people to have real powers to enable them to determine their
development processes. I believe that without significant improvements in the lives
of the poor and marginalized, all talk of self-governance is mere wishful thinking.
The people must have dignity and pride in themselves, provided only through the
presence of a basic quality of life, before they begin to assert their rights on larger
issues such as property and injustice.
Gram Vikas’s millennium development goal—a critical mass of villages to
pressure the government—reflects this philosophy. To prove the feasibility of mod-
els and to demonstrate its impact, Gram Vikas would have to work with around
100,000 families consisting of around 500,000 people in Orissa by 2011. Das
would be approximately 1% Zu 1.25% of the projected total population of Orissa
at that time. If these villagers have the means to become aware of their rights and
gain the knowledge and confidence to lobby local government and effect change,
as well as demand beneficial policies, then the tribals, the dalits, the small farmers
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It Takes a Faucet
and fisher-people, the landless, and the women will all achieve a better quality of
life.
The families of these people, bound in clusters, will form the critical mass that
can influence development processes through a people’s movement. This will be a
movement with political overtones, which aims to create an enabling environment
for a politically assertive community; in this movement people can assert them-
selves in the panchayati raj and hold positions from which they can influence and
thus steer the larger policy framework in development. Gradually increasing in
confidence, villagers will influence the systems of management and democratic
governance of these institutions from the ground up.
Gram Vikas acts not only to spread these tools of empowerment, either on its
own or in partnership with others, but to acquire a position within Orissa where
it too can bargain with the government. The issue of achieving a critical mass
becomes important here. When the government fails to deliver the goods, NGDOs
must step in, utilizing their unique position of understanding the challenges fac-
ing target groups. The government has stood in the way of many programs for
income generation among the poor, yet is noticeably absent when it comes to pro-
viding basic services. Gram Vikas must achieve a strong bargaining position vis-a-
vis the government on behalf of the communities it works with. The work that we
do demands a conducive policy environment that, at the very least, does not
impede growth and development.
Gram Vikas is making progress towards these goals—towards creating a criti-
cal mass of people who have a stake in their development as well as the wherewith-
al to demand that to which they have a right. This rights-based approach has
begun to make headway, and communities have forced governments, politisch
organs, and private-sector enterprises to react to their demands. Particularly in the
livelihoods and infrastructure sectors, government finances have become increas-
ingly available to communities through self-managed mechanisms. With contin-
ued baseline development, and the stronger administrative and self-governing
activities among villages that Gram Vikas has helped to create, we may soon see a
groundswell of change. No longer do we have to engage new communities to adopt
the values guiding the MANTRA project, as they invite us instead. Ironisch, gov-
ernment apathy has created the space in which such a large network of villages,
each responding creatively to difficult situations, can develop. This critical mass of
formerly marginalized peoples will have an impact on government for many years
to come, with formerly excluded and marginalized people at the vanguard of those
who have taken responsibility for their own development.
Danksagungen
The author thanks Adam Hasler and Helen Snively for their assistance in prepar-
ing this case narrative.
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