Priorities v.s.Needs

2nd October, 2013

I had completely lost track of time and I did not realize that it was Gandhi Jayanti today till the Up Sarpanch asked us to go to the school for a programme. ‘2^nd October, Mahatma Gandhicha ani Lal Bahadur Shastricha Jayanti’ was written on the board. For a minute I thought that there was some mistake. We had never celebrated Lal Bahadur Shastri’s Jayanti on 2^nd October in my school. But surprisingly, everybody in my group mates knew about this and for the first time in my life I realized that Convent Education does not necessarily mean the best education.

The children were asked to stand in rows for a group procession and they shouted slogans like “Ek Rupiya Chandi ka, Desh Hamara Gandhi ka’ and “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan”. They also had a small programme later where all of us were suddenly announced as chief guests, given flowers and made to sit on the dais. After the programme got over, we started working on our Biodiversity project.

 We focused on gathering information about the plants and trees in the jungles and their varied uses. I was really excited when the Vaidji showed us two plants that could cure cancer. I thought I made a significant discovery and started dreaming up ways to grow that plant in bulk. In the evening when I was compiling the data, a question came to my mind. How could the Vaid claim that a certain leaves could cure cancer. Was the medicine tested on someone or was it just his hunch? I realized that in my excitement of making a discovery, I did not stop to ask the 5W’s;  what, why, who when, where and the most important 1H, How; the basic tenets of journalism.

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As we were returning to the village for lunch, one of the elderly men pointed out something that looked like a stone slab from afar. When I went closer, I realized that I was actually a commemorative stone for his son who had died in a Naxal firing in 2009. He told us, “Jab kisiko batata hoon ki main Varsa se hoon, sabse pehela shabd jo unke muh se nikalta hain who Naxalwadi. Ab unko kaun  batayega ki mere bete ko unhi Naxalwadiyon ne mara hain?”

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 One interesting thing that I noticed while completing the surveys was that lot of houses had bike parked inside their drawing room. It was the pride of the house and a pretty cover was placed on it, too. But many of them did not even have a bathroom for taking bath. Nearly every house had a DTH but no tubelights. All they had was one bulbs under which the children would study and women would cut vegetables and sometimes stitch.

I realized that our priorities and their needs are really different.