On Our Voluntary Sector -- My Journey … with the CityMakers i joined Aashray Adhikar Abhiyan (AAA) as more or less a tabula rasa on the homeless issue . There weren’t any books, researches and monographs on which we could lay our hands and which could guide our work. And finally, when we got a couple they didn’t fulfil our purpose. We realised early in the day that we had to learn it the hard way. The task became more harder. As we continued working to enable, empower the homeless in a rights mode, we knew our task was difficult. Homeless as a group were people with whom nobody had any programme, at least in Delhi, also in recent times (between 70s-90s). The only asset we had was faith in each one, our homeless friends included. The AAA team had another asset and that was ability to ask the right question. The effort all through was not just to seek answers, but to move to an advanced stage of framing much bolder questions. And answers were not given but picked from the conversations with our homeless friends. This was the Socratic method that we followed. Definitely, I consider my stay in AAA as the most rewarding period of my life. What I learnt here , I couldn’t have learnt anywhere. Over three years that I have spent here are equivalent to a decade of experience. I find myself today as a better human being. AAA gave me the opportunity to test my beliefs in the innate goodness of beings. And my belief stands emboldened. My entire team reposed its confidence in me and together we were able to deal with problems that surfaced from time to time. Indubitably, today we are a strong team, not as a rock, but flowing waters of a river in raptures. Allowing everyone the same opportunity to remove the boulders and flow to places (people), we can never think of reaching. We visualise AAA as a banyan tree, for ever growing, expanding and moving from strength to strength. Offering shelter and homes to all who come. With homeless friends The homeless: children, women, men, disabled, mentally ill, and elderly have showered their unrestrained love to me. And it is really deeply moving to be bestowed all this. Truly, I have met hundreds of homeless friends, in precarious / distressed conditions but not even a single one of them ever abused anyone of us. I’ve been out at late nights, at all odd hours with them but never has ever an untoward incident occurred. With AAA staff I joined Aashray Adhikar Abhiyan (AAA) a programme of ActionAid India, in March 2000, as its Director. Jaishree Suryanarayanan had joined in February. Jagdish Bhardwaje joined in April and the rest of team members: Paramjeet Kaur, Dhananjay Tingal, Shalini Vatsa (who acted as Dhaniya in the film Peepli Live, and is in touch with us even today), Bidhan Chandra Singh and Jabar Singh (Babblu) joined us in May. D. V. Rao and Pramod Das joined us in June 2000. Trudy Brasell – Jones joined us as a volunteer from August 2000. By December 2000, Shalini who was very good in theatre and we were allowing her ample space to pursue this, left us (AAA Update was her idea). Though she got the group Developing Countries Research Centre of University of Delhi, where she worked, in touch with us. They did a film on homeless (made by Ruma Ghosh) and Shalini joined the filming team. Bidhan left us in April 2002. He later joined GreenPeace , in Bangalore (back to Delhi now). He is in touch with us. He was really remarkable. Brought in lot of energy and dynamism to our work.. Trudy left us in December 2002 as her spouse, Peter Choudhry’s consultancy had come to an end. She did say, had she not been married she would have continued working with AAA. She loved AAA, its community workers, its children (even CHETNA’s). She too has been in touch with us, and currently she is in Australia. Homeless Community Workers had started joining us from 2002 (in part time capacity and per job requirement they had started working with us right from 2001). Zaved Nafis Rahman joined us from July 2002. More team members: Puja Trisal, Ram Kishen, Mary Bosco, and Dr. Ram Prakash, whom we required right from August 2001, joined us only in September 2002 (as we had budgetary constraints earlier). Dr. Ram Prakash was asked to leave in April 2003, due to breach of AAA non-negotiables, which we noticed and was also corroborated by the community workers. Seeding of Aashray Adhikar Abhiyan It was around August 1999 that I met Harsh Mander in his office in Munirka, after getting the news that he was joining ActionAid India, as its Country Director. It was just a courtesy call. Later, I again met him that’s when Harsh suggested me to return to AAI, around September 1999. He had couple of ideas like using the experiences of people like Raj Arole, Abhay /Rani Bhang etc. to usher a community health approach. Other one was to address the issue of homelessness in Delhi. This I liked and told Harsh that I was interested in this, as in VHAI we had done a study on Delhi (Delhi: A Tale of Two Cities) but fell short of taking up these issues. Around October 1999 Mathew Cherian, Director, Charities Aid Foundation asked me if I could check about Night Shelters from Mr. Manjit Singh, the then Additional Commissioner. Meeting Manjit Singh was not so simple. He would never come on phone. And without appointment nobody was allowed by his secretarial staff. Finally, I had to use the services of a very senior person in Delhi Government, a relation of mine. Hearing his name Manjit Singh finally came on the phone. And then, I was able to fix a meeting with him. I visited the Turkman Gate Night shelter in October 1999. Planning Commission meeting on 19.11.1999 was the prime mover for AAA (for more after that read my write-up AAA: Not by the way!). I shared my findings in this meeting. We never followed the on and for approach, i.e., working on or for the homeless. Truly, we have moved from the with approach to the BY approach, i.e., the AAA moving from programmes to campaign to create a movement led BY the homeless (whom we now call CityMakers) themselves, at every stage. And in all this we became better humans. Thank you my friends (homeless children, women, disabled, destitute, mentally stressed, substance dependents, the AAA team, and our networking partners), for allowing me to have a space in your homes (heart). Words fail me! In expressing my gratitude. I remain yours’ forever. Forever. And ever. Love, indu prakash singh (1st June 2003; 04:30 am –1:00 pm) {with minor additions on 24.6.2014} “… be careful never to hurt a human heart. -- RUMI
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 06:06:07 +0000
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