History, Culture and ethnicity vs today’s life pattern and needs..
Muradgarhi is a village in which Rajputs are staying. The history says that the Rajputs are fearless, courageous and adventurous. They fought many battles of wars and they do not accept defeat. They are the warriors that stamp is forever with them. At the same time, Rajputs are very generous and kind hearted, very supportive, very protective for their own community. They generally secluded their women, which was the practice in the past, but one can see this to some extent in the present time too. With changing time, many are becoming liberal and many have very strong inhibitions.
Muradgarhi is a village in which Rajputs are staying. This falls under Jewar, the Yamuna Express Highway, a road cuts in between and the Industries are coming up in a big way.
When I visited first time, I entered the village, I saw a signboard with “Rajputana”. It was the first visit and it was to the school. I met the Principal with my colleague. He was courageous, confident and very optimistically managing the government primary school. The big ground though but with minimum infrastructure. In the room of the Principal, I saw a small library and curiously I asked, who donated the books, he said, ”These are my books”. A school without library does not mean anything to him, the reason he brought books from his home. We met the teachers who come from the nearest villages and some from Noida. It is tough to travel but the enthusiasm was at peak to teach children and bring them at par with other children in the nearby schools. The Principal called his nephew, who took us to the village, where we wanted to meet with the women of the village and then the youth. We had general discussions with the women and wanted to know their aspirations. Every woman said that they have dreams to fulfil and they would like to do something for themselves and their families. This made me believe that aspirations are always there, but what lacks is the opportunity. We shared with them our purpose of visit that we have come to provide access to various resources for learning, if the community as a whole join hands with us. The commitment was made and they wanted assurance from us that we will visit them again with resources so that they get the opportunity to realize their own dreams of self-empowerment and so something in their life.
We interacted with youth, who were having high hopes that the industry is coming, they will get the employability, but further interactions made them realize that they have to work on their skills, personality and learning to make them fit for the jobs.
This is not the story of one geography as mentioned. But, wherever the Industry is coming, youth are not prepared to get the employability, resulting in demotivation, in and out migration and many other related issues. The need is to bring the opportunities at their doorsteps. While young boys can go in the city to learn, but deprivation is for children, young girls and women. While interacting with young girls, they are bright, good in studies but lack resources to excel in their lives.
Within three months after our visit, we launched a Community Library and Resource Centre on 20th April 2022. The first step was to take a safe space in the village. We set up with all requisite infrastructure of books, computers, early learning centre, sewing machines, and the most important aspect was selecting the team as Resource Persons from the village itself, creating employability for the women and they willingly allowed their women to serve their own community with variety of services from the Centre.
Seeing the change in the mindset and realising the importance of their own self-growth with dignified and respectful learning, almost 300 children improved their reading and writing skills, learnt the English language, which they consider is important in the present time. More than 60 children come to the Early Learning Centre as there are no pre-schools and I am not sure about Anganwadi. More than 60 women learnt the apparel making skills and more than 100 boys and girls learnt the basic and advance computer skills. The youth attended the sessions on personality development and interview skills as they envision their future in that area where the new airport is also coming in the future.
The community still needs education on safe drinking water and the efforts are being made to provide education as the supply of the safe drinking water from the government has to be made available. The government has started their own initiatives for the holistic development of the area and the people, at the same time, it was too exciting for us to be with them, understand their needs and aspirations and touching their lives for positive thinking, specially, the strong youth community, who needs to be encouraged to use their energies for positive self-growth and the growth of their families. They are the important part of the demographic transition, whose earning with professional growth is going to contribute in the GDP of the country as a whole.
The potential is there, of course, multi-stakeholder’s partnerships are required to strengthen the community as READ India believes in community strength and keeps Community First. There is so much to be done in the villages like this. Though we have served almost 500 villages which is a very small number as compared to 6,40,000 villages in India. The mission is strong and will reach to more and more in the coming times.
