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This is Also India

By Kavitha Kailasam '05

Pens, or my lack thereof, have become the bane of my existence. All the staff here are always scrambling for pens, asserting that someone has stolen theirs, or otherwise safely guarding the one in their pocket or their bag. I have even picked up some pen-securing techniques since being here: when someone asks to borrow your pen, if you remove the cap for them and hold on to it, you are more likely to get your pen back!!

The thing is, without your pen, you can get nothing done! You can’t write reports or sign reimbursement forms or write down that inspirational idea that just came to you. I feel limited here by the unreliable availability of resources. Indian ingenuity and innovation are often touted as the greatest resources in this country. How great these Indians are at making do with the materials at hand! But there are only so many ways and things for which you can be innovative using the materials at hand. If you don’t have a pen, you simply don’t have a pen.

In the office setting, the access to materials is everyone’s major concern. The materials are available, but lengthy protocols must be worked through to obtain them, and once they are obtained for the office, they are kept under lock and key. The comparison is stark to where I worked back at home. There, everyone had free access to the stock room, where hundreds of pens of all varieties were kept, and no one stole them.

Similarly community development programs are often dependent upon the uncertain accessibility of resources. Although the resources are here, the systems to access them are problematical. In the newly formed Adolescent Girls Center that I am a part of, the staff insist on putting away and locking up whatever materials we have equipped the Center with. Games therefore are not on display. They are being kept safe from being stolen, as well as safe from being used. There is a mentality formed surrounding this issue. As children marginalized people are taught that resources are scarce. Everyone looks out for him or herself, with the assumption that the ‘greater good’ will also look out for itself. And if it doesn’t, well then it probably wouldn’t have managed to survive anyway.

If everyone has pens, there is no need to steal them I suppose. But questions remain. If people are enabled with appropriate infrastructure will they automatically be helpful, rather than competitive, towards one another? Or here in rural developing India, is this behavior engrained at this point?

The other day, an older staff member, Arumugam, asked a younger staff member if he could borrow her pen. I don’t know what her intentions were in doing so, but she took off the cap and handed it to him. Arumugam, noting this, looked at me and said, “This is India.”

Did You know?

Indicorps offers a variety of programs and opportunities that encourage leadership and civic engagement. While the fellowship focuses on empowering people willing to do whatever it takes to affect change, we also have local volunteer programs in India, an established internship program, an emerging domestic program, an effort to engage late-careers seniors in development, an online volunteer opportunity site, and more....

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Inspiration

If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

- Lila Watson