Trip To Saragur

Participants : Deepak,Manjari,Pooja,Neha,Nishant,Sridhar,Kiran,Shekhar

On 8 March a few of us had the opportunity to visit Saragur and see for ourselves the work which is being done by Swami Vivekanand Youth Movement over there.

For those who don't know about the organisation,quoting their website -"In the year 1984, a group of young medical students led by Dr.R.Balasubramaniam at the Mysore Medical College (in Karnataka State , India ) were starting to feel that the career in medicine they dreamt of pursuing was very different from the practice of medicine around them. They believed they had in them to make a difference and make a positive impact on the lives of the poor & the marginalized. And so, they started the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM, for short)".

Saragur is around 200kms from Bangalore and 60 kms ahead of Mysore.

We reached there around 10.30. The first thing we saw was the school which had been built for rural children. Right now the school is upto 6 standard and every year 1 class is added. The school is affiliated to CBSE.The school is well equipped with a huge playground, swings for small children,library,computer lab and even wi-fi access. SVYM generally does a lot of work with tribals of the area, yet this school is built only for the rural children. They are still working on ways to bring the tribals children  to the mainstream.For now they  have a separate school for them. One of the reasons for this is that most of  the parents of tribal kids are working in the rural households. So the  relationship which their  parents have, gets carried over to schools as well.

The tribals which SVYM works with had been living in forests. When the Forest Act was passed, they were forced to move out and settle down. In return they were given two acres of land per family by the government.Their primary skill was collecting honey and they had no idea about agriculture was a different matter.

The issues SVYM has to deal with while trying to bring tribals into mainstream and educating them are-

1. Addiction- A lot of these tribal kids get addicted to marijuana which they grow in their own backyards.
2. Sexually Active by the age of 12- These tribes don't have a concept of marriage,they are sexually active by the age of 12 and have had kids by the time they turn 14. As a result they are uneasy when they come to school.
3. The 2 acre of land which they own can be used for agriculture only for 4-5 months. Rest of the year these tribes move to Kerala in search of work where they are unskilled labour. As a result the drop out rate is high.

Then we visited the hospital. Some of the interesting things which we saw are-

• Highly subsidised for these tribals.The Registration fee being 2 rs and hospitalisation charges being 5rs/day.For the rest of the rural population the charges were just enough to cover the costs.
• There is a State Rural Health Insurance scheme where the premium is Rs 120/year and the benefits include free surgeries throughout the year and  free hospitalisation.

After the hospital we went to see the Residential Tribal School. The school is from Class 1 to 10. The school is setup in a beautiful location in the forest and has a wonderful infrastucture. The classes can be divided into 3 sections.

1. Standard 1 to 4 - open classrooms - The school initially started like a  typical school with confined classrooms. But the children would start acting  weird. Some of them actually jumped out of windows onto trees and would refuse to come down. Further investigation revealed that these kids are not used to closed/confined places and would get scared. So for the kids new to school, they came up with these open classrooms which are nothing but circular roofs on pillars with sunshades.Absolutely no other furniture.
2. Standard 5 and 6 - semi open classrooms - These class-rooms are a hybrid of the proper classrooms and the ones defined above. With classrooms still being open but there being desks and chairs.
3. Standard 7 to 10 - These classes have formal structure with the state syllabus as the curriculum.

Also, from what I understood in my very limited Kannada, there is no set curriculum from classes 1 to 6. There are a lot of activities and the learning happens through them. Also the focus is more on the arts side than on Maths and science.One of the major issue the Institute is dealing with is how to get these children into the mainstream after schooling is over. A lot of them get back to their usual lives after schooling because of dearth of opportunities/ideas. Few of them are hired by SVYM itself.

The highlight of the day was meeting the person who started all this, Dr R Balu. He told us that his mission was to reduce the inequity between the Urban and  Rural India. Then he explained what he meant by inequity. He gave examples like-

1. The Kabini River dam which is in HD Kote supplies 40% of the water supply of Bangalore. Yet,at HD Kote all they get is water enough to irrigate 3000 acres of land!
2. The hydroelectricity generated over there is around 27 MW. If all the electricity needs of HD Kote are meet the maximum demand it can have is 3-4 MW. Yet all they get is 10-12 hours of power supply. All the electricity is sent to Bangalore.
3. The Contribution of the tertiary sector in Karnataka's GDP has increased from 18% some years back to 36% now. However the population engaged in it has grown only from 1.4 % to 2%. During the same time the population involved in Agriculture has declined from 65% to 61% only. In short the inequality is increasing.
4. In Rural India, for every 100 children that start schooling, only 7-8 children complete it. While for Urban India the figure is around 80.

He further said that it is difficult to get industries to HD Kote because of poor infrastructure, even promises of cheap and skilled labour are not enough  to compensate for badly built roads and power shortage.

Lastly he encouraged all of us to vote. He said intelligent people like us actually going ahead and participating in the system instead of shunning it is the only way out. We have to bring accountability in the system. This task is very much possible. All we have to do is to start asking questions!

There are a lot of questions left in our mind, but due to paucity of time we had to call it a day. However, Dr Bala has promised to meet us the next time he comes to Bangalore.

Disclaimer:- The above mentioned stats may not be precise