Assignment 1

Report on

A report submitted to

Prof. Jahnvi Andharia

In partial fulfillment of the requirements of the course

Rural Immersion

By

Nitish Kumar (Roll: 155081)

Section B

On

05-03-2016
Rural Immersion Personal Story

When I set out my journey for rural immersion .Numerous kinds of imageries, manifestations
were reinforced in my subconscious mind. Lots of assumptions were embedded through
theoretical knowledge. It’s time to get the first hands on experience to challenge those
assumptions and try to enter in to the shoes of our rural brothers and sisters. Rural immersions as
the name itself have a connotation with the social aspects of rural life. I was assigned a task to
delve deeper into the life of rural people and get the deeper insights of their living conditions.
While moving towards the village Sarkakheda 70 Km away from Lake City Udaipur I was
thinking about the mesmerizing beauty in the lap of Lake City Udaipur. As I moved towards my
destination I was overwhelmed by the serene beauty of the pasture land. Landscape wants to say
something. It evoked a feeling of belongingness. It is the true India which I have been secluded
from the time being. People were embroidered itself with torn and untidy clothes.

I get down at my abode of assigned NGO “Gandhi Manav Kalyan Society”. After Lunch I
started off my journey to my village Sarkakheda 5 km away from my residents. Roads were well
laid to some kilometers but when we entered deeper in to the village premises the conditions of
road was not good .I encountered a drainage bridge which was broken and no maintenance
activities was carried out. It seems to me that government official don’t give a heed to it, they
had taken it for granted. I tried to reconnect it with my own city and I found it the situation of
road in village is bad and also maintenance activities are not well planned. Although the road
was ok but the width of road was not acceptable. Somehow it brought up the picture of
corruptions of civil officers in laying out the road.

When I moved along the path I found out something that was unaccepted to my eyes, I was
shocked. The women whom we have been revering whole our lives were bathing in abysmally
unhygienic Nalas water. That is also in open conditions with no curtains and all. I asked my
guide why they were bathing in here .The answer was that because of scarcity of water Women
used to bathe here. Although on the other side of road there was big dam. I don’t understand why
the infrastructure is not developed. On the one hand whole nations, TV channels stood up against
government when there is scarcity of water in Delhi but here there is no one to look after their
concerns. On this very day I feel ashamed of so called highly developing nation tag we are
wearing. Our women are not even getting the basic facilities to live up their life.

We stop by a house. I look around the house the house was made up of kuccha clays, husks and
bricks and there were no main gate. I interviewed a young women which happens to be a mother
of two child, probably she got married at a very early stage may be 13-15 years. She was slender
and it seems to me that she was anemic. She was not literate. She had shown me her grain
storage vessel it was quarterly filled. All across the nations politicians want to change the
conditions of women but here they don’t think even know their conditions.
I also got a chance to visit the school and Anganbadi. There were in total 54 student enrolled in
the school. There were no proper classes for each standard. All students from class1 to 5 were
forced to sit together in one class. And the teacher use to teach all of them the same topics. I
interviewed some of the students but they were not even able to properly read and write. This
shows me that it merely a school of enrollment not of quality education. We want our country to
progress but I have a strong doubt that how come we strive towards developed economy when
our generation Y is not even able to read and write. The students don’t even have proper dress to
put on. The government doesn’t even drop a visit in once a year to investigate in to the quality of
education.

Incidents that had changed my subconscious memory and challenged my assumptions

(1)Conditions of women are abysmally bad. They don’t have access to proper hygienic tools.
There is no one to ameliorate the condition

(2)Although caste discrimination was there but no signs of ethnic discrimination were noticed.
That is prevalent in our cities. It’s one of the good things that I found out there. Untouchability
was also practiced over there among different castes.

(3)In name of infrastructure nothing had been developed so far. Only one class room was there
from 1-5 standards. Toilets were never built up. Although main road was there but no internal
roads had been laid down. Means of transportations were also major problems there. Public
health centers which are one of the basic building blocks of any cities were not present. Lots of
women had died during labor pain because of this only.

(4) Wastage of food is rampant in cities while in villages people are deprived of three time meal
a day. People don’t have enough grains and milk to feed their children.

(5) Some taboo is there in village like during menstruation women are considered to be impure
somehow it is also prevalent in our society also. No black magic and witchcraft were practiced.
That was one thing that I thought would be prevalent in village.

(6) People are not hypocrite like us they are plain, simple and candid. They don’t hold grudges
against anyone like us. During my MBA journey I had learnt organizational behavior, human
resources management but I will say that if anyone wants to learn these things they should learnt
it from them. These people are good at hospitality.

(7)I was surprised to see the amount of electricity bill they were paying is much more than us.

At last I had learnt that I am privilege and better off I spent 40k in mobile and they don’t have 4k
of earning per month. I will definitely spend some part of my life in village to uplift the
conditions of our brothers and sisters.

Word Count 1067