Seva in reality today - A Holistic View

Hi,

Last to last week I got a chance to explore the Indian Tribal culture and their lifestyle. They are many primitive tribal groups (Aadivasi) across India and some of them are in Andhra Pradesh also. In Khammam District, surrounded by Badhrachalam; many hill side villages and agency areas we can find these Primitive tribes.

My Travel
I had reached Bhurgham Pahad near Badhrachalam town on 25th Dec and was there for 3 days. I stayed in Vignana Vihara Aadivasi Boys Hostel (strength of 87 tribal children from many tribal villages of surrounding) run by Seva Bharathi Organization. I started exploring the near by places, tribal villages and their lifestyle, their living hood. Had good time in chatting with children, telling stories, science subjects, having food along with them. I got a great opportunity to understand the meaning of service to society. I had covered around 800 km by Bike, Bus, and Medical Van. I had almost traveled to Chattisgad border. I have explored the beautiful nature of the hills, jungle and innocent and beauty of tribal too.

Here is the URL to see the photos.
http://picasaweb.google.co.in/kolamala.sudheer/SevaharathiBadhrachalam
(It is accessible)
Please do read the below information about my experiences too.


Aadivasi’s Lifestyle
Primitive tribes are called Vanavasi in our Indian Culture (British started calling them as Aadivasi, the same name used by Indian GOVT also). They have their specific culture (inline with our culture), specific language and no script. Most of them stay near to hill side, called Gudems. Each Gudem/village contains 40-50 families. You can find another similar village in just 2-3 km apart. They live together. They do a different kind of farming called Podu farming (seasonal). They make good hand crafts. They sell their products in the local market which happens weekly once called Santha. They come down to the main towns/ villages only that day in the week. They sell their products and buy what ever they want and will back to their gudems. Aadivasi are very innocent and pure hearted people. They take time to mingle with the new people. Once they feel good about you, they share their respect, love and affection towards you. They are observing a lot and take much time to respond when you try to interact with them. They have intelligent and quick to learn the things. This is the typical lifestyle of the aadivasi. They pray many gods like Pochamma Thalli, Poleramma, and Gangamma etc. They have marriage system, they have strict customs also. The tribal marriage is very beautiful to see. They do celebrate festivals.

My Observations
They don’t have health awareness, cleanly ness. They eat things with out properly cooked. They don’t take nutritious food like milk. They do Most of the kids found with malnutrition problems. Water storage is really dirty. Most of them get affected malaria, dengue fevers and jaundice. Though they are told about the good health practices, they donot practice and feel the out come of it. They consume liquor almost every day. Many woman are found married in very small age. The average is 14-16 years. Many of them are having kids. The birth survival ratio is very poor. Most of the kids have genetic problems and very low weight. The educated people ratio is almost zero. I had found one person out of 100 people in the village studied till 9th and finally dropout of school. They are good in making handcraft products.

GOVT Development Programs:
Indian GOVT has planned excellent programs to improvise the lifestyle of tribes. Improve their education, health, awareness, handcraft development and marketing, reservations and so many things. All the plans are excellent in paper but when comes to reality they are zero in implementation. There are many reasons to it. One major factor is the well known corruption. There is lot of money floats in for the tribal development to ITDA Wing of the GOVT. But finally a small part of it will reach the actual tribal. Another reason is lacking of the actual implementation of Govt plans. Most of the workers assigned with these activities just work for the money. The service minded people are very less. Many people feel it like a burden. The GOVT just look for the statistics on the paper which they want to circulate to higher authorities to show they have achieved great progress in implementations.

Dirty Politics:
Interestingly, I had found many political party flags in a gudem which I have visited. When I enquired with them they told that many political leaders from many parties visit them often. They give money, liquor the tribes and make use of them for all the political related activities like transport them for mass political gatherings, party meetings, showing their party strength to other parties. They just don’t care about the impacts. Political parties build egos between these people. Divide the people into groups. There is lot of impact on their culture and their brother hood and relations. Ultimately the tribal loose their culture and friendly nature between themselves. As they are innocent and immature they donot understand the impacts of these politics and get seriously effected. There are cases that people killed each other. I had personally come across this information when I enquire a 9th class level educated man from the tribal community.

Naxals threat (Another side of Naxal Movement):
Khammam district is one of the district has major naxal threat. Khammam has Chattisghad state as one of its border which has major naxal threat. I had a good opinion about naxal movement because they are sacrificing their life to bring the social justice which many of the people are not getting these days also. But with my visit to these tribal areas I came to know some unknown facts about the current naxal movement. The naxals working against the tribal education and tribal development activities like construction of roads, bridges on small canals, which help the tribal to reach nearest towns.

For instance, Govt has started implementing the Ekopadhya scheme (Single teacher) in around 80 tribal villages which has spread across many hilly areas of Chintal and V.R.Puram mandals of Khammam district. Most of these villages don’t have proper communication channels like roads, bridges. Some villages don’t have power supply Tribal people still walk for 30 kms to reach near by town. Some times they have to cross small canals also. If there is flood to Godavari River, the communication channel is lost. Ekopadhya scheme is one of the prestigious and best schemes for tribal education development and naxals are threatening the school teachers to leave the places and tribal people to not to go schools. The main reason is if a tribal is educated it will be difficult to their movement. Many of the youngsters are used as couriers for the naxal movement. Most of the tribal villages are affected by Naxal and Police war. There are cases that many tribal people killed in the fight between naxal and police.

NGOs (Some unknown facts):
Another observation is there are many NGOs offering services to these tribes. But unfortunately most of them are not doing with the full fledged service mind. There is a long term business plans behind most of these NGOs. These NGOs are generally funded by many companies whose main motive is to turn the tribal to their side, so that in future they can expand their business plans with their support. Of course these companies are providing employment to the tribes but most of these companies main aim is to expand their roots and business in that area. There is no proper implementation employment rules have been imposed specifically for tribes. But there are few NGOs serving the tribes with pure service minded.

Seva Bharathi Organization
Seva bharathi is an organization which serves the various sectors of society with for a small cause. Ekam Sath Vipra Bahudha Vadhanthi. God is same and he is one. There are many names given to him. He is there in each particle of the whole universe. His soul is there is everybody. Serve the mankind which is serving god itself. The above one is told by our great Bharathiya Rushi Parampara and was practiced in our ancient society also. But changing of times, impacts of other cultures on us, impacts of various rulers like British; our society forgot the great things told by our Rushi Parampara.

After Independence we got the chance to rule our self and got the chance to administer the systems of the society. We made ourselves into divide and rule. Divided ourself into states, communities, regions, sub sects, categories, A, B, C, D, etc. But we forgot the greatness and beauty of loving each other. Not finding the common soul in other person. We always debate about system has to be changed, but forgetting the fact that we have to change ourself to be a good human first. Loving and caring the next person in the society who has the same soul.

Seva Bharathi is an organization which serves the society with love and making them realize the fact that everybody has the same soul. Seva bharathi serves the various weaker sections of the society, gives them education, health, self employment and more importantly moral values, love and affection towards the society. It acts as barrier between various sections of the society. Seva bharathi works towards binding people for a common national soul and ultimately wants to see Bharath (India) as Jagadhguru (Guru of the Universe, which it was once).

What ever I told about the organization is very limited. To know more information about Seva Bharathi, Mission, Wings and activities of Seva Bharathi, please visit the following URL http://www.sevabharathi.org/. Please take a look at it.

I feel really great to be part of Seva bharathi. There are no specific rules or conditions to be part of the organization, having good heart with small space for serving others is enough.

Finally
I am not imposing any of my ideas or ideology on you; I would like to share my real experiences about the sections of the society I have seen. I feel that we all have a common soul which makes us to feel love, affection to each other. I have seen the same soul in the people I met.

Sarve Jana Sukhino Bhavanthu