I am a 22-year young man from Mohd. Hussain Palli village in Khilla Ghanapuram, Mahbubnagar District of Andhra Pradesh in India. At the outset, let me tell you a little bit about my self and my village. Our village is a medium sized village with about 1500 people. Most of us in the village live on agriculture and allied activities. My father is one of the opinion leaders in the village, a position he acquired from his father and elder brother. He is also a large farmer and that too was a factor in the game of things. If things were congenial I would become one in due course, as I think I have the right qualities like desire to solve problems, willing to talk and spend time with people. Organising village level events including festivals and other melas is a routine for me.
But, now, there are hardly any opinions sought by others in the village as our primary occupation is slowly and steadily withering away due to recurrent drought that had been changing the face of our lives only for the worst year after year. My father says that the house was full of paddy bags and spending some thousands was least worrisome during the time we were not taken by the drought. He performed two of my sister’s marriages when days were good, but had to halt the other two sisters marriages due to the changed situations.
Nearly 800 acres of land is under cultivation in our village and most of us grow Paddy (Rice) largely and Jowar in small patches of land. Two three decades ago only coarse grains and oilseeds were being cultivated in our village, as our elders knew they were best suited for our lands and they also knew there was limited water. The then government introduced rice cropping in our region with rigorous training from farmers who came from the coast of Andhra Pradesh. I keep wondering what a disastrous step that was, and where was the comparison between the coast that had plenty of water, and our region that had limited water tables. All of our elders took to rice cultivation, because government had a policy of providing minimum support price for buying paddy, thereby reducing risk, the other crops we grew didn’t have any such perks. Meanwhile, several research organizations came into the fold with new varieties of paddy that were capable of giving higher yields. All of us welcomed this change and shifted to these varieties, little realizing the high investment requirement that would be involved year after year for buying the seed. Meanwhile the lake that served as an irrigation resource for nearly 800 acres in our region also dried up, because of constructing government buildings, blocking scope for any rainwater to seep in the earth, blocked off the wet bit. Our problems started one after the other, like input use leading to pests and the quality of our rice started to go down. Today there is widespread poverty in our village. Nearly 10 to 12 families migrate to different parts of country and sometimes outside countries too every year. Unfortunately, it leads to breaking of the families as children are often left behind with grandparents. Some times some of my friends and cousins come back as if to die suddenly of some unknown disease. The reasons are hushed up and we think it might be something to do with HIV Aids.
Drought had taken away any divisions from our social fabric, but in an ironic way, no one is rich anymore, and even large farmers like my father struggle to maintain the family. The plight of big and small farmers is the same except that people like us who saw the hay once couldn’t even seek daily wage as a means of income generation, as we were the bread providers for several others just a while ago. It is like we lost our face and pride.
Some good things happened too in my life:
Did I depress you by giving you a bit of our story? May be, but you should also know we are very spirited people. We celebrate Moharrum with such pomp and our night long celebrations are to be seen to be known and felt. All our village girls who left the village after marriage come back to the village to visit the Maszid and offer prayers. We have a bonfire and we play around it all night, surely one or two people walk on the fire at dawn. I love our village, and sometimes think no other place will be so perfect to live like our village. The smell of our earth mesmerizes me, and I want to stay in this village all my life, that surely will make my parents happy, as they don’t see themselves moving out of the village in their lifetime. But, it is not just this much, I have some dreams to chase too.
· I want to become a technical man who can use technology creatively and effectively, and I want to be the best in my work
· I want to learn and know truth beyond what appears for the common eye to help people improve lives, and
· I want to earn money for a happy and comfortable living.
You may wonder how I acquired such grandeur dreams. I don’t want to say it was in my destiny, because in my life and experience I had seen that there are reasons, and that when blind faith is challenged one can learn so much and these Learnings are life changing. I was told this is called scientific thinking for seeking truth.
Now let me tell you a little bit about what happened to me since four years. When I was 18 years, I was busy helping my father with our farm work. During this period, a project called “Computers on Wheels” (COW) came to our village. The person who was riding the COW as it was called, needed to be given food every day at our home, as a part of the agreement we had with the people who brought the project to our village. Our villagers in the meeting said that “we will provide fodder, shelter and milk the COW” jokingly. Being the opinion leader of the village it automatically fell on us, now you will see being an opinion leader is not fun, it involves responsibility. This person on the COW started to give us information services, on health, agriculture, animal husbandry, education etc., we were paying him a nominal amount to use the services.
During the first week of this person visit to our village, he left his laptop on my fathers’ bed and sat on the floor to eat food. He was a kind man and allowed me to touch the laptop computer and even asked me to type “a,b,c” on the laptop. I started to do it as I did my basic schooling till the 8th class. (By the way, I recently completed my graduation from Open University and am also pursuing some software programming courses). I had to stop at 8th class due to our family conditions. To my surprise I didn’t find the letter “m” in the computer. I searched and searched but still didn’t find it. The COW rider after lunch got up and shown me the letter “m”, which was hidden in the last row of the alphabets, by then I realised that the sequence of the letters was different in the laptop. That was my first stint with technology. Gradually, I started to use, digital camera (both still and video), a laptop computer, solar panels and electrical fittings that connected the panel to the inverter etc., I became an information provider for COW project and roam between seven villages in our region regularly giving information services. In a simple but interesting way I learned the lesson of cause and effect and started to even see the same principles in the way use of information was doing to the lives of people. Some people would use the right information and get bettered like improve health, or save a goat, and some of them would blame it on evil eyes, or bad luck. But, I had learnt my very valuable lesson, that action follows result and the accurate and right the action the better the chances of a good result. I started to enjoy learning and now I feel the best thing that can happen to me is develop a purpose to learn. Over the past few years my thinking led to setting goals and those three goals you read just now are what I had finally arrived at.
My idea “Project Movie Man”.
I have a video camera and power for it comes from a solar mat that I roll and carry with me wherever I go. I have a laptop computer that has some of the best audio, video and edit software. I edit my images with this software. I have to still learn how to edit my movies. All the software I use is free and I know how to use it well. I can even fix small problems. I had been engaged in covering events in people's lives as a part of my job for three years now. I take videos of family functions in my villages. Every time there is birth in a family they remember me, if someone is getting married I will be invited. One season in a period of 40 days I covered 21 marriages. When I show the marriage video in the laptop to the family, there is roaring laughter and happiness around. They relive those times and enjoy. I had seen in my experience that people like to see, because many of them cannot read. Actually, because most of our elders were not literate in the formal sense, their lives were guided by stories, proverbs and sayings that were in simple colloquial language. The power stories have on our lives is enormous. For every situation there is story, and we tend to get our lessons from the story. The problem is things have changed in our environment, both physical and social, and we don't have stories to compliment to these changes. We need new stories now, those that are relevant to the changed situations. Because most of the World Wide Web is in English and is in written word, it is not perfect for our situation. I read things, and interpret them for our people’s benefit to the best of my abilities, but still it is not the same, as they don't have a direct experience of the knowledge. But, when I see them roaring with the marriage video's I think knowledge should be in movies, and not in written word, so that they are engaged in the actuality. Otherwise we are divided as those who can read and those who cannot.
My experience with the project COW led me to realize that so many new things are happening in the world on improving agriculture. I believe by releasing black ants into jowar fields at the time of pest infestation, we can actually arrest pest. I want to visit these places where they are combining new with old and traditional wisdom, browse the web and combine things so as to bring those stories to our village and show to my people, on a big screen. I can also talk to them on what my camera might not capture, the knowledge, I gather as an individual. I want to have a database on agriculture in years to come. When the government, organizations or people want a movie on agriculture they should think of me, I should be the best in my field whether it is the skill, technique or content. I am sure some of my fellow villagers, and may be my father and me too will pick up some good lessons that will improve agricultural conditions in our village. I want to cover 21 villages I am familiar with, I know a lot of people in these villages, and I am sure they will invite me with enthusiasm. They do feel excited every time they see me with technology gadgets. We are people of the earth, and listening and talking comes naturally to us, even numbers come naturally to us, though not the math of the modern world. Our people are smart to pick up from experiences and sieve them through a filter of our special circumstances to put good things to use. I had seen that people had arrested communicable diseases in goats and improved their health with the right information and advice. So why can’t I use a technique of visual literacy to improve agriculture in our region. Let me tell you Internet is good for sending information, but when I want to put it to use in a more profound way, I think story telling is the best technique. Our grandparents always told us stories. I too want to tell stories, stories of truth, of hope, of possibilities and finally of LIFE.
Epilogue:
This first hand story of Panduga Bhupal Reddy is captured by me, not in one session but over four years, as his own conviction had come to maturity to define his life goals. Bhupal stated the three goals for his life very clearly on the noon of 23rd September,2007 to Riyazuddin, (my collogue in this work) and me. Now, that his life goals are stated, his new journey for himself has to start, departing from being a mere information provider for the project "Computers on Wheels" (COW). In my limited capacity I had given an outline to his ideas and opinions, which are his own and rightfully, though I had added elements to make the story more readable. Some minor technical parts of the story, like a solar mat, software solutions are added to the story based on what is possible technically though they are currently not in place.
Pingali Rajeswari,
September, 2007
