If you fancy yourself in rural uplift, try a dose of this

After finishing her postgraduation in social work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Tiss), Arundathi Vishwanath has chosen Ojhapura village of this district to study further.

She has a daunting task, to encounter poverty at Ramdas Dhruve’s house, where she has to live for a month. After that, she has to come up with a new strategy for tribal people to combat poverty.

A number of graduates from various management institutes, including the upper-crust IIMs, and more down-to-earth cousins such as the Institute of Rural Management, Anand, are now being asked, as part of their course, to do this. That is, live with the family, eat what they eat, in their mud house. Arundathi said she also washed her clothes at the local river with other women.

The task is part of the ‘Development Apprenticeship’ she is doing at the Pradan (Professional Assistance for Developmental Action) institute at Kesla, near here. The apprentices at Pradan give shape to their concepts on poverty eradication only after having lived some of it.

For a girl from an upper-middle class family of Bangalore, it might have been tough to take the decision, but Arundathi was determined. “It was largely my decision to join Pradan, but my parents supported me a lot,” she said

Pradan has now reached an advanced stage of talks with Gottingen University of Germany, which has given as many as 42 Nobel laureates to the world, to launch a post-graduate diploma course in Development Study at its Sukhtawa (Hoshangabad) campus. Suktawa is a village where Ramon Magsaysay winner Deep Joshi has successfully shared his concepts with the poor tribal people, who now have some respectable livelihood options.

“We are in talks with the Gottingen University and hope we will be able to launch our diploma programmes. They (University) want us to have a tie-up with some Indian university that offers or recognises similar courses in India. We hope the Indian government will soon give permission to universities to recognise courses in developmental studies,” said Aneesh, a senior executive in Pradan.

Under the one-year programme at Pradan, a student has to experience poverty at some poor person’s house and come up with an idea to combat poverty. He makes a presentation before the family, village and the institute. Then, the student is asked to implement it among the poor.

“Only after successful completion is he allowed to join Pradan or any other social organization of his choice,” says Aneesh. A student can come up with brilliant ideas in his research work or the master’s course or write thousands of pages against poverty. But, to have a close look at, and understanding of, poverty is something different.

Pradan started its DAship in 1992-93 and a number of students are either now part of Pradan or working against poverty somewhere else. But the low-cost, plain campus in the Satpura range of forests offers a real, if rare, chance to experience and work for less-privileged people. It needs some energy and will to avail of it You are unlikely to be just an armchair theorist on the subject any more.