More power to the people

The other day, my 14-year old and I were discussing the issue of migration before his economics exam. "Why can't the government provide better work opportunities in villages to control migration?" he asked with the clarity of a young mind undimmed by reality's disappointments. "I can imagine how unfair it would seem to a young person from a village, if he were told not to seek work in Delhi and stagnate in his own village, just because it's already too crowded!" So I told him the story of Yogeshwar Kumar and his Namda project - a story so inspirational that I decided to share it here as well.

Kumar is an impassioned IIT alumnus-turned-power activist who's engineered many an impossibility into reality. Years ago, when he realised that many villages in far-flung areas were too far from the grid line to even hope to be electrified, he decided to do something about it. "I trained villagers to build, operate and maintain their own hydel power plants, harnessing the waterfalls and streams around them," said he. Suddenly, life in these villages became much brighter. Yet, over the years, Kumar noted that the young from these villages still sought to seek their fortunes in larger cities. "I realised that unless we could create some viable work opportunities for families in these villages, the trend of migration couldn't be reversed," said Kumar.

Noticing that many villagers in Uttaranchal had herds of sheep and that wool was a plentiful, locally available resource, Kumar built a wool-carding machine that ran on the power generated by villagers in Agunda, a remote village in the state. With the help of the ministry of textiles-run weaver's service centre in Panipat, he trained villagers to use this carded wool to make felt rugs (locally called Namdas) in 2008. Today, Kumar and his NGO Jansamarth, with funding from the United Nations Development Programme, the India Institute of Entrepreneurship and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, have conducted month-long workshops in six villages - Agunda, Medgaon, Genwali in Tehri district; Balkhila-Malari and Selwani-Mehergaon in Chamoli district and Bhatwari in Uttarkashi district.

I had the opportunity to speak to Guddi Devi, the sarpanch of Selwani, while the felt-training workshop was underway in her village. "Given that wool is easily available here," said she, "felting is a good work opportunity. It is light work, and offers great returns!" In some villages, trainees have already formed self-help groups and have started selling prayer mats to pilgrims en route to Badrinath. Since many had prior experience of working with wool, they found it easy-going. Devi felt if they found a good market for their Namdas, many youngsters could be persuaded to stay home, instead of migrating elsewhere.

Even as I was telling this story, I realised that just training people to make and sell one product, or enabling villagers to make their own hydro power stations for that matter, wouldn't completely address the big and complicated issue of migration. Yet, to me, these Namdas brought to life the Gandhian philosophy that the best products are those that are made by hand, using local raw materials and minimal resources. But most of all, the Namdas bore testimony to the fact that a single individual, if suitably motivated, may not be able to move mountains - but he can certainly give people in the mountains a small reason to not move.