How likely is it that one is stopped by an armed police picket and an armed roaming patrol of Naxalites, all on the same day? I underwent this in August 2008, in the Visakhapatanam district of Andhra Pradesh, close to the border it shares with Odisha and Chhattisgarh.
I emerged not merely unscathed from this black swan event, but was escorted some distance with great courtesy by the groups otherwise implacably hostile to each other. Such was the groundswell of goodwill created by the developmental activities of Naandi, the voluntary organisation founded and sustained by K Anji Reddy, who passed away on March 15.
Dr Reddy led from the front the countless initiatives of his famed laboratory in discovering many effective, affordable, cures for numerous ailments of mankind. This he had claimed was his life's mission. He pioneered India's emergence as a major player in a field known for extreme competitiveness, with stringent quality parameters, not exactly an area in which India could claim a shining record.
But Dr Reddy's healing touch extended beyond physical maladies. By the late 1990s, he had earned unimpeachable renown internationally and the Dr Reddy's Laboratories (DRL) imprimatur commanded respect globally. Yet his own country suffered countless preventable deaths on account of such commonplace factors as unsafe drinking water and poor nutrition, especially among women and children. He set up Naandi (meaning "the beginning" in Sanskrit) in 1998 to address these concerns directly.
Naandi's approach from the beginning was to deal with the mission professionally and not treat it merely as a charitable handout. Its approach was to take on the challenge with determination through its qualified young staff paid reasonably well and provided adequate resources.
The Araku valley region of Visakhapatanam was among the first where Naandi teams were deployed. This sparsely populated tract with denuded hill slopes of the Eastern Ghats was home to tribals who had become steadily more impoverished over the last couple of hundred years, as recorded by the District Gazetteers. The state counted it among its more remote and interior Naxal-hit tribal areas. But special funds and programmes meant for the development remained either unused or did not reach the people for whom they were meant, more a rule than the exception in such cases.
The Naandi team realised that while safe water was a problem, a far greater one was adequacy of livelihood. What little the degraded slopes could produce was confined to the six or seven months when it rained. The rest of the year meant coasting on tiny surpluses, literally a struggle to keep starvation at bay. No employment was possible because of remoteness and absence of infrastructure. Foraging for and eating leaves and roots was common. Naandi, ever sensitive to ground reality, decided to focus on income generation.
The integrated tribal development programme had some years earlier distributed coffee plants for growing on the hill slopes. The trees took root, but with little technical support and none for marketing, the local population gained virtually nothing from the programme. A Canada-supported voluntary organisation tried to build on government support and even started a coffee-seed pulping facility locally. But all these efforts were in a moribund state by the time Naandi came in.
Naandi decided to revive the coffee project in 2001. It brought in technical experts for organic coffee cultivation. Organic was easy, almost a matter of necessity given the inaccessible terrain. It tied up with ITC for coffee seed purchase and took over the pulping station, with arrangements for further curing in Tamil Nadu. By 2004, the farmers were getting the unheard of price of Rs 90/kg of cured coffee seeds, up from about Rs 20/kg five years earlier.
Naandi then contacted Bonn-based Fairtrade Labelling Organisation (FLO), which had championed the cause of non-exploitative production of commodities with respect for human and natural resources. Its certification commanded hefty price premiums in Europe. FLO-tagged products accounted for billions of euros annually. FLO agreed to certify the Araku Valley coffee, which now belonged to a co-operative body of the growers.
I visited Araku Valley as an FLO consultant shortly after the first annual general meeting of the co-operative. More than 3,000 members of the total strength of 8,000 attended it (700 were expected), causing the first-ever traffic jam in the eponymous little town. I went all over the area without any prior notice, still suffering from an infrastructure deficit, on the back of a motor cycle driven by a young Naandi staffer. They were happy that a new pulping and curing facility owned by them (with a Dutch and Naandi grant) was getting ready near the old pulping station, which meant even better prices and some jobs. Even the remotest villages were spotlessly clean, with reasonable water supply arrangements. Local schools functioned because parents demanded that, and teenagers happily trekked 10 km or longer for higher schools. Above all, coffee paid well, with net cash incomes of up to Rs 150,000/ha. Some of those who recalled surviving on boiled leaves not too long ago now proudly displayed the gold they had bought.
I have written elsewhere that the Amul co-operatives were truly empowering organisations. I did not see them at their birth. But the Araku experience gave me a fair idea of what it must have been like in Kheda district in the 1950s. That is why both the state apparatus and those committed to its overthrow respected this remarkable experiment. It has since grown further, with 11,000 members now and expanded to include biodynamically sustainable activities such as horticulture.
I have dwelt above on one aspect of Naandi which I know best personally. Its other achievements in the field of providing nutritious midday meals to over a million children in four states through large modern central kitchens, safe and affordable drinking water and education for the girl child are equally remarkable and worthy of separate studies. The key to them was the quiet, behind-the-scenes leadership of Dr Reddy, who, without his name appearing anywhere, tried to help heal a society suffering from wounds of historical neglect and discrimination.
To my everlasting regret, I did not quite try hard enough to meet Dr Reddy. But I have no doubt whatsoever that the title of this tribute would have had his wholehearted approval as a most fitting epitaph for his distinguished life.
The writer taught at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and helped set up the Institute of Rural Management, Anand
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