Stories of change

Start With a Person.

Written from DEHAT’s own case records. Adults are named where the record names them; children carry changed names. Choose someone and read their life through.

Sixteen girls Cycling Home from School They were riding home from school when they heard a child crying inside a stranger’s truck. Not one of them was older than fifteen. The Child Parliament A Village Primary School There was no cricket bat, no ball, nothing. It is the kind of absence adults stop seeing. The children did not. Arun Information Minister, aged twelve A twelve-year-old was sent to work in a market town. The person who noticed was another twelve-year-old. Shiv Elected Prime Minister, aged eleven Eleven years old, freshly elected, and unable to open a meeting. Six months later he was running them. Rubi Learner, and Her Teacher A teacher walked past her house every morning. One day her mother called her in. Rina Child Parliament Member What changed her family’s mind was not an argument. It was seeing what she and the other children had already done. Kiran Learner, aged thirteen Thirteen years old, out of school, back in a classroom, and silent in it. Her teacher did not push. Fifty educators Girl Child Rights Workers, Jamunaha A girl will tell you her marriage is being discussed. She will not tell a stranger. The parents’ committees Balika Shiksha Adhikar Samitis The failure is the reason the method changed. This is the story DEHAT does not leave out. Sixty-seven villages Swadhyaya Learning Centres For a child who has already left school, the classroom is not the hard part. Walking back into it is. Jagdispur School Management Committee That almost never happens. It happened because the committee that was supposed to run the school started running it. Twenty girls Forest Villages to Bahraich City The cliff is not literacy. It is the year a girl turns fourteen and the nearest school gets too far away. Twelve teachers Government Primary Schools No new building, no new budget. The floor, the walls and the corridor were already there. The protection booth Dargah Mela, Bahraich A tent, a table and a number everybody had been told. That is the whole of the intervention. The border forum India and Nepal, Working Together Children do not go missing in the gaps between villages. They go missing in the gaps between institutions. Seventy-two women A Self-help Group, and a Ration Shop They had come together to save money. They stayed together to make a public service answerable. Eight forest committees Vangram Azadi Sangharsh Samitis The Forest Rights Act created a route. Using it meant reading a statute, forming a committee and assembling documents nobody had. Five Gram Panchayats Residents Using the Right to Information The Right to Information is usually described as a democratic principle. In five Panchayats it was a way to get the land you were allotted. One hundred and forty-seven ASHAs Accredited Social Health Activists An ASHA is the last mile of the public health system. Her working conditions are a health issue, not an HR one. Ten villages Committees and Child Parliaments Child protection near a border cannot run on vigilance. It needs a forum, a register and a known route out to the authorities. Five thousand workers Ten Gram Panchayats, One Gate When the State Farms Corporation moved to shut the fifth, the women’s forum built an alliance and spent six weeks arguing for it. Dwarika Prasad Day Labourer, Then Farmer Four thousand square feet, farmed by traditional methods, and fifty rupees a day when work could be found. Geeta Devi Karikot Maiya Aajeevika Adhikar Sangathan Not a bigger harvest. Two harvests, on different clocks, from land most people would call too small to plan with. Radheshyam Ganga Aajeevika Adhikar Sangathan For a smallholder, an experiment that fails is not a data point. It is a season. So he made the experiment small.

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