There’s Suman for Everyone
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“Ankit Ji, be careful there’s a monkey around campus that pulls people’s hair and slaps them,” Suman said, his eyebrows raised.
Note to self: Look out for monkeys.
One night I was in bed waiting to fall asleep when I noticed movement on the floor in the darkness near the footboard-end of my bed.
Is that a tail?
I manoeuvred into an upright position to get a better look. I saw a hood hovering about a foot above the ground.
“Aah!” my legs jerked faster than my brain could process Cobra.
Breathe.
I switched the light on and grabbed a broom from the opposite corner of the room.
“Shoo!” I shouted before reminding myself it’s not a dog.
After a few sideways movements, it slithered out from beneath the door.
Was it going to return after a stroll around the neighbourhood?
Have you ever heard your heart beating like We Will Rock You at 2x speed?
I spent most of the night mumbling lyrics; sleep and serpents don’t mix.
“A cobra entered my room!” I informed Suman the following morning.
“Ankit Ji, the campus has lots of snakes,” he shrugged.
Note to self: Kuchh logon ko maut se nahi, thappad se dar lagta hai.
Kachnaria Katzenjammer
Visuals of my visit to the night school at Kachnaria stayed with me longer than I’d have liked. In the following weeks, I learnt some of the reasons for what I’d observed. Fluoride in drinking water was why many of the adults had bent or twisted bones and why the children had discolouration of the teeth. Protein deficiency was the reason some of the children had reddish discolouration of the hair. I learnt many of the children are anemic due to iron deficiency. And that water-borne diseases and snake bites caused the majority of their siblings’ deaths.
Understanding the Problem
Pressing problems were all around, but I had to focus on my first task: Finding out why the current waste management model wasn’t keeping its target villages — Tilonia and Nallu — clean. We knew the current model needed debugging because waste continued to be dumped in corners of campuses or at the ends of streets. Dumping and open incineration continued to be the ways people dealt with their household waste. Cows and bulls often died or fell ill from consuming plastic on the street. Such misfortunes with cattle meant households suffered devastating losses of income.
Nallu was visibly doing much worse than Tilonia, so that’s where I started. I visited Nallu and met with Karthik bhaiyya, a senior SBI fellow whose work on the waste management project I would be taking forward.
My question: Why was the existing model failing to change the situation?
Three reasons stood out:
1) the people of Nallu, led by an influential local, didn’t seem to want a solution to their ubiquitous waste
2) people were not enthusiastic about learning to segregate and dispose of waste, even in Tilonia, where the need for waste management was well recognised
3) there was no mechanism in place to record and measure which areas were successfully segregating waste and how much waste areas produced in each category
I figured bridging these gaps in collaboration with locals of the two villages would go a long way in making the model cost-effective, sustainable, and replicable. I’ll be honest, at this point, it was a relief to have some direction.
You Bridge Some, You Dodge Some
I approached Gap #1 as something to be dodged rather than tackled. Note to self: Don’t try to solve a problem the locals don’t want solved. I decided to revisit Nallu only when its sarpanch expresses interest in implementing a solution. Or if he offers me chai. Until then, I’d focus on villages that acknowledged the need.
Gap #2 was more than just an aversion to change in behaviour — having to dispose of waste in compliance with a system. It was more about the messenger than the message; NGO fellows like me were new faces in town. People couldn’t be sure if I was here to help or I had only my interests in mind. They weren’t obliged to open the door when I came knocking. Armed with my sales pitch, I met more mandanas than people. Waste segregation and disposal needed a campaign, and my approach was bombing harder than Arthur Fleck.
Effecting a behaviour change often requires a give-and-take relationship. What did I have in return for their trust and attention? Pop culture references usually come to my rescue — wink-wink — but Joey’s charm had no jurisdiction here. I’d have to look for common ground.
And I had to find it on my own; Karthik bhaiyya had finished his term and was ready to head back home from Nallu. I met him a final time before his departure when a voice cried out.
“Eh Karthik bhaiyya! Aap idhar?”
A little boy came running out of a house towards us.
“Is bhaiyya se hum Tilonia-school mein mile the!”, he yelled facing his house as he continued towards us.
BINGO!
I got it. Instead of splitting the campaign resources between schools and households, I ought to focus on the schools. Households — as far as 10-kilometres away — had at least one child attending school at Tilonia. If I could get the school children to champion the cause, they would swing open for me virtually every door and mind in the 10-kilometre radius. Vouching for me in the context of their education was the bridge I needed. More importantly, the children would practice better waste management long after I — or any other fellow — was gone.
To achieve this, I had to be more interesting than their Maths, Science, and Hindi teachers. Easy! In my class, the children would get to close their books and step out of the classroom.
Approximately Six Goats and a Motorcycle
Suman, who leads Barefoot’s waste management team, quickly became my go-to person to understand life and logic in Tilonia.
“I enjoy life because of my family. My wife, three children, mother, father, cousin, and six goats,” he smiled with monk-like humility.
Wow, he considers even his goats a part of his family, I thought.
“Come stay with us sometime. I’ll make you fresh mutton curry.”
Oh.
With Suman as my sounding board, we put together the plan of action for campaigns at both of Tilonia’s schools. We would request the principals for three sessions a week with the children. In these sessions, we’d demonstrate the importance of better waste management, how waste is segregated and appropriately disposed of, and the tools employed. Most importantly, we’d have the children set up waste management equipment on their school campuses. They would take turns to operate, monitor, and maintain the system. Lastly, we’d ask them to identify suboptimal practices at home, correct the ones they can, and report back the others. Suman would conduct these workshops for future batches.
The school principals granted us weekly timeslots, and we got to work. A teacher at each school volunteered to translate my Hindi into Marwari for the children.
In parallel, we worked on procuring compost pits, brooms, dustbins, and community bins. My only option was to get the schools to fund the equipment; there was no funding to draw from Barefoot. But the most the schools could contribute was ₹10,000 — less than half our estimated costs.
I needed to resist the temptation of paying for some of the expenses myself because that would mean the model wasn’t scalable. How do I bring the costs down to ensure scalability?
We used vegetable oil cans and drums from the schools’ messes as dustbins and transportation units. Further, Barefoot’s workshop department pulled off compost pits for ₹2,300 — that would’ve otherwise cost ₹17,000. These pits were portable to nearby villages, and the workshop team could produce as many as needed. Workers elsewhere can be shown how to make them too.
The campaign was underway, and its budget was in order. The next step was to start addressing Gap #3 — measuring the success of the campaign, region by region.
It was great working with Suman; he was conscientious and delegated well. But I noticed something peculiar: sometimes, he spoke a lot less, his voice went feeble, and he avoided eye contact by looking downwards. He seemed alright at Barefoot and school. It was while interacting with people out in the village that something seemed off.
What’s In a Name?
“What’s your name?” “Where are you from?” “What do you do for a living?” — typical questions when making someone’s acquaintance.
But here in the village, the 3rd question went differently: “What caste do you belong to?”
Every time I met someone new in the village, they asked me this. I described how caste plays an ever-smaller role in life in the city, and I used it as an opportunity to understand the role caste plays in their society.
I learnt each village had a unique set of 4–6 castes, and these castes were the people’s surnames. So Sharma was an “upper caste” that served as pujaris, those surnamed Rajput, enjoyed prestige, and most often joined the army or the police force, and so on. One’s surname decided what they did for a living, where in the village they lived, whether they ate meat or not, whom they married, etc.
That’s when I understood two things about the waste management team: some belonged to “high castes” who often faced disapproval or anger from their community for working in waste management, and some belonged to “low castes” who lived a kind of double life; they were leaders at Barefoot but subjugated in the village.
A Deal for the Ages
I took up Suman’s invitation to stay at his home for a few days. I must say, few things compare to the hospitality and warmth of a kind family.
After an exquisite dinner, we began discussing the campaign’s progress when a plan of action occurred to me.
“Suman Ji, I’ll make you a deal. You help me learn basic Marwari so I can connect better with the school children. And I’ll teach you how to use Excel, send emails, record and analyse your team’s attendance, track revenue and expenses, and maintain documents.”
“Is it possible for me to learn all those things?”
“Of course. Can you teach me Marwari?”
“Yeah, that’s possible. But how will I learn so much?”
“Just say ‘Challenge accepted.’”
“Challenge accepted.”
I could imagine it: Gap #3 was going to be history soon, and Suman was going to lead the way.
Our deal went into action the very next morning. Starting with MS Excel, Suman met his challenge with attention and dedication.
Meanwhile, Suman helped me deliver workshops in Marwari. It wasn’t long before we took the school campaign to the next level.
Bad Doggies!
Our campaign was working. The schools started disposing of waste in a manner that made collection and treatment a lot easier. I wanted to see the happy faces in Suman’s waste collection team.
I saw none.
“What’s the matter?” I asked Ramlal, “Why do you look like nothing has changed for the better?”
Cold eyes met mine. Not a blink.
“As long as I am a waste collector, I will have no dignity,” he said slowly, every word cutting like a knife.
It took me a while to respond.
I joined Ramlal in collecting waste that day. I saw what he was talking about: Menstrual pads, tampons, condoms, needles, and syringes, lay scattered on the ground by the dozens.
“Dogs,” he said before I could ask, “They smell blood, topple the bins, and drag the waste out. The wind does the rest.”
Unbelievable.
“When this is my job, I– “ Emotions cut him short.
I didn’t speak much either.
Suman 2.0
Suman picked up new capabilities one after another. He was doing so well I added two more skills to his list: project planning and proposal writing.
Four months into his upskilling, Suman and his team were recording the waste produced — by region. The waste management warehouse was generating more revenue from scrap sales than it ever did.
Eight months in, it was clear the team had generated about 25x the revenue they did the previous year. Suman presented his work to Barefoot’s founder, Mr “Bunker” Roy, and requested additional responsibilities. Mr Bunker approved; Suman now draws double the salary.
My favourite part? I dare say he holds his head high more often when he’s out in the village.
The Temp
“That’s Gyana Kaki. She’s new to the team,” Suman said, “Well, not exactly new. It’s been a couple of months since she took her husband’s place in the team on a temporary basis.”
“But why is she crying?!”
“Her husband passed away three months ago. She’s been crying like this every day since. We don’t give her any work — she isn’t in a state to take up tasks.”
“Oh… How did her husband pass away?”
“It’s terrible… He was drunk. He got run over and decapitated by a train.”
_________
Part 3 — Woman of the House
