When things work

Today I witnessed democracy...

I had a meeting scheduled with the Jhabua district director of the Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD) - the department in charge of anganwadi workers, the village health workers who are the government's first line of defense against malnutrition. We're working with DWCD in Jhabua to train all anganwadi workers, anganwadi helpers (who right now don't do anything more than cook, but who have enormous potential), and village leaders in various aspects of malnutrition identification, treatment, and prevention. We were supposed to meet to finalize the training schedule.

Just as I sat down for my meeting with Mr. Jaura, a man donning a dhoti and the longest ear-hair I've ever seen barged in and sat down right next to me with a sheet of paper. He said he came from a remote village outside of Meghnagar, where there was no anganwadi worker. He handed Mr. Jaura a handwritten list with the names of 310 children he counted in his village (there should be 1 anganwadi worker for roughly every 100 children) and also listed out the various ailments children had - diarrhea, malnutrition (who knows how he measured), fevers, etc. He demanded that DWCD place an anganwadi center in his village.

Mr. Jaura immediately ordered an inspection of the village and got his staff started on the neccessary paperwork to create an anganwadi center in this village.

I was happy to wait my turn sipping chai while this whole process went on. About 20 minutes and DWCD was on their way to increasing access to anganwadi health and education services to one more village.

Of course this was just the first step in a long process to establish a new anganwadi center. And given the fact that the list of anganwadi centers the government says it opperates does not actually match up to the ground reality - we'll wait until we see children sitting on the floor eating and learning until we call this episode a complete success, but this is a step in the right direction and proves that in order for things to work we need the dedication from people like my long-ear-haired friend.

The rural poor are afforded numerous benefits and services from the government, but unfortunately many people are not aware of these rights and therefore do not receive the benefits. The times I've seen the system work the best are times like this when rural people take it upon themselves to demand these services from the government.

I'm going to try to make it out to this village soon to see where this man is coming from and what prompted him to come to the DWCD with this request. Will update!