Ralegan Siddhi – an alien country

“We need to be the change we wish to see in the world”

Mahatma Gandhi

Global revolutionary (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948)

I first heard Barack Obama’s rendition of the above quote from Mahatma Gandhi in the winning speech he gave at Chicago, Illinois, November 5 2008. Ever since this particular quote has stuck with me and as I am opening my vision beyond what’s immediately in front of me, the meaning of what Gandhi was trying to say is beginning to make sense.

 

Ralegan Siddhi is India’s first and only one of a handful of ideal sustainable villages (Adarsh Gaon) in India. What sparked my interest in Ralegan was the 35 years of work put in by Anna Hazare (social revolutionary) in transforming Ralegan from one of the poorest villages (1975) in India to one of the richest (1995). 

In the war of 1965, Anna was the lone survivor in the military bus he was driving. He couldn’t understand why he didn’t die with everyone else in the bus and even contemplated suicide as he couldn’t understand the purpose of life. He read a book by Swami Vivekananda “Call to the youth for nation building” which describes the purpose of life to be in the service of others. Ever since Anna’s life has been dedicated in the service of others. The amount of literature on Anna is limitless, but here are a few of my observations on Anna Hazare’s Ralegan Siddhi.

Shramdaan (Voluntary labor)

Yadavbaba temple

Anna realized very early on that in order to create a sustainable society where people are invested in their future, the citizens need to be involved in the developmental process. Leading by example he invested his pension money into renovating the broken down Yadavbaba temple, where he still sleeps at night. Once the temple was built the villagers started seeing hope and every project in the village in the last 35 years has been built using the villagers shramdaan. 

Labor is one of the biggest inputs in building infrastructure and shramdaan helps reduce project costs substantially. In fact over the last 35 years the villagers have created assets worth over Rs. 1 crore (approximately USD 200,000) with the help of shramdaan.

 

400,000 trees have been planted by school kids and these school kids clean up the entire village every day. The headmaster of the high school told me that the first thing the kids do when they get to school is clean the entire school and only then do they start studying. I couldn’t stop being amazed at how proud and happy the kids were in maintaining the cleanliness of the village. Here is a scene from the primary school at the back of Yadavbaba temple.

 

Boarding

Anna introduced a water storage and water management system and transformed the village from a agriculture deficit to a surplus village. With government funding Ralegan now runs a national watershed development training center, which provides training on water management and can house up to a 100 people a day. The program costs Rs. 500 per day (including meals, stay and the training) and runs for 15 days. Casual visitors are welcome to stay here for Rs.100 per day.

Vegetation

The difference in the level of vegetation outside and inside of Ralegan is striking. Credit goes to Anna for leading the way, in 1975 there was almost no farming to speak of and there were 40 liquor dens in the village – Ralegan supplied alcohol to the 5 neighboring villages. Anna realized that alcohol was also the only remaining source of livelihood for many and alcohol manufacturing would only stop if they are provided with an alternative. Using watershed planning he began building a sustainable future with the villagers help – he helped construct a very systematic and sophisticated network of wells, canals, check dams, contour trenching. Instead of building individual wells, he urged farmers to build cooperative wells to irrigate multiple farms thus achieving economies of scale and creating infrastructure that can be shared across farms. All these networks of water are connected through underground pipelines which run through the village and are powered by motors. He has created 200 acres of grassland exclusively for feeding cattle, as feeding cattle on farms makes the soil loose and reduces fertility.

Dairy farming

In 1975 when Anna moved to Ralegan the village barely produced 200 litres of milk a day and now the same village sells 2,250 litres of milk a day through a dairy cooperative called “Shri Sant Yadavbaba Dudh Utpadak Sahakari Sanstha”. The uniqueness of this cooperative is the efficient use of technology in delivering the right price and the right quality. The cooperative has a system which has assigned a unique code to each dairy farmer, an electronic weighing scale and a dedicated staff to test the fat content of the milk – the higher the fat content the higher is the price paid per litre of milk. No cash changes hands, the local bank maintains a saving account for each dairy farmer and every month the income earned is deposited into the bank. As you see here 4.7 is the volume of milk, 04.0% is the fat content and 014 is the code of the dairy farmer. This transformation in milk production was a result of Anna encouraging villagers to sell low-yield cattle and buy high-yield breeds of cows and buffaloes. The current breed has been improved through artificial insemination and the presence of a vet makes dairy farming a very lucrative alternative source of income.

A high school for children with a record of failure and anti-social behavior

Anna believes that anyone can educate students with a willingness to learn, but to see real change one must educate and reform children that no one wants to educate. With this in mind Sant Nilobaray Vidyala was started – a school built through voluntary labor and donations. The school puts extra emphasis on sports and additional tutoring is provided to struggling students. The pass rate of the school in standard 10 and high school exams is close to 100% and at the inter village sports competitions more than 50% of the awards are won by kids from Ralegan.

Value based approach to progress

Anna proposed a 5 principles based approach for a sustainable village.

1. Nashabandi (ban on addiction)
2. Nasbandi (sterilisation)
3. Kurhadbandi (ban on felling trees) 
4. Charaibandi (ban on grazing) and,
5. Shramdaan (voluntary labor)

Gandhi’s vision for self sustainable India was through development of villages, he believed if India has to progress it has to happen through its villages. Anna made this vision a possibility through transforming Ralegan Siddhi from extreme poverty to self sustaining economic freedom. The government of India has spent billions in rural development in the last 60 years through its many 5 year development programs, but the impact on the rural population is dismal. All the decisions about rural development are made from the central government – this top down decision making is a fatal error and leads to gross wastage of public resources and in many instances budgets are underused as the rural population isn’t even aware of the resources made available to them. Any decision about rural development needs to adopt a bottom up, need based analysis approach. A village in southern India doesn’t have the same problems as one in northern India, so how can rural budgets and plans be made centrally?

The obvious question is if Anna Hazare could change 1 village, what about the remaining 638,000 odd villages in India. According to Anna every village can become a model like Ralegan Siddhi and Hivre Bazaar, but there are 3 prerequisites:

1. A strong leadership
2. Strong moral character
3. Lots of sacrifice

It took Anna Hazare 20 years to transform Ralegan and any such change takes time and perseverance. Hopefully we can see some more leaders coming forward and taking the initiative to start their own gram revolution.