Interview of Nandlal Master by Sanjev and Anita - Jan 06
Part I
My name is Nandlal Master. I am called Master because I started work here teaching kids. After sometime even I made it my last name. Most people use their caste as their last name but I don't like using caste as last names. This is why my name is Master. Today more people know me as Master rather than Nandlal. I have been working here since 1994. This area that you are seeing is an area where Benarasi saris are made. 95% of the people here make Benarasi saris. Everybody here has a loom in their house. There are few people who own multiple looms while there are some poor people who cannot afford to have their own loom, who go to the dealers (mahajan) who have 50-100 manufacturing units. They work with the dealers for daily wages.
I was staying with my sister and studying there and then I returned here in 1994. There were some children from my own family who were not going to school and were working in making Benarasi saris. An interesting point is that the making of Benaras saris, even children are made to work. Children make the 'borders' of the Benaras saris. Another point of interest is that this work has been going on for generations and we believe that the whole family should work together in this. I saw that the children did not go to school. One day 3-4 children came to me and asked me to teach them something in the evenings. The children wanted to learn to write their names and wanted my help in this. Then I started teaching those 4 children and in a matter of 3-4 months, 70-80 children started coming to learn. I was happy that I could do something for the society. Then I developed this as a school. Since children were coming from other villages and there were already 70-80 children, I was finding it difficult to manage things alone and I had never ever planned on starting a school. I was completing my studies and working in the family sari business. When all these children suddenly turned up, how was I to close the school? Then I searched for some youth in the village and two to three of them came forward and said "We will help you with your work. This is good work." The school was being run in the night at around nine or ten and the children coming from other villages were finding it difficult. Then the people from those villages urged me to start a school in those villages. I felt that I was not in this for profit, so if some youth would come forward I would be glad to help. Then I searched for youth in the other village too, and they came forward volunteering to teach the children. This way the school was started in another village. In this manner we ended up opening schools in ten villages. We managed to do this without a paisa of outside support. The people of the village took care of the running of the school.
On the other hand the govt was spending crores of rupees on the name of child labor and brought many projects. There were no children in any of their projects. In fact one of the NGOs came to us and asked us to put their name in front of our schools and we will give you all the funds. But, I didn't feel that was right for us since we had been working independently all this time. We continued running these schools and now there are 10 centers that run here 2 in the day and 8 at night. There is also a vocational stitching unit for the girls.
We do our work under the name of Lok Samati. Lok Samati is not a registered body or NGO. You may remember in 1977 it was the first time in our history that we had an emergency. Jayprakash Narayan a great socialist leader had challenged the emergency and started the Junta Party. However, the issue of the people that the party came to power with was not answered and Jayprakash Narayan was disappointed. He felt that in the name of unemployment, corruption and inflation the governments had changed, but nothing had changed. There was some change in the policies, but not much. He then said that if we really want to strengthen democracy and weaken bureaucracy at the grassroots to be strong then we need to organize people. Each village should have a Lok Samiti which is not related to any religion, political party, but should be an independent group of youth which will focus on the issues of the people and will keep an eye on the work of local authorities. If there is any activity that is not in the best interest of the community then the youth should bring it forward and oppose it. Lok Samiti, is the foundation of the Gram Swaraj that Gandhiji spoke about and we do two kinds of activities – one is constructive and the other is struggles. Struggles are when you see something that is wrong and you work to stop it. The opposition should not be through violence, but through peaceful protest. If a person does not oppose something or does not protest against that which is wrong there can be no democracy or true freedom. A person should always express themselves. The second is that we don't just wait around for the government to do everything and if there is something we can contribute we should e.g. if there is a road that has not been made then we should make ourselves, if there is no school we should together educate our children. So on the one side there is struggles and the other is constructive through which we can improve our village.
Today there are two kinds of NGOs, some don't talk about struggles they only talk about constructive efforts and others work based on the kind of money they get as support, say 3 yrs of a health care project and that's it. We had a funny experience with an organization that offered to support us for our struggle and we were informed that we would do 4 protests in a year. Well we asked them what this protest should be for and how they can determine how many days a struggle will last. It's not like we can do a protest for one day, when we feel the need to rise against an issue we may need to protest 10 days at a row, in fact it is possible that the protest is indefinite. So this NGO works on constructive work but doesn't understand struggles. Then there is the second kind that are political parties, they talk a lot about struggles for getting into power, but don't really care about the issues that face people.
Lok Samiti is now present in 25 villages that form small youth groups in many villages. Similarly, there is a group of women. The groups meet once a month and discuss the issues of the villages as a group and decide what kind of programs can be done to improve these issues. Also we have a meeting here in the center of the active volunteers of all these groups so we get a view of the issues of the villages together and also talk about national and international issues. In this way we work in 25 villages. We work on 30-35 self help groups, on education and also on right to information, right to work and right to food campaigns we work with the people to resolve their issues. Issues can be as simple fights in the village that can be resolved in a Panchayat rather than dragging it in the courts and police, or family squabbles.
There are two big struggles at this time, the first is the right to information campaign and the campaign to protect our water. We are opposed to the Coca Cola plant that has come to our village and are demanding that it be shut down. There are a couple of reasons behind asking for it to be shut down. First, this is a local problem with the villagers being affected adversely by the company. Second, we believe this to be a national and international issue. Water is a basic requirement for humans to stay alive, it cannot be commodified. Today government godowns and shops are filled with foodgrains but a poor person who is hungry has no access to it. This is because he does not have a right to those foodgrains. Today, foodgrain has been commodified. If you have money, you can buy it, else you cannot. The same will happen to water if it gets commodified. You will see water in the market inside bottles. If you have money, you can drink water and if you don't, you wont have access to it.
Coca Cola says in its vision that our main goal is to provide water to the 6 billion people in the world. But why is Coke providing people with water? Not because people need it but because Coke wants to make profits.
On the other hand, in our village, people consider water to be a basic human right. They offer water even to their enemies because they know that whether they want to maintain friendship or enmity with you, they must first keep you alive. Today, it is such a shame that we are living in a democratic, independent India. Before this, it used to be a country of kings and emperors. However cruel a king was, he would do two things. First, he would build roads and there was never any tax collected on roads. Second, he would get community wells and ponds constructed. Why were wells constructed? Because the king knew that in order to rule over people and be king, people first have to be alive. This area used to be ruled by kings of Banaras and even today, you will find many old ponds and wells that were constructed by them. (Hence the name of the area, Raja Talab: Ponds of Kings) And it is such a shame that we are in an independent country trying to turn water into a commodity. This hasnt happened so far in India. Just as land has been commodified, tomorrow we will see Coke get a contract that it owns our groundwater. They will tell us that we cant use our own groundwater since they have a contract. They will extract water free of cost and sell it to us. If you have money, you drink water. If you don't, you don't get any water. So this is our struggle. Commodification of water is very dangerous. We don't want water to be sold for profit.
When we have a protest, coke tells us farming also uses ground water using a tubewell and you are not protesting against them and we also have the same tubewells so why do you appose us. They ask us that there is little difference between the two wells so what is the difference. The difference is that the farmer's borewells are from 3-5 hp, the company has a minimum of 25 hp machines. The next difference is that the farmer gets electricity only sometimes, say 3-5 hrs in a day and at times weeks without any electricity. But, the coke plant is not dependent on electricity and runs 24 hrs a day on generators. Third, when does a farmer draw out water? When he requires it for irrigation and for personal use. Coke doesn't do it for this, it wants to form a market and sell this water. The bigger the market the better it is, it doesn't care about the water it only cares about the profit.
Interview with Nandlal by Sanjeev and Anita