AIF Exposure Visit: Kutch's Migrant Population & Education

Last week, while recovering from a mutton biriyani induced illness, I flew to Ahmedabad, Gujarat, took an overnight bus to the city of Mundra in the district of Kutch, Gujarat and spent two days visiting the migrant communities a fellow AIF fellow, Diane, has been working with for the last 8 months. Working within the education sector with urban disadvantaged populations I have not been exposed to the rural scenario. It was hot, it was dry, it was sparse, it was dire and unlike anything I had seen before. The following attempts to highlight and explain some of my observations as I continue to process what we did, where we went, what we saw and all the questions that were raised.

AIF Exposure Visit

After Prev and I found our ‘honeymoon suite’ on the bus, I walked up to the front, called Diane and handed my phone to the driver’s assistant so she could tell him in Hindi where to drop us. Seven AC hours later we were awoken by the driver’s assistant and escorted off the bus. But not only were we escorted off the bus, we were escorted through the early morning dark cool desert directly to Diane’s doorstep. Apparently, Patel Travels and Diane are close, really close, next-door neighbors to be exact.

There was little rest for the weary. After a few minutes of shuffling around stuff and settling on a sleeping arrangement that would only last an hour, we crashed, woke up, showered, and ran out the door to catch the bus with peanut butter and nutella sandwiches in hand.

The next two days of buses, jeeps, walking, meeting people, trying to stay hydrated and trying to stay out of the sun was exhausting and while fascinating, was ultimately depressing and it left me asking lots of questions about the role of NGOs, development and education:

• What is the role of funders in projects? Is it purely monetary? What level of accountability should be required?
• How can marginalized migrant communities be brought into the network of public services such as primary education and primary health care?
• If governments can’t (or don’t) provide marginalized communities with basic services and NGOs also struggle, who will provide these services? What needs to be changed so the government or NGO sector can integrate these populations?
• Is something (minimal services) for a few better than nothing at everyone?
• What are the benchmark indicators for primary education? How many days does a teacher need to be at school to call it education? How many days does a student need to attend school to call it education? What resources need to be provided in a school to call it a center of learning? What skills do children need to acquire for primary education to really be an education?
• Are there sustainable models of education for migrant communities that have worked in other areas? What can be learned from those?
• Are NGOs and donors doing adequate research before implementing projects in particular communities? Do they know enough about the communities they are working with? How can those of us working in development improve the information gathering process to better serve the communities we work with?
  

The primary reason I wanted to visit Kutch was to see how education was (or was not) happening in these migrant communities. The government has schools in the villages, but these schools are not accessible by the migrant populations: saltpan workers, fishing villages, and the animal herders. Realizing this need, an NGO in Kutch works primarily to provide basic services for the migrant populations.

Day 1-Surveying the Salt Pans


After munching on our sandwiches and getting briefed by Diane on the almost 2 hour bus ride, we arrived in a town called Adipur. We met our jeep driver and their research assistants and headed off to the a nearby Salt Company’s saltpans outside of a village on the southern coast of Kutch.



The saltpans are expansive and sunglasses are required to stare out at the glaring bright white salt. Similar in size and shape to the endless square rice paddies of Japan, the saltpan squares disappear on the horizon. While most of the workers work at night to avoid the heat, the day landscape is also dotted with bright pinks and oranges, and the brilliant blues and greens of the saris of the day labors raking the salt under the hot sun.

The primary activity of the day was observing the research assistants administer a demographic survey, focused on the women of each household. The aim was to collect qualitative information about the saltpan workers, because not much is known about who they are, where they come from, or how they are living. Apparently, most of the workers are from Eastern Kutch, the Rajpur and Bachau blocks. They work 6 days a week, and make about 300 rupees. They get one day off, decided by the salt company, to go and buy necessary food provisions in the town nearby. Perhaps because the workers and their families come from various villages and areas in Kutch, or because the work demands that families live near their particular saltpans, there does not seem to be much of a community atmosphere among the workers.



Each family lives in a collection of burlap tents, their only protection from the sun and heat of the desert. Since most of the parents work at night, the kids sleep alone in the tents. Consequently, while the parents are sleeping during the day, the kids are alone to entertain themselves. While I was there, walking from house to house following the researchers, I saw lots of kids. Without access to much fresh water, they looked like they hadn’t bathed in a long time—matted salt filled hair. The few babies I saw had skin rashes of varying severity, in one extreme case flies coated the baby’s buttocks.



While we were driving around the saltpans with the research assistants, Diane pointed out the cement building designated as the school. It sat empty, and looked unused, no teacher or students in sight. Perhaps it is just summer vacation? However, while we were doing our research, one of the young girls came up to Diane and asked her “Where is my teacher? He hasn’t come in a long time.” It was a sad situation, and there was nothing to say to her. Diane’s earlier attendance tracking study indicated that the teacher had indeed not been at this particular school in quite awhile.


After the research team called it quits for the day we returned to the college, dropped off the assistants and sent the jeep driver home. We went to the local “College Canteen” and sat down for a much needed refreshment - ice cream and cool drinks. We reflected on the day and the dire situation of education and life in general in the saltpans.


Day 2-Finding the Fishing Village

After another delicious feast of peanut butter and nutella sandwiches on the bus, we were dropped off in a small village where our jeep picked us up and drove us to the Muslim fishing settlement on the coast. This settlement is drastically different from the saltpans. Most of the fisher families come from villages 10-50 km away, and commute on a regular basis. The fishing village is set up to replicate a real community, with several small shops, and burlap tent compounds encircled with wooden fences hugging the shoreline. Many of the compounds have animals presumably both used for transport and food. We also saw a solar panel, several motorcycles and even a car at one house. But even as we arrived, several families were packing up and leaving, apparently the fishing season had stopped being as productive as they had hoped.


As soon as we parked the jeep and got out, an old man, one of the elders of the village, approached Diane and proceeded to tell her all about how various NGOs had been coming to this village and the work they were doing there, or the work they had promised to do. In the end he said that the NGOs had disappointed the communities. That was evident when we went to visit the school and had a look at the dry water tank.

The school consisted of concrete block rooms with a corrugated tin roof. There were colorful paintings on the walls to teach kids about fruits, the Gujarati alphabet and body parts. But nobody had used the school in such a long time that there were bird droppings covering the floor causing a horrible smell and ants had already destroyed parts of the floor. Furniture was piled up in a corner, unused for sometime. Another concrete block floor base had been built but did not have walls. It looked like the villagers had constructed a makeshift room with burlap bag walls, but it had also been neglected.


We walked around the community and along the beach, which was eerily waterless. The tide was so far out we couldn’t see the water. This also meant that the boats just sat in the muddy sand, stranded until the next tide. On the way back to the jeep, we stopped by a water tank that had been built to help supply the community with fresh water. However, when we looked inside the tank was bone dry. Apparently it was assumed that the nearby village would be the fresh water source for this community and they would not allow it. So families continue to commute into town on a daily basis for water, or have a tanker come and deliver water to their homes.



After leaving the fishing village we headed to the main office of Yusuf Meherally Center (YMC), Diane’s NGO placement. While the office itself was quiet, nearby is one of YMC’s hostels for migrant workers children. The idea behind the hostel is to allow kids to stay in the community and attend the local government school. Considering the teacher attendance is problematic at the migrant worker schools, this seems to be a more viable option. However, it too has downsides. Many parents do not feel comfortable leaving their children with strangers, especially the girls. In addition, some families do not always migrate to/from the same village; they do not have a home base, so keeping kids in a hostel in one village is counter intuitive. This particular hostel had about 24 students both boys and girls, but is probably capable of housing double or triple that. The kids were in the middle of eating lunch when we arrived, but were happy to show us their living quarters and take a quick picture with us.



Before returning to Diane’s lovely little row house, we had the driver take us through the new Mundra port area. This port is quickly changing the landscape and economy of the region. And with increased levels of pollution in the water, the migrant fishing community may be forced to find a new livelihood in the near future.


Before boarding another overnight bus, we played with the neighbor boy, Samye, the son of the Patel Travels employee. On our way to the bus stand, we took a quick tour of the walled old city and stopped off at a little snack place for dinner. Eight AC hours later and we were back in Ahmedabad knocking on Natassia and Ekta’s door at 5am.

Thank you to Diane & Dean for being such wonderful hosts. I could not have asked for better exposure! Thanks also to university research grants, the skilled jeep driver, the College Canteen, Patel Travels, and Diane’s friendly neighbors, especially little Samye.