Child Nourishment ProjectA Project of Aasra Sewa Santhan

Mankaiya, Mirjamurad, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India

Ajay Patel, Asha for EducationAnkit Shah, University of Pennsylvania

August 2010

The Mushahar Community in the Sevapuri Block of Varanasi

In Sevapuri, as in many blocks within rural India, there is a large divide between the

middle and lower castes. Contrary to international belief, the caste system still presides

very strongly in these communities, and consequently, being characterized as lower caste

or, even worse, untouchable, does nothing but bring about difficulties in one’s life –

economically, politically, socially, and emotionally.

In rural Varanasi, there is no community that is more subject to the detriments of

the caste system than the Mushahar community. This is a community that is

underprivileged in every sense of the word. The children wake at 5:00am daily for the slim

chance that they receive breakfast by begging for food in nearby cities, for which they have

to walk several kilometers with little certainty of sustenance. These same children often

“bathe” in the same water in which pigs cool off, garbage is thrown, dishes and clothes are

washed, and other pollutants are washed away. Consequently, the children are never

exposed to sanitary conditions. After the morning and early afternoon spent begging, all of

the children – no matter how young – join their parents in manual labor, including

Mushahar Children on their way to beg for food at 5:30am

collection of leaves, used for disposable dish production, picking of garbage and plastics,

and other tasks that yield them 100 Rs-/ a day if they are lucky. It is usually less.

The homes the Mushahar community people live in are temporary, at best. Their

foundations are built on dried mud while the roofs are assembled with bunches of hay.

During rainstorms, they leak and the houses fall apart, only to restart the 15 day process of

rebuilding. It goes without saying that their food supply is cut short due to financial

impediments and, often, their water supply is subpar.

Due to widespread corruption in the Indian government, little public work is done

for communities like this. The Mushahar community is broken. Throughout the years, they

divided geographically, and consequently, they have no unified body. Without it, they have

little voice in Indian politics. Politicians here only listen to groups that have large political

say – that is to say, groups that can affect election results if they work together – but the

Mushahar is split and thus works ineffectively in politics.

The Mushahar community in the Chitrasenpur village in Sevapuri, Varanasi, Uttar

Pradesh (U.P.) is one that only received the land they live on because the Gram Pradhan

(the political head of the village) bribed them with it as long as they keep their mouths shut

regarding his corruption and take no action against him. With little other option, they

accepted the land and make do with what they have – that is to say, mudhuts and a swamp

A common Mushahar home, with a family sorting through leaves to create dishes from

to bathe in with pigs, no water pumps within a 0.5km radius and no water wells. This is just

one of the many examples of the effects of political corruption on lower communities like

the Mushahar.

Within society, other village

people frown upon the Mushahars –

even by those who are below the

poverty line. They are subject to the

worst treatment in every institution.

This is exemplified by their treatment in

the public education system – what they

need the most if they are ever to be

uplifted. Mushahar children are

discouraged from going to school and

most eventually stop going as a result of

their treatment. Teachers make it a

point to neglect the children, not only

excluding them from lessons, but

directly telling them not to come back, that no one wants them there, and that they are

untouchable and must be kept separate from the other children. By law, the children have

every right to be there; nonetheless, this is the treatment they get there, and this was

confirmed time and time again throughout surveys of Mushahar children.

On more than one occasion, children shared

stories of being beat for no reason by their instructors.

Also common were stories of asking to use the bathroom

facilities and not only being refused, but the children

were ordered to urinate or defecate on the floor of the

classroom, and if they didn’t, they would be beat further

until ordered to sit down in discomfort. It is clear that

society either chooses to ignore their condition or

purposefully push them further down.

Manoj, an 8 year old Mushahar boy, chewing tobacco – a habit he picked up from his father at the age of 4

Pooja, a Mushahar girl, who still pushes to go to primary school

despite being beaten and ordered to defecate on the floor

This undoubtedly shoots the spirits of the Mushahar community down.

Conversations with them revealed a lack of hope of ever moving forward, ever having

enough food to feed themselves, ever being economically sustainable, ever being accepted

within society, or ever simply having something worthwhile to live for. Older members of

society who have experienced these misfortunes their entire lives actually laughed in the

face of a proposal for change and improvement, but Training for Independence aims to

prove their doubts wrong.

The Target Age Group

Training for Independence aims, in its first year, to nip the problem in the bud.

Accepting approximately 20 – 30 Mushahar children from ages 5 to 10 with no education

and a less-than-ideal health status – ranging from edema-afflicted to anemic to simply

malnourished children – the program will pave a new path of life for these children through

the routes of academic, vocational, and values education, proper health and diet, sanitation,

and overall living atmosphere. In selecting these younger children, we have the

opportunity to still mold their perspectives, the way they choose to live their lives, and

their educations.

The Program

In conjunction with Aasra Sewa Santhan, Training for Independence will be set in

Mankaiya, Mirjamurad in the Sevapuri block of Varanasi, U.P. Here, there has been a

nonformal education (NFE) center that has worked to educate about 50 – 100 children

from January to December 2009. The nonformal education center was closed after that, as

all the students were transferred to government primary schools; however, all the teachers

who taught there – who are all professionally trained in standard government school

subjects – are still actively engaged with Aasra Sewa Santhan. A center with several

classrooms and a small library is already constructed, and Asha covers eight teachers’

honorariums. Being that there is currently an opening for students at the NFE center, Ajay

Patel, the head of the Aasra project, has agreed to allocate the teachers’ expertise to

providing education to all children in Training for Independence. Being that, for the most

part, these children have no education, they will all be taught at the level of first standard.

They will be put in these educational facilities for six days a week, with a recess on the

seventh day.

The Mushahar children for the program will be coming from Jogapur and Mankaiya.

Those from Jogapur will have arranged transportation every morning that will pick them

up at 6:40am and bring them to the village by 7:00am. The children will be taught proper

cleaning methods and will begin each day with a 30-minute yoga session with one of

Mankaiya’s teachers, Ashok Kumar. They will then be taught bathing methods using soaps

and shampoos provided by the program at the water pumps.

They will follow that with a balanced breakfast of grains, dairy and fruit, provided

by the program. They will attend their first session of school, and have a balanced lunch of

breads, rice, vegetables, and lentils and have playtime near the educational center followed

by the end of their schoolday. Every day, sciences, mathematics, English, and/or Hindi will

be covered. After the four hour session of school is over around 1:00pm, the students will

stay on the grounds of Mankaiya village with each other, the teachers and Ajay Patel, who

will be administering the program from Mankaiya, as he is a local in the area with

experience in running educational programs. They will take a break and eat lunch.

Every other week, the children will follow their school and lunch with community

service. This can entail anything from cleaning up the village and setting up a sanitation

system, preparing food with local families, pumping water for the elderly, giving the

animals baths, helping the elderly with anything they may need, producing hand fans for

the villagers, or anything else, really. In the late afternoon, after a few hours of community

service, they would return home for dinner with their families via the same mode of

transportation by which they came in the morning.

The weeks during which the students are not doing community service, they would

go through vocational training. This would entail the students being separated into groups

of 3 or 4 and working with local merchants – drink shop owners, medicine shops, artificial

jewelry producers, teachers, social workers, the chai wala, etc. – to learn the tricks of their

trade, how they get by, and how business is conducted. This would entail regular

communication with these merchants to ensure that they agree to work with the Mushahar

children.

The children’s incentive to come to this program would be rewards at the end of the

week and, occasionally, the end of the month or two months. Depending on the children’s

attendance, they will receive rewards, which could range from ice cream and Frooti drinks

to cricket bats, badminton equipment, setting up a badminton court for them in their

village, to taking them on a tour of Varanasi City or a nearby area while funding their

travels and expenses through the program. There are multiple purposes to this. Firstly, it

will keep the children entertained and excited about the program. Second, it will give the

kids increased exposure to the world in 2010. Living in poverty in the village keeps them

away from the public eye, but it also keeps their eyes away from the public. Because of this,

they are very unaware of what’s going on and how the world functions in 2010. If they

grew more aware of this, it is possible that they could modernize their lifestyle and escape

some of the older habits that have held them back from progress in society.

Every two months, we will have a doctor come in and run a full checkup of each of

the participants of the program to keep us and our supporters posted on the health status

of the children. Reports will also be created bimonthly to keep the supporters updated on

the student’s educational progress – what they have learned and where in the curriculum

they are for all subjects will be noted. Letters from several select students will be included

in these updates as well to share their perspective on the program and what they have

been doing as of late. This will serve to create a warm, personal relationship between the

supporters of the program and the students.

Any serious nutritional deficiencies or disorders present within the students will be

taken care of immediately with the funds of the program. At times, this may lead to

emergency funds being withdrawn for treatment, but these serious ailments are top

priority before anything else.

In Mankaiya, a healthy atmosphere is present. The games the children play are

healthy ones – cricket, marbles, various ball games, and local village games. There is no

gambling, smoking, or drinking in the vicinity of where the children will be spending their

days, and this is key to fostering healthy growth. The program will also, through Ajay Patel

and the teachers, point the children in the direction of forward growth. That is, specifically,

employment in skilled labor in businesses and other practices that require expertise and

continued education. This is why the students will stay in the village every single day of the

year, including days off from school.

In the pilot year, the program will be in trial mode. If the children are positively

receptive to the program and show health improvements as a result of the balanced diet,

multivitamin supplements, and medicines, it will be expanded to more than just these 20-

30 children and we will be able to provide continued education until the children are in a

place where they might be able to sustain their own lives with their own local businesses or

something of the like.

Our goal with this program is to clean up the reputation of Mushahar community

people and take them to a new platform where they are not immediately judged and

dismissed by their status. The children, after being cleaned up, nourished and educated,

will be in an ideal position to be welcomed into mainstream society and uplift their families

from their current positions.

We firmly believe that in order for change to be effected, it must begin with the

children. Adolescents and adults are older and significantly more set in their ways and

unreceptive to programs like this, but if we can suppress the problems encountering the

people of the Mushahar community from a young age, these children’s entire lives can be

changed.