THE narrow road out of Tilonia is so full of potholes that Bhanwar Jat prefers to drive our jeep on the desert earth beside it whenever he can. If you didn鈥檛 know who he was, you鈥檇 think this quiet, scruffily handsome man with the gold flower ear stud was 鈥渏ust鈥� the driver. Earlier that morning, as I sat cross-legged on the floor, Jat had silently served tea. But a stay in Tilonia鈥檚 30-year-old Barefoot College soon teaches you not to judge by appearances.
An illiterate farmer, Jat and a team of other 鈥渂arefoot鈥� architects designed and built the new campus using traditional materials, techniques and local labour, yet with no formal plans. Entirely solar-powered and with hundreds of structures to harvest rainwater, the building earned last year鈥檚 Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
Tilonia is a large village down a dirt track off the Delhi to Ahmadabad trunk road, west of Jaipur. Sandwiched between a railway line and a barren red hill, this is where, back in 1972, a handful of university graduates from all over India decided to set up the Barefoot College鈥攎ore properly called the Social Work Research Centre (SWRC). Their goal was to improve the lot of the poorest of rural poor, while themselves living with the bare minimum, following the example of Mahatma Gandhi. Today, even the most illustrious visitors must help themselves to the simple, vegetarian dinner and sit cross-legged on a thin carpet in the communal dining room, washing their plates afterwards. In class-ridden India these conditions can be humbling鈥攊f not humiliating鈥攆or those who take their power or paper qualifications too seriously.
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This is no ordinary college. There are no classrooms or lecture theatres. It is impossible to tell teachers from students, and 鈥渆xperts鈥� are anathema. As the training is entirely practical, it takes place either in small workshops, offices or outdoors. Today, the college鈥檚 200 full-time and 287 part-time staff are nearly all local people. There are barefoot solar engineers, pathologists, teachers, midwives, architects, mechanics, accountants and computer data processors. Most have just a few years primary education, or secondary schooling at best. No one is paid less than the national minimum wage of 60 rupees a day (about 85 pence) or more than 90 rupees a day, including the college鈥檚 founder and director, Sanjit 鈥淏unker鈥� Roy. But most of SWRC鈥檚 activities take place in the 100 or so surrounding villages, in the shape of night schools for goatherds, water committees, women鈥檚 groups and specific projects involving education, hygiene, rainwater harvesting and solar energy鈥攚hatever the villagers need.
As we drive from one dusty village to another, my uninitiated eyes cannot, at first, see the fruits of the college鈥檚 efforts. Brightly clothed women still wield pickaxes, doing hard manual labour, other women and girls carry 20 litres or more of water on their heads from distant wells. But the men perch like birds by the roadside, drinking spiced tea and playing cards. Ingrained in the fabric of every village are near-feudal conditions of bonded labour, illiteracy, untouchability and exclusion, with women at the bottom of every list. Added to this are the effects of poor hygiene and the seasonal migration of the landless in search of work. But, as my barefoot guides slowly reveal, the changes triggered by SWRC are there鈥攁nd they are profound.
After an hour鈥檚 spine-jolting drive with Jat, we arrive at the village of Panwa, about 100 kilometres west of Jaipur. The road curves round by the village nadi, a large pond dug to collect rainwater鈥攁 tradition over a thousand years old. The level is low, as only 10 centimetres of rain fell in last year鈥檚 monsoon. A stone鈥檚 throw from the pond is the village well, with raised mud rings sculpted on its rim, where, as all over rural Rajasthan, women set down their round-bottomed urns before filling them. At least, they used to. A bank of blue solar-energy panels now stands next to the well, alongside a towering concrete water tank. Installed by villagers in 1995, under Jat鈥檚 supervision, the panels pump underground water into the tank during the hours of sunlight. For an hour in the morning and evening nearly 60 houses have piped drinking water, direct to their courtyards.
But this project, still the only one in Rajasthan, isn鈥檛 just using modern technology to relieve the drudgery of carrying water. The solar panels have also short-circuited one of the more pernicious effects of India鈥檚 caste system. The well belongs to the better-off, higher-caste community. Until the pipeline was installed, a 鈥渟cheduled鈥�, or low-caste, woman could not take water from the well. Instead, she had to beg a higher caste woman to pour water into her pot. The Indian constitution outlaws untouchability, but in remote villages like Panwa it is still part of everyday life. Even today, scheduled castes cannot enter some shops or drink from ordinary cups at tea stalls. They have to live on the outskirts of the village and can expect rough treatment if they overstep the time-honoured limits.
Slowly, the Barefoot College has become a kind of social equaliser, chipping away at the feudal systems that keep the landless poor and ignorant. 鈥淲e have looked at the problems that the poor face from their point of view and not from the point of view of a so-called expert looking from outside,鈥� says Roy. 鈥淲e have come to the conclusion that, using their own knowledge, skills and practical wisdom, it is possible for them to solve their problems themselves.鈥�
Gulab Devi, 35 years old and already a grandmother, is a typical barefoot graduate. Born into the low, leather-worker caste in neighbouring Harmara village, she came to SWRC looking for work when her husband fell ill. Like most women of her generation in Rajasthan, she had a mere two years of primary education and could not read or write. After a month鈥檚 training at SWRC, she could repair the hand pumps previously maintained by an engineer from a distant town at great cost. 鈥淚t was hard work,鈥� she says, 鈥渘ot least carrying a 20-kilogram tool kit to surrounding villages, up to 6 kilometres away.鈥� But she stuck at the job for nine years, going on to train dozens of other engineers. Gulab also helped to install the piped water system in Panwa, before retraining as a solar engineer, making, assembling and repairing solar lanterns.
As with all SWRC projects, the idea of piped water for Panwa came from the villagers. And it was a 12-year-old girl, Koshalya, who brought the problem to the college鈥檚 attention, through the world鈥檚 first Children鈥檚 Parliament, started at SWRC to promote children鈥檚 rights and teach about democracy. At the time, she was Prime Minister, elected with her cabinet from the 3000 children attending the Barefoot College鈥檚 110 night schools, lit by the solar lanterns. SWRC opened these schools, run by local barefoot teachers, to give primary education to children who look after animals by day.
When, a few years later, Koshalya married a boy from Panwa, she single-handedly persuaded the village鈥檚 56 families to pay an initial 1000 rupees (拢14) and a monthly subscription of 20 rupees, to make sure the water supply was sustainable. As a precondition for providing help and the solar panels, SWRC insisted that the community elect a village water committee to manage the system and share experiences with other village committees at the Tilonia campus.
For Bunker Roy, the Panwa project is a vindication of SWRC鈥檚 principles: 鈥淭he pipes were laid by the villagers, the planning was done by the villagers, the maintenance is looked after by the villagers, with community contributions. It鈥檚 a myth when people say they are so poor they can鈥檛 pay.鈥� In another village, Chota Narena, 200 families pay for piped water collected from a rooftop rainwater harvesting system.
The relative comfort of today鈥檚 campus and the steady stream of foreign visitors hide SWRC鈥檚 tough history, which included a siege by local landowners. It also survived a merciless audit by the state government, retaliating after the SWRC helped uncover a corruption scandal in which poor women were not paid for road construction work. For Roy, 鈥渢he biggest problem is convincing our own kind鈥濃�攅ducated Indians.
But some are already converted. Some 24 affiliated grass-roots centres have started in 14 states of India. Barefoot engineers from Tilonia have helped local villagers in Ladhak install hand pumps and solar power for over 1000 homes in the area. SWRC has also advised villagers in Mali and Morocco on traditional rainwater harvesting techniques.
Roy is clear about the wide-scale application of Barefoot College methods. 鈥淚f we want to focus on solutions that improve the quality of life for the rural poor then we can address problems that exist all over the world鈥攄rinking water, health, education, energy, housing. Legal issues are also a problem because of the high percentage of illiteracy.鈥� Roy doesn鈥檛 believe development programmes need urban-based professionals. The skills usually exist locally, he says, but are not valued simply because the local experts are poor and illiterate.
The best places to start such programmes, he says, are inaccessible (to keep out urban experts), with a high rate of illiteracy, a strong oral tradition and where 鈥渇amilies depend on each other and not on outside help鈥�. Prerequisites for those starting such a project in a new area are patience, humility and perseverance, according to campus veteran Vasu, who was with Roy in the 1970s.
Like Gandhi before them, Roy, his colleagues and the local villagers have created a very Indian solution to their problems. By carefully choosing which technologies they introduce they create change without adopting Western values wholesale. Yet they are still challenging the injustices that are a part of their own culture. 鈥淭he process of social change is slow,鈥� says Vasu. 鈥淚t will take another 20 to 30 years before what we have started here achieves its goals.鈥�
