Author: Reshma Patil
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: April 25, 2005
This is a story of a little village
off the highway to Bangalore, where pink is the colour of revolution.
Every house is painted pale pink.
There are pink benches under banana and almond trees for community reading.
Once your eyes adjust to all that pink in the belly of the Sahyadri mountains,
you notice that the door to every homestead bears the name of a woman,
not the man of the house.
That's only part of the surprise.
In times when rural Maharashtra is in the news for farmers' suicides or
hungry babies, this pocket called Kambalwadi-over 400 kms from Mumbai-has
no time for depression. Never visited by the big guns of politics, it is
busy with a signature revolution-for life and death-that could teach rural
planners a thing or two.
Kambalwadi, in the conservative
sugar belt of Kolhapur in southwest Maharashtra, is a bold spot on the
map. When its people die, they return to the land. After cremation, ashes
are scattered on fields as manure for the soil.
"We would rather mix with our farms
in death, than pollute a river with our remains," says farmer Keshav Sawant.
Six months ago, he spread his brother Chandrakant's remains over the sugarcane
field he cultivated. The practice started three years ago with few families
showing the way.
"Years ago this village had no development,"
recalls former sarpanch Vilas Patil. Now it's the subject of a just-completed
documentary funded by the department of science and technology to air on
Doordarshan. "It highlights the village's self-governance," says filmmaker
Rajiv Shah in Mumbai. To start with, every house went pink. "The village
met and decided that pink indicated calm and peace," says S P Sarwane,
an agriculture diploma holder. "One colour brought the rich and poor on
par, instantly."
Changes began in 2002, but the big
leap was last October. The panchayat-four members are women-decided female
members must own household property rights. Nobody objected and new names
were painted on the doors.
"We will make our daughters graduates,"
promises Savitri Kogekar, head of a womens' savings group, one of 13 such
groups that dabble in community businesses like growing cabbage. Profits
are shared between the women and the panchayat. There's more good news.
Ibis is a region with a skewed child sex ratio tilted in preference of
male progeny. But the village is planning fixed deposit savings for every
girl child with money saved by cancelling annual expenses on a festive
procession.
The primary school building -once
falling apart, with no tiles-now boasts of a ramp for the physically challenged,
white fences and a botanical garden, all created by the residents. School
also lasts an extra hour beyond regulations. "Seven to 9 pm is homework
time, so all homes switch off television," says principal Suresh Patil.
He manages with four classes squeezed into two rooms.
The state has 1.92 crore illiterates.
But here they do their bit to improve, with classes to teach, at least,
how to sign names.
The list of no-no's is long. No
alcohol, gutka, cigarettes, plastic, and no cutting trees. "I am not afraid,"
says sarpanch and standard-seven pass Bharati Redekar, firmly tucking in
her blue zari saree.
She need not fear. Over the years,
inhouse donations bucked up by institutional loans taken on advise of faculty
from nearby institutions and NG0s have built the roads, toilets per house,
drains to recycle waste water into farms and water conservation projects.
But they do like fun. At dusk, they gather to gossip at Kambalwadi's 'oxygen
comer.' Seriously, it's their fancy name for a patch of tulsi and mint
plants they believe keep mosquitoes away and freshen the air.
