Nafisa grew up in Queens NY, got some sort of degree in Ethnic Studies and Political Economy, worked in youth organizing/nonprofit, then moved to Kolkata for a fellowship. Somehow she ended up in Atlanta, getting a masters in development practice. Nutshell:
My ngo has an SRI programme (http://www.sri-india.net). We’ve been in the community for 20 years and the same issue hampering food security consistently comes up. Folks say “We’d love to try SRI, but we have no water”.
Why no water?
It’s been a largely political problem. According to villagers, the local Panchayat hasn’t spent the 6-10 lakhs allocated to digging the irrigation canals. For the past 10 years.
Productivity for subsistence-farmers of the area that rely on a system of irrigation canals or KHAALS has gone way down. It’s particularly hard on rice that’s dependent on specific amount of water for the paddy to form. Or else cheet-dhan happens, or empty paddy.
WhatHaHappanWass..
Anyway. After a series of meetings with the Panchayat members, that the heads were consistently and conspicuously absent from, the lock-in happened (earlier blog post). This was without any NGO staff around. Long story short, villagers locked the panchayat head in his own office when he failed to attend a community-meeting he’d organised himself and then demanded that the cash for the canals be handed to our org, so that the NGO could implement it.
We of course said whoa, heck no.
We immediately started documenting the process and went with our community women to talk to the BDO, or Block Development Officer, the higher up from the Panchayat head. We started a petition and got nearly 300, of the Panchayati’s constituents, meehee, and yesterday we went to submit it as planned:
35ladies and 5dudes, all smiles on their way in. 
Climbing the BDO office stairs. 
Handing the petition over. ~280 signatures. 
The meeting begins. I’ll write about how the presence of the young men affected the action afterwards. 
Getting the receipt for the petition submission. 
Aroti-di and her mom. THEY ARE P.O.’d about the canals and the BDO officers absence. 
Okay, in between there was a veritable showdown that happened. Again, eh, the ladies really got in the Panchayat member’s face and the couple of men that were there were interesting because they were the one’s pulling the women back. I don’t want to write about that now though. 
Dolon reminding everyone not to be reactionary (too much, b/c let’s be honest, she loved the fierceness), and the importance of being strategic in order to get the canals dug in time. 
babies at the BDO. 
example of an unmaintained canal/khaal. That’s supposed to be water feeding the fields.
Results
The BDO officer was missing. His proxy and panchayat cohorts recieved the petition, told us they couldn’t do much, and that we should get an engineer to see the canals. then one panchayat memmber called our NGO theives, I don’t know why. But this got the women really riled. Oh dear, they took it so personally and what resulted was a face off of community ladies and 3 Panchayat memmebrs and the BDO-proxy…. who ended up leaving work early in an auto scared out of their wits.
The Canals
Work has already started in terms of the canal digging and we are going to bring in an engineer indeed, and now that the community pressure is at a high, they’ll most likely release the rest of the money. The plan is to have the canals dug before the rice is affected.
Target, strategize, mobilize.
