The Native | Ashok Patwari

When Manu boarded the bus at Ranchi he was quite clear in his mind what was in store for him in Bhawnathpur. But he was prepared to face it because he wanted to prove himself as an extraordinary anthropologist. He aimed to establish himself as somebody who had done something which others might not be able to accomplish. It was indeed a small price for the enormous task he was going to perform.  
Manu was in Bhawnathpur barely two months ago before returning to USA after working in tribal areas of Jharkhand for several months. On his return to Baltimore, he prepared a report on “Iron supplementation in tribal areas of Jharkhand” as a part of his Master of Public Health (MPH) internship assignment which he submitted to his department at John Hopkins University. All the faculty members liked his report except Pierce who made a gesture with his semi-pouting lower lip when he congratulated Manu on his successful project. Anthropology being Manu’s most favourite subject, Dr Pierce’s opinion made a lot of difference to him. And Manu was smart enough to decode the hidden feelings of Prof Pierce when he made that gesture which meant that he didn’t really like it. Therefore the next thing Manu did was to see his mentor, Prof Richard Pierce, Head of Anthropology department, in his office.
Prof Pierce was himself eager to tell Manu what he felt about his work in India because he considered him as one of his best students. Therefore when Manu approached him for his comments, he said what he had to say without mincing his words.
“Wonderful work!” As usual, Prof Pierce was supportive. He didn’t mean to discourage Manu. “But it is just another clinical study which anybody would have done!” Prof Pierce gestured with his hands and paused for a while.
“Manu, living in the tribal areas for over three months is a great opportunity. You could have done a lot more than this simple clinical study. You tried to give them iron supplements without finding out – their day to day issues in life, their socioeconomic peculiarities, their food particulars, their overall health-seeking behaviour, causes for their anaemic conditions, their reasons for not taking free oral iron-folic acid tablets, the barriers they encounter! I am sure there are lot more than purely health issues. Lack of awareness and education, including health education, hygiene, sanitation, you name it…”  Prof Pierce expressed his thoughts clearly and without a pause as if reading from his notes. As a student of anthropology, Manu had no doubt in his mind that his mentor was absolutely right.
“As an anthropologist you should have lived with those people in that environment. Then only you would get an ‘emic’ perspective,” Prof Pierce went on. “I hope you remember Participatory Research Methodology. If I were you, I would have stayed in one of the villages in the tribal area, dressed like them, participated in their village gatherings and meetings, and interacted with them. I am sure you know that there is a lot of difference between just interviewing somebody and interacting with people as one amongst them.”  Manu was totally in agreement with his mentor and therefore without asking a question he thanked him for his valuable comments and left his office.
For the whole night Manu couldn’t sleep because he was getting too many divergent thoughts in his mind, about activities of international funding agencies, not-for-profit non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and a host of other people who in certain villages outnumbered the natives – all of whom worked only from dawn to dusk. Even before the sunset their vehicles would be driving back to Ranchi, back to their five-star hotels.
“I am planning a randomized controlled trial in Jharkhand to evaluate a new mosquito repellent,” said one of Manu’s senior MPH students while approaching him earlier in the day to get some firsthand information on Jharkhand. He was looking forward to guidance from Manu.
“Manu, I am sorry to say that all of you – the so called public health researchers – are treating Jharkhand as a laboratory and the tribal men and women as your guinea pigs for your experiments,” one of Manu’s old schoolmates commented when he met him in Delhi.
“There ought to be a purpose when you do any research. Your results should be more than just observations or discovering new information. What do these poor innocent tribals get in return for your research you publish in The Lancet? As an anthropologist you should try to find out their problems and suggest evidence-based interventions and solutions to help them.” Prof Pierce strongly supported meaningful research.
Manu didn’t remember when the overlapping thoughts and visuals of events, people and places clouded his mind to deep sleep but when he got up in the morning he had made up his mind that he would not pursue his post-doctoral fellowship at John Hopkins. He decided to return to India and work in tribal areas in Jharkhand.                                                                             
***
The very first night that Manu spent in the village on a charpoy (cot made of ropes) under a bed net was a major breakthrough in his life. Son of an eminent cardiologist in Delhi and after having spent five years in United States it was the most revealing experience for him for the first time. It took him no time to actually face the realities of hard life in an underprivileged situation for which he had voluntarily opted. He was mentally prepared to live in the tribal villages as one of the local population and capture a firsthand impression of social and other determinants which influence the health-seeking behaviour of the community. He was certain that his proposed project on ‘Determinants for health-seeking behaviour in Baiga tribe’ would be a path breaking report. Working on this project was interesting because the people who belonged to the Baiga tribe were reportedly the least civilized of all the different tribes of Jharkhand state. Knowing their health awareness and health-seeking behavior was certainly expected to provide an incredible insight into the other end of the human spectrum. Manu had all the reasons to be excited for this adventure in a far-off difficult-to-reach tribal area in Garhwa district.
Getting settled in Bhawnathpur was not difficult for Manu because his earlier experience and acquaintance with several local people helped him to find a place for himself in a nearby village. Most of the local people knew him as somebody living in America who was interested in knowing about their lives. The only thing which surprised everybody was his decision to stay with them, without electricity and comforts of city life, eating their food and living like them as an ordinary native.
Manu took no time to adjust his own life style, and started getting involved with the welfare of the villagers, participating in their meetings and social events. Before actually starting to work on his project it was critical for him to know the demographic and social factors influencing their attitudes and practices. Manu was amazed to find that several of their problems were related to ignorance, illiteracy and poor overall development in the area. Within a month something touched Manu’s heart and his interest drifted from his project to actual events in the community. He became a part of the community and shared their happiness as well as sorrow. For a while he decided to put his project on the back burner and started a small Community Based Organization (CBO) named Parivartan with the help of locals. He led a group of young enthusiasts and started working towards priority issues, creating awareness about health and nutrition, improving sanitation, promoting primary school attendance, community banking and handicrafts. With his background as an alumnus of John Hopkins University and his personal contacts he was able to muster financial support from some international organizations for health and developmental work for at least ten villages around Bhawnathpur. His hard work was acknowledged by the locals who were proud to have him amongst themselves as somebody who was like a local inhabitant.

***

It was after spending more than three years in Bhawnathpur that Manu came in close contact with Sona, daughter of a Sarpanch of one of the villages where the Parivartan team used to operate for social and developmental work. Sona was one of the brightest girls Manu spotted when he first visited her village. Being the daughter of the Sarpanch she was more privileged than others and had already finished her middle school education. Manu convinced her parents to send her to high school in Bhawnathpur. Sona did very well in her studies and became the first matriculate in her village.

It was a sheer coincidence that, around the same time, the Government of Jharkhand started a scheme, Mukhya Mantri Janani Shishu Swasthya Abhiyan (MMJSSA) for improving maternal and child health. Accredited social health activists, named Sahiyyas, were recruited as village-level link-workers to implement this program. Manu was instrumental in getting Sona a position of Sahiyya in Bhawnathpur. Manu never forgot that despite his living in the area for many years, he was still an outsider. Therefore he considered it one of his greatest achievements to identify, inspire and train a local tribal girl to stand for and help her underprivileged, illiterate, difficult-to-reach and often neglected community.

Perhaps, Sona’s educational and professional status was perceived differently by her community. She had already crossed her twentieth year but not a single family from the tribal villages was willing to accept her in marriage. All of them respected her innocence, her charm and selfless service for the tribal community but confessed that she was misfit for their boys because of her higher level of education. Sona was also discriminated when she used to interact with men and women from non-tribal areas and other towns of Jharkhand from different organizations. They often referred to her as ‘That tribal girl!’

Not only Sona and her parents but Manu also felt concerned with this development. Sona’s father indirectly blamed himself and Manu for sending her to a secondary school, knowing the literacy level in the area. Even as a knowledgeable anthropologist Manu had never expected his efforts towards positive change could turn into a counterproductive and negative phenomenon.

After working for sometime as Sahiyya, Sona eventually joined the Parivartan as Manu’s assistant. Sona proved to be the most hardworking and intelligent members of his team and he felt confident to give her more responsibilities so that he could concentrate on larger and more important issues. Manu was very happy to have helped Sona in her professional settlement. It was with his support that Sona was able to complete her graduation as a private student while earning a living for her family as an active member of the Parivartan team.

Manu would have never imagined that going that far in his attempt to practice Participatory Research Methodology in a remote village in Jharkhand would turn him into a native in real sense, but it did happen. He decided to marry Sona.

Manu was quite conscious about his decision. Like a hermit he had already given up his city life, his father’s posh house in Delhi and all the comforts attached with that. Living in a village for over five years had already transformed him into a native, a tribal! He did remember what Prof Pierce said when he made an official site visit from John Hopkins University to Bhawnathpur six months after Manu had started a project on improving sanitation in the tribal villages.

“Don’t forget. It is a known fact that many anthropologists run a risk of turning into real ‘natives’ while trying to have an ‘emic’ perspective of the study population and spend the rest of their life in that environment.”  Prof Pierce winked with his left eye while patting Manu’s back for working on a wonderful ethnographic study in the area.

***

Manu’s passion for hard work and making efforts towards goals considered impossible by others became more intense with his initial success of working in the tribal area and the visible impact on the lives of the downtrodden, underprivileged, underserved and often neglected people in the locality. Having lived in that environment for many years Manu was able to visualise beyond health and development and could identify the reasons behind socioeconomic barriers the community was facing. As a local inhabitant he got to know several social maladies which originated locally and had to be tackled by people themselves. Tackling the problems related to addiction to handia (a local beer) was one of the major tasks in front of him. He was confident that with more concerted efforts, Parivartan would be able to make that change he envisaged, a change for the better, and a positive transformation which he always desired for the tribal people. Unfortunately, while he was trying to intensify his efforts to tackle multiple problems – and with the assumption that Sona would share his extra work load so that he could concentrate on other major issues – Sona was losing interest in social or developmental work being done by her team. Manu was disappointed but he knew why Sona was behaving the way she was.

It was in fact the events during her childbirth which had an adverse influence on Sona’s changed mind set. On that fateful night when she started with her labour pains she landed in the district hospital closest to their village. Because of foetal distress she required to undergo a caesarean section for which she was referred to the medical college hospital at Ranchi. Her travel from her village to the hospital in Bhawnathpur and later to Ranchi and her experience in the hospital was a nightmare which shook her from the core. She fully understood what it meant to be a tribal. As an ordinary tribal girl she would not have felt so bad because eventually everything would have gone off quite well. Luckily, she delivered a normal healthy baby without any post-operative complications. But her education and exposure to outside world made her so sensitive that she became too conscious about herself and felt underprivileged and discriminated at every point of her contact with the outside world. She hated herself to be a tribal woman. A major fallout of this experience was that instead of helping Manu to bring a positive change to the doors of her community, she preferred to discard it, sever her umbilical cord and escape from the dreadful realities of life still plaguing her community. She wanted Manu to hand over Parivartan to  a local tribal man who was Manu’s close associate and pressurized him to return to mainstream. She knew it pretty well that her husband could get a senior position in UNICEF or any other international organization any day he would like to move to Ranchi or Delhi. But Manu thought differently.

“How can we leave them in a lurch, Sona? We have a responsibility towards these simple people; they have expectations from me.” Manu was conscious what it would mean if he left the place.

“You have done enough. The problems here are enormous. No single human being can resolve all these issues. Let the local leadership take over now. Let us think about our own life and our son’s life.” Sona was very clear about what her priority was.

“But, so far, we haven’t achieved a lot of success. We have yet to bring that social change which is the only way to sustain these initial gains.” Manu had a vision and was convinced that he was still far away from achieving the desired goal.

“We have no moral right to give our son a life which is a by-product of your vision or ambition. I don’t want him to be stigmatised like his mother. He deserves to grow up without any baggage.”

“But Sona, how can we terminate our mission when we have just started to plug the holes?  I left John Hopkins because the conditions of these people touched my heart. I ignored my family in Delhi to understand and share the problems of these poor people and help them. I became a native to work with them, and not just work for them from a distance. I spent ten years of my life to create that environment for a change which brings education, good health and prosperity to these people. Now is the time to pool the gains together and bring a social change.”

“Not at the cost of our son’s future.” Sona suddenly interrupted his emotional plea with stern and clear message that she was not going to be a part of his decision. And she really meant it!

***

As usual, the Jet Airways evening flight was delayed because the incoming flight from Delhi was late by two hours. Manu had come to Birsa Munda airport at Ranchi to see off Sona and his son who were taking a flight to Delhi. Sona had taken up a senior position in Delhi in a central government project on tribal health. With a decent government accommodation provided to her at Chanakyapuri and her son enrolled in a prestigious private school in Delhi, Sona was quite excited to begin her new life with lots of aspirations.

After leaving his wife and son near the security gate Manu sent them off with a smile on his face and kept watching them till they moved towards the boarding gate.

“It is too late, sir !” the driver of the jeep interrupted Manu’s thoughts as he stood still with his right hand frozen in the air after waving a good bye to his son.

“Sir, it is not safe to travel at this time. Let us stay in Ranchi for the night,” the driver reminded him.

“No we need to go. Remember we have a meeting tomorrow morning with the SDM. We can’t afford to be late.” Manu ignored the driver’s suggestion and moved towards the jeep.

On his way back to Bhawnathpur, Manu supported his head on the head rest of the rear seat, closed his eyes for a while and quickly wiped them!

 

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photo credits: Warli horse from Maharastra www.talleststory.com

Ashok Patwari a Pediatrician and Public Health Researcher by profession. In his words : “I have published around 75 short stories in English, in print and online journals, during the last 20 years encompassing a wide spectrum of social issues and events which often jiggle a creative mind. I regularly contribute to ‘Muse India’, ‘Contemporary Literature Review of India’ and ‘Phenomenal Literature’”.