Shubha Madhukar

With self-reliance rather than charity as its central theme, a comprehensive rural development programme undertaken by Tata Motors has transformed the character of 22 villages in Pune district

Shankar Shivekar was one of Mumbai's famed dabbawalas — that unique breed feted by everyone from Prince Charles to assorted management suits for their expertise in delivering lunchboxes on the dot to the city's office-going millions — but it was an existence he hated. "We lived in a cramped quarters that had these sleeping berths with fixed occupancy timings," explains Shivekar. "There were three of us to a berth, which worked out to eight hours for one person in any 24-hour cycle. This meant that I had to vacate my berth once my timing slot was over. Even if I had high fever, there was no way I could lie down in my berth outside of my time slot. Those days were worse than hell."

Shivekar spent 15 years in perdition, earning a top salary of Rs 2,000, before redemption arrived in the form of a rural development programme supported and driven by Tata Motors in his village, called Shive, in the Khed region of Pune district. The programme has helped Shivekar, now 44, farm three crops a year in a 10-acre field that was lying fallow till it was irrigated under the Tata Motors project. These days Shivekar's thoughts are occupied by onions, from which he has made Rs 1 lakh in 2004, rather than lunchboxes and sleeping hours.

Tata Motors' rural development initiatives have improved the quality of life of many people like Shivekar, farmers as well as other village folk. These integrated development efforts, which began in 1977, have been concentrated in 22 villages of Khed, and they embrace projects in health, education, water management and environment. This is not development through charity; instead, Tata Motors works on a partnership principle wherein all its rural projects are executed with the active participation of the villagers.

The initial years were not easy. For one, the villagers were not forthcoming, wary as they were of Tata Motors' intentions. Two, they expected handouts whereas the company believed in working in tandem with them. Perseverance and communication has broken down the barriers created by suspicion and unrealistic expectation, and the self-reliance philosophy has taken root. The villagers started the cooperation process by contributing locally available material and voluntary labour for all the activities undertaken under the programme, whether it was building dams, roads and schools or planting thousands of trees.

Water management: Water has always been a major problem here. The villages had little water for drinking and nothing at all for irrigation. To begin with, Tata Motors ensured adequate potable water by providing tube wells and open wells. During the summer months it supplied drinking water tankers to scarcity-hit villages.

The greater objective was to make the 22 villages self-sufficient in water for drinking as well as irrigation. Tata Motors constructed a dam over the Bhama river, with lift-irrigation facilities in Pimpri Budruk village, 35 km from Pimpri. The company contributed Rs 3.27 lakh for the project and the remaining Rs 4 lakh was provided by the state government. The villagers pitched in with the labour.

The dam now irrigates 800 acres, allowing the villagers of Pimpri Budruk, with technical support from Tata Motors, to grow cash crops and flowers. Modern irrigation methods have transformed the economy of the village. Tata Motors withdrew from Pimpri Budruk a couple of years back — and this has been integral to the sustainability strategy it pursues — but the company's going has not stymied the village's prosperity. Today Pimpri Budruk's denizens reap three crops annually and their income has zoomed from next to nothing to Rs 13 crore a year.

In Shivekar's village, too, water was big problem, with women having to trudge many miles to fetch the precious liquid. The difficulty was so acute that Shive's young males found it nearly impossible to find spouses from outside the village. Garde Baba, a 72-year-old resident, remembers there being a well, in the backyard of the village school, which provided drinking water even in summer. This well had dried and people had come to depend on tankers sent by Tata Motors for their drinking water.

In 2002, with Rs 85,000 from a government allocation, Rs 70,000 from Tata Motors and the shramdaan (voluntary labour) of Shive's residents, a huge rainwater-holding catchment was created through excavation. Called Ram Tale, this has greatly eased the water woes of the village while also providing six tankers of water every day from February till the onset of monsoons to neighbouring villages. Thanks to Ram Tale, the bachelors of Shive have become eligible once again.

Health services: At 9 in the morning, five days a week, a lady doctor and two nurses pack medicines for patients and lunch for themselves before setting forth in the Tata Motors' mobile health unit to make the rounds of villages in the Khed region. The company's minstrels of medicine have, for the past 17 years, been delivering curative and preventive health services to people in places where no other healthcare is available.

Villagers pay a token amount of Re 1 to receive treatment and medicines. Apart from curing minor ailments, the Tata Motors health team also immunises children and conducts antenatal and postnatal checkups. The mobile unit is also equipped to carry out vasectomies and Copper-T insertions. Under this programme, a number of rural women have been trained in basic healthcare. These village health workers also educate the rural populace on sanitation and hygiene.

Education: Like elsewhere in rural India, schools in the 22 project villages are few and far between, and they are poorly attended by teachers and students alike. Recognising the need for rural education, Tata Motors decided to tackle the problem with two initiatives that go hand in hand. One was to build schools and high schools and the other was to conduct training programmes for teachers.

For every school built, Tata Motors motivated the villagers to donate land and labour to complement the money it contributed. These co-ed schools, now equipped with science laboratories and furniture, regularly secure 85-100 per cent results in the exams for 10th and 12th standards conducted by the Maharashtra government.

Under the training plan, called the 'teachers development programme', Tata Motors invited expert educators to guide the village teachers. Teachers who have come through the programme use self-made teaching aids and customised teaching methods to generate student interest and give them a better education.

Environment: This component of the Tata Motors rural development project is focused on planting trees on barren land, and it involves company employees and their families, besides providing gainful employment to villagers. From time to time Tata Motors employees and their families take off for picnics of a different kind. On the menu, besides food and drink, are tree-plantation drives in the project villages.

Rajendra Rithe, a 35-year-old resident of Pimpri Budruk, is one of many who have benefited from the company environmental initiatives. Tata Motors arranged for Rithe to attend a one-month training course at the district social forestry office at Pune. Since then he has been running a nursery that grows saplings of bamboo, berries, custard apple, timber, etc. These are purchased by the company for its plantation projects.

The environment-enhancement part of Tata Motors' rural programme has seen gobar-gas units being installed in many of the target villages with assistance from the government and the company. The villagers have realised the advantages of using gobar gas as a fuel for cooking. Smokeless fireplaces are making a difference to the environment and to the health of the women of the villages.

Behind the success of Tata Motors's rural development initiatives are many unsung heroes: employees whose dedication and enthusiasm have enabled the company to weave the concept of self-help and self-reliance into the social and economic fabric of thousands of poor villagers. These people, once staring at the abyss of destitution, have worked a minor miracle to put themselves firmly on the road to sustained well-being.

Uploaded on March 2005