"A Two-Men-Made Village!"

Dinesh is one of the coordinators of the Land Rights' Army. This is what we were told yesterday before we met him. Noopur and I headed to our interview with Ganesh at about 8:00 am without being sure about what would happen. We both prepared specific questions about land right's issues, made comparisons with the situation in Brazil and imagined a very targeted conversation.

As we are outside the Center's administrative offices waiting for our meeting, we see Martin Macwan, who had just come back from Nepal. We pinned him down with all our strength and enthusiasm and sat for chai. Martin asked us about our experiences at DSK and kindly answered our questions about the future of the Trust and the many projects it holds, including DSK and Kataria School. Martin explained that his dream is to be able to offer programs for Dalit children from 5 to 17 years of age in a very intensive room-and-board fashion so that accompaniment, kinship, identity building, and real empowerment can happen along with quality education. Martin says that if the Trust stays with a child for those many years, after that, they should be
ready, and there is nothing else he can do.

After learning about future undertakings, we asked Martin to tell us more about some specific issues, which resonated with our group during our stay at DSK. For instance, issues of reconciling secularism and gender equality with parents' expectations and community perceptions surfaced. In regards to the former, Martin says that parents do not realize the secular nature of the institution. The lack of religious affiliation even works as an advantage given the fact that religion is one of the most overarching factors into the equation of exclusion that has marginalized Dalits. On the other hand, the latter, gender, has been a constant exercise of balance: finding procedures and approaches to promote as much gender equality as possible in ways that parents and girls alike are safe and comfortable in regards to the politics of the institution. Practical measures include to separate the hostel of boys and girls and to have them sit in separate tables during lunch. It also includes to give boys and girls specific time and places to be together such as in classes and morning exercise sessions.

At this point, Dinesh, the land rights coordinator arrived in the room. Martin left us, and we started our journey with another great leader. While Martin is the inspiration for ALL the people we have met here and in the villages, Dinesh is the inspiration for the villagers of Sayla. He is one of the 25 men and women elected by the people as councilmen of the Village. He is considered the chief officer. Dinesh coordinates the efforts on the distribution and possession of government mandates for land ownership by the Dalits and, at the same time, he makes sure that "his" village improves fast and with less caste-discrimination. He is fighting for better schools (two big schools are being constructed and when asked about who will supervise the teachers to make sure discrimination does not happen, he does not hesitate to take the responsibility,) he built a universal well, and he now wants to build a bridge that connects the villagers of Kanpur with Sayla in the times of monsoon. Two of the farms in Kanpur are run by Valmikis, the lowest caste into the hierarchy. Dinesh and the Land Rights Army were able to fight encroachment and give them land. These two families which 10 years ago lived off of manual scavenging are now farming land and selling agricultural products for the same price as anyone else in Kanpur and Sayla.

Dinesh walks around the village center with us showing the new developments; he walks towards inclusion and integration even if Muslims, Dalits and Non-Dalits are still spatially segregated. Interestingly enough, despite housing segregation, Dalits and non-Dalits shop, go to school, dine with each other. In the village of Sayla, women and men share responsibilities inside and outside their homes, and because of the courage of one brave female laborer, women and men make the same amount of money in all occupations despite of construction. Noopur and I did see some signs that reminded us of the many gender problems that have shocked us until this day and that are part of the discourse of females of all ages. Examples include the usage of the head scarf in front of male strangers, and the gender dynamics when males and females share the same room: women would not answer our questions without the interference of their men. Still, the types of gender imbalances we experienced seemed to be closer to the realm of acceptable cultural differences and not unacceptable violations of basic rights.

The village of Sayla has changed over the past 10 years, a mark that correlates with the beginning of the activities of the Trust and institutional work of Martin Macwan in Gujarat. Martin is creating a network of leaders like Dinesh who share his gender and caste sensibility and have the skills to spread such sentiment throughout a whole community. This work has not been easy and is far away from being completed. Small victories have been collected such as the fact that waste land in the last 5 years have been given in the largest number to Dalits and that all land titles given to Dalits in the reform of 1962 became actual possessions by 1995. Other victories include the building of quality Dalit schools, litigation of several cases in regards to abuse against Dalit women, and the implementation of a Video Unit, which screens documentaries on issues of public interest in more than 400 villages every week.

The victories in the rural area, however, do not overshadow the difficulties in the cities. While land ownership has served as a way of empowering and equipping Dalits for a life with more infra-structure and less discrimination, the plight of Dalits in the cities have not been discussed as much at the grassroots level. There are different problems in the city caused by caste hierarchy that are labeled more as a result of urban poverty than of untouchability. Nonetheless, Dinesh, the man who "owns" a village and built a universal water well just beside his house is aware of the challenge in the cities. He also says that the Trust has to concentrate in incremental changes and local efforts.

Dinesh concentrates his energy in his own village. He carries on with Martin's teachings. He believes that step-by-step the village of Sayla grows and becomes a place for all, a place where his children will cross the centennial gate that has separated Dalit and non-Dalit for decades and will fully overcome untouchability and discrimination. After a long day in the field, one wonders how many villages like Sayla one can find in Gujarat, how many Dineshes one can find in India, and how many Martins one can find in the world.