TISStory A Journey Since 1936

Dr. Bela Bhatia Interviewer: Shilpi Gulati Camera/Sound: Divya Cowasji Date: circa 2011 Place: TISS, Mumbai Key words: Class of 1983-85, Family and child welfare, campus, Prof. S. Parasuraman, field work, slum, tribal welfare, Bhopal tragedy, Setu, Shramjivi Samaj land struggle, Agriculture cooperative society, Community organization, social movements, tribal issues, marginal farmers, Naxalite movement, research.

Bela Bhatia is an independent researcher and writer, presently honorary professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Her research interests include questions related to peoples movements, human rights, peace and democracy, with special reference to rural India. Her doctoral research was on the Naxalite movement in Bihar (Cambridge Univeristy, 2000). She has since studied the movement in other Indian states including Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Before turning to academics she had worked for nearly a decade as a full-time activist in a local organisation of agricultural labourers and marginal farmers in north Gujarat and in an international peace movement in Iraq and Palestine, out of which engagement emerged two books: Unheard Voices: Iraqi Women on War and Sanctions (co-authored; London: Change, 1992) and War and Peace in the Gulf: Testimonies of the Gulf Peace Team (co-edited; London: Spokesman, 2001).

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TISStory A Journey Since 1936

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Bela: I was in the 1983-85 batch (MA, Social Work)

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Shilpi: So how did you come to TISS? Bela: My undergraduate degree involved the study of child psychology and I thought of doing Social Work for my M.A. My brother was then working in Pune. He suggested that I apply to TISS since it was considered to be the best in the country in social work education. That is how I came here.

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Shilpi: What was the process of coming down here for the first time like? Bela: It was the first time I travelled out of the family home with an idea of studying and living in another place. So in many ways it was my first venturing out. My own independent journey begins here. It was the first and last time that my father accompanied me. After that, as my mother used to say, I acquired wheels under my feet!

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Shilpi: Can you tell us something about someone you met or teachers who interviewed you? Bela: The campus with its trees and architecture looked beautiful and attractive, more or less as School of Media and Cultural Studies Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India
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it looks today. Many students had come from different parts of the country, and even from outside India. It was a new and unusual experience for me. I was still uncertain of myself and what I wanted to do in life. Others, I think, also felt the same and there was much discussion amongst us of common concerns. About the interview, I recall one or two questions that were asked, but not who asked them!

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Shilpi: Can you share bits of your hostel life, where you did some kind of mischief or something? Bela: Well .. some memories do stay clear despite the passage of time. One instance of mischief I recall happened a few days before the convocation. Our exams were over and we were free. One night, with time at hand, I discovered that writing with a charcoal on the wall was quite fun. Since charcoal marks could be rubbed off easily, I did not think it was an issue. So slogans and quotes and a poem or two soon filled part of the wall. The experience became more exciting when a few other friends also joined in! The graffiti on the plain walls gave them character and the new look was altogether more interesting. But, not surprisingly, our hostel warden was not amused! Life in the hostel was fun and a great learning experience. We learnt from classroom teaching and discussions of course, but what we learnt outside the classroom was just as important, and hostel life contributed in this respect. Some of us are still in touch with each other. Those days there was a students' group called Shodhna. It had been convened by some of our seniors and the idea was to discuss contemporary issues. The group invited speakers who were engaged directly in grassroots work or had taken a stand on a contentious issue, etc. Today, such activities are quite common and there are many forums to host and facilitate such debates, but in School of Media and Cultural Studies Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India
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those days that was not the case. We were 64 students in our batch who were doing Social Work. Students who had opted for an MA in Personnel Management were around 30 or so. Besides us, there was the senior batch (later, the junior one) and some MPhil and PhD students. So it was a much smaller community. To us, however, it looked quite big. I was in room no 1 in the girls' hostel. We were four to a room. Julie (from Calcutta), Pari (from Shillong) and Dolly (Dorothy, from Kenya) were my room-mates. We got along very well and had a great time together. In the second year, we had single rooms. I was in room no. 21 and had Snehlata as my neighbour on the right and Kanchan, Sunanda, Laxmi and Dolly in the rooms on the opposite side. That was the first time that I had a room of my own and that felt quite nice too!

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Shilpi: How were students guided in terms of lectures and classes? Any professor you particularly liked or whose teaching you still remember. Bela: There are several teachers whom I remember well, like Mrs. Apte, who was the head of the FCW department, Mrs Gokaran, Miss Grace Mathews, Mr. Hebsur, who taught us political science, Mr. Parasuraman who taught us tribal anthropology and was also my research guide. Retrospectively, much of what I remember of those two years are activities that involved some degree of direct participation. I don't recall the content of classroom teachings, though of course they must have made an impression of a kind, but I recall better some assignments, like an assignment on the plight of the elderly. I think issues and themes that involve direct participation stay longer with you.

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TISStory A Journey Since 1936

Being in Bombay was also special. Among the memories that stand out in this respect is the very first rally that I attended in my life. This was in Chembur where many women's groups had assembled to protest against the alleged suicide of a woman. The women's groups maintained that it was not suicide but murder violence against women within the family had by then become a public issue following the powerful campaign by the women's movement on this issue. We walked through the streets of Chembur shouting slogans and had a dharna (sit in) in front of the multi-storied building of the housing complex, in the top floor of which was her flat that we could see from below. This experience of collectively demanding justice was very empowering. I still recall the shiver that ran down my spine, as it still does, when one shouts slogans one really cares about. Even the act of lifting up your arm with clenched fist in resolve and in unison with others has a certain distinct quality to it. There were many interesting things happening in Bombay then. CED (Centre for Education and Documentation) used to be an adda (hangout) of a kind for activists. Human rights groups like Lokshahi Hak Sangathana and women's groups like Forum Against Oppression of Women were active. Whenever we had a chance to participate in events organised by them, we did.

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Shilpi: Something about your field-work experience. Bela: Two days in the week were reserved for field-work. We were expected to wear saris! These days also allowed us to see a bit of the city since we had to often go to far off locations that required changing trains. For an outsider, travelling in the local train in Bombay, is in itself quite an experience. It is an introduction to the rhythms of the city, for example. The rush and the speed on the one hand, and a somewhat more laid-back environment and attitude, especially as School of Media and Cultural Studies Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India
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far as women are concerned, on the other. It is interesting how, at that time, going for field-work into the community was permitted only for students of Community Development (students who had opted for URCD Urban and Rural Community Development as their specialization). Having studied child psychology at the undergraduate level, I had opted for Family and Child Welfare (FCW) as my specialization at the time of admission. Each specialization had limited seats, and I thought I would have a better chance of being admitted in FCW. As it turned out, I was the first FCW student who was permitted to work in a community setting, in a slum called Cheeta Camp in Trombay area, not far from Deonar. I had worked on a part-time basis in a slum (Amar nagar) when I was an undergraduate student in Baroda. That was my first real insight into the conditions of Indian slums. While the residents of Amar nagar had been mixed, those in Cheeta camp were mostly lower class Muslims, many from south India. Later, when communal riots broke out in Bhiwandi in May 1984, some of us had also gone there the riots had left many dead and injured and made a deep impression on us. Other than Cheeta camp, I was also placed for a few months each in an orphanage, a school for children with special needs and a school for physically challenged children. These placements were also important experiences for me. My time in the orphanage showed me what life in institutions is like. I remember the story of one child I worked with, a boy of about eight. How he ran away from his village in a coal-carrying goods train and came to Bombay, the many difficulties he encountered, and how he finally found his way to the orphanage. While basic services were being provided in the home it was still far from being a cheerful place; the hygiene in the kitchen, for instance, was quite shocking! In the same compound as the orphanage was a home for mentally challenged children. The quality of services being provided there was even worse. In the school for children with special needs I worked with two children. I remember School of Media and Cultural Studies Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India
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TISStory A Journey Since 1936

one of them, Shankar, who had cerebral palsy; he was a little older and quite expressive. All these exposures were important. Besides, there was also the block placement. For one month we were placed in social organisations of our choice in any part of the country. I chose to be in CINI, the Child In Need Institute, in the outskirts of Calcutta. That introduced me to issues related to children's health, to health conditions in rural areas of West Bengal, and to the remarkable work that CINI was doing. Travelling to different places of course always broadens one's horizons. My dissertation too, in this respect, proved to be another memorable experience. I had chosen to study the health care utilization patterns of the tribals of Dang district in south Gujarat. That was my first direct exposure to village India and the tribal world, and proved to be a formative experience. In the following two decades I have spent a lot of time in activism and research in tribal areas of the country, but those six weeks in Dangs remain special. I did not know anybody and had to find my own way and manage my research independently. Finding the six villages where I worked, getting introduced to the Bhil, Kokna, Warli and Gamit tribals and their way of life, and just being in that hilly, forested, and tribal district was a novel experience. The Bhopal disaster occurred in early December 1984. TISS played an important role in conducting research immediately afterwards. Students went in two (perhaps three) batches. We spent a lot of time there. This research was made possible due to the initiative of teachers like Prof. Parasuraman. The TISS report was the first report of its kind on the Bhopal disaster and the condition of those who were affected by it. The research generated the baseline data on the issue. We went to different neighbourhoods and interviewed a cross-section of people based on random sampling. I don't remember going to well-off neighbourhoods. Mostly it was crowded residential colonies and poor neighbourhoods where we went since a large majority of those affected were

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lower middle class and poor people.

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Shilpi: What did you learn from your engagement in the Bhopal research? Bela: The first learning was that it was a useful intervention at the right time. We learnt by doing and also contributed while learning. Also, that an institution like TISS that has a practical edge to its academics, is very well placed to undertake such action-research. I am happy to see students take similar initiatives on their own these days. For instance, last year a group of students went to Jaitapur and came up with a report. I think that was very good. The value of such engagement with contemporary issues of our time cannot be emphasized enough.

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Shilpi: What kind of work were you engaged with immediately after passing out? Bela: After the convocation, I headed for Pune. The only clarity I had then was that I wanted to work in a rural area. I could not be more specific, I think, because unfortunately we were not exposed enough to different social and political movements or ideologies nor the rich history of diverse movements in different states during colonial times. By mid-1980s there were already significant autonomous movements but we did not know enough about them either. However, in those days there was greater hope from government institutions. The promise of democracy could be fulfilled, it was thought, if the government could be made accountable to the people. So bringing greater political awareness amongst people and enabling them to realise their rights was understood as an important first step. I was looking out for work with that idea in mind. School of Media and Cultural Studies Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India
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Initially, I looked at various options in Pune and Beed districts of Maharashtra. Beed was interesting but the Marathi that was spoken there appeared to be a more difficult version of the one I had become accustomed to in Bombay. To make things easier, I thought of working in Gujarat since I had already lived there for a few years and Gujarati was somewhat familiar. Around that time I received a letter from Medha (Patkar) who was looking out for fresh graduates to work in an organisation that she had joined in November 1984 in Ahmedabad. She had heard from one of my teachers that I was contemplating working in Gujarat. The organisation, Setu: Centre for Social Knowledge and Action, was fairly new and had only two other persons besides Medha working in it. As the name suggests, Setu's aim was to be a bridge between the two crucial fields fundamental for change 'knowledge' and 'action.' They hoped to do this by strengthening grassroots movements by providing them with information as well as activists who would work full-time with them. With this in mind, they were looking out for individuals who were interested to work in local organisations in Sabarkantha, Panchamahals and Dang districts. So that is how I happened to join Setu in July 1985. I received an honorarium of Rs. 1200 per month from Setu but worked and lived full-time in Shramjivi Samaj in Bhiloda taluka of Sabarkantha district. On 5 July, I visited Bhiloda for the first time. Only a little over three hours from Ahmedabad, it seemed like a world apart. Medha and I had covered the last part of our journey in a truck. We alighted from it on the road near a village called Kalidungri. Kalidungri was an adivasi village; next to it was Janali Tanda, a village of Vanjaras. It was drizzling and as I looked around, I saw Nanjibhai, one of the key leaders of Shramjivi Samaj, who had been working in his fields and was now looking expectantly at us. Beyond the fields, the mud houses, and the path broad enough to pose as a road that divided Kalidungri from Janali Tanda, one could see the low Aravalli hills that are so very much part of Bhiloda. I shall always remember that rainy day and School of Media and Cultural Studies Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India
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my first glimpse of a land that was to become my home for the following five years.

Bela: It is in the villages of Bhiloda that I learnt my first real lessons in sociology and politics. For example, when I went to the villages, often the first question people asked was what is your caste? This made me realize the grip that caste had on their psyche and the role it played in society. Likewise, I could understand better what untouchability means, what poverty is, the oppressive situation of women in uppercaste-class households, and the importance of land for people. Bhiloda, takes its name after Bhil (Dungari Garasia) adivasis who are there in large numbers. These adivasis comprise the bulk of Bhiloda's poor besides dalits and others like Vanjaras and Thakardas, who fall under the 'other backward castes' classification in Gujarat. It is these shramjivis (those dependent on their labour for survival; labourers) who gave birth to Shramjivi Samaj, a trade union of agricultural labourers and marginal farmers, after a long struggle for land. According to a government resolution (GR) of 1962 that land should have been distributed amongst the landless poor but was not until the late 1970s; meanwhile, the farmers of dominant castes continued to cultivate the land illegally. The labourers had to struggle for many years and also face police repression which was unusual for Gujarat since such stories were heard more often from places like Bihar and West Bengal. The government had to finally give in, implement its GR, and allocated 1300 acres of land to them on a yearly contractual basis. Eight agricultural cooperative societies were formed. Since then they have been farming on this land on a collective basis. There have been many experiments into collective farming, and they have faced many hurdles including disputes amongst them, but they have successfully kept their cooperatives alive, and even expanded.

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More dailts and other landless have also fought for land in other villages of Bhiloda taluka and in neighbouring talukas. During my years there I was involved in supporting work around land issues as well as in forming a women's wing of the trade union that we called Shramjivi Mahila Sangathan. SMS led struggles on various fronts: implementation of drought relief works and minimum wages; equitable distribution of water; effective public distribution system; against local issues of government corruption; for effective functioning of various government schemes and programmes such as pensions for widowed, separated and divorced poor women and the elderly; protection of child nutrition and health through anganwadis; care of pregnant and lactating women through government health centres; as well as initiated campaigns for land rights of women, against the practice of labelling women as dakans (witch-hunting) amongst adivasis, and against domestic violence. Since 1995, my research has taken me to left organizations in different states. I have had a chance to understand agrarian movements led by these parties. In many areas, communist organizations have seized land. But nowhere have I came across an example of land being taken, cultivated on a collective basis, and managed entirely by people themselves as happened in Bhiloda. Now I can better appreciate the importance of Shramjivi Samaj and what the people there could achieve through sangharsh (struggle) and nirman (constructive work). My Bhiloda days are amongst the most memorable of my life. It was nice to be part of a community on a continuous basis, to share their travails, as well as the simple joys of village life like sleeping under the stars and waking up to find a calf licking my nose! Bhiloda of today has changed much. There are autos, electricity, phones and internet, more roads and pucca houses most of these did not exist in my time. However, the situation that prevailed there in mid-1980s continues to be the reality in large parts of rural India like Bihar and Bastar, where I have spent School of Media and Cultural Studies Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India
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more time in the years following Bhiloda.

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Shilpi: For this year of Platinum Jubilee what would be your message to TISS? Bela: My hope is that TISS is able to make a difference to the lives of large sections of the Indian people who are still forced to live a miserable existence. Institutions like ours and individuals like us are in between the powers that be and the people. Through socially relevant knowledge as well as practical experience we can nurture students to have questioning minds, to have a sound value system, to have the courage to swim against the tide, and have a social conscience. When I was a student, we used to criticize the notion of social work as seva (selfless service). We wanted to extricate it from its philanthropic origins. We felt that it was not entirely selfless. Even those who were not in it for remuneration and were providing voluntary service did receive satisfaction and personal fulfilment. Others, at the time, were also advancing the notion of professional social work. Our concern then for a different notion of social work still remains valid today because now there is too much professionalism and very little seva! The problem has got compounded due to high payments in the NGO sector (also due to corporate influence and CSR) and in academic salaries (due to the sixth pay commission) while a corresponding increase in agricultural and other sectors is sorely missing. The inequality between the social-work/science academic or NGO activist and the people has widened. Social work that had its roots in voluntary service is not so any more by any stretch of the imagination. Meanwhile, challenges on the ground have grown more serious. The state is increasingly colluding with corporates even at the cost of people's fundamental rights. State repression on School of Media and Cultural Studies Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India
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democratic movements has become quite common. We need now, more urgently than before, a social engagement that is driven by a deep and unrelenting personal and political commitment.

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