Unto the last

Small contributions from over 1200 individuals residing in Mumbai have helped provide food, shelter, clothing, health and education services to over 25,000 tribal families of South Gujarat

Forty two years ago, two women and two men in their early 30s got inspired by Bhoodan leader Vinoba Bhave and left their homes and quit their jobs in Mumbai to work for the uplift of the poor adivasis in the remote villages of Dharampur taluka in Valsad district of South Gujarat, bordering Maharashtra.

The youngest of the four was a doctor, Navnit Faujdar, who set up his clinic under a tamarind tree in Pindval, a remote village reachable only after trudging 25 kilometers from Dharampur by foot through a hilly track 1700 feet above the sea level. His clinic comprised of a table, a chair and a small physician’s bag from which he dispensed medicines to the local tribals from out of the stock of physician’s samples he collected from his doctor friends in Mumbai.

It was while undertaking a padayatra as part of the Bhoodan movement that Dr Faujdar and his three fellow-travelers from Mumbai – Chandrakantaben, Harvilasben and Kantibhai Shah saw the dire poverty of the people and decided to dedicate the rest of their lives for the uplift of the adivasis of the region.

“Night blindness was rampant among the local people. The death rate of children below five years was very high. There were also incidents of starvation deaths. The root cause of all this was malnutrition,” recalls Kantibhai Shah. “Though Dharampur is known as the Cherapunji of Gujarat because it receives the highest rainfall of nearly 100 inches in a year, people faced acute shortage of drinking water during the summer. This was because there was system of collecting rainwater which quickly emptied into the sea,” he explains.

What started as a free medical aid programme in 1968 with help from the medical fraternity in Mumbai, Valsad, Surat, Vadodara and Ahmedabad, was expanded over the year to run programmes that generated employment, improved agriculture, ensured food security during frequent spells of drought and provided tiled roof on huts that did not get washed away in torrential rains.

“To be able to undertake these development works, we needed funds. So, we formed a public charitable trust in the name of Sarvodaya Parivar Trust. Though not related to each other by blood, all four of us had become one parivar (family),” says Harvilasben.

After they joined the Bhoodan movement, quitting their job in Mumbai as school teachers, both Harvilasben and Kantaben had developed and maintained personal contacts with hundreds of middle-class Gujarati families in the metropolis by enrolling them as subscribers of ‘Bhoomiputra’, the mouthpiece of the Sarvodaya movement.

Both wrote a column in the magazine under the name of ‘Harishchandra’, formed by combining their names. In this immensely popular column, they wrote real-life human-interest stories highlighting the good deeds of individuals. Kantibhai Shah, as editor of Bhoomiputra, gave detailed accounts of the development work being carried out by the Sarvodaya Parivar and other like-minded groups in Gujarat and elsewhere.

“While on a door-to-door campaign in Mumbai to collect subscription fee for Bhoomiputra, we would narrate our experiences and ask for monetary assistance for our work in Pindval. Soon, we could convince over 1,500 people in Mumbai to donate a certain part of their income for the welfare of the tribals of Dharampur. Some of the donors would also visit us in Pindval and go back convinced about the efficacy of our work,” says Harvilasben.

“Among the regular donors was a Naliniben Laijawala, a resident of South Mumbai. She would give a donation of Rs10,000 every year on one condition that we should visit her home and partake lunch or dinner. On one such visit, while we were leaving, her maidservant, who had been listening to our conversation, asked us hesitatingly if we would accept donation from her. When we welcomed her offer, she rushed to the store room, brought back a bundle of cloth in which she had kept her savings and emptied all its content. There were coins amounting to Rs10 and 65 paise. We gave her a receipt for Rs11,” recounted Harvilasben.

“In the last 40 years, we have received over Rs11 crore as donation from about 1200  to 1500 donors who include the likes of Naliniben, the lady of the house, as well as her maid servant Janabai,” says Kantibhai. “The administrative cost of our trust is little less than 10 per cent. Therefore, we are able to spend as much as 90 per cent of the donation on development programmes,” he adds.

The Sarvodaya Parivar started fund collection drive only after a severe drought struck Gujarat in 1973 when thousands of adivasis faced starvation. With a collection of Rs94,000 from 691 donors, the Sarvodaya Parivar distributed foodgrain among the famine-hit people firs at subsidized rates, then to some as free and later as loan.

After this, the Sarvodaya Parivar conceived the idea of establishing a ‘food grain bank’ from which it lends grains to the tribals who returns the same amount of grain after a year to the bank. Earlier, the tribals used to borrow foodgrain from traders of Dharampur at the beginning of the monsoon and return double the amount after the harvesting of crops during the Diwali festival.

Since 1973, Sarvodaya Parivar had also been providing foodgrain which include nagli, wheat, jowar and paddy to the adivasis at Rs 1 a kg till 1992, and at Rs2 after the market price nearly doubled. At present, when no food grain is available at less than Rs10 a kg, the organization was compelled to sell at Rs 5 a kg. Between 1973 and 2008, Sarvodaya Parivar has distributed 15,983 tons of food grain entailing a subsidy of Rs 4.37 crore.

After ensuring food security for the adivasis, Parivar decided to undertake the work of providing titled roof over the mud huts which frequently got washed away during the monsoon. Each family needed at least 1,000 tiles to cover its roof. Parivar gives these titles to each tribal family at one third the cost. In the last 28 years, Parivar has disbursed 25 million tiles among the adivasis, enabling 25,000 families to live under a tiled roof.

With a view to providing employment at their doorstep, Parivar introduced Ambar Charkha (hand-spinning machine, with six spindles) in the region in 1978 with 25 units which increased to over 1,000 machines owned by women in 32 villages. In 1987, pedal-operated looms were introduced to weave khadi cloth from the yarn spun on the ambar charkhas. Today, there are 20 looms in Pindval which gives employment to 40 youth. The centre at Pindval produces khadi worth Rs 40 lakh in a year.

Parivar started a residential school in the campus housing the khadi production centre in 1995 in which there are today 200 boys and girls studying in class 1 to 7. Another residential school was started in Khadki, 20 from Pindval, in which there are 230 students. The campuses of both these schools have also been put to use for developing nurseries of various types fruit-bearing plants that are distributed among the villagers for carrying out forestation.

The fruits of last 40 years of work of Sarvodaya Parivar can be seen in the form of lush green trees on the hills of surrounding Pindval, titled roofs on the huts of the adivasis, clean and healthy children residing in the two schools, hundreds of wells that have been recharged because of the construction of check dams over rivulets and streams.

In recognition of their yeomen service, all the four founders of Sarvodaya Parivar have received such prestigious awards as The Jamnalal Bajaj Award jointly to Kantaben and Harvilasben, the Indian Merchants Chamber’s Platinum Jubilee Endowment Award and the state-level ‘Darshak’ Award to the trust.