Bagar website is up!

Time has definitely gone by fast here in Bagar. We are almost on our sixth week, it is hard to believe. One reason time has flown could be because we are so busy! Our work day starts around 8:00am or 9:00am and goes until about 8:00pm. Recently, I have been working extra hard at creating the website for this town-- check it out at www.bagar.org. I am the project manager for the site and am working with another intern, Anurag Dutta from BITS-Pilani (a VERY good Indian University for anyone who has not heard of it). He is basically the technology backbone behind the site. As you will see, I have had the opportunity to learn a lot about Bagar and its history. The other day I walked around town for three hours with Manalal Ji, one of the men of the village who explained to me a lot about Bagar and its history. He was in the Indian army for 21 years and enjoyed telling me about his adventures all over India including Calcutta and Kashmir.

Besides the website, I have also been working with the English classes on personality development. This week, we discussed Time Management and Study Skills. It was a huge success and I was able to teach some of the skills I have learned at Penn to the students in rural India. Also, this week another batch of students began coming but this time, the students were actually teachers themselves and college graduates. They enjoyed hearing about lfie in America and were all eager to know "who my favorite actresses and actors were." When I responded with two people who were not in Bollywood, they were slightly surprised (shocker!!)

Ok, time to get back to work! Until next time.....

Stephanie

An experiment in trust

Despite one month of living and working in a new place and interacting in a language and culture I had only a passing familiarity with, I have not yet taken the time to write about my experience. Friends have encouraged me to write both about my time in Bagar and about specific successes and disappointments. My work at the Bagar Employment Exchange has definitely provided much material to write about as we have had a string of successes recently. Yet it was not until a group discussion last weekend that I really felt the impulse to write. Despite being such a seemingly simple concept, it was this idea of “trust” and its role in development that finally pushed me to write. So much of what one reads in development literature and encounters in a developing country such as institutional problems, lack of rule of law, public goods becoming de-facto privatized, etc. boils down to a lack of trust. And, in my experience thus far, this lack of trust is so widespread that personal relationships are needed to get anything done, business can become a painful ordeal, and one must always be on the offensive when dealing with others as written rules may not be respected. It’s a prisoner’s dilemma that one lives each and every time they interact with others and it perpetuates itself each time someone gets burned. Yet I’m also hopeful because once a process begins to be understood, alternatives can be imagined. What is my vision of a developed India? It’s one where trust exists between people and in public institutions and norms. It is of a broad, increased level of public trust rather than the intensely personal relationships I’ve encountered thus far that seem to trump any attempts to create trust beyond the individual. So let us see. My whole time here, everything I do, every person I meet on behalf of BEX, GDL, and the Piramal Foundation, is an experiment with trust. I’m looking forward to what it brings.

Cross-posted at the GDL blog: http://www.piramal.org.in/gdl/2008/06/26/an-experiment-in-trust/

Namaste From Bagar

Hello Everyone!

I am Stephanie Searles and I am also working here in Bagar at GDL. I am currently building a website for the town because (surprise!) nothing really exists on the web about Bagar. I am trying to capture Bagar's identity in the site. I have the unique challenge of figuring out the history of this place (most of which is not written down). My travels across town have taken me to some amazing places. I have visited many havelis (elaborately decorated mansions), most of which were beautiful at one point but are dilapidated and damaged by the extreme weather conditions. I am also trying to visit as many local businesses as possible and figure out the best and most efficient way to present their business on the web. The people here are so welcoming and friendly. It is impossible to walk down one of the street without hearing "namaste didi" (hello sister) from one of the children or being invited into someone's house for a cup of chai.

Also, I have been working with two of the English classes here. I am helping with the personality development sections of the classes. Last week we worked on career development and I tried to explain to the students what their options are where and how to go about pursuing their interests. This week's presentation had to do with positive attitude. Today, to finish off the positive attitude module, someone from the next village is coming in to do a meditation session-- should be interesting.

Overall, I have already learned so much in the first three weeks here. I will continue to up date you all on my experiences and will let you all know when the website is launched!

Namaste!
Stephanie

PS, yes I did ride the camel in the picture and yes, I did scream almost the whole time I was on it!

Namaste

A warm hello (literally & figuratively) from Bagar, India!

It's getting late here, so I'll try to keep the introduction brief. Assuming everything goes according to plan, myself, Pooja, Rahul & Stephanie will be updating this blog regularly over the coming weeks. We're all undergrads at the University of Pennsylvania and are spending the summer interning with the Piramal Foundation's Grassroots Development Lab. Our project assignments vary, so I won't even attempt to describe each person's work! We'll fill you in on the details over the next few days...

In the meantime, here's a brief description of both the Center for the Advanced Study of India (which awarded us the grants that made this trip possible) and GDL itself. If you want more information, you can always check out the links we've posted.

About CASI (in their own words):

"Founded in 1992, the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania is the only research institution in the United States dedicated to the study of contemporary India. A national resource, it fills an urgent need for objective knowledge of India's politics and society, rapidly changing economy, and transformation as an ancient civilization and major power. The Center's key goals are to nurture a new generation of scholars across disciplines and to provide a forum for dialogue among the academic, business, and foreign policy communities."

And about GDL:

"Established in 2006, the Piramal Foundation started by establishing a "Grassroots Development Laboratory" in the ancestral town of the Piramal family: Bagar, Rajasthan. The GDL's mandate, much like the research and development centers for industrial innovations, is to find solutions to the toughest questions in the development of rural India. The GDL team works only on issues of national relevance, applying different ideas through innovative trials in a single district. Our aim: to find ideas with promise that can be scaled to larger populations by future foundation projects."

That's that. Look out for more postings over the next few days, as we get this blog up and running.