Life, seen through a different lens.

Some of us from the General Management Program actually presumed that the Rural Exposure Program at XLRI, would be a relaxed affair with plenty of time to catch up on our overdue rest and sleep. Little did we know that our minds and hearts, hardened by the hustle and bustle of a life in the city and in the corporate world, would undergo a profound transformation.

A mind blowing metamorphosis!

Every year, XLRI together with NGO’s functioning in the villages of Jharkhand arrange for batches of students to be sent to different villages, accompanied and guided by rural development societies. The objective of this program is to ‘expose’ us to a lifestyle, that very few of us have witnessed firsthand. We, the students, get to see the cooperative functioning of a village, the hardships and struggles faced by the residents, the aspirations of the next generation within the village and the ideas supplied by an enterprising few.

On a damp Friday morning, 15 of us left for the Tagore Society of Rural Development located at Patamda, East Singhbhum district. The village was originally a part of West Bengal and the local language was Bangla. Luckily, we had a couple of Bengali colleagues with us, which proved to be vastly useful. Though Patamda was only 50 kilometers away from the XLRI campus, rains and bad roads played spoilsport and it took us a good 2 hours to arrive at TSRD’s gates. Mr. Akash from the NGO passed on a copy of our itinerary for the next 3 days to us, and the realization that the visit was not about fun and sleep, sunk in slowly.

Visit to Patamda Village, by the GMP junta at XLRI (Collage by Venkatesh Iyer)

Mr Akash had an infectious enthusiasm which roused us as well. We started by visiting the Dhadkidih village which had a population of close to 800 people. The school was our first point of visit, and we spent time talking to children and their interests. It was also obvious that the schools found it quite difficult to attract children to come study. The midday meal scheme was very much in existence and played its part in ensuring that the children stayed until lunch.

To TATA Steel Rural Development Society (Collage by Samarjit Mazumdar)

There were two things that struck us almost immediately when walking through the village. One was the lack of electricity, and the other was the prevalence of mobile phones (despite the unavailability of electricity) and the occasional Airtel Dish TV connection. We later understood that the village did fall under the electricity grid, but the availability of electricity was dismally sporadic. To our disappointment, there was just one single determined lady from the whole village who was pursuing her Masters at Jamshedpur.

The day progressed with meeting the Village Panchayat and also understanding the economy of the village. The highlight of the day was the inauguration of the Kisan Club. The Kisan Club is a perfect example of the cooperative system in the village. Members of the club pooled in money and resources to procure equipment of better technology which could be used on a need basis by all members. The day ended with all of us analyzing the supply chain followed by the villagers for their vegetable and poultry produce trying to see if there were options that resulted in better margins for the villagers.

The next 2 days were spent in visiting the Public Health Centre as well as the village of Sundarpur. During the time spent there, Kharkhand experienced torrential rainfall and the Suvarna River swelled threateningly. Interestingly, none of us felt compelled to stay back because of the rain. Contradictory to our original plans, our inclination to rest and watch the raindrops was cut down by our curiosity to visit every nook and corner that the surrounding villages had to offer.

Other eye openers were visiting the farmers market (where one could get anything from vegetables to local liquor and open cooked chicken), meeting the school teacher and the Anganwadi representative, walking one kilometer into corn fields that were destroyed by the rains, understanding the NREGA system and its problems, and finally the talk with Mr Bakshi who spearheaded the activities of the NGO.

The change that had come over us at the end of the visit, is hard to put into words. We left TSRD with reluctance, with a feeling of leaving a task incomplete.

Days after, the feeling still lingers on.

The end result is that each one of us have turned more socially conscious in one way or the other. We had always been blinded by our wants, while the needs of many deserving people have gone unfulfilled. The urge to bring about a change in the system, finally awoke in us.

Thanks to XLRI and selfless organizations like TSRD, our eyes have finally been pried open.

Of team building, adventure trips and unexpected challenges

Belief-defying obstacle courses, man-made and natural, belief inducing team building exercises, imagination stimulating games, life in the rural wilderness, a fierce unexpected storm and tough decisions. These pretty much form the outline of a part of the adventure trip embarked upon by the students of XLRI’s GMP batch 2011-2012.

This compulsory trip, organized this year by the Raymond Memorial Welfare Trust, is a part of the General Management Programme and is aimed at fostering team spirit, increasing familiarity and bonding between the relatively new faces in college, bringing out the leaders the group, overcoming fears and instilling belief in oneself and to get out there and take in whatever life in the greenery and the earth has to offer.

Having arrived in the rustic outskirts of the village Tumung, the group of around sixty students set up camp with the aid of the RMWT instructors and launched into a host of adventure sports. The proverbial lap of nature threw up a challenge or two as teams of students tackled group tasks that tested leadership skills and trust levels within a team, imagination, spontaneity through group tasks, the ability to overcome apprehensions and fears as the group egged each other on through incredible natural and artificial obstacle courses. It didn’t matter that age was not quite on the side of many of the participants; the enthusiasm in the group was infectious, energy rubbed off among the members.

The nature-made challenges, however, weren’t restricted to the obstacle course. On the first night at camp incessant rains and cyclonic winds swept the camp relentlessly. Security and health concerns began to crop up as some of the tents were rendered unusable by nature’s fury. The inhospitable conditions tested the batch’s ability to deal with unexpected crises. Some enquiries and a quick survey revealed that there was a govt school building in the vicinity that could be used as temporary shelter until an alternative could be figured out. As there was some uncertainty about availability of shelter for 60 adults, some of the members volunteered to stay back in the tents and thus help ease logistical issues.

Conditions unfortunately did not improve into the next day and the activities had to be called off prematurely. However, the truncated trip was not without its lessons in management for the students.

The trip was a first-hand experience in:

- Realizing what rural India goes through when the weather runs wild

- Working with what you have

- Prioritization – moving people with health concerns to the temporary shelter first

- Work as a team, coordinate with each other

- When the going gets tough, it becomes all the more important for a team to keep the bigger picture in mind at all times and work towards a best possible solution under the circumstances.

- The importance of clear thinking

The adventure trip may not have fulfilled its immediate purpose, but the students did take away equally significant lessons in management. The students learned what it took to deal with a real situation the hard way; something that cannot be fully learnt in a classroom or from books!