The other India

This has been a clear few weeks of contrasts. I've been working on a new project in Delhi and rural parts of Rajasthan to communicate to the poor about the government's new health insurance for the poor. This is very different from my normal work for several reasons - but mostly I've never worked in Delhi or in rural north India. Last week I toured some slums in Delhi to talk to people and see how they reacted to the offer, when to find them at home, who would make the decision, etc. One thing that struck me is how different each neighborhood is. In one the men came home from lunch and trusted the government, the other the men were out from 8-6 and didn't trust the government. The people are also incredible (first picture was a girl who showed us around her neighborhood with it's overflowing sewage and tiny passageways). We asked a woman in the area if she'd prefer a person from the government or a person from the insurance agency telling her about this she thought about it and said, "send me who ever you'd like to talk to". We're not that different sometimes.

Then I had a weekend escape to Goa (long exhale). AAAAAAHHHHHH.

Then this week I headed to rural Rajasthan, to Tonk district. Spent yesterday doing a lot of traveling and then talking to villagers. Time has not hit this part of India. Big gold rings in the women's noses, bright turbans on the guys, camels camels everywhere. We ended up meeting a lot of the people who were employed by the government Rural Employment Scheme (oddly mostly women in really bright saris) which guarantees 100 days work on public works projects every year. Most reviewers think it's a disaster but some big holes were getting dug! The village leader who seemed to have polio and had only one working leg and four teeth that protruded over his lower lip showed us around the work sites to find qualified Below the Poverty Line families to talk to. I could barely climb the sand dunes and here he is navigating with ease.

And I saw a huge variety of animals, besides the gazillion of camels, there were cows, water buffalo (did you know the females have horns? Either that or males have started nursing), furry pigs (even piglets), goats (including kids dragging a dead one into the open drain and many females who had their utters tied up in a fabric bag that I can't for the life of me figure out!), dogs, cats, a tree full of gorgeously singing green parakeets, donkeys, horses, black camels, ... in fact I starting thinking that towards the end of the day the only normal indian animals I hadn't seen were elephants, peacocks and monkeys but shortly thereafter I saw a peacock and then later a monkey the size of a 6 year old child. I don't want to romanticize rural poverty, as certainly they are poor and from the stories we heard, suffering but the space they have to live in compared to urban areas. All the huts in the village were made from clay but they had courtyards and each family (i.e., parents versus adult son and his family) had their own room on a side of the courtyard. In Delhi 15 people live in a 2x2 space. The last picture of a family is the ideal family for this insurance. The father had kidney surgery last year which cost $1250 (even on the rural employment scheme they make $2 a day), included three different hospitals in two states and had to mortgage his land. His middle son is mentally retarded. He has an elder daughter who was in school but the scheme only covers three children and he said he'd pick these three as they were younger. Tough choice!

Today we spent the day in Tonk again but in this meeting (in a tent on plastic chairs) for government workers about the plan which was endless and in a language I don't understand.

And after I get back to Delhi tonight, I leave tomorrow night to play in an ultimate frisbee tournament in Ahmedabad where they've strictly forbidden us girls from wearing shorts (which I wouldn't have done but isn't sitting well with me regardless).