Thread by @journohardy

1. This was from the time a New India had not yet been born in 2014.
About nine years into journalism that, I had switched to DNA in 2005 in the launch team as Vidarbha correspondent, reporting the region for the Mumbai daily.

2. My focus was steadfastly on the continuing farmers’ suicides and a deepening agrarian distress, and the Congress governments were worried but open to steps that would mitigate the crisis.
It was the time when suicides and agrarian distress had peaked to unfathomable level.

3. In December 2005, I first met Kalawati-bai at her home in Jalka village; Ranjit Deshmukh, my photographer friend and my constant companion in those countless journeys into the hinterland, was with me. This was the native village of my taxi driver friend Ram Khadse.

4. It was at Ram's insistence that we went to Jalka to report on the tragic suicide by Kalawati’s husband, Parshuram, a marginal farmer. The day we visited Kalawati was the tenth after her husband’s suicide.

5. The household was completely broke – Kalawati had nothing to feed her children; seven daughters and two sons. Interview and story aside, Ranjit and I first rushed to Karanji, a nearby town on Nagpur-Pandharkawda highway, and brought grain and other groceries for the family.

6. In the following years, with the help of friends and well-wishers, we managed to raise some funds to support Kalawati, just as we did with many other absolutely impoverished farming households.

7. But there was something that stood out with Kalawati: one day she asked me if I could help her buy a buffalo and a couple of goats. We managed to do it; this time, @PSainath_org was around to help.
(See PSainath_Org story on her here: )ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/fa…

8. We bought a sewing machine for Kalawati’s eldest daughter, deserted by her husband. She began earning some income to support her mother.
In 2 yrs, Kalawati bought one more buffalo; the number of goats and chickens increased, and the family managed to sustain itself.

9. Fast forward to 2008. By then the Congress govts in the centre and state had announced a series of measures, including loan waiver. In July 2008, a day before the crucial vote on N-deal in LokSabha, @RahulGandhi came to Vidarbha – his tour initially of 3 days curtailed to one.

10. His team had requested my mentor and guide P Sainath to accompany him; and Sainath in turn had asked me to join the entourage since I knew of the region. I sought and got permission from editors at DNA to accompany @RahulGandhi on his tour.

11. Mr Gandhi was touring India under what was then called by media as his ‘discovery of India’ journey. In Vidarbha he wanted to meet farmers and understand their plight. Mrs Margaret Alva accompanied him, since she was the party general secretary-in-charge of Maharashtra.

12. His team put two conditions : That this trip be kept strictly confidential, meaning we would not reveal the places we would be visiting, and two, no partymen would be privy to any information. So, it was just me who knew the places we would visit and the road we would take.

13. From early morning until late evening, it was a non-stop tour in an overcast sky. Dorli in Wardha, a village that had put itself on sale; Sheoni Rasulapur in Amravati, where farmers had protested with ‘kidneys for sale’ posters;

14. ..Bothbodhan in Yavatmal, a village with nearly two dozen suicides over seven years; Pardhi-beda, a hamlet of an impoverished De-notified Tribe farmers. Our last stop was Jalka in Ralegaon tehsil, before we wound our journey back to Nagpur.

15. During his interactions, Mr Gandhi would ask farmers to be frank and even critical of their view of the government. He wanted to know what had gone so wrong with the rural economy that farmers had been dying in their hundreds by suicides.

16. Gandhi met tens of farmers, but two women stood out for him: Shashikala Renghe in a village called Sonkhas, a farm labourer belonging to Andh tribe who wanted to educate her two sons. And Kalawati in Jalka in Yavatmal, Mah, not Bundelkhand as someone in LS said yesterday.

17. Sonkhas was an impromptu stop, where he wanted check out a residential tribal school. After interacting with the students, he took a round of the village and saw Shashikala washing clothes in the front-yard of their small hut.

18. The woman was taken aback and speechless to see him standing at her hut asking if he could come in. Shashikala’s sons, I distinctly remember, were studying in a lamp in that dark room, and Mr Gandhi was touched. He wanted to know their dreams:

19. One of them wanted to become a collector; the other want to join the forces.
Most farmers he met that day did not want their children to take to farming.
In Jalka, he was moved to meet Kalawati, and see her struggle.

20. Our idea was to show him how even small but regular income from allied sectors, could support a farm-family, a learning the policy makers were failing to implement in troubled Vidarbha countryside. Multiple, diversified, income at regular interval could be the way out.

21. Kalawati is articulate and has braved difficult times. She was thrilled to see Rahul Gandhi at her home, just as other villagers were when we landed at their doorsteps unannounced.
Dorli had just woken up when the caravan entered into the village.

22. The following day, in the Parliament, in his brief intervention over the N-deal debate, he spoke about his meeting with two women, Shashikala and Kalawati, but in a different context. He pushed for the N-deal because, he reasoned, India should have diversified energy sources.

23. The same day, the national and local media erupted into a kind of discovery of their own: Shashikala and Kalawati, the women were sought out and interviewed in most channels and newspapers.

24. Sonkhas and Jalka were in the news for some time, before fading into oblivion. Congress leaders, on their part, visited the villages, and offered doles and help. Someone promised to build them houses; the district collectors explored ways to give them support through schemes;

25. It became a jamboree that I had not imagined in my wildest dream. Our idea was to put before the Gandhi scion an earnest view of an issue that we believed needed a major policy and programmatic intervention of a national scale.

26. Enter Mr Bindeshwari Pathak, the founder of Sulabh International, and things transformed for both Kalawati and Shashikala. Sulabh promised them to pay Rs 25,000 a month for 30 years.

27. Pathak kept his promise, even started some activities in two villages, even as Kalawati and Shashikala could see their lives transform. Both managed to come out of the shadow of their past. Kalawati supported another widow in the village who was struggling to make ends meet.

28. One of Shashikala’s sons joined the army, the other could not become a collector but has a job.
Kalawati still lives in Jalka; she lost one of her daughters; her sons are grown up and support her, while other daughters got married.

29. Kalawati, who later became a Green Peace brand ambassador for renewable energy, and Shashikala perhaps met Rahul Gandhi twice later in his subsequent tours of Vidarbha.
And no, Mr Gandhi did not eat at either of the households; If I recall, he just had tea.

30. What did Rahul Gandhi see in that tour?
I reckon, he saw how his party-men stood completely disconnected from the masses – something that bothered him to no end. Things haven’t changed one bit even today despite his 4000-km Padyatra from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

31. Politics itself has become far-removed from the masses or their issues.
In that sense, the BJP is no exception. It has no leader at least in Maharashtra who understands the rural economy. Not that anyone understands any other issues greatly.

32. But the one leader the BJP had in Maharashtra with some rural resonance was late Gopinath Munde, now a forgotten entity in a party he built in the state. The other was Eknath Khadse, but having been cornered he had to leave the party to join the NCP

33. That day, Mr Gandhi also saw how much people had to offer in terms of solutions and suggestions, if only Delhi had eyes and ears; and how rural India had fallen behind the urban by miles.

34. I could not find in the DNA archives my stories from that time, since the paper DNA is no more, except this piece: dnaindia.com/analysis/comme…

35. I remembered it all, because someone poked a joke at Mr Gandhi over Kalawati.
Of course Kalawati bai herself has spoken what this visit meant to her here:
hindustantimes.com/india-news/kal…

36. What did I find that day?
I thought Mr Gandhi was not a great orator, and has problems with the choice of words, but a fine human being that is essential to becoming a fine politician too; and he's not someone to run away from the problems, come what may.

37. One last anecdote from that trip: In one village, he asked people, do Congress leaders come here?
The village Sarpanch said: Never. If you call your district president now, he will take hours to find where this village is.
Mr Gandhi looked at Mrs Alva, and smiled.

#Kalawati