For over 50 years now, in hundreds of sun blasted, drought-prone, largely poverty stricken places, tens of thousands of villagers look upon our Community Initiatives and Rural Development teams as minstrels of faith. For, in these interiors, under the umbrella of the Aditya Birla Centre for Community Initiatives and Rural Projects, stewarded by Mrs. Rajashree Birla, our teams work to lift an underserved people from sub-human to human levels.

Hindalco works in over 340 villages. Of these, 71 villages in Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Silvassa, were taken up for transformation into model villages in a three year time-frame, capped into a three year rolling plan. A total of 70 per cent of the model villages were phased out as per our schedule and new villages have been taken up for conversion into model villages.

The making of a model village entails ensuring self-reliance in all aspects — education, healthcare, family welfare, infrastructure, agriculture and watershed development and ensuring sustainable livelihood for the populace. Once the villages reach the stage of self-sufficiency, the hand-holding stops. Hindalco highlighted the progress made in three years in these 71 villages and took pains to prove that they were now well on a sustainable path.

The Hindalco team-talk
"Our plan is based on a tripartite partnership with the gram panchayat (the village elders), the beneficiaries and our company. All milestones are arrived at collectively. These villages were amongst the poorest of the poor with 70 per cent of the villagers living below the poverty line (BPL). The villages were devoid of even basic amenities such as potable water, healthcare centres, and steady means of subsistence. The challenge for us lay in the onerous task of changing all this for the better. Of the 18,806 families in these villages, our project reached out to 13,165 BPL families. Our programme is a holistic one. Our concentration is essentially centered on economic self-reliance including watershed development, healthcare, education and capacity building, infrastructure development, and women empowerment.

The report card
Our report card in the last 36 months is quite heartening. We have:

• Brought around 24,000 acres of land under irrigation, benefiting 10,129 families
• Under the watershed development programme, erected 138 hyder towers, built 250 pucca canals, dug 337 wells, constructed 157 check-dams, distributed 245 pedal pumps and set up 307 harvest tanks.
• Raised land productivity by 29 per cent
  * Through training in different skills at the Aditya Birla Rural Technology Park, enabled to raise the earning capacity of 11,794 people and now they are earning more than Rs. 2,000 per month by various income-generating activities
• Set up 360 self-help groups that run 50 oil processing units, 40 tailoring centres, 27 horticulture and 103 vegetable growing fields. Apart from this, we have trained 93 rural entrepreneurs in the repairing of diesel pumpsets and 909 farmers for lac cultivation
• Through training programs in different trades, enhanced earning capacity for many and as a result they are running their own enterprises such as rice and flour mills, hand pump repairing, rope making, running tea stalls, pottery, making carpets, washing powder, bee-keeping, bamboo basket making, goatery and blanket making
• Brought the literacy rate to reach around 59 per cent. We extended the Aditya Bal Vidya Mandirs, which today have more than 4608 children between six to 12 years, getting quality primary education
• Provided access to better healthcare by establishing 18 first aid-cum-family welfare centres and conducting medical camps twice a week. In all, 484,235 doses of pulse polio have been administered among children under the age of five in collaboration with the block health department. We spotted 4,471 tuberculosis patients through our medical camps and treated them. In 80 eye-care camps, 4,771 senior citizens, afflicted with cataract, were operated upon. Our team of doctors, through reconstructive surgery and supportive aids, put over 90 patients back on their feet. Through 18 outreach clinics, we managed and reached out to 39,053 families, impressing upon them the need for planned and small families. Thus, we lowered the maternal and child mortality rate by three and six per cent, respectively
• Brought the BPL families whose income level was hovering around Rs.10,000 per annum to the above poverty line at Rs.25,000 annually

The measurement metric
To measure the effectiveness of our programme, we had the Xavier Institute of Social Service (Ranchi), do an extensive project audit. Dr. Alex Ekka, Director, Research and Consultancy Department of the Xavier Institute and his audit team conducted the social audit.

In Dr. Ekka's words, "Qualitative and quantitative assessment of various components of the model village development programme as well as the state of affairs of village organisations revealed that around 70 per cent of 71 villages studied under social audit could be phased out by 31 March 2005. The village bodies in those villages are empowered to carry forward the developmental works on their own in future. Adequate measures have been taken for the sustainability of the rural development projects implemented under the model village programme and the assets and institutional infrastructures created therein". We had gone by the audit team's advice. We have phased out 49 villages and elevated these villages to a stage of self-sufficiency. However, we are providing managerial support as per need.
Dhansariya and Bechan - a new begining

Dhanu's stirring story
Dhansariya Devi, one of the beneficiaries in the sleepy Devari village in Muirpur Block of Renukoot, extols the yeomen service rendered by our Hindalco team. She gets extremely emotional. She says, "Life can often be a wretched wringer and as you emerge squeezed, you learn quite a few lessons and a few mean tricks too".

Married much before she entered her teens, Dhansariya and her husband, Bechan, is a farmer couple with six-bigha land. "We used to work from dawn to dusk on our land. It has been quite a struggle because Dewari is woefully short of irrigation facilities. And of the rain Gods, who can say? When we reaped a fine harvest, we would stow away part of the produce to tide us over in lean times. This became a kind of a set pattern. Bechan, my husband, and my three children and I learnt to live on sparse meals.

"Bechan, however, would feel most pressurised. He started losing his mental balance. Imagine getting up one morning and suddenly discovering that the man of the house has left you high and dry. In the mood of irrecoverable loss that I felt, my mother-in-law and brother-in-law said that he had gone soft in the head because of me. They emotionally tortured me and admonished me because I would still put the bindi on my forehead. To look after my children and to feed them, I had little option but to work as a maidservant in the house of other well-to-do villagers.

"To my good fortune, on a sunny day, Krishna Kumarji, the block coordinator of the Muirpur Block, having come to know of my pain, met me. He convinced me that a maid's work would lead me nowhere and persuaded me to form a self-help group.

"Diffidently, I gathered a couple of women and we started a small kitchen garden. I have always believed that when God closes one door, he opens a window to let the sunshine in. Krishna Kumarji connected me with the Hindalco Mahila Mandal and the Hindalco Jan Seva Trust. They impressed upon us to take our vegetable cultivation on a far higher scale. The Hindalco Mahila Mandal gave us an interest-free loan of Rs.70, 000. This was a great boon of all of us in the self-help group, and today the ten of us earn more than Rs.2000 per month. Our quality of life has changed dramatically.

"With Hindalco, my luck changed even on the personal front. Deep in my heart I always held on to the fact that one day Bechan would return and that my life would reshape. Out of the blue, I received a letter. Since I am unlettered, I asked the Gram Pradhan to read it. To my utter joy, he said that Bechan was staying at a hospital run by missionaries in Kerala for the last nine years and that he would be happy to return home. Again, the Mahila Mandal came to my rescue, with the President, Shrimati Sangita Shah, taking a personal interest and advising Mr. Ahmar Sultan to bring Bechan home.

"So my story has a very happy ending. Today Bechan is also working as a farm hand. Besides my self-help group, I am undergoing the women hand-pump repairing mechanic training at the Aditya Birla Rural Technology Park. Once I fully understand how to repair the hand pump, I will be able to earn even more money. All that I dream of is to make sure that my children study very well and lead a better life than ours".

No wonder hundreds of villagers look upon our people as 'minstrels of faith'.