The adage, from your lips to God’s ears gains new meaning as I find lessons in remote northern Indian villages. The lessons which South Africa has forgotten and needs to re-learn.

I am squatting on the floor of a hut in an Araku tribal village in the north of Andra Pradesh, a populous state of over 80-million in the south of India. It reminds me of the many villages to which I travelled while organising workers in the sugar farms and mills of Natal in the 1980s. The rolling hills, the lush green vegetation, the mango trees filled with ripening fruit. The people are excited. They are members of the Araku Co-operative Society. They have 11,000 farmer-members.

I am a guest of Naandi, an innovative NGO launched in 1999 as a public-private partnership to deliver a hot, nutritious midday meal to children in Hyderabad when the Supreme Court of India ruled that was a child’s constitutional right. Today they feed over 1.3-million children across India.

But the organisation has grown beyond social responsibility and today, with more than 6,000 employees, it is one of the largest civil society development enterprises in India, focused on building sustainable livelihoods through social businesses. I have spent two weeks with them travelling to their projects. There is so much that is relevant to Africa.

The indigenous tribes of India are poor and marginalised communities. Public investment in these rural areas is not evident. Stretched across the northern part of India, they officially number over 80-million and are listed in the constitution as scheduled classes. They are among the “invisible people” in India.

I asked Manoj Kumar, the dynamic CEO of Naandi, why he started working in Araku. “It was chosen for its remote location, in which there was a Maoist insurgency led by the Naxalites against government, an absence of NGO presence and abysmally low indices in maternal and infant mortality and school enrolment. We felt if we can crack Araku, we can solve poverty anywhere in the world.

“We thought we would bring development to Araku. We realised that the farmers knew the land better than us. So together we built an army of ‘barefoot development change agents’ by training adivasi farmers as our team of trainers in their own fields. Now they can teach our staff about development.

“My tryst with Araku was an occasional visit in 1998 when I had fallen in love with its panoramic beauty. But I was also moved by the facade of nature hiding the privation and poverty of the people. In 2001 I went again as Naandi CEO to expand our first programme – namely starting schools for children who studied under large trees where the community built the school with sticks, straw and mud walls. In three years we’d built 425 schools and ensured almost all kids are in schools now, run by government,” Manoj tells me.

In August 2002 while ‘inspecting’ his school programme he met Canadian linguist, Uwe Gustavson, who had lived in Araku for 35 years working on literacy programmes and codifying the tribal dialects.

“He told me, ‘I watched you work with such dedication on the education programme. I wish you would do the same for landless peasants who have an acre of leased land from government to grow coffee, but whose lands are unproductive because they lack the skills and tools of agriculture’.”

Naandi proposed they lead a cooperative of farmers using fair trade coffee and black pepper routes with a bio-dynamic framework for development. The journey began in 2002 with 1,000 farmers and has now grown to be the largest empowered adivasi coffee farmer cooperative in India.

At that time farmers were earning $1 for a kilogram of coffee. Working systematically they were trained in organic farming; how to make natural fertilizer from cow dung; how to process the coffee beans according to their quality; when to harvest and an organisation was built from the village upwards.

I met the board the farmers controlled. These were confident leaders focussed on their duties. They proudly showed the training manuals using pictures to describe the techniques and detailed records of the farms all put on a GIS system so that farmers had legal title to their land.

Naandi organisers reminded me of the dedication of unionists with whom I had worked. They put the farmers through a rigorous process of organic certification and negotiated access to global markets. Farmers have now increased their incomes to an average of $5/kg, cut out the middle men and are working towards connecting directly to the consumer.

The coffee combined with other commodities in the Araku are about helping create a small sustainable source of income and at the same time creating opportunities for education, medical care, better food sources, nutrition and fresh water.

David Hogg, a Naandi organic farming guru, preaches, “Sustainable organic agriculture is all about the restoration of sovereignty to farmers in seeds and appropriate local technology to ensure fertile, carbon rich soils and nutritious food that has a direct market linkage to consumers. To achieve this requires a social transformation.” I absolutely agree with him.

Naandi began working on a broader project of empowering farmers to plant a million mango trees using carbon credits to fund the operation. In this project they are working on communities developing vegetable gardens that will make them food-secure and earn an income from exporting surpluses to the cities. No artificial fertilizers or pesticides are used.

The outcomes demonstrate one essential point. This is sustainable development. It comes from painstaking organising of communities around livelihoods. Cosatu succeeded in organising workers, not because we “sold” politics, but because we organised workers around wages and working conditions.

I meet the chairman of the Araku Coffee Co-operative, Garam Kumbo. He is a proud man. “I have educated my daughter, Seetha, and my son, Chandra. Last year we bought an ambulance with our profits of the co-operative. This year we want to introduce health insurance.”

I go down to the village. The water system has collapsed. They have pestered government officials to fix it. Months have passed. Today they have collected money. They will contribute half and the co-op will contribute the rest. But they are also going to organise the nearby villages to march on the government offices demanding that they do the jobs they are paid to do.

The next time a political party comes to ask for their votes, they have some tough questions on what they have done for the community. They are not powerless anymore. Already they have demanded that teachers are in school on time and teaching. And those that don’t comply are chased away. Power here is slowly but surely returning to the people.

I meet the village committee in the village of Mattam Korthur. It is an amazing encounter. They have built a community meeting place under a tree that I am honoured to inaugurate. The village looks successful.

Houses have been improved. The children in class are immaculately dressed and disciplined. They are excited to see strangers coming from a distant country to their village. They don’t really know where South Africa is, but they have heard of Mandela. He is the Mahatma Gandhi of Africa, they say.

They explain their programmes. I ask what their problems are today. A young woman called Sumoni stands up and says “We have banned alcohol in our village”. The majority of women and men applaud. Some men are sullen. A drunken man from another village wonders in curious about the gathering. He is thrown out of the meeting. They are serious about their decision.

I meet Tranadh Somani. She is 38 and has two children. She is a village committee member. Her job as a volunteer is to monitor knowledge transfer. She has been trained and is proud of her knowledge as she takes me through the fields.

She shows a quiet confidence. “My children will have a better life. They will have better education. I am learning how to look after their health. Naandi has shown me that women are an equal part of the community,” she says. These traditional communities have been educated to respect a woman’s rights. That is the Araku way. It is a lesson we need to re-learn in South Africa.

Originally posted by the Daily Maverick.

Emma Mashinini; a leader that represents the true human spirit of our progressive labour movement and the democracy we fought for. Her story should be compulsory reading for all public, private and civil society leaders. They need to be reminded what we fought for and what were the values that underpinned our freedom.

Picador African is please to invite you to join Emma Mashinini and Jay Naidoo in conversation around the launch of Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life.

Cape Town

• Date: Tuesday, 22 May 2012
• Time: 17h30 -18h00
• Place: The Book Lounge, 71 Roeland Street, Cape Town.

• Date: Wednesday, 23 May 2012
• Time: 08h30 – 10h30
• Place: Khaya Bazaar, 2 Makhabeni Street, Khayalitsha.

Tomorrow, I will participate in the celebration of GAIN’s 10th anniversary. Since its founding in 2002, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition has worked on the frontline of the fight against malnutrition, mobilizing partnerships and bringing innovative solutions to the table.

Since I have been involved with GAIN I have really seen the organization growing, expanding its scale and improving the lives of vulnerable populations around the world. Over 600 million people are now benefiting from affordable, better quality food thanks to the efforts of GAIN and its partners. I am really proud to be associated and part of this effort.

Inspiring message from Dadi Janki from the Brahma Kumaris, World Spiritual University.

Dear Friends,

Om shanti. Each of us has different specialities. We have to see only the goodness in everyone. When we interact with others with love and honesty, their virtues naturally emerge. If there is any ill feeling in my heart, then it will erode my own self-respect. To make judgments about others is a sign of ego in me. Instead, I should work on my own inner cleanliness and notice whether any weakness remains within me. If I allow myself to see any weaknesses in another, it will become my own weakness, and then how can I be of service?

Remember that ‘past is past,’ and finish whatever defects and weaknesses still remain within you. Thoughts of the past should never enter your thoughts, or be used in your words or deeds. When you look at everyone with love, the present will be good and the future will be even better. Check yourself, and see the goodness in everyone.

With love,

Dadi Janki

In India, there is a model for healthcare that goes against all economic logic. People pay what they can to have their sight restored. If they can’t pay, they still get the gift of sight. No bank was prepared to back Dr Govindappa Venkattaswamy, yet today the results of his service are felt in 30 countries across the globe.

I pay R7 to have an eye test. I can come two more times in the next three months and I will not be charged. I first do a glaucoma test, then I am tested for vision, and then examined for uveitis, an eye disease I suffered in my youth. I am given a clean bill of health.

The hospital is spanking clean. Every day it sees 1,200 patients and the doctors perform over 200 operations. But this is only the beginning of an amazing story. It is part of a network of eye hospitals that has seen 32 million patients over 36 years and performed more than 4 million eye surgeries, most of them ultra-subsidised or free.

All this originates with the vision of one man, Dr Govindappa Venkataswamy, affectionately known as Dr V. In 1976 he founded Aravind as a post-retirement project when he was 58. He was inspired by one of India’s legendary philosophers, Sri Aurobindo, whose reflections on the transience of humankind influenced many thinkers. He spoke to the prerequisite for a collective and radical transformation of consciousness of the human spirit.

Dr V represents that ascent of the revolutionary staircase that unites the inner soul and the logic of nature. He set his goal to give the right to sight to the 12 million people in India suffering from preventable blindness. No bank wanted to lend him money. “’You are too old, they said. You are prepared to operate for free on patients who cannot pay. You don’t have a business model we can fund.‘”
So he mortgaged his home and created the first 12-bed hospital in Madurai in the south of India, one of the country’s oldest cities and home to the famed Meenakshi Amman temple, dating back to 6BC. Here the patient has the choice to decide whether to pay or not. In a country where a huge majority of people live on less than $2 a day, he ripped off the price tag for access to world class quality eye care.

Then he decided he would never ask for a loan again. Aravind would run as a Trust that controlled the operations and the surpluses would be used for more operations. Today there are seven major Aravind Hospitals, over 50 vision care centres and they consult and work with eye hospitals in over 30 countries.

As my son and I walk through the hospital, we are amazed at the energy that resides within. It is a railway station. But there is an air of serenity. It is spotless but I do not see a single cleaner. I ask the outreach manager, a young beautiful woman called Pria, how they manage such an efficient operation and yet remain so calm. She laughs.

“We love our work here. Dr V had a vision – ‘To see all as one; to give sight to all.’ We believe that vision.”

I understand. It spans a beautiful rainbow arc that unites a revolutionary business model with a profound compassion of our shared humanity.

How sadly lacking are we today, globally and locally, of selfless leaders such as Dr V. His goal was “to spread the Aravind model to every nook and corner of India, Asia and Africa; wherever there is blindness we want to offer hope. Tell me, what is this concept of franchising? Can’t we do what McDonald’s and Burger King have done?’

The only difference I would add is that Aravind is delivering high-quality health rather than junk fast food.

Today the Aravind Eye Care System is the largest provider of eye surgeries in the world. They see more than three million patients and perform over 300,000 surgeries a year. That is almost 7% of the global total. And their record of proficiency is better than that of the UK healthcare system.

The simple philosophy is to create awareness that blindness is largely preventable, building trust that Aravind will deliver world class treatment even if it is free and ensuring access to the most remote communities through the outreach camps, underpinned with the values of humility, compassion and service.

I ask Dr Boo Balan from the hospital administration in Pondicherry how he can run such a fantastic facility and achieve so much.
“We have commoditised our operations. Everyone knows exactly what they have to do. The clinical staff must do the diagnosis. We have the most sophisticated equipment here. The doctors must prescribe and operate. The counsellor staff must explain all the procedures to the patient. The administration must work like clockwork. There is no laziness here. Staff that do not have the work ethic of Aravind do not stay long. For us the patient is the focus of everything we represent.”

I think back to our healthcare system in South Africa. I know that we have islands of excellence that match this, but the norm is that the system is designed more to serve the interests of bureaucrats, politicians and staff than the patient.

My son asks Pria how they manage to ensure efficiency. She takes me to the data clerks outside each major section of the hospital. They have a real-time system. It monitors the waiting time in each unit of those waiting versus those seen. At any time staff can be allocated instantly to where they are needed.

I ask what the average costs will be if a patient requires complicated eyed surgery such as a cornea transplant. Dr Veena, a senior surgeon, replies: “The average cost for the most complex surgeries will vary between R1,600 and R3,000. It will cover all the tests, the cost of the operation, the hospital accommodation and medicines. The patient will have to pay separately for food. And if you cannot pay it will be free. You will get exactly the same operation and treatment but accommodation will be in general wards”
We are stunned. Why can’t this be the model across the world for all our healthcare needs? I ask what the costs of spectacles are, knowing that we pay hundreds of rands for them in SA. On average a set of quality spectacles costs on average R50 at Aravind.

The only variable is volume and the efficiency of the system. But even then I know that the real reason in SA is a monopoly that drives up the costs that puts profits before the patient.

As we debate the future of our healthcare system and the proposed National Health Insurance, I ask myself how these ethical human values can be integrated into the way our health system works.Throwing money at our problems is not going help. I know that at Aravind every member of staff will bring their children to this hospital because they trust the quality of healthcare they are delivering to the patients who flood their gates every morning.

They have their heart in their work. It gives them meaning in their lives. They are here to serve and they do that from a deep-seated feeling that we are all born equal and united by the human spirit. It’s more than the salary package. It’s about service with passion and an infinite vision.

For more information, go to Aravind.
And see documentary on Dr V – Infinite Vision.
Also Sri Aurobindo Society.

Originally posted by the Daily Maverick.

Twenty five years ago there was a fierce contestation of power between the democratic movement and a brutal regime run by the finger wagging “Groot Crocodil.” It will be good to debate what we were prepared to give our lives for then? What we have achieved? And what rights we struggled for then still have to fight for today?

The last 25 years: From a wagging finger to a show of hands | Daily Maverick

It’s been a quarter of a century since South Africa’s last whites-only general election. CHRIS GIBBONS examines what’s changed and what hasn’t.

Emma Mashinini; a leader that represents the true human spirit of our progressive labour movement and the democracy we fought for. Her story should be compulsory reading for all public, private and civil society leaders. They need to be reminded what we fought for and what were the values that underpinned our freedom.

Emma Mashinini Launches Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life at Constitution Hill

The launch of Emma Mashinini’s Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life in Johannesburg last week was a moving tribute to South African women workers, particularly during the apartheid era but also in the present.

In June the world will turn its attention to the G20 Summit, where leaders from across the globe will gather to discuss some of the most pressing problems faced today. Food security, with an emphasis on food price volatility, will rightfully be high on the agenda.

But implications for food security go well beyond the challenges of increasing food production to meet future demand, and of addressing short-term price volatility – for poor consumers , the issue is not just about the quantity of food that they eat, but also the quality. The nutritional quality of food consumed underlies health and wellbeing, and impacts on virtually all aspects of people’s lives and livelihoods. This is why when we consider food security in Africa, we must move beyond whether there is enough food but also consider whether that food can deliver life sustaining nutrients particularly for the millions of pregnant and lactating women and infants and young children who have greater nutritional requirements than the general population.

The recently released World Bank Global Monitoring Report 2012: Food Prices, Nutrition, and the Millennium Development Goals, makes this point clear, noting that:

“Vicious interactions between malnutrition, poor health, and impaired cognitive development set children on lower development paths and lead to irreversible changes. The most dramatic effect of the food price crisis is an increase in infant mortality, especially in low-income countries. Other hard-to-reverse impacts include growth faltering (stunting or low height for age) and lower learning abilities. Malnourished young children are also at more risk for chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease in adulthood. Moreover, declines in human capital in a crisis tend to be more pronounced than the corresponding increases during economic booms.”

And it was the 2008 Lancet series on Maternal and Child Undernution that put a number on the extent to which nutrition impacts child health citing that undernutrition accounts for a staggering one third of total child deaths globally – some 2.6 million each year . Even for those children who survive undernutrition has produced generations of children who suffer from chronic malnutrition, and millions more suffer from vitamin and mineral deficiencies, which affect an estimated two billion people affecting their health, development, educational attainment and their economic outcomes. Moreover, acute malnutrition, which demands emergency treatment, affects an estimated 55.5 million children globally. These conditions are, not surprisingly, exacerbated during times of economic crisis and food insecurity, and by poor lack of access to clean water, good sanitation and adequate healthcare. It was following on these shocking statistics that the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement was born- designed to help Governments, civil society, the private sector, research institutions and the United Nations system work together to fight hunger and undernutrition through scaling up proven interventions. Far from a silver bullet, the SUN movement recognizes that addressing undernutrition will necessitate coordination and collaboration among the food, health and hygiene sectors.

And what of Africa? Why does Africa, a continent with such abundant agricultural potential, face such a challenge in food and nutrition security? Certainly land and water management practices, limited uptake of agricultural technologies, poor infrastructure, a weak enabling environment which has inhibited investments particularly from the private sector, dysfunctional markets and few means to manage risks associated with excessive price volatility of agricultural commodities play critical roles. But these challenges also relate to our failure to view food as a conduit to good nutrition and ultimately to positive health and economic outcomes. One need only to look at progress toward achieving the MDG’s to see that Africa’s statistics are indicative of this. Progress in health-related MDGs, particularly maternal, infant and child mortality, is significantly lagging with respect to the 2015 targets, and progress toward reducing undernourishment also has a long way to go, with only 15% of SSA countries having achieved or on track to achieve MDG1- leaving 85% off track or seriously off track.

The real question then, is what can be done, and where should the G20 focus their efforts if they care about both economic development, and also the health and welfare of the world’s poor. Evidence from the recent food price crisis indicates that increases in global food prices have not only decreased access to food but forced the poor to preserve their need to fill their bellies and channel their meager incomes toward the purchase of staple foods at significantly higher prices, sacrificing consumption of nutrient rich foods such as fruits, vegetables and animal products.

Improving the production, access, and use of nutritious foods is one fundamental strategy to improve the nutrition of the poor. Improving the quality of staple foods all along the value chain, through improved seeds, better fertilizers and milling and storage practices, as well as through large scale fortification efforts shows promise to improve the diets in a sustainable way that reaches the very poor. We must also recognize that the data are very clear that pregnant and lactating women and children under the age of 2 have extremely high nutritional needs, and must consume higher nutritionally dense foods in order to adequately meet their nutritional requirements. Improved maternal nutrition during pregnancy and lactation, breastfeeding promotion – including during illness, the use of nutritious solid foods to complement breastfeeding starting at 6 months as well as therapeutic feeding when necessary are important. Taken together efforts to improve the nutritional quality of food along the entire food value chain coupled with targeted nutrition interventions can both increase effective yields for poor farmers and improve the health and livelihoods of their communities and themselves.

In short, if we are to improve nutrition for Africa’s Food Security we must ensure that the food system is accountable for and works to improve nutritional value. This means more than simply increasing production, and stabilizing prices. Nutritional quality needs to become an active and measurable objective embedded within the food security agenda and within agriculture programs. Strategies for integrating health, nutrition, and agriculture are reflected in the Scaling Up Nutrition movement, and are gaining momentum both nationally and among the global community. More support is required from G20 governments for substantial progress to be made in the fight against malnutrition. Supporting the policy and resource goals of the SUN movement is an important step. Better capitalizing on the reach and knowhow of the private sector, all along the value chain, and coupling their expertise with a strong policy environment is also important, as is emphasizing the importance of nutrition in the agriculture and food security agendas. Providing a framework for measuring progress is a fourth. These additions would go a long way in addressing one of the world’s greatest challenges both in Africa and in poor countries around the globe. Let us see the G20 take decisive actions to make this happen.

Spent the last few weeks travelling in south of India and meeting villages learning about development projects especially organised around milk production that translates the wealth of the poor into incomes and livelihoods.

Have just met with organisations of tribal coffee farmers in Araku in north of Andra Pradesh.

Great experience and learning how we deal with poverty by organising communities around livelihoods.

It confirms for me the need for more campaign based approach to dealing with the structural causes of poverty and inequality.

I have spent several weeks travelling in rural India. I am shocked to see how deeply entrenched the caste system is. It must rank as evil as apartheid was to us in South Africa. And it continues to oppress and exploit communities in India in the 21st century. But I realise like in South Africa that racism will not disappear because the Constitution forbids it. It will be eradicated when we are organised as communities and hold our leaders accountable to the interests of the people and not the interests of economic and political elites.

A candle in the dark | The Hindu

Makhdumpur is a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Bhadohi district. Adjoining it is a cluster of huts inhabited by people of the Nat caste, one of the lowest among Dalits. Congress party general secretary Rahul Gandhi visited a hut in the settlement just before the recent State Assembly elections. He spent some time inside the hut, interacted with the residents, shared a meal with them and then went on his way. After the victory of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the elevation of Akhilesh Yadav as Chief Minister, the hut was vandalised and burnt down by a mob claiming its affiliation to the Yadav caste. Though the act was a grave offence against Dalits, neither Mr. Gandhi nor Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) leader and former Chief Minister Ms Mayawati condemned it. In fact, atrocities against poor and vulnerable Dalits by powerful middle castes and supporters of the SP have been on the rise in the State but there have hardly been any protests by political parties. – BADRI NARAYAN

View more photos here.