Learning Giving from the Poor

"After a while it became difficult to differentiate the benefactor from the the beneficiary" Ms Surekha Reddy, CEO, Sri Padmavati Mahila MACS Federation, Tirupati

All of my work life has been spent in Agriculture and Rural space, with NDDB and NABARD, and later with an NBFC that was majorly into lending to Microfinance Institutions.

A significant part of every role involved travel to project areas and implementing agencies as well as meeting 'beneficiaries' or 'clients' of programmes. Every visit used to be carefully planned and choreographed by the person travelling, the office, and the host on the field. While air travel to small towns is of recent origin, our travel used to be largely by rail, and by road, if rail connectivity was poor or inconvenient.

Where to stay where to have lunch, where to visit, and when to get back was all well planned (a phrase describing this popularised by Robert Chambers was Rural Development Tourism). As a part of this routine, we used to visit/meet 'beneficiaries'/end clients, who were most times carefully chosen and well-rehearsed.

The common theme, irrespective of where I went, whether Lakpat village in the Rann of Kutch or Peren in Nagaland, or whom we met, was the largehearted hospitality, irrespective of their own means. And when they offered a cup of tea or a snack, it was so difficult to refuse, for it is not the item they serve, but the love behind the giving. Trying to make-even the cost they incur by contributing financially was offending. 'How can love have a price?' they would counter. If you pay for it, you reduce it to a transaction.

How then do we return the outpouring of love of so many we encounter during the course of our official work? It is by being more sensitive to the work that we do and how it impacts and touches their lives. When we plan, design and implement programmes for such people who are euphemistically called 'beneficiaries', their love replays before our eyes. How can we do the utmost to help them? How can we be facilitators rather than stumbling blocks? How can we give more and hold back less for ourselves?

This sensitivity itself helps us to be better persons, and better Development workers, and it shows in our conduct in office and outside.

That brings me to the quotation I put up at the top of this article. While I worked with a cluster of Artisans in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh, over time, their economic transformation was so tangible. Surekha (https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/surekha-reddy-a9976815/), the then CEO of the Mahila Federation was so impressed by the way we related to the community, treating them as equals, without the airs of a funder or benefactor, she made this observation in one of her public talks. What she said has stayed with me since. After all, that we are where we are, and they where they are, are matters of providence.