WELCOME Address by Diana Schumacher
for the launch of Jeevika Trust, 25 June 2005
Dear supporters of the India Development Group (now Jeevika Trust) and Friends.
I am extremely sorry not to be with you on this wonderful and very auspicious occasion owing to the exceptionally inconvenient timing of a family wedding! It is my privilege, however, on behalf of the Board of Directors, to extend to you all a very warm welcome in this lovely location. We all hope that you will have a very enjoyable and relaxing afternoon and that you will learn about the current work of the Trust and feel sufficiently enthused to support it generously; and also by becoming a Friend of Jeevika, so that you can share its progress with us.
My association with the India Development Group goes back probably longer than that of anyone here barring Mark and Elizabeth Hoda of course, and our Chairman George McRobie who, with Mansour and Surur Hoda, was originally responsible for getting the organisation off the ground in 1970. I first met George and the remarkable Hoda brothers through my late father-in-law Fritz Schumacher who was the fourth of the Founding Fathers of IDG and the author of many of its distinctive ideas. Sadly, Fritz died in 1977, and within the last five years both Mansour Hoda who ran the projects in India, and Surur Hoda, Secretary-General of IDG (the UK support group), also died. But the work goes on and hence this gathering today to mark the re-organisation and re-launch.
The charity was originally the idea of Dr E F (or Fritz) Schumacher. As an economist Schumacher had been invited to India, originally in 1961, by the renowned J P Narayan. This visit proved a turning point for him: it was the first time in his life that he had really experienced truly devastating and degrading poverty. He described it as “a complete collapse of spirit and soul and the inability of people to help themselves”. From the perspective of an economist he simply could not understand this! It was far worse than the poverty he had seen in war stricken Germany or in the poor areas of Latin America or rural Burma. Moreover, no conventional economic theory at the time offered a viable solution to the type of development needed for sustainability in such poor conditions. India was, and still is, a very rich country, and yet two-thirds of the population lived in abject misery. Schumacher observed, however, that there were what he termed “two Indias – a dual economy” - where people in cities and also in villages had two completely different patterns of living - side by side and yet, in reality, worlds apart.
Almost 45 years on, the same situation exists, and in many ways has been exacerbated by the growth of population, by the wrong types of development aid being channelled into large centralised projects, by the impoverishment of the soil by industrialised agriculture and by the eradication of much biodiversity through the cultivation of monocultures and genetically modified crops. With all the news about economic growth and call centres etc, it is too easy to forget about India and the grinding poverty of millions of rural villagers when the tsunami and other all too-frequent natural disasters fall off the headlines. The G8 and the rest of the world are now focussing on Africa. Yet poverty, unemployment, environmental degradation and famine are the norm for the majority of these rural people and the suicide rate of Indian farmers is the worst in the world.
Contrary to the contemporary thinking about development, Fritz Schumacher saw that the establishment of modern industry in a few metropolitan areas kills off competing industries in the rural areas thus causing widespread unemployment and poverty. As he put it “The countryside takes its revenge by mass migration to the metropolitan areas causing them to expand to an unmanageable size.” In these large cities, of course, the cost of subsistence for each individual rises significantly. There are no ‘free’ natural resources. Unemployment in rural areas and mass migration to the towns, especially by the young, causes “mutual poisoning”, with the creativity and resources of both regions becoming destroyed.
Having studied Gandhi in depth and spoken to various eminent Indian economists, Schumacher came to the conclusion that there must be a “middle way” between the Western-style highly automated technologies (which also destroy jobs and local cultural traditions), and the fairly primitive technologies practised by the rural poor. He gradually came to the conclusion that this “intermediate technology” was the most appropriate form of aid and yet at the time it never featured in development projects.
The India Development Group was therefore set up to supply tools, training and technological transfer based on small-scale technologies appropriate to local needs. These “tools for progress” as Schumacher called them, were cheap to construct locally, easy for non-literate people to understand and maintain, and could be made available to countless thousands of peasants in their home villages. Other aspects were later added such as six months courses at the Schumacher Institute in Lucknow, a village school and health clinic; local irrigation and forest farming schemes, training in IT skills and so on.
This charity – under its former name – has been in existence for 35 years and focuses on tackling the roots of poverty. It encourages villagers to make tools and small-scale energy generating equipment from local resources; teaches improved agricultural techniques and traditional village handicrafts and sets up small-scale cottage industries all with a view to capacity-building and enabling people to generate an income, thereby helping them to help themselves. At the same time, unlike aid in the form of hand-outs and tied aid packages, by restoring creativity and livelihoods, this form of assistance also inculcates a sense of responsibility and restores the dignity of work, and pride in the local community.
I and some of the other directors have visited many of the projects ourselves and it is encouraging to see how in India, even with what aid agencies consider relatively small amounts of money, a very great difference can be made to peoples’ life styles. This, of course, has a very positive ripple effect, sometimes with unforeseen results.
In this setting, the direct hands-on help supplied by Jeevika Trust creates oases of hope and opportunity for people to break out of the poverty trap.
One of the reasons for our success so far is that we are a relatively small organisation with very little spent on overheads and administration. The money we raise goes directly to India via the Schumacher Centre in Delhi and you will be hearing more about this from Dr. Giri who is directly in charge of operations out there. If you have questions I know that he, Andrew and other members of the team will be delighted to answer them.
In the meantime I wish you all a very fruitful and enjoyable afternoon’s celebration!
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