I still remember, a strong hot wind was blowing and the temperature was touching 50 degrees. A really young boy was trying to plough a piece of land with bullocks that were almost like skeletons. The land was all rock and I couldn’t imagine anything growing there. But he had this urgency in him as if, if he didn’t grow anything there that very day his family would starve. That was in 2005 when I went to Pati for the first time.
In 2005 I embarked on a fifty-day long bus journey across the north Indian rural belt immediately after completing his university studies. The journey was a final push to demand for the enactment of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). In this journey I discovered Pati, a small cluster of village panchayats in Madhya Pradesh (central India) where would continue to return and work for the next fifteen years.
In 2005 I embarked on a fifty-day long bus journey across the north Indian rural belt immediately after completing his university studies. The journey was a final push to demand for the enactment of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). In this journey I discovered Pati, a small cluster of village panchayats in Madhya Pradesh (central India) where would continue to return and work for the next fifteen years.