Anil and many other stories like his are beginning to emerge from the more than forty villages that are now participating in the Adivasi Voices Project, which is becoming an important catalyst for social change among tribal communities that have often felt marginalised and who suffer with what recent research describes as “the quadruple burden of disease.”

The key to the success of this project is that it starts with a process of listening to the stories of the community, appreciating their strengths, working with them to grow belief in their own capacity for change and to care for each other.  But now the teams feel that it’s time to go deeper.

Earlier this year I travelled with Dr Ian Campbell from Affirm Associates to work with the Adivasi Voices Project (AVP) teams to reflect on their work over the last few years and to train the team on how they can go deeper with communities using a story and “strengths-based” approach called SALT. I’ve witnessed the power of this approach first-hand, in a project Amplifying Voices was involved in, in Sierra Leone.

In India, going deeper will involve more regular and intensive visits, where AVP members will go into people’s homes to hear their personal stories, understand their concerns and build on their hopes and strengths, involving them in the creation of content that will help to transform their lives.

During our time of working together the AVP teams practiced doing “SALT conversations” with total strangers in the local town, amazed how everyone they spoke to felt valued and appreciated being heard. The team reflected on those conversations:

• We are all humans and we all have pain’
• ‘We learn through talking.’
• ‘I recognise myself – who I am and I can help people understand who they are.’
• ‘I realised I have strength in me and I can see strength in others.’
• ‘We are looking for change in ourselves and in our communities.’
• ‘When you hear people’s story, you can bring hope and learn hope.’

Since the workshop, more than 75 families have been visited which is bringing deepening connection in communities and increasing understanding of people’s concerns and hopes for their families. From these conversations, we know that there is real desire for people to live well, to earn a sustainable living for their families, and to help their children access an education. What’s more is that they are willing to work hard to achieve this. There is also a deep concern and desire to change the problems that are common among Adivasi communities. These stories will inform what people will hear on the monthly speakerbox programmes and will amplify their voices and their concerns.

*Village speakerbox programmes are produced every month with participation from local communities.  Programmes are distributed on SD cards in more than 40 villages by Adivasi Voices Project Teams. This is an initiative of  Seva Social Welfare Foundation in collaboration with Amplifying Voices.

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In a remote tribal village in Maharashtra a remarkable story is unfolding. It started with one village.  After a year, another one joined in.  Before too long there were thirty others, with new ones asking to join. None of the communities in these villages had ever met, but somehow they knew each other well, for they shared a common story – of challenge and adversity. But they were also connected through the Adivasi Voices Project, a  joint venture between local NGO, Seva and Amplifying Voices.

Sharing stories, coming together

For over a year these village communities have been listening to each other’s stories on speakerboxes, learning from each other and from experts too.  With support from the Seva team, people shared their stories, about overcoming addiction, escaping the trap of bonded labour, or how to start a kitchen garden. The communities not only inspired each other that change is possible, they also shared how.

Since before the pandemic many people from these communities had been asking Seva to set up a face-to-face meeting with other villages in the district, and so for the first time, last week, five communities came together, hosted by the village of Umburne.

“It was like meeting long-lost friends ,” said Ram, “we had so much to talk about, but most importantly we talked about the programmes we loved the most and the changes that have happened in our villages since we had the speakerboxes.”

Village-to-village transfer

Seva team leader, Shilpa described the gathering as being like a celebration of learning. As story after story was shared, Shilpa said she was so surprised to see how much faster change had come to the villages which had most recently received the speakerboxes, compared to those who had them at the beginning.  “They have adopted new ideas, attitudes and practices much more quickly than the first villages we started working in,” she said.  “Of course the communities have learned from the interviews with experts, but what has been most powerful is that the communities have been learning from each other,” she added, describing it as a “village-to-village transfer.”

Community members from five adivasi villages in Maharashtra share how stories and content on the speakerboxes have impacted their lives

The content on the speakerboxes is coordinated by the Seva team, however each programme is rooted in the heart of the village and the communities are involved in their design and creation.  Experts too are involved when important learning or information needs to be shared. The most popular programmes in all the villages, however were the dramas, which reflect village life and issues they all face. One lady, Trimbak, chuckled as she recounted how the family arguments she heard in the dramas were just like the arguments in her family.” Dattu, who was able to recite the dialogues in the dramas, said the programmes were in their language and exactly depicted their lives and situations.  Tulshi shared how the programme on early marriages had sparked a big conversation in his village, because they hadn’t allow girls to get an education above 4th standard. “But all that has changed,” he said, “Our entire village have decided that all our children should have an opportunity to have secondary education as well.”

After food and dancing the villagers said their farewells, agreeing that this should become a regular event and that more villages should be included in future.

For us, we have been reminded that lasting, sustainable change happens at the grassroots level. And that when change, no matter how small comes to one community, it can cause ripples of change in other communities.  Some of these ripples will intersect with other ripples to create waves which result in momentum and lasting impact.

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Mirabai (not her real name) was admitted to hospital in the city on 19th September suffering with abdominal swelling and terrible pain in her body. Normally she wouldn’t go to hospital, but she had heard on the speakerbox in her village in India about symptoms of uterine cancer, which was prevalent among Adivasi communities, and that it was important to get treated as early as possible.  As an Adivasi woman, classified in India as a person from a “scheduled tribe“, the presenter on the speakerbox programme told her that her medical expenses would be covered under the MJPJAY programme.

When our colleagues from SEVA, who made the programme, went to visit her, shortly after her arrival, no beds were available and no doctor would treat her. Bewildered and in a strange city, far from friends and family, she was told that she first had to pay before she could receive treatment and be admitted into the hospital.  “But I have no money,” she told them, “I was told that treatment would be free.”

At the time of writing, 28 days after arriving in the city, Mirabai has been admitted to hospital only because the SEVA team advocated on her behalf and the only pain killers she has received has been from the SEVA team, who also paid for her to have a scan. Sadly it seems she does have cancer and it has already spread around her body, but still no treatment has been forthcoming.

“Please let me die at home.  It is better to have my family with me than to die as a stranger in a place I do not know.”

In a very frail and weakened state Mirabai told the team this morning, “Please let me die at home. It is better to have my family with me than to die as a stranger in a place I do not know.” While the SEVA team makes arrangements to help her get back to her village and ensure she has appropriate medication, the team leader frustratingly said: “This injustice seems to be common. By law she is entitled to healthcare under the Mahatma Jyotirao Phule Jan Arogya Yojana scheme, however the reality is that she did not have a voice to exercise her rights.”

Since the Adivasi Voices project began in 2018, a major thrust of the project has been to inform local communities of their rights under the law and the range of services that are available to them free of charge. They have had some success, such as when one village was able to access government support to get gas cookers to free them from the harmful effects of cooking over wood fires in their homes (See Sanghitha’s story).

“We realise that we’re just scratching the surface of this problem,” said team member Sam. “Awareness of your rights is not enough if you don’t have the power to exercise them,” he added.

It can often feel like there is nothing we can do in the face of injustice and inequality, however over the coming days, the SEVA team will be looking at how they can strengthen their advocacy role for Adivasi communities. They recognise there are three main ways they could help:

• Advocacy by the communities themselves:  Involving the communities in conversation and helping them see that when many people join together to call for change, powerful decision-makers can be influenced and difficult situations can change. This can be a very effective and sustainable way to do advocacy as it gives integrity and legitimacy to the activities and challenges of unjust power relations.
• Advocacy with the communities:  By bringing together communities affected by an unjust situation with other communities, groups and organisations who are not directly affected, collaborative action can effect change.
• Advocacy for the communities:  SEVA also recognises that it has a role to advocate on behalf of communities affected by an unjust situation, especially where they are unable to speak out because of fear or danger. They recognise this will involve strengthening relationships and trust with health service providers, informing them of the plight of tribal people and holding them to account when services are withheld or rights are ignored.

Mirabai’s story makes us want to scream against systems that perpetuate inequality, unfairness and injustice.  It has served as a reminder to our team at Amplifying Voices that we need to keep doing all we can, no matter how small, to work towards a time when all people, everywhere have an opportunity to live a life in peace and with dignity.  In the meantime our hearts go out to Mirabai and her family and community, and the many people like her who are victims of injustice.

The Adivasi Voices Project is a partnership initiative between the SEVA organisation and Amplifying Voices, using community-centred media approaches to bring positive change to resource-poor tribal communities that often feel neglected and marginalised.

Photo: An Adivasi listener group with speakerbox.

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“My name is Hiram and I live in a small village in Maharashtra called Sagpada. Several months ago I was listening to a programme on the speakerbox provided by Seva Social Welfare Foundation, which challenged me to begin growing a kitchen garden to improve the nutrition of my family.  We rarely eat vegetables in our village because they are too expensive, but one day when the Seva team came to distribute the monthly audio programmes, they also gave us packets of vegetable seeds such as brinjal, bhindi (okra) and tomatoes. That evening, I listened to a programme about how eating vegetables would give us better health and I was inspired to start my own kitchen garden. The programmes gave instructions on how to look after the plants and even ideas for cooking with the vegetables that we grew. They said that by regularly adding vegetables into our diet, it would make us and our children healthy and strong.”

Hiram’s crops grew so well he soon had an abundant supply and was able to begin providing food for his family and his neighbours as well.

“Over the next few weeks I tended my new kitchen garden very carefully and watched with joy as my vegetables grew. The soil in our village is very fertile and with good rains, my plants were soon producing delicious vegetables. In fact they were so plentiful, that I had more than I needed for my family and was able to share with my neighbours.  Every evening we enjoyed the results of our garden and over the next few months  I even noticed that my children seemed healthier. I enjoyed tending my new crops so much that in the following months I began visiting neighbouring villages to share my experiences, encouraging them to grow their own gardens. I even began cultivating and giving away seeds from my own land.”

Hiram’s story so inspired Vaidhei, that she contacted Shilpa, Seva’s CEO  with an idea.  She realised that the power of community-centred media to influence people’s attitudes and behaviour was vital, and that if this was backed up with the provision of resources, the possibility for people to change was compelling.    Before long the two organisations were collaborating.  Pagaria launched a crowd-funding project to make seeds available at scale, to villages across the district.  Seva for its part ramped up programme production, promoting and inspiring the value of kitchen gardens in every home while the audience engagement team began distributing seeds with every programme – multiplying  the great work that Hiram had started, reaching many more Adivasi villages.

An Adivasi lady shows the packet of seeds that she’s just received from Seva’s audience engagement team.

Shilpa says, “When we started the Adivasi Voices Project in partnership with Amplifying Voices in 2018, our baseline study showed that malnourishment due to poor nutrition was a major problem across the tribal belt in Maharastra.  The beauty of Hiram’s story is that it shows the community  leading the way.  We believe this new initiative will mark a major change where we will begin to see healthier communities and a reduction in malnutrition and diseases especially among children,” she added.

Besides vegetable seeds Seva’s audience engagement team has now also begun distributing mango saplings, while they continue to make programmes with communities and other service providers to encourage and enable people to use their land more effectively and to develop sustainable livelihoods.

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Maharashtra’s Adivasis number more than 10 million and sadly, they often feel marginalised by mainstream society and regarded as outcastes, deprived of many of the basics of life such as healthcare, education, access to clean water and sanitation. Seva and Amplifying Voices have a shared desire to see communities freed from bondage and enjoying fullness of life.  The challenges these communities face however are complex, where poverty is not simply a lack of resources, but rather an oppressive web of social, political, economic and religious entanglements, which have been described as a ‘poverty trap’ by Robert ChambersNoted development practitioner Professor Robert Chambers describes the dimensions of poverty as an interactive system that he calls the ‘poverty trap’..  It’s a bit like filling a leaking bucket with water: no matter how much effort is put in, these communities are never able to succeed in achieving a decent level of health and wellbeing or making enough to meet their daily needs.

The beautiful Western Ghats in Maharastra is home to many Adivasi communities                 (Photo credit: Amy Hargreaves)

While the problem is complex, change is possible and over the last two weeks I’ve been hearing many testimonies of how Seva’s innovative community-centred media project has impacted people.  We came across the young woman in the picture during a visit to a remote Adivasi village, when we heard her remarkable story.  She told us about how she and her husband had been bonded labourers, which is a kind of modern-day slavery and is illegal in India but sadly still widely practiced.  However, one day they heard through Seva’s speakerbox programmes about ways in which they could escape that life and that Adivasi people were eligible for government grants to start businesses.  The programmes also spoke about how to do micro-enterprise and gave ideas for creating wealth, so she and her husband were inspired to start a shop in her village.  “This has set us free from bondage,” she told us, adding that she will never be a slave again, ending generations of bonded labour in her family.

During our two weeks in India there were many other stories that we heard, too many for a short blog-post, but I’ve been so impressed by the dedication of this small local team who have so much passion and are working tirelessly to see the lives of the Adivasi people transformed.  I am also convinced, that difficult and complex though it may be, change is possible.

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Organised by our partner Seva, 7 remote villages were brought together for a cricket match to launch “Adivasincha Aavaj“, or “Adivasi Voices”, a mobile phone app that will give bonded labourers vital access to information, which could transform their lives.  Bonded labour was made illegal in India in 1976, however a 2018 report estimated that around 8 million workers in India were unpaid or held in debt bondage, although campaigners believe the true figure is much higher.

Bonded labourers from an Adivasi community demonstrate a mobile phone app that will transform their lives

Around 200 bonded labourers from the seven communities were able to join the cricketing festivities as they were home for the Hindu festival of Holi that celebrates spring, love, hope and new life.   And team leader Shilpa believes that is exactly what the app is all about, bringing hope and new life.  “We’re breaking the cycle,” says Shilpa.  “These young men did what their parents did and what their parents before them did, but now they will be able to learn about living a life that is free from bondage.”

Although Seva had been addressing the issue of bonded labour and workers rights on the village ‘speakerbox’ programmes for more than a year, our evaluation showed that they were not reaching labourers, because they had already left their villages to work.  It was during Covid that the idea of a mobile phone app first occurred to them.  “As our team were delivering food to vulnerable communities, we had conversations with many bonded labourers and heard their stories of how they were tied because of debt, unaware that there were ways to break the bondage and earn a living,” said Shilpa.

The mobile phone app, which delivers audio programmes and can facilitate interaction between subscribers,  is now available on Android devices, but it will be tested first on this limited audience from a few villages, to learn how it is used and what content they find most valuable.  Once the concept has been tested on this small scale, it can be easily scaled up and tailored to reach bonded labourers across the entire sub-continent in multiple languages.

Shilpa and Maneesha from Seva award the Man of the match and cup to the winning team

After the winning team cup and man of the match awards were given, men from the different villages exchanged names and contact numbers and it became apparent that something very special had happened that day.  “Not only did several villages come together for the first time ever to share their love of cricket,” said Shilpa, “but new bonds of friendship were made and eyes were opened.”  As if a metaphor for life, all the teams were given real cricket balls to take away as they had only had access to plastic cricket balls.   “We’re never going back to old cricket,” said Rajesh, one of the players. “Now that we’ve experienced that there is a better way of playing, we want more of it.”

As everyone returned to their respective villages and the men go back to their bonded labour situations, the Seva team is very aware that they could face a backlash from unscrupulous landlords, once they realise that their cheap labour supply could be threatened, as workers become empowered to break free from their bondage.  But as Shilpa says, “Somebody had to step in.”

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Although illegal, the practice of bonded labour is commonplace in the country.  For some time the Seva team has been trying to tackle this issue, however during a recent Covid outreach in a number of Adivasi (indigenous tribal) villages, the team heard stories from many bonded labourers.   After the rice harvest, many leave their villages to give their labour as security against money they have borrowed, or when they inherit a debt from a relative.  Some are lured into buying ‘luxury goods’ like mobile ‘phones in the promise of secure jobs and medical cover, which never materialises. Many don’t realise that there are laws to protect their rights to a minimum wage, basic amenities and fair treatment – but remain in debt bondage to owners who deny them these rights – often with impunity.  For many, Covid has pushed them further into debt and bondage.

“Every year families leave our village to bond themselves to landlords to pay off their debts,” one elderly lady explained.  “It has been like this for as long as I can remember.”

Although Seva has been addressing labour and rights issues on the village ‘speakerbox’ programmes and encouraging other ways for people to earn a living, the team realised that families that had left their villages to work, never had access to the programmes.

Team leader Shilpa told me, “After these labourers shared their stories, and we realised they were missing out on the information that could really help them through the speakerboxes, we came up with the idea of creating an ‘app’, that could deliver content right onto their own mobile ‘phones.  They will soon be able to listen, without fear from their bosses, any topic they want to hear and even what kind of format, whether a song, drama or interview,” she added.

Most importantly though, this app will give bonded labourers vital access to information, which could help them make better choices which could change their lives.  It will also enable them to have conversations with others and will create a safe space to share their experiences.

The app, simply called, “Adivasincha Aavaj“, or “Adivasi Voices”, will go live in March and will be trialled in one village first.  This will enable us to learn lessons and discover how it could become more widely available to many other people facing similar injustices in other parts of India.

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So it’s always a joy when we see this principle come to life in the communities where our project partners work. Yesterday I heard the story of Malti, a primary school teacher in a remote Adivasi village in Maharashtra, where we have been supporting our partner, Seva, on a community-centred media project, based around a ‘speakerbox‘.

Malti said she was listening to a speakerbox programme with a group of her friends one day, when she heard how bonded labour was so destructive to Adivasi communities like hers. Although illegal, the practice of bonded labour is commonplace in India, where tribal groups are particularly vulnerable. It happens when people give themselves into slavery as security against petty loans that they are unable to repay, or when they inherit a debt from a relative.

During the programme, the friends heard stories of how people had been set free from debt and bondage by starting small businesses to earn income. One of the announcers then challenged listeners to think about what talents and resources they had, which they could use to generate income. Inspired, the group of friends began to talk about what they could do. An older lady in the group, Renuka was talented at sewing and needle work and offered to teach the others. Before long the ladies had come up with the idea of pooling their resources to get material and equipment and begin a small enterprise making and mending clothes.

Excited by the prospect, Malti described how she and her friends scraped together money they had saved and purchased their first pieces of material, cotton and thread. Renuka was a great encourager and she soon had the ladies working together as a formidable team. They started with simple repair jobs in the village, but gradually they started making clothes that they sold in neighbouring villages and eventually in the city. “The best thing of all,” said Malti, “Is that we did it ourselves.”

Malti and her friends are just one small group of many people that are being impacted by the Adivasi Voices Project, which is now active in 16 villages across Maharashtra, and rapidly expanding into new areas.

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Convinced that there was no alternative to cooking with firewood and cow dung, Sangeetha put up with her condition, as did her neighbours. That was until one evening, when on her speakerbox, she heard about a government programme called “Ujjwala Yojana” (Bright Scheme). This is a government programme designed to help disadvantaged communities get a grant for a gas cooker and cylinder, to help put an end to the devastating impact of smoke fires on their health. She learned through the speakerbox that it was important that tribal people understood that they had legal rights to protect communities like theirs, and it explained just how they could exercise those rights.

Just three weeks after petitioning the local government office, a man was sent to set up Sangeetha’s gas cooker. Proudly demonstrating it she said: “The speakerbox programme from Seva, taught me how to use my voice and exercise my rights, and this will clear the air.” Sangeetha’s story has now been shared in many other villages on new speakerbox programmes in which she urges other tribal people to take advantage of the scheme, so their health can improve as well. “Brothers and sisters,” she says, “So often our people are afraid and don’t know we can speak or are unaware that we have rights, but learn from my example about how you can change your own circumstances.”

Village chief Ramdas said Sangeetha’s story is just one of many stories that can be told since Seva began the speakerbox project in 2018. “If you came to our village two years ago, you would be amazed by the many changes that have taken place. We have toilets that work, water that’s clean and our children are attending school. We feel different and we feel like we have found our voice.”

The Adivasi Voices Project is a partnership initiative between the SEVA organisation and Amplifying Voices, using community-centred media approaches to bring positive change to resource-poor Adivasi communities that often feel neglected and marginalised.

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