AM PROUD TO BE A MUSLIM!

By Syed Taha Qamar
When I say 'I'm Muslim',
I'm not shouting "I am the best."
I am whispering "I seek peace,"
and Islam is the path that I choose.

When I say 'I'm Muslim',
I speak of this with pride.
And confess that sometimes I stumble,
and need ALLAH to be my guide.

When I say 'I'm Muslim',
I know this makes me strong.
And in those times when I am weak,
I pray to ALLAH for strength to carry on.

When I say 'I'm Muslim',
I'm not boasting of success.
I'm acknowledging that ALLAH has rescued me,
and I cannot ever repay the debt.

When I say 'I'm Muslim',
I'm not claiming to be perfect.
My flaws are indeed visible,
but ALLAH forgives because ALLAH is the most forgiving.

When I say 'I'm Muslim',
it does not mean I will never feel pain.
I still have my share of heartaches,
which is why I invoke ALLAH'S name.

When I say 'I'm Muslim',
I do not wish to judge.
I have no such authority,
My duty is to submit to ALLAH'S all-encompassing love.

My Dearest Papa is No More....!

By Ankita Sharma

Papa suddenly died on a Friday morning. A day very convenient for us. It was a long weekend and all the formalities could be completed without taking leave from office. But I would have to take a leave on terahin, as it would fall on a Wednesday. Papa was like that. He had always been accommodating.

Mumma cried a lot, which nearly convinced me that she loved him. But I believe he would have lived at least couple of years more but for her nagging. Lot of people turned up and most of them were sad. Ahuja uncle came, Shukla uncle and aunty came; all had moist eyes. Rosalyn aunty looked as if she had cried. But Bunty chor was smiling; he is a rascal. I cannot fathom, if one cannot be somber in such a situation why should one come to pay a visit. Look at me, I am not particularly sad but I am serious. Death is a serious business. Even I can die like Papa someday, gone in sleep. It was like him to die such a silent death; he was the most docile person I have known.

But I cannot stand the post death rituals. Apparently you cannot cook any food in the house where the death took place. So what are we supposed to eat - grass? But it is ok; I can bear few uncomfortable days for Papa. After all he was my Papa. But I will not shave my head. Not too much of hair is left anyway. But if I let go of it today, it will never come back.

Mumma is fussing over the preparation for the last rites. So is my wife. They do not understand how much arrangement it involves. After all this is not like marriage celebrations. I think we should just provide good food for terahin. We should also give a small bowl of ghee with the meals to the brahmins. Papa liked ghee, his soul would not find peace if we do not serve it. But look at my wife, she has started nagging me about the difficulties she has to face because of all this. As if I had any role to play. Now, I am convinced that nagging is not genetic but hormonal; otherwise how come all women are infected by it and all men are affected.

It is good that finally day got over without much problem. The pandit performing the last rites, tried to coerce me to give him a cow, but he couldn't get that out of me. I say that these pandits will get the cow butchered and eat its meat. Beef eaters!

I must confess house looked a lot larger since Papa has left. He occupied a third of this three bedroom house, Mumma and Munna in one and me and my wife in what was left. But I am not sure what I will do with the extra room that I have now. Probably Papa's presence was good, his silent prayers on his rosary.

I do not know what caused this major rift between Mumma and Papa, but it was much like this since I remember. She nagged, he remained silent and aloof. But was adjusting and never exerted him. He did not earn well, but what he did he spend on my education and mother's treatment. Mumma has been ill since when I cannot even remember. My wife is good that ways. But then she is so huge what can happen to her.

Apart from the house Papa didn't leave a paisa for me. Not literally, I found 5000/- rupees below his pillow. But he had this aluminum box which he never allowed anyone to touch, leave alone open it. The key always safely tucked in this janeyun. But now since I have it I can finally open it. Though I do not expect to find anything interesting but my curiosity will be quenched.

But what is there inside - a bunch of old damp papers, some of them half eaten by termites, his college certificates, papers for this house and pension and a passbook.

Price Rise and Poverty in India

By Rajinder Puri

On top of galloping inflation, with even food prices soaring to unprecedented height, the government thought it fit to hike the already high prices of petrol and diesel. This was done before the assembly elections in several states. Why is the government deliberately committing hara-kiri? Or are there elements in the ruling party that wish to destroy their own government? Or are there instead corrupt elements raking in maximum loot while in power in the belief that they will never be re-elected? The people cannot be blamed for indulging in such wild speculation. The energy price hike just does not make political sense.

In terms of petrol prices related to purchasing power India has about the highest retail price in the whole world. Among the major powers China has the highest petrol price. India now boasts of more than two and a half times the petrol price in China! Government officials and apologists defend the hike by pointing out economic compulsions that cry for more revenue. Are there no other avenues for augmenting revenue in an administration reeking with conspicuous consumption and shameless waste? Are there no possibilities of extracting revenue from the very rich by making them tighten their belts? This isn’t socialist ranting. It is a wake up call to the government to recognize ground realities.

Even the middle class is complaining about unacceptable prices that curtail its daily bread. It just can’t make two ends meet. So the middle class complains. What about the very poor, especially the rural poor who lack even the luxury of getting their complaints heard. What might they do? Politics is about empathy. Do our worthy ministers ever try to sense what the poor must be feeling? Do even mainstream media attempt to empathize with their condition? One would like to recall a recent incident in Maharashtra to highlight the desperate state of the poor.

Recently the Maharashtra government broke from tradition to allow appointments to Class IV posts. Its forest department recently announced 1,175 guard jobs open for recruitment in the Maharashtra forest department. More than hundred times the number of applicants responded! The physical criteria for the job were a 25-km run for men and a 14-km run for women. Of the 9,500 aspirants who applied for just 85 posts many collapsed during the run. Eight were hospitalized. One 23-year old died in the attempt. Incidents of candidates collapsing were reported from other cities too. What level of desperation must have impelled these applicants to literally run themselves to the ground, even to death, just to get a job?

These are not a class of people whose complaints would be heard by authority. Nor do they have the means to organize violent protest. Ah, but the Maoists do! Home Minister Chidambaram has described the Maoists as the biggest security threat to the nation. Given official insensitivity should the rise of Maoism surprise? What is the government doing about that? Improving the police force is not enough. The government must start empathizing with the poor. For a start it must begin recognizing what the price rise really means in the daily life of a poor family. Otherwise the government will not only commit suicide. It will imperil the future of democracy in India.

The Metaphor of Blindness

By R K Bhushan

Blindness is a blessing; blindness is a curse. It is physical; it is a psychological passion the intensity of which is proportionate to the loss or gain, happiness or misery, peace or war, creation or destruction, divine or human. In all situations, blindness becomes a metaphor. When our reason is clouded by mad senseless passion for anything, excessive love, we are blinded to unbounded pitfalls and falls. When our desires and cravings touch and respect the boundaries of rationality and teach us calm and poise and patience, our physical blindness turns a blessing that gives out the best that becomes the radiant ornamental of glorious literature.

Homer was blind; Oedipus blinded himself; Milton became blind; Satan was blind in his pride and ambition and hatred against God; Gloucestor and Edgar are also seen blind in King Lear; Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello,Coriolanus and Brutus were blinded by their own eloquently mad passion that had its root insubtle revenge, vaulting ambition, provoked and misplaced jealousy, political unsophistication and senseless egoism. Surdas was blind; Ravinder Jain is blind; Dhritrashtra was blind; Kandhari chose to be blind by bandaging her eyes; Shakuni was blind and he blinded Duryodhana…I remember having seen many physically blind people finding their way through life, and then, I had hardly any idea of what blindness is.

Now when I can see its ugliness and beauty and realize how I suffered immensely and gained profoundly in ugliness and beauty and look around to see much more infected. In moments of self-introspection, I feel that this is also a richly interesting area wherein we see “God’s plenty” and our own level of sensitivity endears us to what we see, feel and experience. It elevates our spirits enhancing our experiential knowledge far beyond our conceptual and intellectual knowledge.

It is equally fascinating to learn the lexical, linguistic and grammatical usage of blind. Once we have enriched ourselves with this wide variety, the joy of discovery merges into ourdelightful learning.

The word blind is used as a verb, adjective, noun and adverb. It not only means simply lacking sight or vision or foresight, intellectual perception or discernment or unable to appreciate circumstance etc. or reckless or drunk……but it has some compounded or idiomatic or phraseological constructions also such as blind force, blind effort, blind ditch, blind alley, roller blind, fly blind, bake blind, blind spot, blind stamping, swear blind, blind faith, blind trust, blind following, turn a blind eye; similarly, blind used with prepositions conveys different meanings such as blind to, blind of, blind with etc. There is blind coal, blind corner and blind turn. However, in the most ordinary usage in our everyday work-a-day life, our blindness costs a lot. Therefore it is absolutely necessary to use oursight, insight, far-sight or fore-sight, with a calm and poised mind failing which our paths of life shall be accident-prone. We may not be justified in holding persons and pressures, men and matters responsible for the accidental mess. So caution and wisdom demand the use of a little sight to safeguard our happiness and it may mean disagreement or displeasure.

In the greatest Indian epic, The Mahabharata, the metaphor of blindness has been used so deftly and with such a masterly skill that its richness of variety and diversity of its implication and application simply stun us. Kaurvas brought upon themselves not only total ruin but also ignominy and effacement in their blindness. They were all blinded by their ignoble passion of hatred, jealousy and malice for the Pandvas. These base passions had been sowed, spread and scattered by Shakuni provoking and igniting these degrading, debasing, disgusting and devastating passions and prejudices, wrath and vulturous ambitions of supremacy and self-destructive revenge-all uncontrollable and bind to the abysmal darkness. Kandhari understood the annihilating role played by her brother, Shakuni, in misguiding, mis-educating and misleading her son, Duryodhana and she expressed her serious concern with what had been going on in the palace but Dhritrashtra, blind inside-out, would be pained at the warnings and revelations. Shakuni played a subtle game of cheating and deception, intrigues, conspiracy; the immediate success in the games maddened their happiness and inflamed their eagerness for the fulfillment of dark irrationalities. This not only darkened but also further deepened their blindness to truth and Divine Justice. Even the failure of their heinous crimes against the Pandvas and the severe losses in the war field failed to awaken them.

Dhritrashtra was born blind. Kandhari chose to be blind by bandaging her eyes, less out of the blind dutifulness and respect to her husband, more perhaps out of unconscious knowledge of not being a witness to the disastrous tragic fall out of the blindness of all in her family and around her. Shakuni was blinded by his total hatred for the Pandvas and he invented and conceived every tact of the intellect to engulf everybody in his venomous snares, Duryodhana being his easy tool as he was blinded by his towering ambition to be the supreme ruler of Hasthinapur fed and flamed byShakuni. So Shakuni devised every cunning, conceit, conspiracy, intrigue to turn every loss into a gain, every defeat into a victory. He didn’t let anyone see the hidden and conspicuous irony in all that was happening as a consequence of which the Pandvas not only emerged safer but stronger and stronger preparing for the establishment of the Kingdom of the Good, the Noble and the Virtuous. Moreover, the heart-rending and poignant, and also horrible sights of the heaps of defeats, deaths and destruction in the camp of Kaurvas aggravated by blind hatred, jealousy and revengefulness exasperated and frustrated Dhritrashtra as there was none now to carry on the campaign of hatred, ruin and wreckage in his camp. He must accept in all humbleness his razed and humbled blindness and blind filial love and over-zealous ambition! It is the peak of irony that even after the death of his hundred sons and other kith and kin, he wanted to kill Bhima in his embrace when the Pandvas went to seek his blessings. How blind!

Today, filthy decline and degeneration and chaotic mess around us in our daily life can be clearly and fairly traced to large scale deliberate blindness and callousness to consequences of what wrongs we do consciously. When shall we learn to see to save the present from becoming the unpardonable future?

In search of a sustainable model for global banking

By M H Ahssan

Change will require lighter balance sheets, cost cuts, and finding ways to grow safely in a more heavily regulated world.

The global financial crisis and its aftermath of economic and regulatory change present major challenges to the traditional operating models of banks in developed countries and are undermining the sector’s ability to deliver a sustainable level of returns to shareholders.

A new McKinsey report, The state of global banking—in search of a sustainable model, shows that despite a strong global profit performance in 2010 and the first half of 2011, the return on equity (ROE) of banks in Europe and the United States has still not recovered to the point where it covers their cost of equity. The gap is set to widen in the wake of new regulatory requirements. Without radical action to shrink balance sheets, cut costs, and increase revenues, banks will be unable to attract sufficient new capital from the investment community and to play their critical role in underpinning economic recovery and growth.

On its face, 2010 was a good year for the industry. Global banking revenues reached a record $3.8 trillion, and after-tax profits jumped from $400 billion in 2009 to $712 billion—above their 2008 level, if not the 2007 peak. But this rosy picture did not necessarily imply a bright future for banks in Europe and the United States: 90 percent of the profit improvement was attributable to a reduction in provisions for loan losses, and most, if not all, of the good news came from emerging markets. Declining cross-border capital flows, high bank credit-default-swap spreads, and persistently low market valuations all pointed to declining investor confidence in the industry’s future long before the latest alarms over sovereign debt during the summer of 2011.

As a result, investors have been reassessing the banking industry’s long-term growth prospects and rerating the sector. The major problems include the rising cost of doing business—thanks primarily to new regulation requiring banks to hold more capital and liquidity to ensure that the industry better withstands future shocks—scarcity of capital and liquidity, changing consumer behavior as a growing number of customers move to mobile and online channels, and diverging regional growth paths.

In 2010, the US and European banking industries delivered an ROE of just 7 and 7.9 percent, respectively. Even when these returns are normalized (by assuming loan losses equivalent to the 2000 to 2007 average), the 2010 ROE figures increase only to 9.3 percent in the United States and 9.2 percent in Europe. At this level, the banks’ ROE is still some 1.5 percentage points below their cost of equity. Even before the industry has digested the additional capital requirements from Basel III and other surcharges being considered by global and national regulators, banking in developed countries faces a significant returns gap.

We calculate that to achieve an ROE of 12 percent by 2015, European and North American banks will have to add more than $350 billion of net profits in the intervening period—double the current level. This sum is more than the total profits of the global pharmaceutical and automotive industries combined.

In Europe and North America, it’s clear that business as usual is not an option. Banks are squeezed for capital, profits are under pressure, and growth opportunities in the developed world appear to be in short supply. Emerging markets, we project, will contribute nearly half of all banking revenues around the world by 2020, compared with just one-third today, and will represent 60 percent of all revenue growth in banking over the next decade.

The process of transformation is already under way at many banks, but even market leaders must intensify their efforts to produce the long-term returns needed to attract investors. In our view, banks must combine three moves:

Shrink the balance sheet. Banks in both Europe and North America must find ways to work with less capital and to use what they have more efficiently. One way ahead for European banks is to shift a substantial part of their lending to the capital markets so that these banks do less direct lending and help revive the corporate-bond market. In Europe, such bonds address only 20 percent of the credit needs of companies, compared with 60 to 70 percent in the United States.

That kind of change would be challenging at both an individual bank and system level and would require an expansion of traditional debt markets and the development of low-cost alternatives to them, action to expand the investor base in the bond market, and the creation of new and safer asset- and mortgage-backed securitization markets. Ways to make balance sheets less capital intensive without shifting risks to the capital markets include a more sophisticated approach to the risk-weighted asset calculation, the optimization of credit lines, and better management of collateral. Individual banks will increase their capital efficiency by making capital and liquidity management a much more central, long-term discipline.

Rebase costs. To achieve a 12 percent ROE through cost cuts alone—taking none of the other actions we recommend—banks would have to reduce their expenses by up to 6 percent a year between now and 2015. That’s a tall order, since only about 1 bank in 50 achieved annual cost reductions of 4 percent or more in the years from 2000 to 2010. But other industries, notably telecommunications, have responded to new regulation, technology, and competition by dramatically improving their productivity. Banking remains one of the most fragmented sectors globally, and depending on the stance of national regulators some institutions should be able to pursue large-scale mergers and acquisitions.

What’s more, we have found that banks can eliminate as much as half of the cost of their branches by moving sales and service online. Some banks have shown what can be achieved through the application of lean and other techniques—for example, cutting the time to process a mortgage to 60 minutes, from days.

Capture new opportunities. Banks have overcome previous crises by finding innovative ways to increase the top line. Although opportunities may seem to be limited, we see huge scope to improve pricing, to adapt products to the needs of customers, and to find new pockets of growth (taking advantage of the better risk-management processes many have introduced in the wake of the crisis). Opportunity lies in the potential for disruptive technology in both consumer and wholesale banking—yet many of banking’s digital strategies are still in their infancy.

Action to restore the banks’ ROE to a level at least equal to, or above, the cost of equity is not only essential for the industry’s own health but also a precondition for long-term economic recovery.

How To Get Those Fab Abs?

Lifestyle plays a huge part in gaining or losing weight. But one can burn belly fat using simple yogasanas, says SHAMEEM AKHTER

Most abdomen tighteners used in different forms of exercises are borrowed from yoga. However, in yoga one is discouraged from developing a six-pack because such tautness implies a weak breath due to the unnatural pressure on the large respiratory muscle called diaphragm. Also, internationally, the anorexic supermodels who flaunt a boyishly flat stomach have done the unthinkable: They have removed the last pair of the rib bones to get washboard abs! In yoga, such drastic interference is deemed unnecessary when you have intense and well-designed asanas complemented by regular pranayam (breathing practice) that involves breath retention and bandhas (energy locks). Then you, too, can boast of yogic abs without recourse to either starvation or surgery.

Lifestyle plays a huge part in one’s gaining or losing weight. Fighting weight has a lot to do with your state of mind and habits. Below are a few yogic lifestyle suggestions that you must use to boost your yoga regimen.

Control your stress
Even slender people, who are chronic worriers, tend to lard on at the waist. This is because the stress hormone cortisol affects the lipogenic and lipolytic enzymes. These control the flow of fat in and out of the cells where it is stored, thereby increasing body weight. Control your stress level through meditation, belly-breathing, relaxing pranayam or pursuing breathing practices like ujjayi, soothing forward bends (both standing and seated).

Only crunches won’t help
Spot reduction does not really work since you need to work the entire body for that perfect hip-waist ratio. Combine an effective exercise regime, at least for 45 minutes, five days a week with diet checks.

Cut down alcohol intake
Apart from making you gorge on greasy stuff during the binge, alcohol seems to affect the brain’s satiety signal, which indicates when you have eaten to your fill, as well as tampering with detoxifying organs like liver involved with fat storage. One needs to follow the asanas (see the box) to fight the flab that rests on your abs.

Naukasana (Boat pose)
Instructions:

• Sit up straight with hands on either side of the body.
• Inhale as you lift up legs. Move hands up to either side of the knees.
• Hold the pose, breathing normally as long as you can.
• To return to the starting pose, gently lower legs to the floor as you exhale.
• Over a few weeks build up stamina in the final pose, so you can hold it for a minute or more. In a few months, you must learn to hold it for three minutes or more for proper impact.

Avoid: If you have severe lower backache.

Benefits: It is a cellulite-fighter. Tones the stomach, thighs and powers the abdominal muscles. Boosts metabolism, aiding weight loss due to the pressure on abdomen and liver.

Naukasana (The crunch version)
This is easier for beginners. Those with advanced practice may hold hands on side or hold them locked behind the head.

Instructions:

• Get in the boat pose following the above instructions.
• Inhale. As you exhale, move knees closer to chest, using hands to hug the knees. From this crunched position, move back into the boat pose again, inhaling. This is one round.
• This must be done in a dynamic fashion, continuously flowing from the starting boat pose into its crunch variation.

Caution: This is easier after you acquire mastery over the first version. Also, the lower you drop your body back in the boat pose, the greater the effort of the stomach muscles and greater the impact.

Avoid: If you suffer from severe lower backache.

Benefits: It is a powerful ab crunch and has all the above benefits in a higher degree.

Viparitakarani mudra (Psychic union pose, crunch version)

Instructions:

• Lie on your back.
• Fold legs at the knees so they are at a right angle to the ground.
• Inhale. While exhaling, raise head and neck.
• Simultaneously raise hands, placing them alongside knees.
• Hold the pose breathing normally.
• Inhale, relax back to the starting position.
• Learn to hold the final pose for longer to enjoy greater impact. This must be learnt in a graded fashion over a few weeks.

Caution: Do not over-exert. Allow the neck muscles to strengthen by phasing this over a few weeks.

Avoid: If you face neck problems.

Benefits: A powerful ab crunch. Boosts metabolism, aiding weight loss. Tones the spine.

Dwipada uttanasana (Double leg drop)

Instructions:

• Lie on the floor, hands by the side or fingers linked to hold the back of head.
• Inhale, raise both legs at 90° to torso.
• Continue to breathe as you slowly lower both legs. If you have slack stomach muscles, this can be excruciating. So as a beginner it is better to do it fast, increasing stamina over a few days.
• You may also place hands, palms flat under your hips to take the strain off the lower back.

Benefits: It is one of the best poses to control abdominal bulge. It also improves mood, is therapeutic in most ailments, including circulatory problems (improves skin tone), removes varicose veins, tightens flesh around hips and thighs.

INDIA'S FIRST 'MBA' SARPANCH

A jeans-clad, highly qualified woman hardly fits the bill for a sarpanch in rural India. There is, however, an exception in Chhavi Rajawat, who has left her corporate job to address the problems of her village in Rajasthan. ERAM AGHA reports

The changing face of rural Rajasthan is a sarpanch in jeans! Chhavi Rajawat took a de tour in her career by leaving a comfortable corporate job to address the problems of the villagers of Soda district, 60 km from Jaipur, Rajasthan.

Carrying the legacy of her grandfather, Brig Raghubir Singh, Rajawat picked up from where he had left — the Brigadier had retired from the post of sarpanch 20 years prior to Rajawat’s election. Her grandfather had worked hard to provide basic amenities — roads, electricity, schools and hospitals — to the villagers.

Rajawat was not prepared for a village life, but the locals had already set plans for her. “I would give full credit for this change of direction in my life to the inhabitants of this village. I had never planned to fight elections or contest for such a post and perhaps wouldn’t have, had it not been for the persistence of the villagers,” Rajawat says.

Fifty-odd men went a long way in convincing Rajawat to contest elections. But why were they so convinced to have her onboard? “There were many reasons that influenced them. This is my ancestral village where my grandfather was also elected unanimously as sarpanch. He was behind many development activities in the village,” she says.

After his retirement, the village hardly saw any development activities. “After the retirement of my grandfather, the village did not see any significant development. Primarily, owing to their love, faith and respect for my grandfather, the villagers decided to get someone from his family to run for the post,” Rajawat says.

The Soda residents were already familiar with Rajawat, as she used to spend a lot of her vacation in the village. The unbounded energy of hers found expression in hopping around from one house to another in the village.

She would often jump onto someone’s tractor and visit the neighbouring villages.

“I, therefore, formed a strong bonding with the villagers at a very young age,” she says, adding: “The team which came calling upon me with this plea, comprised of men older than my father and many as old as my grandpa. These were the men who had carried me on their shoulders and pampered me when I was a child.”

So, Rajawat was left with no choice but to take up the responsibility. She says, “I did not want to let them down... since I am a great believer of the idiom — ‘charity begins at home’ — I wanted to make a difference by starting work in my own backyard. And, being originally from the village, I was aware of all the problems. I had the nagging thought that if an insider like me did not come forward to help, then how could an outsider be expected to do the same?”

“I have seen, observed and become aware of the issues that exist. Also, I have noticed how, over the years, problems have only got aggregated in my village,” says the sarpanch.

Rajawat’s MBA experience and Lady Shri Ram College education helped her in her endeavour. “Through my education I am able to better manage projects, prioritise tasks, balance budgets and even create reports for the village. This, I believe, helps me win credibility when I meet government officials,” she says, emphasising the importance of an educated leader in rural areas.

On March 25, 2011, Rajawat addressed the 11th Info-Poverty World Conference at the United Nations. “I believe I was the only one there (at the UN) representing the grassroots,” she says. “There was no clear understanding of the grassroots issues. But why should we look outside? Even within our country, most people living in cities are unaware of what rural India is all about. There is much to be done,” Rajawat says, adding: “Rural development is as important as urban development. It needs to be understood that if rural areas are neglected, then the migration to cities will increase, ending up creating chaos in urban centres.”

The battle had just begun for Rajawat after her election victory. Issues like safe drinking water, education and sanitation were lined up for her attention. First and foremost was the water conservation project, which aimed to dig afresh the village’s main reservoir covering an area of 100 acres.

In Soda, the limited groundwater is unsafe even for agriculture, as it is saline and has high natural contamination, resulting in high skeletal and dental fluorosis. Due to the lack of water between mid-March and August, life becomes very difficult in the village. Conserving rainwater is the only way to have safe drinking water. The project, therefore, aims to conserve rainwater.

“Of 100 acres of reservoir needing to be excavated and strengthened, we have been able to excavate only 10 acres through personal funding from friends and family. Today, only this excavated area provides drinking water to the villagers,” Rajawat says.

“Of 1,000 houses, not even one per cent have toilets. We intend to construct toilets in each and every household. For reforestation, approximately 1,200 bighas of forest and pastureland need to be revived. As for education, the high school here has Hindi literature, Sanskrit literature and Geography available for the 11th and 12th standard students. Just imagine the future they have in store,” she rues.

As a visionary, Rajawat wants agriculture, animal husbandry and horticulture to be taught to schoolchildren. These lessons will not only provide technical know-how, but also equip them with tools to improve the yield. Since agriculture and animal husbandry are the only source of income for the villagers, the move is much needed.

Rajawat’s wish-list is long and challenging, and in the span of one-and-a-half years she has been exposed to some shocking realities. She asks, “Would you believe, companies that are already selling their products and services in the village said, in a flip-flop, that they couldn’t help the village because it was not located in close proximity to their plant or unit! It might be worth mentioning here that our district, apart from being one of the most backward districts of Rajasthan, has no industry. Does that mean the villages here should not be supported at all?”

Rajawat is not going to take it lying down. After all, grassroots service lies in her jeans. Err... I mean genes!