Return to Maliwada           click pictures to enlarge and for caption
By William L. Bingham

I was on the team of consultants which helped the ICA initiate its first Human Development Project in Maharashtra state, India. I returned in January, almost 40 years later. The following are my impressions from the two visits.


I received the invitation to help with the project “out of the blue” in 1975. The phone rang. I picked it up and heard the Texas drawl of George Holcombe from the ICA. My family and I had spent a year interning at ICA’s headquarters in Chicago. There, I heard about a plan to establish a ring of Demonstration Projects around the globe; perhaps one in each time zone.


So I was not surprised when George said an interdisciplinary team was being assembled for a consult in a remote village in India. My skills as a mechanical engineer would help round out the team, he said.


The team was to leave on Christmas Eve. To a typical Christian family with four children ranging in age from nine to 16, this was not ideal. However, my wife Annette is an extremely capable woman who has taught middle school for a few years and managed the ICA’s printing department for a year. But we did have an issue: our eldest son, who sustained an apparent brain injury early in life, was showing signs of regression.


Still, our family decided that I should go. The three younger children could help their mother run the home and care for their ailing brother.


Surviving India

Our team landed at Bombay airport. There, we boarded an Indian Airways plane to Aurangabad. Its airport had a short runway then. Because of this, we flew in early so that the plane could take off again by 9 am when the air would still be dense enough to give it the required lift.


My seasoned fellow travellers taught me how to survive in India. When I reached for a glass of water in a cafe, one of them warned me: “Don’t touch it. Wait and order some tea.” I learnt not to drink water in India that had not been boiled.


Preparing for the consult

We spent our first day in Maliwada touring the village and meeting its residents. One lady was decorating the space between her small dwelling and the unpaved street. The surface was a dark green and she was drawing designs on it with white lime.  It was quite neat; even handsome. I asked an Indian ICA staff member, Kamala Parekh, what the homeowner had used to make the background for her images so green. She gets the material “locally”, said Kamala. Her response seemed a bit dodgy. When I pressed her further, I discovered the secret: “gobar” (cow dung).


One of my tasks was to build a toilet for use during the consult, which would last several days. I helped a local craftsman dig a hole upon which to mount an enclosure. As we measured the boundaries, he taught me to count: ek, do, theen, and so on – my initiation in speaking Hindi.


Our team included founders of the ICA such as Joe Mathews and Gene Marshall. Every day we were bussed from our sleeping quarters in the Government Guest House to the village. We walked up and down the street, talking to villagers about their images of the future for a “better Maliwada”. As foreigners, we were paired up with an Indian as most of the villagers had little proficiency in English.


Side trips

We took a side trip to view ancient religious sculptures at the nearby Ellora Caves. These were not natural caves – they had been carved out of the mountain side. We had to visualize the process to grasp how the artisans made the sculptures emerge in situ from rock.


We also did some “souvenir” shopping in Aurangabad. I got Annette some silk for a sari and trinkets for the children, including a rudimentary bicycle lock that bolted directly to the bicycle frame.


Revisiting India

Last year, when I celebrated my 80th birthday, Nelson Stover of Emerging Ecology, an Associate Member of the ICA in Greensboro, North Carolina, asked:  “What’s next?” My answer – return to Maliwada to see the changes. Six months later, he proposed a visit to India. Annette and I took up the invitation. After all I would not be younger the next year.


So through the auspices of Emerging Ecology, we went on an excursion to India. It was about two weeks long - enough for several significant experiences, even though the actual distance we travelled in India was only about 250 miles.


Vijay Lokhande, president of the board of ICA India, took us on a tour of small scale industries in Panvel, near Mumbai. We visited a printing firm that used technology sophisticated enough to simultaneously print on both sides of a page. The firm is owned by two brothers who are leaders in Rotary Club International. They described another innovation – a method for collecting rain water and pumping it into aquifers 20 metres below. In times of drought, it could be pumped up to the surface for agriculture and other use. It is expected to be replicated throughout India and elsewhere.

 

Changed village

In Aurangabad, we left our hotel in a caravan of two vans and stopped at what seemed to be a suburb. “This is Maliwada” said the driver. In 1975, I remembered driving through open farmland to the village. Now, here we were, in a bustling urban area.


It took me a while to recognize the large open well before us. Women were lowering buckets to draw water. Looking down the unpaved street I saw a number of modest houses; most of them had a concrete floor in front, a contrast to my first visit when I saw women plastering the earthen floor with a dark green layer of cow dung. There were some double-storey buildings; one with a shop selling electronics and computer products. I looked up and saw the electric power lines. That must have been one of the most appreciated changes.


We were taken to a house near the well where we met some of the village leaders and elders. Several of them smiled at me and said: “I remember you”. I believed them although I was sporting a goatee in 1975. We sipped tea and listened to their stories. I was awed when the home owner took out some project documents produced in 1976 from a treasured spot.


Sign of hope

Children milled around the homes we visited. Some had even rushed home to change into fresh clothes of bright colours when they heard visitors were coming back after many years. Some were riding bicycles of the old one-speed variety. One girl, about 12 years old, rode up and down the street a number of times, pausing each time to peek through the door at this gathering of American tourists.
 
This image of a curious and serious girl, quietly observing the visitors to her village, stayed with me, a sign of hope in a village that has changed so much in the last 40 years. I am grateful to Emerging Ecology and to Nelson and his wife Elaine for guiding us on this journey.




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