Bridging the rural-urban divide one brick at a time

It was only when 19-year-old Pritam Maji, a first-year computer science student of K.C. College, Churchgate, accompanied his NSS team to construct toilets in a village, did he realise that actual learning comes from outside textbooks. The teenager along with 300 NSS volunteers from the college adopted a village Karvale in Palghar district of Maharashtra. The team has managed to construct over 67 toilets for the villagers since. The students, in an initiative to bridge rural-urban gap initiated the process of development at a grass-root level. Pritam shares, “It was a task to break the ice initially because for them, we were a bunch of city kids who did not know much about their lifestyle. So we started with creating awareness about literacy by building a community centre and distributing reading and writing material to the youth through our volunteering initiative.”

After having established trust among the villagers through their projects, the volunteers then decided to aim at providing better sanitation facilities to the them. “When we reached there, the sanitation levels were very poor. There were about 100 houses and only people who were well-to-do had toilets inside their houses. Others still had to go to the nearby hills and jungles for their daily ablutions,” he shares.

A team of 300 volunteers then decided to take charge of the situation and have successfully built 67 toilets for them. “We have been visiting them every Sunday for almost six months now. Initially, I was very sceptical about the whole activity. Why should we do this for the villagers, I wondered? But it was only later after interacting with them that I realised that if we don’t, then who will?” Pritam says.  

Just like her comrade, Simran Bijwani had her set of apprehensions about visiting a remote area with little comfort. “I’ve an OCD with cleanliness and I had my share of doubts about how I would manage to construct a toilet but when I reached there, I felt grateful for whatever things I have in my life. As urban youth, we tend to take a lot of things for granted. The villagers don’t have as many facilities as we do and it is our responsibility to bridge that divide and do things from our end. Anything that we have — be it skill, knowledge or any form of help should be shared,” Simran asserts.

The volunteers also held a farmers’ market at the village recently where fruits and vegetables from Karvale were brought to Mumbai and were sold. Profits were then shared with the village community.  The kids who have now officially inaugurated the toilets for use are on cloud nine seeing their hard work pay off. “I now know how to construct a toilet and it’s a proud feeling. The mason in the village taught us the art and we even painted them,” Pritam shares. “The whole experience was very heart-warming. There were times when we got so engrossed in the construction that we had to skip lunch and the villagers were sweet enough to walk in and make sure we ate,” says Simran.