Transition from an Urbane Bumpkin into a Forester/Ecology Enthusiast

Dear All

Not responding to anybody in particular but just adding my two pence to the proceedings about IRMA's relevance!!

I do not know about the priorities people have but would like to recount my transition from an urban bumpkin into a die-hard forester and ecology enthusiast that has been facilitated by IRMA.

I have been asked questions by my relatives, aquaitances and newly made friends like the following :-

Kyon yaar ye NGO kya hota hai??

Kyon tum jungle aur gaon main kya karne jate ho?? Wahan kaun se ped lagate ho??

First impulse is to tell them about the LFAs that i work on

Second thoughts tell me that Even I was in a similar condition some 8 years ago when I cleared written tests for various MBA Schools.

Somebody had told me that IRMA takes people who have particular interests and focuses.

I immediately took out the brochure and found that some subjects talked about Environment and Natural Resource Management. (I crossed checked these with Prof Raju and Akhil Pathak in my interview to be doubly sure that the same are not scrapped in regular curry-culum reviews)

All my childhood had grown up in a protected environment (of a concrete jungle) reading Jim Corbett, Ruskin Bond and Joy Adamson fantasizing about National Parks and Sanctuaries while Mom and Sis saw Shanti and Swabhiman on Doordarshan!!

I thought this is my chance to get into my dreams.I skimmed all websites that returned the result of googling on environment to convince the interviewerss about my dreams and intentions. Some other candidates saw IRMA as a gateway to rural banking and Insurance companies. I immediately developed camaraderie with them. When we studied together I also saw the same as fall-back options if my dreams crash and my rosy imagination do not match with my experiences !!!!!! (Even today I thank these people as I use their salary figures to impress others about my possible market value!!!)

Cutting the long story short, My work experiences of last 5 and half years have only reinforced my dreams and made them bigger.I got through IRMA, undertook all my assignments in Forestry in Udaipur, Ambaji and Uttaranchal and got into the job of my liking i.e working for the forestry sector and ecology. Now I know what IRMA gave me - the exposure and chance to realise them through the training segments/cases/alumnii/organisations all well networked and knit together to present a composite picture to enable me to make an informed decision!!!.

Crux of the story - The people who ask me the above questions actually remind me of myself struggling to find out about the other world that an urban student/careerist struggles to know about and urban commoner remains ignorant about. He might know about politics, movies, sports all practised and printed for morning tea in the newspapers but he would have to scratch his head about the struggles, enchantment and thrills a forest dwelling tribal might be facing. (That time even Naxalism was also a kind of technical Jargon for me). The course at IRMA tries to remove your information assymetry about the world that you live in and introduce you to these problems. Now it is upto one to catch hold of the field where one would like to contribute rather than where one could be employed. (So it is not about you as an input human resource but as a trigger or change agent who procreates copies of himself.)

IRMA gives one a chance to know about the other side of reality, about one's interests, one's personality, one's choices and the endless possibilities that one has of bridging dreams and realities...

They say Development is about generating choices. That way IRMA gave me a chance to excercise my choice safely without putting my own livelihood security (had to earn my own bread) under threat.

I hope my ramblings help people recount their dreams. Would love to hear similar such stories.

Vivek

PRM 23

Extent of Voluntarism

Dear Mama Saheb
In response to your question I would just quote one dialogue I had with our general secretary bhati sb. We have a sister organisation called "centre for voluntarism" which organises lectures and dialogues on voluntarism and civil society. Speakers also include our PM, nobel laureate stiglitz, Rk pachauri etc. Once a professor of English from the university here criticised our work saying, all these NGOs have three star facilities and they do not do any work with the notion of sacrifice that the NGO's founders like mohan sinha mehta etc. did.

I remarked, if one wants to do this work continously, it cannot be done in frustration or by yourself becoming a hermit. That would only lead to oneself being cut-off from the reality.

At this bhati sb remarked. We should never put a condition on voluntarism. Some people have a will and the capacity to put in 100 % of their time and career into this sector, others can put in only 10 % of it. Both are welcome. As a professional you are welcome, as a part time volunteer also people are welcome. This is so coz everybody has a different capacity and background.
They might also differ in terms of economic and intellectual background and therefore it is only by self realisation that volunteerism can work and not through setting parameters for participation.

Hope am able to partially answer your question :)