Datta Patil is the Director General of Yuva Rural Association (YRA), which was established in 2002 to address rural issues in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra. YRA has extensively worked for the development of rural areas of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. Patil is a multi-faceted social activist with 38 years of experience in various capacities and positions with exposure to national and international development issues in the government and NGO sectors. Excerpts from an interview:
Vidarbha is one of the least developed regions of Maharashtra. What have been the main development challenges for you?
Yes, Vidarbha is one of the least developed regions of Maharashtra. Development in this region is not same as it is in other developed regions. Under the recommendations of the 14th and 15th Finance Commission, they have started giving funds directly to Gram Panchayats. This decentralization of governance is a good thing, but at the same time it is seen that these institutions are not equipped to implement their development duties.
Yuva Rural Association has also worked in Madhya Pradesh. How are the challenges in Vidarbha are different from those in Madhya Pradesh?
There are not many differences except in Madhya Pradesh people are ready to work, whereas in Vidarbha people do not come forward to do work. For instance, in some of the villages we found that people were not getting food because of Covid-19 and YRA distributed food. Then we started working in the same village. It was a constructive approach. We identified labourers from Pune and Mumbai who were unemployed. We thought about engaging them in our work, but they refused to work. That is the different between people in Madhya Pradesh and Vidarbha. It is also not the truth that 100% people of Vidarbha were not ready for work, but most of the time they were not.
How do you see the long term impact of Covid-19 in Vidarbha and Madhya Pradesh?
The long term impact is that there might be increase in the number of poverty and BPL families and problems for farmers. Over all agriculture production can decrease. Exploitation at all level can also increase. So this pandemic has brought many challenges to the society, which can last for long.
What would be your advice for other NGOs?
NGOs should review their approaches and practices that they have adopted to see if these are working or not. They also need to engage with those people for whom they are working. We have to also give them the responsibility of their development and then we should perform our role of facilitator or trainer. Now it is time for the sector, people have to come together in a united way, they have to think whether there is role for them or not, and if there is role they need to understand and play that role. And not as parallel body, we have to do work with the government.
– Transcript by Mohammad Mujtaba
(An intern from Jamia Millia Islamia)