I live in Bhopal and am currently working at Aranya a non-profit of which I am a founder trustee. My work currently is with the Pardhis– a nomadic hunting community. I was involved with setting up the IIFM Alumni Association and an office bearer for the first three years.
Location: BHOPAL
Q. Please tell us about you School & College before you came to IIFM. And how did IIFM happen?
A. I am from Ranchi that was then Bihar and now Jharkhand. I did all my studies pre IIFM at Ranchi itself. I did my schooling from Sacred Heart and my Economics Honours from Ranchi University. We lived in a Public Sector township and life was very cosmopolitan with people from all parts of India coming to work there.
When I was completing my graduation, I was exploring different possibilities for a professional course and learned about IIFM in the Employment News (wonder if the publication still exists) at the college library. I was curious and made some enquiry and thought that I could give it a try. But, what made my decision in favour of IIFM was the visit to the campus for the interviews.
Q. Kindly give us an idea on your journey from IIFM till here.
A. From IIFM I joined a research agency which at that time was authoring the first sub- national Human Development Report. The designation was advisor -HDR, GoMP. The job looked into all kinds of data available with the government and selected suitable ones to create ranking tables. It was a very interesting experience that introduced me to the immense amount of statistics generated by government agencies and helped me build a career as a freelance researcher. For the next decade and a half except for a brief stint at Unicef as a State Co-ordinator for Drought Relief I freelanced as a research and documentation consultant. I fondly remember those days as one got to work in diverse sectors and issues and got to travel to different places all the time. But then, I did eventually succumbed to the long time itch of community association and set up a non-profit along with friends.
My main work today is with a community of nomadic hunters called Pardhis. The Pardhis are a Denotified Tribe and perhaps the most stigmatized and marginalized community in India. We run a residential educational facility exclusively for their children and work for preservation of their oral and tangible culture; in addition capacity building to ensure constitutional rights.
Recognition of our work with Pardhis
Q. What are the key milestones/ learning in this journey?
A. We all grow with a specific set of inherited values that we shape with our individual personal life experiences. Like many in IIFM and elsewhere I started my professional life feeling happy and high about getting the highest salary in the batch, being the first to buy a car or getting high profile assignments but not before long and I realised that the hectic schedule was not for me! I liked a slower life 🙂
About 15-16 yrs back I got friendly with inhabitants of a small settlement of Pardhis. Like most of us, I was exposed to understanding marginalization in India in terms of dalits, tribals and gender, the Denotified Tribes and their extremely different world view and self exclusion was frustrating and challenging. The small diffused populations of these communities make it near impossible to negotiate politically in an electoral democracy. I felt that I was among the very very few who had the opportunity to access these communities and gain their trust and so I must work with them. And that changed my career plans.
Story writing session@Aranya
A village visit
Q. What is the most satisfying part of your career?
A. I am still enjoying my current work choises. And feel happy that what started with two little girls staying in my house is now a ‘Kunba’ with children attending university, taking up professional courses, becoming artists and taking up mainstream jobs.
Parenting is always a challenge but parenting ones own children is buffered with social consent and limited legal overview. One always has a much easier decision making. Bringing up children whose final decisions rest someplace else and that someplace else has a much different social and cultural moorings, is much more challenging. But things seem to be working so far and thats a big source of satisfaction.
Aranya’s kid Book in Parag Honor List
Q. Has your learning at IIFM helped in shaping how you approach your professional roles ?
A. IIFM has been very important in my personal and professional life. Its unique curriculum gave a multidimensional exposure. This I feel is rare in the Indian higher education scenario or at least it was in those days. I liked the pedagogy, especially those independent field studies. It really helped me grow as a person. Like most of us from urban middle class homes, I too had had a protected predictable safe and cocooned life. The course made me ready to take up almost any challenge that life threw.
Q. Who (or what) are the biggest influences or drivers in your careers ?
A. Since I am writing for IIFM alumni, I will start with IIFM. The whole experience – my batchmates, the faculty, the campus, the interaction academic and otherwise has strongly impacted my life.
But my strongest influence has been my family. We lived in an industrial township, but our feets were still very strongly planted in our rural agricultural identity. We lived both the worlds. That simultaneously made us participants and onlookers in both the worlds. My family’s close association with the Indian Independence Movement, their efforts to enhance educational facilities in our region post- 1947, their efforts for bringing girls into mainstream education and their participation in ensuring Bihar’s development in the 50s, was always something that guided our life. And has been the rulebook by which I make my choices.
Q. What are your favorite memories during your IIFM days ?
A. With less than 25 of us alone on the hill for large parts of our campus stay – infact even when both batches were on campus, we did not have even 50, there are so many incidents that come to one’s mind.
But, what I cherish most is the general feeling of the good times there. I had a wonderful batch. I especially remember those 2 OTs ( now called Summer internship & Winter internship), the late night walks, the lantana square addas, walking to Kerwa dam and back in the rains, and going down to watch the Bhadbhada gates open. I remember the hogging expeditions to Ghazala and Sudin’s (our batchmates from Bhopal) homes. And the daily post-class treks to Madhuram for a snack.
I have loved the get togethers of our batch at the campus.
I also got the opportunity to be a regular if not a daily visitor at IIFM for almost three and a half years while setting up the Alumni Association. And feel happy that we set out putting together the association, when I see the vibrant interactions.
Q. Kindly share the history of our Alumni Association as you played a crucial role in it ?
A. With its small alumni strength, and a good network among them, IIFM Alumni perhaps did not feel the need for an association in the initial years. Strangely neither did the institute.
In fact, a couple of us from my batch – which was the 7th – began working in Bhopal, and we tried to set up an association ; in 1998-99 perhaps. A society was registered and some alumni took interest in it too. But when it came to taking membership only five joined in – two of us, the founders, and three others! In fact I do not have memory of who the office bearers were either. After a couple of years, when the girl at my office said what to do with the files, I sent back the one (expired) draft that was lying in the file. Thankfully the others were cheques and disposed of the papers.
More than two decades later (2018-19 perhaps) the then students wanted to set up an Association as the institute was filing for some ranking or rating; and the presence of an AA would get some points. They prepared the MoU but were not able to get together an inaugural board. That’s when Praveen (Khedale) and I got involved. We got together alumni as prescribed in the MoU. Deepak Khare and others agreed and we set up the association.
IIFM Alumni Praveen Khedale taking the kids for a trek
It’s then that I realised what IIFM had slipped too. Getting smallest of work took multiple visits. When faculty agreed, the clerks brick walled. No one said no, anyone hardly took action! But we persisted and things slowly happened. A physical office, an election, some activities.
Then came COVID and the first elected President was unable to even travel to IIFM. But Ashish (Mishra) through personal tragedies and business complications during Covid kept it going. Papers were circulated by post for signatures and each resolution took a month and a half getting passed. But towards the end of our tenure, it was a pleasure when some Alumni became very proactive. To me personally, it was an affirmation that folks saw worth in the institution and were keen to take it forward. And that the second attempt at putting up an Association had succeeded.
Q. In hindsight, what was the biggest contribution or take away from IIFM that you think played a critical role in shaping you as an individual or professional?
A. It’s not one thing but a bit of all. The batch of course was what carried on after one left the campus. Many alumni too found special place in my life. As I have lived in Bhopal post IIFM, I had many friends and acquaintances in a number of batches post 96. Then one got caught in other things in life, and the batches became huge and I could not keep up. In 94, the year of our joining many new faculty had joined IIFM, I have very close association with quite a few of them too.
25th Year Reunion for our Batch(PFM 96) and PFM 97@IIFM
Participants : ADP Madhavan,Bishwadeep Ghosh, Gazala Ali Khan , Manas Ranjan Mishra , Prabhat Labh, Pullela Suresh Babu,Seema Joshi ,Sudin K & Archana from PFM 96.
Amita Bhaduri, Atulya Tankha, Nelson Royal, Shailesh Nagar, Jaya Parbat Roy, Shridhar Reddy Sripati & Sunil Padale from PFM 97.
Q. What is your typical day at the work.
A. I just resumed work about two weeks back after a 10 month break thanks to a medical emergency. After months of sleeping, gardening and medical treatment, I am still trying to return to a settled schedule. But I largely spend my mornings reading, followed by about 8 to 10 hours trying to do and see what can be done for the residence for the Pardhi children, and then another 3 or 4 hours of reading and socializing in the evening.
Q. And how does it look like while you are on a break?
A. Breaks is all about visiting my mother, brother or sister and sitting and chatting long hours over all kinds of interesting bihari food.
Q. And how about weekends, hobbies, family and anything else you want to add?
A. Bhopal, except for the monsoon months has lots of concerts, plays, fairs and the like. I liked to attend the classical music and dance shows, plays (only if the director is a good one) and ballets.
I love spending evenings chatting with friends.
I also sometimes edit stuff that my kids write, some of which have been published and awarded too.
Q. Favorite Books, movies, authors?
A. I love reading all kinds of historical stuff. Especially India of the 19th and 20th century. I also read a lot of biographies. But a bulk of my reading is fiction. Bhopal added a huge amount of Hindi literature to my reading which in my Ranchi days was largely english.