Government recognises - Sahaj

SundarbansSunderbans is well known, and often for the wrong reasons. Beyond the tiger which may soon turn out to be a conceptrather than reality Sunderbans is known for the Aila, the shoddy infrastructure, the lack of power, the absence of roads,bridges. The days are pregnant with occasional sounds and the nights are eerie. There's a strange lull in the air. All thissingularly or cumulatively doesn't create the image of a particularly habitable or desirable piece of land. Sunderbans ofAmitabh Ghosh's Hungry Tide or Gautam Ghosh's Padma Nodir Majhi isn't inviting at least not a place where one wouldthink of setting up business and making money.We, alongwith Mrs Meena Chaturvedi, CEO, e-Learning and Public Services of Sahaj, Shubhomoy Chatterjee a notedcolumnist and editor, Akangsha, a very enterprising student of journalism and an ardent photographer, who has taken allthese photographs, some Sahaj colleagues decided to test ground reality. In the land of the hungry tide, we wanted toexamine how hungry our VLEs were.What we saw was unbelievable but true. We visited Sahaj centres in different locations in remote Sunderbans whichwere remarkably well maintained, perhaps among the most well maintained CSCs one has seen in 11 states in India.The infrastructure was impressive and above all VLEs were doing brisk business. Its not that they didn't have challengesbut each Sahaj VLE we met were exhibiting an uncanny knack for entrepreneurship and had etched out their ownsuccess models. They had braved the Aila and their work was inspiring to say the least. If these CSCs lacked anything,these were G2C services. We met both men and women VLEs and the only thing common among them was their beliefin themselves and a confidence would pull it off.The VLEs we met that day - Rajib Chakraborty (Brajaballavpur), Minati Das (Brajaballavpur), Tapan Roy Chowdhury(Madhabnagar), Debasish Maiti (Durbachati) were candid that once they had decided to open Sahaj centres they weredetermined to make them a success. They didn't crib, they didn't complain, but they articulated how things could bemade better. We visited a centre in Durgachati which didn't have power and ran continuously on genset. The rathergood looking and qualified VLE (he should have been a film star) had over 70 e learning students. If that's not inspiring, Idon't know what is.Sahaj Sunderbans VLEs had redefined the benchmarks of success and their confidence and positive attitude wascommendable. It's just that they were away from the glare of mainstream media and they are not invited to egovernance seminars. At 8 pm, when we were planning our return, we had found new reasons to celebrate our VLEs,the effort of our field staff and we had found new reasons to work for Sahaj. Above all, we wondered why do we neede-governance seminars, board room meetings and strategy sessions to determine success formulas for our VLEs. VLEshad a contextual understanding of what worked for them. And they had their instincts. All we have to do is to keeplistening to them, work with them and work for them. Above all, we had to see what was happening on ground.- by Sumanta PalSahaj Setu • March 201114