Leaving the boring days behind...

It been since long that I wrote an article in my blog.... May be my regular readers have stopped looking at it, because there is nothing new in it. Yeah, life had been pretty boring in the last couple of months, in spite of the fact that I have traveled a lot within the state for organizing several trainings and meetings, and to Delhi to give my suggestions to the revision of the Sphere handbook, and organizing multi sectoral assessments in the flood affected districts of Hooghly, Malda, Jalpaiguri and landslide affected district of Darjeeling. Since 24 August till 8 September, the days went very

quickly, as I traveled between the northern districts of Malda, Jalpaiguri, Coochbehar and Darjeeling, organizing 24 team members, training them to do a multi sectoral assessment in those flood affected districts. And by the time the reports of North Bengal assessments were ready, there was heavy rain in southern districts of Bengal, followed by the Damodhar Valley Corporation opening over 300,000 cubic feet per second of water suddenly, in order to save a dam, leading to severe flooding in Hooghly district, and four other districts in Bengal.

That called for more action, more meetings, more visits and assessments of the damages etc. The reports are currently available in the "Public Library" that comes with this blog. Then came the visit to Delhi for three days, to work on the Chapter 3 of the Sphere handbook, specially on the food security part. My contribution to the chapter has been highly appreciated, specially for working on the new framework of the chapter which indicates poverty and socio, economic, and political contexts in which malnutrition and food insecurity appear, besides writing a new definition for the "food aid".

(In picture : people in ad hoc relief camps, and a house fallen down the hills during a landslide.)

Following all these I arranged for training of 75 persons selected from six northern districts, and trained them in doing quality Emergency Needs Assessment, with support from an organization called RedR India. The experience was really good as I could slowly begin to influence the lives of many. That is what I miss the most. I seem to be working the whole day. But I am not able to directly influence the lives of people positively. That

separates me....distances me from the people. I want to go back to them.... To be with them. To live and work and die with them!