Watching Movies

I am not a person who likes to sit for cinema, although once in a while I see an English movie, and rarely a Hindi or a regional language film. But in the last two weeks I have seen two of them. That's for a record. The first one is Rowdy Rathore, in Hindi, based on a south Indian movie. I would rate it good, with  a simple story line of good versus evil, and impersonation of a person to grow from a bad person into a good person to destroy bad people! The other one we watched yesterday: Oh My God! It is about an atheist small businessman struggling with his own faith in humanism, when his entire shop is destroyed in an earthquake. The insurance company refuses to pay him the money because it was "an act of God". Now he calls to court all the agents of God (priests of Hindu, Muslim, Christian and every other religion) and takes you through the shallowness of faith of these "religious:" against the "apostasy" of his own commitment to "truth, justice, equality, service to the poor". In the process he must learn what true religion is all about, and teach others as well. A good movie to watch and reflect about. All must see.

Resilient Recovery Planning

The UNDMT has been training a host of people in resilient recovery planning (RRP) across the country, and I got the opportunity to participate in it held at Bhubaneshwar, Odisha, India. It was also a good opportunity to meet some of my friends in the same sector.

The training lasted for three days (16-18 October 2012), and we had about 25 participants. Lots of very good reading materials (known as Guidance Notes) were given. The objective of the workshop is to build a group of humanitarian actors to help UN organizations, UNDMT, Government and other humanitarian agencies for resilient recovery planning from 3 months after any major disaster. Other than for the field visit which took nearly six hours of travel for about 45 minutes of interaction with the community, the workshop was very good, although sometimes we jumped off the scheduled times of sessions marginally. 

It was nice  to meet Sanjay Bhatia, Abha Mishra, and several other old and new friends from across the country. The training is part of the International Recovery Platform's commitment to promote recovery resilient planning.

In Kathmandu Valley

On 6th morning I traveled to Kolkata and then took the afternoon Air India flight to Kathmandu. The flight had been delayed officially by about 50 mts as we were rescheduled to travel at 2.30. The boarding started at 2.15 pm only, and when boarding was completed, we saw power was coming on and off in the plane. At around 2.50 we were informed that the flight would be further delayed due to some electrical snag and the engineers were trying to fix it. By 3.30 we left Kolkata and landed in Tribhuvan airport, Kathmandu, Nepal at about 4.45 pm. Then I had the cab arranged by the Hotel Park Village. The evening was event less, until my companion for the training, Mr. Pradeep Bharwad arrived. We discussed about the WASH Cluster Simulation Exercise that is due on 8th and 9th Oct, as we chatted about preparation for the exercise. 

The weather has been cool and good, and the accommodation moderate, although I feel it is a bit costly for the amount we are paying. But the food is good and delicious. Internet is freely available only in the lobby, but the staying rooms are far from there, which makes it difficult for anyone to have access to it regularly. 

All prepared for the WASH Simulation Exercise. Hope everything goes well as this is a national level exercise with participation of several department heads, INGOs and UN organizations.

Little Surprises

I had days of little surprises throughout the week. Of them, two are more important as it involved visits by some of my friends. The first one is of Dr. Erich W from Germany. He had gone to Raiganj and was on his way back to Germany and had reached Kolkata on 27th morning. In the evening I joined him and two of his companions. We had some wonderful remembrances, little chat about my visit to his home nearly four years ago, the plans I have for strengthening higher education of children from tribal families and the plans he has for the village he and his companions support in Malda district. We had a wonderful dinner at Big Boss restaurant in the China Town, Kolkata. On 28th morning I had the opportunity to reach him to the airport and say "Good Bye".

On 29th I got a call saying that Mr. Mishra, a friend of mine from Odisha state of India was in the neighboring state of Jharkhand and is planning to visit me along with a few more friends on 30th Sept. And we had the visit of Fr. George Uthirakulam and Fr. Varghese Pally along with Mr. Mishra. It was really a big surprise, thrill and to say the least, I was excited. I took them around Bolpur - Shantiniketan, we had some good mutton curry for lunch, lots of talk about what I am doing now and how things are with CKS. 

Thank you friends for making the week a memorable one. The joy of your arrival still lingers on. Hope to meet you all soon again..

The Crash

My laptop has begun to give trouble. This is the problem of being dependent so much on machines. They are so reliable with their performance so much that you begin to depend on them, and then one fine morning suddenly it has a hick-up, and things go haywire. My network adapters in the Dell Inspiron Mini 1012 don't seem to function at all. I thought it is the work of a funky virus, and so, I got the laptop formatted. Now, I am left with a faster laptop with only the wired LAN working. My documents are safe, but do you think I should load all those 142 odd programs I had in my laptop once again and try all those documents, half of which I have not used for the last years, but don't know which one I would need when?  The crash was expected as my laptop is certainly overused, but I have put a new original Dell battery only a few months ago, and so I do not want it to let go. But the network problems I have with it, may ask me to just sell it off for a deal. What do you say?

Time Flies By...

The last two weeks went too quick that it made little time for me to be in touch with anyone. We had a review of the Center for Knowledge and Skills by an international organization so that we could be a partner to them for future interventions. It went off well. There was huge rush with preparing for the next polio round scheduled for 9 September. And so it involved field visits, meetings with staff, meetings at block, district and state level. On the other hand, the present project was getting over on 8 Sept, and so had to work on the new budget commencing from 9 September. There were guests coming in - from Seattle, USA, from Netherlands and from Kolkata. Today, at 7.30 pm, I felt I have completed most of the works and things are now on course. I can concentrate on other things and work on the coming polio round....

ToT for Health Staff

On 23 & 24 August I spent the time in Kolkata at a training of trainers for the staff of polio eradication program. Just 10 chosen ones were trained to train over 250 staff in certain communication skills so that they can effectively communicate with people and challenge resistance to vaccination of children. The training was mostly activity based with lots of reflective, analytical and demonstrative sessions. Rina Dey from Core Group was with me as the lead trainer and so that took off a lot of load of work from my shoulders. There was a meeting at ABCD on Child Protection and Education. Mr. Sarbjit Singh Sahota, the Emergency Focal Point of UNICEF country office had invited me to join the meeting. However due to the training of trainers I could spend only about two hours at the meeting on 24 Aug. Returning to Bolpur was uneventful, as I traveled with a Seattle University student who would spend the next couple of days with me.

Training of Doctors in Flood Preparedness

I must write about part of my experience while training four groups of doctors in the State of Bihar in flood disaster preparedness. The training had been organized by Unicef and the Disaster Management Institute of the Government of Bihar. The training support was given by RedR India, and I was part of the RedR India team. In the first two trainings in Supaul and Madhepura we had to go beyond the training module as I and my co-trainer also had to work on improving the training module and schedule to help it more useful for the other eight trainings to follow. My third training was at Darbhanga where the district health administration was sluggish in organizing the program, and so had to wrap up the program in just five hours of total work in the two days. Then six such trainings in six other districts followed in which I was not present. The last of the trainings was in the district of Katihar, where I joined my co-trainer Dr. Prabir Chatterjee who was also my co-trainer in Madhepura. In Katihar the doctors and health personnel were very much interested in the training and wanted to know more and more. But, unfortunately, some of the IEC materials, training tools and some organizational faults on the part of the district personnel ensured that the program was not a big success. 

Looking back, it was time for me to share some very interesting and personal moments with my co-trainers. Learn from them and learn to be a better health conscious person, as all my co-trainers were professionally medical doctors. Thank you Dr. Ravikant, Dr. Prabir and Dr. Sanjay 

Aminpur Water and Soil Testing Begins....

Center for Knowledge and Skills (CKS) and Visva Bharati University have joined to organize Water and Soil Testing as part of internship of two students from Environment Science department of the Visva Bharati University in Aminpur village, near Bolpur. Readers of this blog are aware that CKS works in Aminpur to help the poor tribal people of the village for their socio-economic development. In this major research activity to be conducted over a period of six months, one of the students will collect water samples from source, collection points in the village, storing facility at homes and from the hands of users. The study will help to analyse (a) hygienic behaviour relating to handling of water in the tribal community (b) ascertain the kind of activities that would be required to undertake as part of awareness building in the community.

In the other study, soil samples from the agricultural fields of the farmers will be collected over a period to study the changing nature of soil, and the support the community would require in terms of agricultural interventions to increase their produce.  Dr. B. Chandran from the Environment Science department will guide the students on the technical aspects of the study. We thank the faculty of  Environment Science for accepting to take up this study for the benefit of the poor tribals in the area, in collaboration with CKS.

India Disaster Report 2011

India's Report of Disasters for the year 2011, known as the India Disaster Report 2011 is already released. A friend of mine, Mr. Subhasish Debnath who works in UNDP shared the report with me. For the benefit of all who might be interested in the report, I thought of sharing it with you through this blog. You may view it by clicking on India Disaster Report 2012.

As for me, I am in Kolkata since yesterday. I was working with the Seva Kendra team yesterday (Thursday) to review their budgets, and today I spent my time with Professor P. Sahni from the IGNOU in understanding some new thoughts and concepts in disaster management. IGNOU is undertaking training in 54 districts from 11 states of India, in association with the National Disaster Management Authority.