Malgudi Revived!?

I am Mani and one of the trios along with Swami and Rajam in the yesteryears classic Malgudi days. Our life took a separate course once we finished schooling and a few years later Malgudi fell from the map as well and became a non-descript village-like countless other villages in the country. Until Swami decided to return to his native Malgudi with the thought of its revival.

It was much later when we were in our 40s Swami and I met in a seminar on Making Villages Self-Sufficient organized by NABARD. I had become a rural development professional and Swami wanted to revive the fortunes of Malgudi. By then, the age of smartphones had begun and we kept in touch from then on.

Swami then invited me to Malgudi and we went around the village. We discussed putting back Malgudi on the map and rudiments of the revival of a village. We met all the sections of the village society. There were small farmers, herdsmen, landless people, herb collectors, unemployed youth typical of any village. The village was short of water and seeing through summer was a challenge.

A plan began to emerge. First thing first, an all-season water resource had to be created. We scouted a good spot where an old tank got already existed but was in a state of disuse. With the help of the rural employment guarantee program, we revived the tank. Come monsoon the tank got filled to the brim. We then formed a water user association and apportioned water along with rational use of crops that judicially used water. Experts from agricultural universities lent their expertise and seeds. Even the landless were earmarked panchayat land and grew fodder for all the cattle of the villages. Soon a milk cooperative became viable. A portion of the forest also was earmarked for the village people who decided on social fencing, which meant that cattle grazing got banned. With the onset of winter, people will collect fodder for their cattle. With stall-fed cattle, gobar gas became a reality. NABARD sponsored a fifty percent discounted small scale gobar gas plant for the household. It relieved the women from the need to collect fuelwood and the gobar gas made a possible reduction in cooking time.

With time in hand, women formed a self-help group and got into making herbal medicines with guidance from an NGO specializing in medicinal herbs and Siddha medicine. Under the brand name Malgudi, a variety of herbal medicines got sold. Some youth got employment when they became sales executives for the Malgudi brand of herbal medicines.

Swami persisted in calling me over to settle in Malgudi itself and we built a house with solar, water harvesting, making use of traditional building materials aka Le Carbusier style with the net result it became a model house. We took on lease a bit of panchayat land and set up a Malgudi Tiffin Center at the highway junction leading to our village. MTR did brisk business.

Malgudi's story spread due to good press coverage and social media and soon the railways started special passenger trains from Bangalore and Chennai. With the help of Airbnb, we started homestays as we found touristy interest to spend a couple of days in Malgudi to soak in the experience and also taste the rustic cuisine.

One of the IT wizards funded to set up a good school with latest in computer teaching. Another donation came to a health clinic. Malgudi now has been put back on the map, a living model for the revival of villages in India.

Swami’s dream has come true. However, Malgudi has not been able to realize Ambedkar’s dream of overcoming caste barriers. The school and the hospital strictly do not discriminate. So is the case with water distribution. But with Airbnb guests, we still have problems as some of them object to being hosted in the Dalit or Muslim hamlet.

We need another Ambedkar to lead us to the second independence.