Saturday, October 11, 2008

Physical and mental abuse of women

Physical and mental abuse of women is very common in Shahpur Jat. We are working towards making women selfrelient and stronger. Also planning to start de-addiction awareness campaign Institute of Human Behaviour & Allied Science.
Anita is a young mother of three children and wife of a drunkard and a abusive husband. Yesterday when she went back home after working the whole day, she found her husband fumbling around, screeming and more drunk than other days. Her time was spent guiding him to the bed, cooking and crying.



Today we are trying to contact the beat constable Mr. Manoj Negi but have not found him since morning.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Need Volunteers for Shahpur jat projects

If you have passion to do something for Environment, Ragpickers and social issues so lets Join Us.

Contact :

Vipin Dagore

9711317373, 011-26499030

New Survey of Water of Shahpur Jat

In the village Shahpur Jat at (Jatav Samaj) we have done a survey on Jatav Samaj.

No of Houses, Address, Members, use of water everyday.
50, 217 to 231 with (A,B,C,D), 10 16.litter min. 115. litter max.

On an average each house has one tanent Vavatavaran team saw a man about 35 year old living in a (5 x 4) size kitchen and he is paid for that Rs. 1000/- per month. and he has only one bucket to use water.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Vatavaran gerenate employeement for villagers

Dear All,

As you know Vatavaran is an non-profit community based organization working towards environment and socio environment issues in Shahpur Jat to make a model urban village now a day we are trying to start generate employement for the villagers of Shahpur Jat.

If you don't have a job so u can conatact us and we will trying to give you a good job.

Contact Person : Vipin Dagore
Mobile: 09711317373

Vatavaran Home Work Hours

On 10th of August Vatavaran started a Home Work Hours for students of the Village Shahpur Jat.
It is a smaller class for Nursury to class seventh students and it has about 30 of childrens time is 3pm to 5pm. Mon to Sat.
We guide them for their school home work and give training about the Greener Environment to save them. Its very amazing class looking like a greener school every child enjoy the class and they make good things of Papers.

If you and your child intrested to JOIN US so you can contact us at following address:
190-A, Ground floor, Shahpur Jat, New Delhi-110049.
Ph: 91-11-26499030. Mob: 09711317373.
So children lets Join and enjoy your age with towards Green India, we make you junior environmentalist here.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Shahpur Jat -a study

Shah Pur Jat -a study
by Vatavaran



Introduction:
NGO-Vatavaran, recipient of Best Practices Award by UNCHS [United Nations Cell for Human Settlements] in the year 2000 and 2006 is working from Shah Pur Jat for making it to become a model urban village.
During the last two years we have collected base data, formulated a long term work plan and initiated the work to make Shahpur Jat a sustainable, ecologically developed, empowered, peaceful and pleasant urban village where the businesses will flourish, shopping will be a pleasure, jobs will be generated for poorest of the poor and backward classes and residents will be coconscious citizens. It is the first ever attempt and will become a benchmark in the country

History:
According to the elders of the village10, 000 years ago (8000 years BC), some Hindu king founded the area where present day Shah Pur Jat is located. There was a fort and palace here, however 5000 years back when ‘Pandavs’ built Indraprastha; they took the stones of that fort. The excavations in the Old Fort area confirm the belief that Purana Quila was built on the site of Indraprastha, the capital of Pandavs.
Tomars (Hindu Clan) ruled Delhi In 11th century AD, in 12th century AD, Prithviraj Chowan was the ruler, until his defeat later that century replacing Hindu rule by Muslim. Allauddin Khilji, founded SIRI -the first Moslem city of Delhi in 1303.It was fortified, beautiful and prosperous, but the later rulers devastated it by taking the building material of Siri for the new structures they got built. Today only parts of its wall, hawelies made with lime and mortar, mosques and some historical a village, now in haryana shifted to SPJ area. About 900 hundred years back, Dagar clan from Indri –a village, now in Haryana shifted to Shahpur Jat area. The fertile land and their agriculture skill helped them accumulate wealth in no time, attracting Panwar clan and other castes to the area which by then was called Shah (wealth) Pur (Colony) Jat (a clan), meaning by locality of the rich Jats.The fertile land and their agricultural skills helped them accumulate wealth in no time, attracting Pawar clan and other castes to the area which by then had acquired the name SPJ

Basics:
Total Area - 4.5 Km. Sq // Inhabited area - 1.75 Km. Sq//Area per house hold- 40 –200 Sq. Mt. // Parks 8( open area – 20% , green area .1%) Schools – 3 (Nagar Nigam Prathmik Vidyalaya Boys, Nagar Nigam Prathmik VidyalayaGirls, Sarvodaya Co-ed. Higher Secondary School, students 3,000 // Govt –dispensaries or health centre- none./ /Private clinics 11( allopathic- , homeopathic- , Arruvedic- , Quakes- ) owners- 15000// Jats households about- 300 ,Harijans/ Balmiikies- 100, Badhai, Baniya, Kumhar, Nai- 250// Non owners- 15000// Householders per house- 46// Number of Households- 650//

Problems
1.Haphazard growth
There is no original single story mud house with a yard. The houses are of concrete, yards covered, expanded in which ever direction they could, covering them to rentable ugly, lightless and suffocating matchboxes. The 50% population--migrant labor lives here, household industrial units for embroidery, mirror work , tailoring, dyeing, printing etc thrive along with eating joints , kitchens for migrant labor, tea stalls and grocery shops
The houses along the periphery or lanes broad enough to walk, have converted the land use pattern to become commercial areas. The basements and ground floors are rented to fashion boutiques, hi-fi house hold products, designer furniture etc.If it’s a big family they live on other floors, small family lives on 1st floor, renting the upper two or three. .

2.ThrowAway Culture
The adoption of throwaway culture by the residents has led to multiple problems. Around 15 metric tons of plastics in the form of plastic packaging materials, multi colored carry bags, mineral water and cold-drink bottles, old toys, squeezable tubes, cups, glasses, milk sachets, razors and ball pens etc. are being indiscriminately discarded. Most of these (specially the carry bags) find their way in open sewers where they block waste water leading to explosions of sewer lines due to the blocked methane gas produced underneath.

3.Congessed roads
The vehicles are chocking its roads . We learnt that the rate at which vehicles increased in Shah Pur Jat is inversely proportionate to the rate, at which its green areas decreased..

4.Water stress
The village is in water stress zone. On one hand there is not enough water to drink for most residents on the other hand there is excessive water wastage by prominent rich .

5. Garbage
Land is being smothered by household garbage. Indiscriminate dumping,has converted 5 percent land in this already land starved village to wasteland. The area has over 35 MCD employees to collect the garbage generated and sweep the roads. 5 refuse trucks are supposed to empty out the garbage from the five Dhalaovs Still, 70% of its 500 metric tons of garbage produced every day remaines unclear.

6. Class and Caste effects
Our base data shows the worse affected are the women of the backward classes in the village. The caste and class division is very distinct in this historic village. The backward classes in Shahpur Jat live in a demarcated area of the village. They have their own temple and Panchayat, as they are not allowed in the mains. There is an urgent need to empower these women through self-help groups and micro enterprises. This would, affect their families and the village the most. Our awareness campaigns will change their attitude make them feel important. Our aim to make Shahpur Jat a model urban village would start with the lowest in the hierarchy.

Action plan:
Formation of village committees- various committees such as women, youth, businesses etc to address issues concerning them.
-Awareness programme for residents to understand the maladies of haphazard growth and over crowding. Introducing the concept of making the havelies in to ‘bed and breakfast places’ instead of child labor factories.
-Work towards making Shah Pur Jat a Zero plastic zone with the cooperation of business houses and residents.
-Improve, repave and rectify mismanagement of roads with the help of the concerned departments of the government. Organizing haphazard parking by awareness campaign on ‘Your basement – your parking area’; training interested youth in traffic control, getting spaces allocated as parking lots and handing them over to the interested youth of the village as their enterprise.
-Rainwater harvesting- Roof top rain water harvesting at the governmental schools, offices and all other feasible places. Teaching reduce , reuse and conservation of water to house holders.
-Cleaning , greening , land scaping the waste land patches , streets , exterior and ways to various businesses , village chopals and eating areas . To make shopping in SPJ an exquisite experience. Use of Solar Energy for street lightings to help the shoppers and residents alike.

-Bio -gas plants- Approximately dung from 4 cows can cook food for a family of 15. There are villagers who own cows and buffaloes they would be persuaded to set up biogas plants.

Programmes
-Programs for Youths- setting of a centre for physical, mental and spiritual upliftment, computer literacy, career counseling, personality development.
-Programs for Women – Training women for greening, kitchen gardening, making of paper and paper machee products and micro enterprises.
-Programme for the rehabilitation of Drugs and drinks addicts..
-Programme for school children -Home work hour.

Problems being faced:
Vatavaran started work in Shah Pur Jat as it was challenging and no model existed. Many individuals and organizations are working in rural villages but none in the urban villages. We have taken up this work but of all our work this one faced the most acute resistance.Resistance from house owners
Rich dominating residents have encroached land and/or undertake illegal activities thus resist any intervention.The not so well offs have been dejected with the government’s attitude, hollow promises of Non Government Organizations and the apathy of the local leaders. They are angry with: the Municipal Corporation of Delhi for accumulated garbage, blocked sewers, Jal Board for allowing the abuse of the water connections by selected few and insufficient dirty water for the rest, Bharat Electrical for absence or insufficient street lights and the higher officials for their apathy.
We are facing the wrath of their anger.

Resistance from the Businesses
The shop,officeor the show room owners who spend the day there but do not stay there care too hoots.They want only those aspects of the village to improve, which would better their business, and for that want to contribute minimally. Office goers are insensitive to the village and small grocery shopkeepers/ residents cannot contribute their time or money.
Resistance from the labour in household industries
The working class of the household industries are mostly Bangladeshi immigrants. They lead a insecure, fearful lives thus refuse to communicate, leave aside any contribution.
Resistance from the local MCD workers
There is corruption among the MCD employees. Each of the 35 employees has a fixed number of workers under their wing. These workers collect the waste from door to door and deposit it in the Dhalow. For the work they do they get a meagre amount from their employees, who in turn get a much higher amount from the residents. The MCD employees resist any one doing any work in the village because of the fear of being caught in their illegal practices or loosing out on their extra income.
Resistance from local leaders
The local leaders of different political parties do not let any work to progress lest the credit goes to their opposition. For example we faced acute resistance from the Ex Mayor who did not let us start even a waste management scheme.

Resistance from Schools
The Government schools do not want to be part of any programmes meant for the betterment of the students or school, as it is not going to affect their pay cheque,& the order must come from the government , which does not reply any such requests.

Resistance from quakes and contractors
The innumerable quakes shy away from any aware person as it could reveal their quirkiness. The contractors fear the raids on the bonded child labor they have brought from Bengal.

Resources
The initial resources to start our work at Shah Pur Jat have been managed from Vatavaran’s already well-established waste management schemes.
Vatavaran’s two de centralized waste management schemes are in Jawaharlal Nehru University and University of Delhi South campus. At both the places the monthly emoluments for Vatavaran teams comes from the respective administrations. Our teams collect the waste from house to house, segregate it into biodegradable and recyclables compost the biodegradable and sell the recyclables. The money that we get from the kabari is being used as rent for an office in Shahpur Jat, as pay for the researchers employed to collect data.

However, this amount is not going to help us reach anywhere. Vatavaran would need external funds from Sponsors, Donors and from funding agencies.

For meeting the requirements of the heavy funds needed for the total implementation of our objectives Vatavaran requests every household, shop, office, man, woman and child to help out.

It has been realized that the active support and participation of existing residents is essential for the long-term success of our programme from the planning to the implementation stage.
We believe that the development of an area is based on profound human needs. Living in clean and well-managed surroundings would become local pride and will allow undertaking of other desirable changes for the enhancement of the amenities and improvement of the inhabitant’s quality of life.
The Team
Ravinder Singh Head Supervisor
Raj Kumar Supervisor
Shashi Kumar Supervisor

Deepak Kumar Office assistant
Harinder Pawar Field assistant

Achievements till now:
-Urban Greening- The road sides , the individual yards and the parks were barren with much scope for plantations of trees, household plants and park plants. We have been undertaking this since the last monsoons.

-Our plans of rainwater harvesting using old dried up wells came to a halt as the selected well gave away.

-Work in collaboration of the MCD was under way. Removal of Malba from roadsides , parks and lanes was undertaken..


-The main roads were paved last year , but, unfortunately they already need repaving as the work undertaken by the contractor was sub standard and inspite of Vatavaran’s request neither the MCD nor the contractors wanted Vatavaran workers around during the work hours.

-Sewage system had almost collapsed in SPJ. Situation is better in most areas after Vatavaran’s intervention and laying of new sewage pipes.

-With our intervention, Delhi Jal Board changed the rusted, leaking water pipes thus improving water quality and quantity

-Health camps and protective gears to the local rag pickers helped them physically and mentally.

-We were in touch with DWM (Delhi Waste Management) to sort out the problem of Garbage which does not get cleared in time. It worked for some time but it has become worse recently.








Thursday, July 31, 2008

About us

Introduction
Vatavaran is a nongovernmental, nonprofit, community
based organization registered in New Delhi as a Trust
[7224(book IV, vol. 494, pg 165 to 173) DT 08.09.1995].
Conceived in early1990’s as a model NGO to work on socio environmental
issues with all sections of the society through multi
pronged, down to earth approach.
Its emphasis has been to improve the lives of the under privileged,
poorest of the poor. We organize and train them, generate
employment, self respect and identities through individual
and community participation.

Uniqueness
1. Vatavaran is a group of individuals who
work at grass root level with passion and
commitment.
2. It identifies socio- environmental problems
of the society and tries to solve them with
the help of the communities.
3. It is like a catalyst. It sets schemes and
hands them over to communities
4. Vatavaran team is spiritually inclined and
Ghandian in approach

Vision
1. Create a fair, equal, environmentally
conscious and self-sustaining society.
2. Provide simple, replicable models to
complex socio environmental problems
by innovative solutions to ’ exploitation to
conservation’, ‘waste to wealth’, ‘barren to
green’ , ‘water less to water sufficient’ and,
‘dependant to empowered’etc

Work sectors
animal welfare
Work on monkeys in the wild and human habitation areas. The
director was a well-established Primatologist more than a
decade before the formation of Vatavaran. . The work has
continued since then.
Vatavaran undertook animal welfare studies for ‘either improve
zoos or close them’, ‘ban the use of animals in circuses’,
‘use of animals for testing of cosmetics etc.’
We also published many reports and flyers on issues
mentioned above and –monitoring animal teasers in the
zoo, snakes and snake charmers, living with monkeys and
understanding dog bites etc.
Solid waste management
The decentralized model of solid waste management started in
Asian games village in mid 90 was replicated in around 30
neighborhoods by 1999.
The model is to study the locality, train the local rag
pickers, collect waste from house to house, segregate
it (if not segregated by the house holders), compost the
biodegradable and send various recyclables to different
industries, thus making the locality Zero Garbage Area.
Once the work stabilizes, the management is handed over to
RWA.
Vatavaran converted JNU, UDSC and eight departments of North
Campus Delhi University into zero garbage areas.
It handed over waste Management Schemes in Asian Games
Village, 11 sectors of Vasant Kunj, SFS Triveni Sheikh Sarai,
Mahipalpur Complex, Defense Services Enclave, Sunder
Nagar, Pitampura, South Extension Part 2 Market and
Sector 15A Noida to respective RWAs.
We trained, helped, launched and monitored waste
management in Vikas Nagar- a low-income settlement
colony.
Developing self-sustaining areas and localities
1. Through reports, flyers, talks, street theatre and street
meetings.
2. Vatavaran’s 5R’s –Reject, Replace, Reduce, Reuse, and
Recycle;
3. Segregation of garbage, Worm pit, Management of plastics;
Paper conservation;
4. Creating colony forests,
5. Making of bio manure and leaf manure
6. Conservation of all resources specially power, water etc.
Awareness campaigns
Vatavaran started work in Shah Pur Jat as it was challenging
and no model existed. Many individuals and organizations
are working in rural villages but none in the urban villages.
We have taken up this challenging work and are collecting
base data on Shahpur Jat- a jungle of concrete.
Of all our work this one faced acute resistance because the
Congress Party’s Ex Mayor who did not let us start even a
waste management scheme.
We have not given up and our plans still are to make Shahpur
Jat a model urban village. Save its historic structures, solve
its water woes, improve roads, increase green spaces,
rectify mismanagement of solid wastes, introduce solar
lights, and rain water harvesting..
We will adopt integrated multidisciplinary approach to mitigate
the problems.
To activate the villagers we have started empowerment of the
women and that too of Balmiki Samaj first.

The team
Dr. Iqbal Malik, founder director
Prof. P.S. Sindhu, founder trustee // Vijay Bhan, founder trustee
Yashwant Singh, programme officer
..............................project officer
Vipin Dagore, junior project officer
Ravinder Singh, head supervisor // Raj Kumar, supervisor // Shashi Kumar, supervisor
Deepak Kumar, office assistant // Harinder Pawar, field assistant

Achievements
Vatavaran has innovative barter system schemes like ‘exchange
your waste paper with hand made paper and products of the
same value’, ‘ Ek mutti plastic do ek mutti khad lo’ , ‘koi bhi
recyclables do – thaila, sapling , potted plant lo
Vatavaran does not believe in big office and massive infra structure.
We are a team of four persons in the office of Shah Pur Jat. The
three personnel in the office get a small honorarium and I work
on voluntary basis.
Vatavaran handed over ‘ Waste to wealth’ scheme in Central Jail
Tihar to the inmates, and Worm pit to jawans at engineer’s
mess, Duala Kuan.
Vatavaran provided training on total waste management,
monitoring plastics, metals, glass, rubber etc to 15
organizations. 11 in Delhi and 4 from other parts of the country…
Indcare, Accord, Samarth, Development Alternatives, Navjyoti,
Disha, Deepalaya, ConcernIndia, Iffcord, RotaryEcoFoundation,
Inner wheel, Ecofriends of Kanpur, Vasavya Mahila Mandal
Andhra Pradesh, Clean Ahmedabad &Darjeeling Earth Group
It helped 14 educational institutes (6 colleges of Delhi University
and 8 schools) to set up paper management barter system
schemes.
It has received many awards, the most prestigious being “Best
Practices Awards by UNCHS (United Nations Cell on Human
Settlements) in the years 2000 and 2006.