Washerman in Madurai City

The extended class rooms for MSW students

My interest towards the marginalized communities is the result of my experience as supervisor for the fieldwork programme of Master of Social Work (MSW) students placed in Tamilnadu Theological Seminary's "Labour and Peasant Center"(TTS-LPC) and IDEAS Institute of Development Education and Action Studies). I have seen with my own eyes how the seeds they have sown before two decades have grown into big trees and provided shadow and shelter to those who needed it. There are several instances, I sincerely attempted to remove the misconceptions about these agencies with some of my friends. I used to get sad with those of my students who were not serious with the works of these agencies and in fact shouted at them that their indifference amounts to urinating over a goldmine than to digout the precious metal there. But those genres of students who used the field work learning opportunities provided by these agencies are shining in the field of development. If TTS-LPC opened my eyes towards urban informal sector, IDEAS took me close to Arunthathiar community.
Why washer man?

The coordinators in TTS-LPC- Rev. Koil Pillai, Mrs. Nirmala Victus and Mr. Jawahar were source of encouragement to me and my students.It is a joy to spend time with them and their staffs during the supervisory visits.I hope that my wish to document the feedback of all my students who did their field work with these agencies may be materialized through this blog..Though there is a lot to write about the work of these agencies, I decided to share my observation about Washer man in Madurai City as a mark of my respect and regard to Miss. Vanitha (one of the good student we had) daughter of Sri. Chinnathambi who did washing when I was a student and then as a warden in our hostel during 70s. His honesty was remarkable and he handed over the students’ the money they forgot to take away from their clothes given for washing. It is this quality of honesty that makes the people to trust on the washer man. Is it not that people who get services from others like plumbers, mechanics, painters, domestic servants and street vendors always suspect them and watch them constantly. Though washer men also belong to the same category of poor, they are trusted upon by others and that make the people to handover clothes worth of thousands and thousands to the washer man and in turn washer man never betrayed our trust.

TTS & Washer man
I still remember the discussions carried out in TTS-LPC, when they thought of organizing a union for washer man of Madurai. Continuous interaction with the washer man subsequently during fieldwork took me to Aruldosspuram, popularly identified as a washer man colony and then to Vaigai River, their work spot,that gave me several wonderful insights about life and livelihood. At my request a student took a research project on washer man and I remember still vividly the time spend in Aruldosspuram and in Vaigai River.
For me research was an excuse to be with them. Personally it was not the outcome of the research, but the process and the clarity we got it from the attempt which was more important.
I feel that this post and the link to the work we did with washer man community is definitely not an attempt to share our work publicly but to gratefully acknowledge the how the seeds sown by (TTS-LPC & IDEAS) have grew.To be with the marginalized sector is not a fashion but of a commitment was a lesson we learnt from these agencies.

Though I was interested to continue my observation I could not do it for personal as well as my inability to inspire my students to continue it. But to be with the washer man will definitely give insights about the livelihood options pursued by our subaltern brethren. I don’t have any regret to put our observation that we did it a decade before rather I feel that our observation has not become obsolete and no one has brought out any document or made any fresh observation about the washer man in Madurai City – so this attempt is a mark of making fresh commitments.
If you feel that it is worthwhile to take few minutes to see the document to mark your concern for Madurai Washer man community, you are welcome and I consider it as a previlage

Washerman & Washing
Draft to comment

Teaching Regional Planning

After two and half hours of tiring lecture, I was told that someone was waiting for me in my room.By then I was trying to interest my student on regional planning. It has been my topic of interest for years; when the long lecture ended I remembered that someone was waiting for me. When I went back to my room I could not find anyone, I went to canteen for a coffee and in my return, I found two senior professors from Meenakshi Govt. College for Women waiting for me. After a formal greeting, one of them informed me that she had accidentally visited this blog and to her surprise found the materials related regional planning in the site. I heard from her that regional planning has been introduced as an elective subject in M.Sc Geography under the new CBCS and they have been trying hard to find materials for their students. This blog made them find that regional planning is also included in the MSW curriculum and that made them to approach us (Madurai Institute of Social Sciences) to get some useful reference material as the resources related to regional planning in their library was totally damaged in previous year’s floods.

I recollected my own experience of running here and there to collect materials when we decided to have a paper on regional planning in our curriculum by then was abstruse; I had to work on my own interest to build some good material for the paper. Over the years, I developed materials relevant to our syllabus. When some of the affiliated colleges in MK university area started MSW course, the instructors of that regional planning paper advised their students to get it from their friends doing MSW in our college. Though I was disgusted about their behavior, in order to avoid the hardships faced by the students doing community development specialization in other colleges, I decided to upload the learning material given to my students in this blog and that has been noticed by the teachers like me who were infact searching for resources to help their own students.The decision of these two professors to visit our college itself is a proof for their concern towards their students. More than that their visit made me to realize the power of technology… thanks to Google with its user friendly technology motivated even computer illiterate like me to use its facilities. An enabling environment is needed even to share what we have.. Is it not?

If I recollect my experiences in teaching regional planning to social work students, it was really a frustrating experience. I thought of recommending to take away that paper from the syllabus but for the request of a fraction of my own alumni who really felt that knowledge about regional planning helped them to grasp the nuances of development. One alumnus told me that his knowledge about viability, range of goods and the concept of innovative firms made others to feel that he might have done his MBA additionally. No doubt it sensitized a limited number of students about the need for spatial social justice. But I have to admit that they are very few in number. My teaching experience in the subject has been very frustrating. Majority of my students always give me looks that admit their indifference to the subject.

But teaching of regional planning and adopting it social work curricula benefited me immensely..widened my cognitive horizons and perception. It sharpened my facilitating skills in participatory rural appraisal (PRA), it sensitized me about the intra village disparities and to produce beautiful self explanatory PRA visuals. My interest in regional planning made me a graphicrate.. it slowly made me to learn about GIS and to adapt GPS in PRA practice, normally not of an interesting area for social work educators. My attempt to incorporate GPS in PRA improved the quality of social mapping and reliability of household related information generation. This combination made both the villagers and the NGO’s field staff to feel that social mapping as a pleasant experience. (I am planning to document some of these experiences as an example for best practices in peoples’ participatory geographic information system- PGIS)
This is the positive side but on the negative side, to admit honestly I could not create any interest with my own MSW students. In an utter frustration I recommended to replace regional planning paper with the new livelihood promotion paper. Since locality/regional development is inseperable from livelihood promotion, I retained many of the core concepts that are borrowed from regional planning.
As the semester is coming to an end, I realized that this is the last semester for regional planning paper and it won’t be taught as a subject matter in the semesters to come. It is time to bid goodbye to regional planning from MISS. The approach of the two professors made me to share whatever I have developed. so far But, I feel honored when I think that the material may be better appreciated outside than my students and my colleagues.
Good bye regional planning from MISS and have a nice and fruitful days in the Meeanakshi College.
Thanks to professors Dr. Sethu Rakkayee and Dr. Rameshwari of Sri. Meenakshi Govt.College for women for honoring regional planning by visiting MISS with the real spirit of searching knowledge, the basic quality of a true teacher.

(Note: The entire material is uploaded in scribd site (see the Community Development Specialization Syllabus Post –Paper 16. Regional Planning in this blog ) and ppt presentation will be uploaded in this site after a little bit of editing)

Madurai Vegetable Markets- Sociological Museums

Mr.Udayakumar & Ranjithkumar II MSW CD(R&U) have been placed in the Unit for Madurai Studies for their III Semester Field Work and they were assigned to study about the Vegetable Markets in the Madurai City. As our previous work in K.Pudur ward and in Pudur Market revealed that vegetable markets seems to be sociological museums -one can learn about many things. This duo have taken more than 200 photographs about the markets and created a table descrbing the features of the vegetable markets. It is decided to georeference the markets in the Madurai city,with the help of Dr.T. Pavendar. Completing that task may take little more time but we have determined to do that. Working in the markets made us to realize that both the policy makers at the national as well as state level and the local governments ignore these markets without realizing these markets potentialities to promote decent & sustainable livelihoods for a sizable sections of the urban population. If the policy makers decides to seek the participation of the poor vendors,keeping away the power brokers, many,many things are possible.We dont know what makes our policy makers to be blind and insensitive to some of the basic issues. We hope that our work in the markets will bring forth learnings that are truely revealing. Wait for that revealing moments

Project Planning

Participatory Rural Appraisal

Since there is an increasing number of students and other friends working in the nonprofit sector have repeatedly approached me to provide some basic material related to PRA, LFA and Livelihood Framework etc, I have decided to put the material in the cdmissmdu (community Development) blogspot. I sincerely acknowledge all the sources from where the content is taken. This compilation will be useful both for the beginners and all those who want to refesh the subject matter. Please post a comment / suggestions so that I will improve it in order to make learning and understanding participatory methodologies as a pleasant experience. Apart from the original sources, I gratefully acknoweldge my sincere gratitude to Dr. John Devavaram, Founder of SPEECH & RCPDS who introduced me to PRA and Mr. Rajendra Prasad, Executive Director, PAD who sustained my interest in PRA and Mr. Balamurugan of Save the Children India, Mr. Muniasamy of CCFC and Mr. Rajesh Kumar and other staffs in SPEECH and PAD who made PRA as a pleasnt experience.

Participatory Rural Appraisal Part I
Participatory Rural Appraisal Part II
A compilation of material by S.Rengasamy, Faculty Member, Madurai Institute of Social Sciences collected from various sources to help the students and development workers to understand and refrsh the basic concepts and tools of PRA