Mewat

IRRAD works in a district of Haryana state called Mewat; it ranks lowest in the state among socioeconomic indicators such as literacy, income, health, access to water, sanitation, etc. Mewat is in the foothills of the Aravali Range, said to be one of if not the oldest mountain range in this part of Asia. It is a unique district in that the majority of the population is Muslim. I don’t know the precise history, but a few hundred years ago, the Hindu population was forcibly converted to Islam, but covertly kept many of their Hindu traditions. This caused them to be rejected by both the Hindu and Muslim communities, so they have been relatively isolated for centuries. I visited two of the villages, Notki and Kotla, last Wednesday.

These two villages are nearly the same in population, around 1200 residents each. Notki is IRRAD’s showcase village; all of the interventions they have introduced are working to some degree. On the other hand, IRRAD has only just begun working in Kotla. I was surprised by the proximity of the villages to each other since they are only a mile or two apart and we passed through one other village, Ghaghas, to get to the other. The roads were extremely rough. There were many naked children and many kids around five years old taking care of even younger children and babies while their parents work.

Surprisingly, only a little more than a third of the population depends on agriculture for its main source of livelihood. About the same amount are laborers, and the rest derive income from shops, driving, and other employment. One of the main impediments to agriculture and life in general is a shortage of water; much of the water that is available is saline. In Notki, we saw several wells and though the water levels were twice as deep as they were just a few years ago, there was water. In Kotla, there are only two wells for the entire village. One was dry. We watched young women dipping buckets to get water from the other well (the water was 120 feet down), and we could hear the buckets hit the bottom each time one fell into the water.
The landscape is beautiful. My favorite memory of my first trip to the field was when we hiked back to see a check dam that IRRAD had built in Kotla. We hiked farther back behind the dam (which wasn’t holding any water back—there was only a trickle) toward a cliff with two small waterfalls and palm trees growing out the side. There were probably 50 women and children bathing under the waterfalls and doing laundry in the pools underneath. It was so neat, and I wish that I could have captured it on my camera, but they people there are extremely sensitive to having their pictures taken, especially women. In fact, I was told that there were rumors circulating recently that IRRAD takes pictures of the girls and shows them to advertise to the whole world without their consent. More importantly, not too long ago there was a fatwa issued in Mewat against IRRAD; this is a very traditional area and many religious leaders are against any kind of development, claiming that IRRAD only wants to take away their power and dilute their culture. I did take one picture of the school building in Notki, being careful to wait until a group of girls had walked out of the frame.