Posted: 01 Mar 2010 07:20 PM PST
• A leader, who at the height of his political career, retired from politics and moved to a remote village, dedicating himself to the vision of a strong India through self reliant villages. • A social activist, who patiently worked and reformed hundreds of villages in the economically backward regions of Central India and rescued lakhs of people from utter poverty.
• An economist, who gave to the world, an egalitarian and self sustaining economic alternative, based on Gandhian economics, when the world was polarized between exploitative Capitalism and dogmatic Communism.
• An educationist who started the first Rural University in India.
• A social entrepreneur, who pioneered the concept of conflict free society through "Litigation free villages", and made the villagers partners in their development.
• A political activist, who crafted one of the largest pro-democracy movements in Independent India which led to the restoration of democrasy in India after a two year dictatorship.
These points can hardly summarize, even infinitesimally, the life and the work of Shri Nanaji Deshmukh. He passed away yesterday, at 94, after living a long and an inspiring life of a social entrepreneur. Here is a brief on the legendary social worker and the swayamsevak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Early Life and Influences
Nanaji became a swayamsevak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, at an early age. His first important influence that would shape his life as a social activist came from Dr Hedgewar, the founder of RSS, who had close contacts with Nanaji's family and who used to visit them often.
The inspiration he got from the RSS founder and other Sangh leaders would turn his association with RSS into a lifelong one. He became a pracharak (full time worker) of the RSS after his education and was sent to Uttar Pradesh for expanding Sangh work. The young Nanaji, like other pracharaks lived an austere life while facing all kinds of hardships. But the Sangh work steadily grew under his leadership. When Bharatiya Jana Sangh was formed in 1953, he along with a few other pracharaks was sent into it. His initial years in the organizations, where he extensively travelled through the economically backward regions of Uttar Pradesh, helped shape his understanding of the problems of rural India.
Guruji Golwalkar, the second Sarasanghachalak of the RSS, sent a team of volunteers led by Nanaji to help Acharya Vinoba Bhave in the Bhoodan movement - a voluntary land reform movement based on Gadhian principles. This was probably Nanaji's first direct contact with Gandhian thought. The other most important influence of his life would come from another RSS pracharak and his colleague in Bharatiya Jana Sangh - the visionary leader Deendayal Upadhyaya. Nanaji has claimed that the inspiration to his vision and the model of "Self reliant villages" came from 'Integral humanism' of Deendayal as much as it did from the Gandhian thought.
In Pro-Democracy Movements
As a political leader of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, his focus was on the organisation, which grew into a formidable one, especially in Uttar Pradesh which had become his new home. He also made great allies and friends in leaders across the political spectrum, including Gandhian and Socialist leaders. His association with Gandhian leader, Jayaprakash Narayan and other leaders of Opposition would help form a formidable alliance against the Emergency imposed by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. A strong network of pro-democracy activists mostly drawn from the RSS cadres was formed, which worked underground to create public opinion and to unite all opposition leaders. The Economist of London called it "only non-left revolutionary force" dedicated to the restoration of democracy in India. The movement grew in strength and popularity and on a strong Pro-democracy wave, the opposition for the first time defeated the invincible Indira Gandhi and came to power. But Nanaji, who had played a pivotal role in bringing the alliance to power, refused to be part of the Government. He decided to retire from politics and dedicate himself completely to the upliftment of rural India.
The Chitrakoot project
Please watch the video documentary on Chitrakoot project here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?
In 1977, he moved to Chitrakoot, a remote village in Madhya Pradesh with a mission to create a prototype of self sustaining model of development based on the concept of 'Gram Swaraj'. When the Indian political discourse had been deafened by rhetoric of the Capitalistic free market policies and of urban centric development on one side and the State controlled Socialism on the other, Nanaji's model provided a refreshing alternative. For the first time, there was a model which depended on the civil society than on the Government for development. "Do not wait for the Government to solve your problems" Nanaji used to tell people "we have to find solutions to our problems".
Many of the hundreds of villages that have come under what is now popularly known as "Chitrakoot project", generate their own electricity through the Bio-energy and solar energy plants. The villages which always faced water shortage today have a variety of rain harvesting and water conservation methods. Organic farming is not just for experimentation but a way of life and Chemical fertilizers are no more an inevitability. Women entrepreneurs today, help run many small scale industries which produce quality goods. All of this with very little support from the Government. For all those who thought Gandhian and Indian economic models were too idealistic and unrealistic, here was an answer. Here was an example of holistic development; of the fruits of development reaching the last man. Litigation free model
One more of Nanaji's vision was to form a conflict-free society. He had found to his dismay that lot of energies of the rural people were wasted in litigations, which left them both impoverished and exploited. He had said "If people fight amongst each other, they will have no time for development". He pioneered a method of sorting conflicts and differences between the villagers called the Litigation Free Model, which was based on the ancient Indian principles of consensus making and alternate conflict resolution.
When the President of India, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam visited Chitrakoot, he was amazed by this. He congratulated Nanaji for giving to the nation the litigation-free model of resolving disputes he had devised. Dr Kalam said "In Chitrakoot, I met Nanaji Deshmukh and his team members belonging to the Deendayal Research Institute (DRI). DRI is a unique institution developing and implementing a village development model which is most suited for India,” "Apart from all the development activities, the institute is facilitating a cohesive conflict-free society.”The villagers have unanimously decided that no dispute will find its way to the courts. The differences will be sorted out amicably in the village itself. The reason given by Nanaji Deshmukh is that if the people fight among each other, they have no time for development,” "I consider that this model may be propagated in many parts of the country by societal organisations, judicial organisations and government," Kalam had opined.
Praising Nanaji Deshmukh for his single-minded devotion to the uplift of the people, Kalam said “What the octogenarian leader was doing at Chitrakoot should be an eye-opener for others.”
Recognition
Today, in the milan when I summed up all these points, a swayamsevak drawing a parallel between Nanaji's work and works of other social entrepreneurs like Mohammad Yusuf of Bangladesh Grameen Bank exclaimed "Should such a great man not have got a Noble peace prize too?". Well "yes" I said, Nanaji like other real social workers never got the due recognition, not just because such recognitions are predominantly reserved for the powerful and the influential but also because such social workers have never put themselves in queues for such prizes. Their focus has always been their work.
The tribute to his life is not in prizes but in the smiles of the poorest people of India for whom he worked all his life, in building a strong and a self reliant India.
From (http://aswayamsevaksmusings.
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