Development takes a new meaning in India

It was hard to understand at the beginning, but seems perfectly clear now. Before coming, Isabel sent us a note about excerpts from India, by Radhika Jha, where the writer had exquisitely said: “You don’t see India, you live it”. I first thought that this phrase could also apply to many other countries, but with India, “living it” takes on a new dimension. India is different.

India is immensely intense, with scary dimensions and at the same time an irresistible attraction. India is color and warmth. It is a constant honk – one that I may even miss when going back to Wonderland - and it is, at the same time, a place where meditation is an essential part of their daily lives. Our meetings at SEWA would start and finish with a prayer or a song, and as words in Gujarati kept filling the space among us, a feeling of calmness and joy just invaded us. India is characterized by widespread poverty, but is also the country that has offered me the most sincere smiles.

Development takes a whole new meaning when you come to India. I came to Ahmedabad hoping to help the SEWA team – one of the clearest cases of women empowerment and strength I have seen in a long time – and now I leave realizing that they were the ones who taught me, through their example, a great lesson. I arrived with the sole idea of hoping not to be just another external consultant that would offer advice without truly understanding what the values and essence of SEWA. But it was not until the third week that I fully understood what that really meant. When doing hard-core development, when you are working with the poorest of the poor, there is a point when everything you have learned may lose meaning. All the theory, the jargon and the big ideas are worthless if you do not start by listening and, most importantly, by trying to engage with them, putting yourself in their feet, genuinely trying to understand not only the organization’s managerial and financial issues but how the members’ daily lives are – what they like and what concerns them, what makes them laugh. Ideas are important, but heart is vital. If you do not start by humility, your contribution may be ephemeral or, even worse, useless. But humility is not something you learn in books; it needs practice. You can contribute – there is a lot you can do – but if you come only to offer solutions, then chances of success are low. No one knows more about the union than the SEWA women; they have all the answers and countless ideas, we helped provide the space and structure to organize and design an action plan for these ideas to move forward from a solid base.

India is different because of its people. SEWA showed me that.

Lucila Arboleya