Footprints in the Mountains
India – Surender Singh, 1989 Graduate, 1996 Training Assistant
If you travel to the state of Uttarakhand in northern India to meet Surender Singh, he will definitely invite you to go trekking. If you accept his offer, you will find that the experience is far more than a mountain walk with stunning views of the snow-capped Himalayas. It is a journey through his life and a lesson on rural leadership.
Singh san, as he was called at ARI, has been spreading his footprints across these steep mountain paths for 42 years. He knows every village, every family. When he arrives at a house, he’ll call out to the residents by name. They’ll welcome him with tea and he will pull bananas or biscuits from his bag to share over a long conversation.
He may tell to you that he slept in this home while building a water pipeline to the village together with the organization he now heads – the Mussoorie Village Development Committee. Or he might mention that the children of that household completed their studies at the MGVS Kaplani School, which was built for the sake of the mountain children, by this same organization 24 years ago. He is certain to talk of the women’s Self-Help Groups, how he trained them in organic farming, and that they are now earning money selling organic produce. You will feel as if there is not a soul in these whole mountains he has not touched.
Surender calls himself a very local boy. “I was born in a mountain village,” he explains. While walking along together, he would point to narrow roads that intersected ours, tell where they lead, who is living at the other end, and how he did something to help them. As I took in his words, I began to get a sense of what it was Takami sensei wanted to do when he started ARI. Takami sensei didn’t go to the poor places of the world with the idea that he might “help them,” or solve their problems. Very much the opposite, when he went to those places, he discovered amazing people there full of talent and commitment … and hope. He called them Rural Leaders, and in my imagination, he said, “They can do much better for the people than I can. So, what can I do for them?” And he started ARI.
Of course, I don’t know the real workings of Takami sensei’s mind at that time, but as I meet graduates like Surender, one by one, and hear their stories, I feel like I am encountering the essence of ARI, the essence of Takami sensei’s dream. It is hard to describe these moments, except to say that what we are doing at ARI – I think it’s working.
Footprints in the Mountains
by Steven Cutting
Graduate Outreach – Asian Rural Institute