Swades Remade

After a 14 hour of tiring journey three chaps from the Planet I drove into a land where they were going to have a brush with reality over the next two days.
This land of “Mogli” (the character from Rudyard Kyping’s Jungle Book) now popularly called Seoni, is situated on the Satpura Plateaus of Madhya Pradesh, India. The visit was a part of the project which IIMI had taken to provide professional assistance to the district government with the “100 day assured employment scheme (NREGP)” launched by the central government.
To have a better understanding of the topography and demography of the place, we happened to visit Block offices, Panchayat offices and attended Gram Panchayats in villages over the next few days. But this turned out to be a remaking of Swades for all three of us.
We always knew that India as shown in Swades does exist; but it is easy to brush past it in an AC theatre and digest it over a discussion on a dinner table. But when confronted with this India in reality, our purpose of existence was shaken to the roots. I remember my hands shaking in a gram panchayat when Mr. Tiwari (from Green Brigade, an NGO) tried to explain the villagers that this scheme has an assured employment of 100 days and at no point would they be cheated.
I thought that how can somebody cheat these people who are struggling to live from hand to mouth. And the answer I got was “In The same way as people like you and I turn a blind eye to what we have seen and realized”.
Even if I fail to deliver what we are expected to of this huge project, one thing which I am damn sure of now is that I am not turning a blind eye this time.