22nd January

22  January, you say bribe, I say commission

Woke this morning having recovered from my temper tantrum (shared only with my long-suffering house mates, fortunately). We have to live with Rita's Regime, of course, as we work so very closely with RUHSA and soon also with Friends of Vellore. As so often with these things, it is a question of history for us and of relationships built over many years of loving interaction. We understand Rita's rationale completely but I think I felt downcast yesterday because I doubt that Rita understands as much of  our viewpoint.. So, after a poor night of brain-churning I set off to see who I could find on RUHSA staff this morning who might help us go forward. We seemed to have a trip for the children and saris for our helpers/ teachers both hanging in the balance. Vartsala, who is Dr Rita's secretary, had already heard what had happened, of course, and especially of the big trouble which my careless words to Dr Rita had landed Sekar in. She had called me early to ask me to phone Sekar, who had to inform me that he is not now allowed to come on the trip or to have any more dealings with us. I spoke to Sekar on the phone to his home ( he had a day of leave) and he told me that we should draw up a list of what we wanted to fund from our own money, plus one or two personal donations which we had brought with us from friends. I must then take this list to  Sanjeevi the accountant.

I became sad when talking to Vartsala, for lots of reasons, mostly to do with our shared history, the tireless work Sekar has put in for us over twenty four years since the first preschool, the relationship that the Bishopston Kuppam Link has had with RUHSA since 1978, one year after the visionary leader Daleep Mukarji founded RUHSA itself. Poor Vartsala then became very distressed on my behalf and she then phoned round to RUHSA staff to see what they could do to help. This resulted in a brief but very helpful meeting with Sanjeevi and with Matthew, senior training officer (see previous blog re Matthew and his early appreciation of our play method) Andy was asked to draw up a list of what we wanted to fund, then he paid over this money to Sanjeevi who entered it into the Patchikili centre account. This money would then pay the coach for our trip- and a young RCO (RUHSA community worker) name John Peter had been designated to come with us in Sekar's stead. We then tackled the more problematic issue of sari purchase and it seemed to be going to be possible for us to raise a purchasing order and to take money ( our money which had now been put through the RUHSA accounting system correctly) to buy the saris. We hope that Dr Rita will sanction this when she is  back in the office on Saturday, plus ideally a RUHSA staff member to help us with the purchase. 

Feeling at least partially reassured, we then moved to our next luncheon date. Balaji arrived with his cousin to take Andy and me on motorbikes to his aunt's house in Kamanchamanpet, the next village to his and the other village apart from Seetaramanpet from which we take our elderly and our preschool children. On arrival we found Balaji's sister in law Santi in full attendance and also Santi's own mother. There has been illness in this family in the last week, so Santi's mother had travelled from her home, a good hour and a half away by bus, to be with them and to help out. The importance of family and the mutual support that the family gives cannot be overestimated. In a harsh world with very little welfare state, the family is their best hope of survival. After a delicious spread with serious quantities of different dishes, we chatted in our small- small Tamil and their rather more English. Balaji told us how for everything you do in India which has anything to do with the government you have to pay a 'commission'. So for example his father has a Rs1,000 per month pension but he has to pay a commission of Rs 50 each month in order to get it. When Balaji had to get his driving licence he had to pay a hefty commission also. I know from past experience that if you want to be employed as a teacher in the state system you must have a lot of money to hand over first. Who gets this commission/ bribe I wonder? In our discussions yesterday with Richard and Rita they had told me how they discovered that many of the elderly in their day centres are not getting the pension to which they are entitled. Apparently at one time Richard had said to Rita that perhaps he could just pay the commission (which would have been a one-off payment) out of his own pocket. Of course CMC does not allow the paying of such commissions at all and I suppose Richard was at least partly joking. However in the end RUHSA people put in a lot of work with form-filling with the elderly etc etc and eventually they did get their entitlement. None of these fundamental issues are easily addressed and certainly not by visiting English people who pass through every few years.