| | 1) Hospital :  The hospital is the lynchpin of the Lok Biradari Prakalp. It has now won wide acceptance in an area that stretches for miles on end. But the cases that visit the hospital continue to be as unusual as ever. The Madias have a tremendous capacity to withstand pain and suffering but the patients who visit the hospital are often in an advanced stage usually because they are brought to the hospital many days, even weeks, after a disease strikes them. Text book treatment is often insufficient partly because the cases are very serious and partly because until recently the facilities available were rudimentary, we have mentioned before how fractured bones had to be set without the use of x-rays.
In the early eighties Dr. Prakash found that he was treating several cases of scurvy. Scurvy is a result of Vitamin C deficiency and manifests it self mainly as a deterioration of the gums. It used to be a scourge in past centuries for seamen who spent months at sea after supplies of fresh vegetables and fruits had run out. Today it is an Urban phenomenon, mainly in the west, and afflicts bachelors who live for weeks on tinned food. But to encounter scurvy among people who lived on forest products was strange.
Dr. Prakash decided to probe further. He noticed one interesting fact. All the cases came from one village in Bastar District and they were all women. Dr. Prakash decided to visit the village to investigate. This was easier said than done. It involved a long ride by jeep to a spot on the banks of the Indravati river, a crossing by boat, and then a 15 km walk (or 30 km both ways).
Dr. Prakash expected to see a village denuded of all vegetation. This would result in a shortage of vegetable and fruits and account for the scurvy. He was surprised to note that there was no shortage of trees in and around the village. So his first assumption had gone for a toss and he had to look further. Only after a couple of hours investigation and meeting the victims of scurvy did the true cause emerge.
The traditional Madia medicine men often ask the members of each village to sacrifice one item of food to the gods. This means giving up some food item: pork, some fruit and so on. In this particular village the medicine man had asked the villagers to give up eating bamboo shoots. Now bamboo shoots happen to be an important constituent of the Madia diet (and thus a major source of vitamin C) between the summer and the first monsoon crops. And giving it up meant a deficiency of vitamin C. But because the human body can store vitamin C in small quantities not all the villagers were affected. The only victims were women, and that too, only those women who were nursing babies during the crucial period. The babies were, through their milk consumption, drawing down the vitamin C reserves of the mother.
A common disease in the area is malaria is especially its more serious manifestation, cerebral malaria. So common are attacks of malaria that almost all Madias have an enlarged spleen as a result. Regulars spraying of insecticides in and around villages could have relieved the problem but the government, after an intensive start, seems to have gone easy on its spraying programme.
Animal bites are a common problem, and the worst are snake and bear bites. The Madias often go hunting in the forests and are vulnerable to both. A typical case is the one seen in the photograph below. The man was hunting along with other villagers when they were attacked by a bear, probably because it felt that they were out to kill its cub. The man was mauled allover. But his face and head bore the brunt of the attack. His scalp was split open by a bear bite which also blinded him totally. When he was brought to the LBP hospital after a journey lasting several days the scalp was totally infested with maggots. These had to be picked up one by one after the scalp was cleaned with a solution of hydrogen peroxide. Fortunately, after treatment lasting a few weeks, the man survived though nothing could be done about his eyes. The irony is that he died about a year later after an attack of gastroenteritis.
2) School :
 When the Lok Biradari Prakalp was set up, a school formed no part of its plans. But Dr Prakash and the others realised soon after they began work that if the exploitation of the tribals by forest guards and other outsiders was to stop the tribals needed to be educated and taught to fight for their rights. Even then it was realised that it wasn’t enough merely to teach them to read and write. They had to be taught better methods of agriculture, better health care and hygiene and so on.
The school at Hemalkasa is best seen through the eyes of Gopal Phadnis, who is now the principal. Gopal had his early education in Malkapur in Maharashtra’s Buldana district. He completed his postgraduation in English Literature from Nagpur University in 1972 and took up a post as lecturer in Ballarshah, which is between Anandwan and Bhamragad. In January 1976 he visited Anandwan and learnt of the work being done by Prakash and the others. During the summer of 1976 he visited Hemalkasa. Baba was there at the time and spoke of the plans to start a school.
A few days later Baba went to Somnath for the annual youth camp and Gopal accompanied him there. They returned together after a week and Gopal told Baba of his decision to stay.
In the first year, Gopal and Renuka Manohar taught along with Mukund and the others. Dada Panchal was in charge of agriculture but in 1978 he moved to the school (he now heads the primary section) and Vilas took over agriculture and the general
administration of the Lok Biradari Prakalp. The same year Gopal married and his wife Prabha joined the school. In 1978 Mukund moved to Lahiri, another village, to set up a sub-centre and Gopal took charge of the school.
Running the school was difficult. The only school textbooks they could use were in Marathi but the children knew only Madia, which the newcomers like Gopal did not know. Another problem was that the children had no experience of being in school the whole day. They came from villages quite a distance from Hemalkasa, the farthest from 40 km away. Sometimes the children used to run away from school without informing the teachers, who then had to go to their homes to fetch them. Sometimes the children’s parents came to visit their wards and on Sundays the teachers used to go around visiting the villages of their pupils, thus setting up a closer bond among themselves.
In the first year there were 25 students. In the second this went up to 50, and there has been no curbing the rise since then. Today there are 650 students in the LBP (1st to 12th standard) residential school. During the year children often used to gain 9-20 kg in weight which they would lose at home during the vacation, partly because food was scarce during the summers.
Fact File:
Number of students: 650
Number of Teachers: 17 Number of Tribal Girl students: 250 Number of Tribal Boys: 400 Standard: 1st to 12th
In additional to formal education, the following kinds of non-formal education/training is provided to the tribal students:
a) Training some tribal boys as "Bare Foot Doctors" (provide first-aid and simple treatments in neighboring villages)
b) Vocational training in Bamboo Craft, Greeting Cards, Fabrication, Music School etc. (some sort of simple livelihood methods)
c) Training in Farming and Horticulture (for dissemination in neighboring villages)
3) Extension Activities :
When the Lok Biradari began functioning there had been no plan to set up a school. It was dictated by circumstances. But formal education through the school was not the only kind of teaching the organization did. Agricultural extension activity was an important part.
Traditionally the Madia Gonds grew no vegetables. They raised millets and rice, and drew all the rest of their wants from the forests. They ate all sorts of animals: dogs, cats, ants, birds, monkeys, etc, often drying the meat to preserve it so that they could eat it later.
The LBP began by distributing hybrid paddy varieties to the tribals so that they could get higher yields. They also used to distribute vegetable and fruit seeds. Simultaneously they organized demonstration plots, both on its own land and in tribal villages. The students in the Lok Biradari School too were taught improved agricultural techniques and they proved to be good ambassadors in their own villages. So successful have they been that almost all the tribals have now begun to grow vegetables and fruits. The government too has started distributing hybrid seeds, so the LBP has stopped doing so to avoid duplication of efforts.
Another important activity was to provide life-saving irrigation to tribal farmers. Sometimes the rains would vanish for a few days or weeks right in the middle of an important growth phase for crops. During this period the LBP would offer their diesel pumps to the tribal farmers on condition that the farmers paid for the cost of the diesel. This activity still continues, but in a limited way, because many farmers now have their own diesel pumps bought with a 100% subsidy from the government. The LBP still provides training to such beneficiaries and later helps out by repairing those pumps that fail. About 20 pumps are repaired every year. Spray pumps to spray insecticides and pesticides are still lent to farmers.
There is even a government handpump repair unit at Bhamragad. Even so the LBP repairs about 10-12 handpumps every year.
4) Informal Court :
A word must be said in passing about the informal court that Dr Prakash has been conducting for many years. Traditionally the tribals had their own council of elders who used to settle disputes internally. But after the police moved into the region the tribals began to go to them when they felt their own panches were not impartial. This often gave the police an opportunity to exploit the tribals and caused more problems than it solved. Going to the courts was not usually feasible since the nearest court was in Sironcha, 170 km away.
So the tribals started to come to Dr Prakash whenever they were not able to settle disputes on their own. Many of the quarrels are about marital and sexual affairs. For instance, a girl may decide to marry a boy although she had agreed to marry someone else earlier. When other villagers oppose the marriage the couple may decide to take the matter to Dr Prakash, who may suggest that the boy compensate the man whom the girl had decided to marry earlier. This is important because the man may have worked for his prospective father-in-law for several months; the Madias have a system in which men pay the family of the girl rather than the other way around as in ‘civilised’ society. There is of course no compulsion on the couple to accept this decision since Dr Prakash has no coercive apparatus at his disposal. But the tribals’ experience over the years as well as their realization that Dr Prakash has no vested interest in his decisions have led them to accept his counsel.
Mention must also be made of the Gokul, the orphanage at the LBP. The Madia Gonds do not milk cows, so if a mother dies during or shortly after childbirth, the child invariably dies for want of milk. The Gokul was started to handle this problem. About 20 boys and girls have been looked after here. Some have been adopted by the LBP workers and others were returned to their relatives after the age of three.
5) Amte's Animal Ark (Orphanage cum Rescue Centre) :
 For most visitors to Hemalkasa these days, especially from nearby schools and towns, the prime attraction of the Lok Biradari Prakalp is its collection of animals. These include leopards, a lion, barking deer, mouse deer, chameleons, nilgai, otters, wild boars, porcupine, bears, cobras, banded kraits, pit vipers, common kraits, hyaenas, civet cats, jackals, monkeys, crocodiles, wild cats etc. The list would be the envy of many city zoos and so would the condition of the animals. The story of these animals has been beautifully narrated in a book by Vilas Manohar which has fetched the LBP about Rs 200,000 in royalties. It is available in Marathi, English and Hindi and should be read by every animal lover. Few other authors have had the fortune of being so intimately associated with the animals they write about, especially with such a wide range of species.
Dr Prakash’s love affair with animals began early. One day, a year or so after settling down at Hemalkasa, he had taken a few foreign guests to show them a Madia deity named Bablai. On the way back they saw some tribals returning from a hunt. The tribals had killed two bonnet macaques (a kind of monkey) and were carrying them slung on a rod. One of them was a female and a baby macaque was clinging to its breast. The sight moved Prakash and he asked the Madias to give him the monkey, which they did though reluctantly. Over the next few days he bottlefed the monkey and soon it had forgotten its mother and begun to regard Prakash as its mother. Since it had been found while on the way to see Bablai, the monkey was called Babli. Babli was the first of the many animals that the LBP was to receive during the next quarter century.
The star among the snakes is the banded krait, a long snake with black and orange bands. It is reputed to be 16 times as poisonous as the cobra and the nearest place where anti-venin for its bite is available is Thailand. There are plenty of them around Hemalkasa, and there are usually a couple in residence at the LBP. Their diet is entirely composed of other snakes.
The LBP got its first pair of leopard cubs in 1982. Until then all the animals including such a patent carnivore as the hyaena had been fed a vegetarian diet with no untoward consequences. The leopard cubs, however, died after a short while. The next pair of cubs came in 1982. They too were fed a vegetarian diet in the beginning and one of them died. Then one day a hen at the LBP died and it was given to Negal, the surviving leopard (Negal is the Madia word for leopard). Since it had hitherto been a vegetarian there were some doubts about whether it would eat the hen. But he polished off the hen with great relish. His health too improved. After that, whenever an animal in the neighbourhood died, Dr Prakash, Vilas and others would cut the carcass into small pieces and store it in a refrigerator. This refrigerator (seen at right) ran on kerosene, since there was no electricity, and was used to store essential drugs. A part of it was now used to store meat.
Initially, the leopard used to be fed only the meat with the hide and other parts being thrown away. Once, Negal was accidentally fed a piece of meat with hide on it, and he ate it up without any hesitation. After that, he used to be offered every bit of a dead animal and it was found that his digestion actually improved.
Some time later Dr Prakash managed to get a female leopard from a forest official in Chandrapur. It was brought back to Hemalkasa as a mate for Negal. It was no more than a cub whereas Negal weighed more than 20 kg at the time. But the two got on well, and when Negali, as the new addition was called, became older the two mated and gave birth to a cub. This was the high point of Dr Prakash’s experience with animals though many of the others like deer had given birth in captivity. A few hours after the birth of her cub Negali had no hesitation in allowing Dr Prakash and Vilas into the cage and playing with it.A few years later Negal died after a snake bite when Dr Prakash was away for a few days.
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