This is the first time we have ventured out of traditional art/craft, but there is a connection because the skills necessary for this craft are traditional and the primary material, familiar. We plan to revisit these villages in a few months to monitor progress.
Water is a huge problem in one of the villages. One tube well services the entire village – and let us not even talk of the so-called toilets made by the government. […]
The trainers were Santal women and even they, having gotten conditioned to their more developed surrounds in Birbhum and Barddhaman, from where they hail, were unable to live in the toilet-less villages of their Purulia sisters and also observed their poverty.
Source: courtesy Ratnaboli Bose, Daricha Foundation (by email, 5 October 2018)
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