People here need employment. There are opportunities out there to grab as this town is attracting more and more tourists. We're getting people to work as a collective to offer accomodation in their homes to tourists as a way of generating income and giving them a glimpse of other cultures. At the same time, we're introducing sanitation that recycles water and nutrients both of which the soil here cries out for.
Orchha, on the banks of the Betwa river, in Central India, is now home to us. It has an old world charm - painted courtyards, low tiled roofs and decorative doorways line its narrow streets. The artistic outline of the palace, cenotaphs and temples etched against a clear blue sky are a constant reminder of its 16th century grandeur. But most of all what keeps us ticking are its smiling, friendly people.
I want to see enough civic sense developing for the mounds of plastic waste and streams of waste water to disappear. I want women to play a greater role in decision-making particularly those who have been elected to public bodies. I want to see the youth constructively engaged in building a better tomorrow with less violence, less corruption, less dishonesty, less pushing others down to rise.
Most of my professional life has centred around development and human rights. After exposure to the drought-prone villages of Maharashtra in the mid-seventies, I went back to university to study Sociology in Bombay and Educational Sciences in Geneva. With Eklavya, in my home state of Madhya Pradesh, I tried to transform teaching methods in rural primary schools to make them more child-friendly. Later I worked for a Swiss development aid organization as the coordinator for projects in Asia. Organizing the arrival of the Global March against child labour in Geneva in 1998 gave me the opportunity to join the International Labour Organization where I worked for seven years on programmes to combat child labour and trafficking as well as on small enterprise development. The need to get back to grass roots prompted us to return to India in December 2006 to work with a local NGO on promoting tourism-linked livelihoods and preserving the local culture and environment.
