A village of sex workers

A village by name Run Gaon in Lalitpur district is very small in size but famous in whole Bundelkhand area because of the two reasons. One is folk dancers and another is sex workers. A special caste by name Bedian (Gnadharva Sub caste) is used to make livelihood by folk dance which is called “Rai Dance". But now villagers are thinking, now livelihood cannot be run smoothly only by folk dance. So, many families indulge in sex work. And Thakurs and Yadavs used to make Sex Slave women of Bedian caste. This is more interesting that only women of this caste are taking care of livelihood for whole family. Mehroni's Madavra Block's Run Gaon is main residential area of this caste (in MP also). However, this village has all shades of life. Pradhan of this village belongs to this caste. Her name is F**** Bai and she is illiterate. She was also a sex slave of a Thakur. But she realized the problem of her occupation. In 2000 Mehroni's Madavra Pachayat constituency was reserved for SC women and she filled application in state election commission. She won the election with only 600 Votes (in 40 villages). Second time she won (in 2005) with 1900 votes but in different constituency. This village has Lodhi (obc)- 400 Votes, Kushwaha (obc) 400 Votes, Bunkar (Genral) 150 Votes , Ahirwar (SC) 500 votes, Bakmiki (SC) 80, Barar (SC) 90 votes, Gandharv (SC) 100 votes, Prajapati (Kumhar) 25 votes, Khatic 70 votes. 2200 total votes. Total Population is 3500.

(Caption: Pradhan of Run Gaon and Rai dancer-below)

A ball changed fate of village

This is the story of India and it’s people। At the border of Uttar Pradesh, most populous state of India, and Madhya Pradesh, a small village merely has significance in more than one billion populations. But this village by name Bhartia (Lalitpur district) becomes famous for passion of a game. In the village a temple was bone of contention between two caste groups, Thakur’s and Yadav’s. Three times people clashed for the temple. The temple was closed but a game changed the fate of village. Kids of whole village got their love in cricket. They started playing with each other and in 2006 they organized their own team. In 2007 Ram Cricket Kilb (they wrote club as kilb) played first match with neighboring village. After winning one tournament within six month kids from both the rival families become friend. And they worship in the temple together. This incidence was a milestone in the process of peace in the village. After one year gradualy families reached on a resolution and panchayat set different timing for worship. Now, there is no incidence of quarrel in the village since one and half year.
(Caption: team member of Ram Cricket Club and a boy playing in the grazing field)

Morsel blog recently published in a newspaper

Why do we use CSpro?

CSpro software was developed by census department, USA. It is available online and free. Anyone can use it and make templates according his/her questionnaire. Morsel used it for two survey; voter survey (in 35 districts of Uttar Pradesh) and Kosi River flood survey (5 districts of Bihar). With the help of this easy software, double entry and STATA, everyone can get a quality primary data.

Origin of a question

This is story of a question. In the voter survey we (Avidit Acharya, from Princeton University and Morsel team) were trying to get questions like why people vote and how they select party. First we made a question in which villagers were asked to rate parties in 1-10 as per their liking. But we were working in villages where literacy rate is about 50 percent. As it was clear, this question did not work.
Then second day of pilot survey, we tried to get answer according party caste (as BSP and SP are low caste party), it worked sometimes but we were not satisfied.
Next day we draw two questions; one for caste and one for class (we are trying to check a theory of Yogendra Yadav, according to which in Uttar Pradesh, people cast their votes on the basis of class not caste, poor Brahmins and Dalits did vote to poor party i.e. BSP in last assembly election). So, we sketched a ladder on cardboard and tried again but results were not very satisfactory.
In evening we were discussing the questionnaire and at once Avidit said, “Oh yes! Why not use money to get a sense what people think about parties that how they are redistributed public services and money.” Someone said “yes! It can work because even illiterate villagers understand the language of money. And they will do it for us.” “Let’s do that”, Avidit said. And then we invented two questions; one for the different castes and other for the classes. We tried to make this question very simple and conversational so that people could answer in one thought. We arranged three plates, one golden color (for upper class), other stainless steel (for middle class) and third clay plate (for lower class). Along this we put three caricatures (drawn by our team) on plates and then we bought some fake notes (used by kids in a game). That day of pilot campaign was very successful and we said to our team, “GO AHEAD.”