Most of us may have just about heard of Jhabua. We imagine it to be right in the middle of Jharkhand – but it is in west MP, on the MP Gujarat border. Though the Jharkhand connection is there – in the sense that 90% of Jhabua’s (and neighbour Alirajpur’s) 22 lakh population is made up of Bhils and other tribal communities. These original residents (Adivasis) have lived nomadic hunter-gatherer lives. British India saw the state make encroachments into their territories as forests got converted into teak plantations. 1855 saw the first rebellion by the Santhals, followed by many more – the last being the Naxal movement that exists even today. 

The administrative reaction to the Adivasi backlash was to pass legislation classifying tribal districts as ‘scheduled’ districts – allowing the British to bypass legal remedies to the Adivais while ‘managing’ these districts. This was followed by the Criminal Tribes Act, where entire communities were classified as hereditary criminals. Members were subjected to strict pass systems, forced to report to police stations regularly, and had their movements heavily restricted. After independence, our constitution enabled some affirmative action and granted recognition to 700 communities as ‘Scheduled Tribes.’ The Criminal Tribes Act was officially repealed after India’s independence, and the affected communities were formally “denotified” in 1952. Today we refer to these communities as denotified tribes.

In spite of all the affirmative action and reservations, education and integration into the mainstream still remain a challenge. 25 years ago, when the Sarva Shikkshan Abhiyan was launched, it cost Rs. 38,000 to make one tribal literate in Jhabua. Mind you literacy was defined simply as the ability for a person to sign her name. 

Folks at www.shivgangajhabua.org found this appalling – and decided to do something about it. One of the founders of Shivganga is Mahesh Sharma, often referred to as the Gandhi of Jhabua – partly because of the way he dresses. Mahesh became a full time volunteer of the RSS fresh out of college. He was asked to work with Saraswati Vidya Pratisthan, the tribal education wing of the RSS. 

In 1988, Mahesh was joined by Shivganga’s other founder, Harsh Chouhan, a tribal from Dhar, an alum of SGITS Indore and an MBA from IIT Delhi School of Management. Harsh’s father has been a 3 time MP from Dhar and Harsh himself has been the head of the National Council for Scheduled Tribes. Circa 1992, thanks to the political and social connections, Shivganga started setting up one room schools – and ramped it up to 150 villages across the district. About half of these later got converted to government run primary schools. 

Encouraged by this success, Shivganga decided to aim higher. They were looking at improving lives of the communities where seasonal migration and low incomes are the norm. The best change is the one that comes from within. So Shivganga looked at using community culture to help self-development. Each village has many young school drop-outs, but all are armed with native intelligence. 4 day training camps were held at villages. Instead of using self-selection, which could have resulted in selfish motives coming to the fore, the Shivganga team focussed on including young people who had demonstrated initiative in community matters. 

These camps discussed collective challenges faced by the village: Health related debts, migration and police atrocities. These camps resulted in an increased awareness of forest rights – and it culminated in a big rally in 2009 at the Jhabua district headquarters. Even today, a few lawyers are active full time volunteers who help communities understand and get what is their legal due.

After this initial success at mobilising the locals, Shivganga moved from activism to activities. One of the key reasons for migration was water. After the monsoon, thanks to extensive deforestation, water bodies would dry up. With no agriculture activity, locals are forced to migrate to cities in search of water and jobs. 

The Shivganga team attempted to solve the water problem through a local Bhil tradition called ‘Halma’. When a person can’t get out of difficulty after his best efforts, there’s a call for ‘Halma’ and people of the community come together to rescue, without any expectation of any return. A kind of community insurance, fueled by labour donation, if you will. And of course, the host has to arrange for dinner for all the volunteers, after the day’s work is done. Looks very much like the 14T volunteering model.

In 2010, a halma was called to help rejuvenate a local hill, the Hathi Pawa, by trenching. This practice continued over the years, and in 2017, 40,000 folks participated in the Hathi Pawa halma – drawn from the neighbouring districts in Gujarat and Maharashtra too. This involved a lot of canvassing across villages over the months that preceded the Halma. 60,000 trenches were dug in this halma. 

In the meantime, Harsh, thanks to his SGITS connections, got the civil engineering department to organise a Gram Engineering Training program to instruct folks on the basis of dams and pond construction.  Future halmas were then directed towards creating ponds – with some machinery and outside support supplementing the halma labour. The count – 180 ponds so far.

Jal, Jungle, Jameen, Janwar, Jan – are what define tribal life. So after Jal, it was the turn of the Jungle and Jameen. Water rejuvenation had resulted in neighbouring forests thriving – and local lakes seeing more water inflow. 500,000 trees were planted in the Hathi Pawa area. Here is where culture helped again. In Maharashtra, there is a concept of Devarais, sacred forests. On the same lines, Jhabua is the ‘Matawan’, forests of the Mother. Mother here signifies Mother Earth. Matavans are protected forest areas where tribals do not cut trees. 150 villages decided that locals would contribute personal lands to create matavans. 

And finally, was the time for Jan – Jan Samwardhan – the generation of social capital. By this time, Shivganga had developed a core group of 12 full time volunteers – professionals like doctors, lawyers and engineers – who had decided to give up city life to work for Jhabua. They could communicate in urban lingo and that helped bring stuff like telemedicine to Jhabua. Infosys donated community libraries – and even helped nurture a small movement of local budding authors. 

There is a plan to set up a rural university to assimilate local knowledge. And there is plenty of it. A full time volunteer, an MBBS from GMC Kolhapur, told us a story of a complicated delivery in a village. She went and found that the baby had turned inside the womb and was feet down. This would have normally called for a C section. She was wondering what to do, when a local dai walked in. She massaged the womb and got the baby down in the head down position – and a few hours later, a normal delivery happened – with both mother and kid safe.

Thanks to its RSS roots, Shivganga uses religious nomenclatures to good effect. The name itself comes from the NGO’s water harvesting efforts being compared to Shiva’s efforts to get the Ganga down to the parched earth. They organise Kavad yatras, where the theme is Mera Gaon, Mera Teerth. And they call their plan periods Maha Kumbhs. 

At times, local culture does not fit in with Shivganga’s ideals of culture. Case in point is the annual festival, Bhagoria, that happens around Holi. Those of you who understand Hindi would know that Bhagoria has some naughty etymology. The festival traditionally has provided an avenue for young people to elope. If a girl smears gulal (colored powder) on the forehead of a boy she likes and he reciprocates, the couple escapes to the forests and is later accepted by their families as husband and wife. Shivganga likes to call it a harvest festival. Bhagoria has now been remodelled after the Ganesh festival of Maharashtra.

The real success though of Shivganga has been with water and forests. This has been complemented by a movement to have more fruit trees in the villages. The assumption is that some of endemic nutritional deficiency issues could be tackled by such measures. So like our 14 Trees, Jhabua started a 15 Trees movement – where 17,000 families were gifted 15 fruit tree saplings each to plant around their house. The word gift is not entirely correct – out of the total cost of Rs. 850 for the saplings, Rs. 100 was paid by the family – and Rs. 750 was raised through CSR. The women of the family took responsibility for nurturing these trees. 

A visit to Jhabua should tell us the story of how the Hathi Pawa forest and 15 Tree plantations are doing. Ideally, I should have gone to attend the Bhagoria festival – but the wife is reading this blog and has warned me to concentrate on saffron and not gulal. Ahh. She tells me that there is a Jhabua darshan organised on 10-12 Jul, 2026. Am going for the Halma, what about you?