What is REAL Development?

In the late 1990's I moved to Kolkata (previously Calcutta) India. I was 27 and searching for a greater meaning in my life than a 9-5 job that I did well but left me a little cold. Prior to Kolkata I had been to France so I was not exactly a seasoned traveler. Those first few days in Kolkata are seared into my memory. The stench, the heat, and the endless mass of people was overwhelming – everything was oppressive. It was Times Square on New Year’s Eve but everyone was poverty-stricken, starving, and sweaty. And for the first time in my life I was a list of things I had never identified with: an alien, a minority, an illiterate. I couldn’t communicate with anyone and was completely isolated, which was especially weird since I had never been around so many people.

It took a while to look past those things and identify the real essence of Kolkata – its people. The Bengalis have an “I will not go quietly” type of determination, a sense of humor famous in India, and level of kindness I have not found since leaving Kolkata.

My work was at an AIDs-Tuberculosis-Leprosy Hospital cum Insane Asylum (their words, not mine – Kolkata has bigger issues than being politically correct). The hospital was under a bridge smack in the middle of a garbage dump. It was thick with rats, snakes, and some of the most interesting characters in Kolkata. I loved my patients. One woman waited for me at the gate each morning and followed me around all day trying to convince me to part with my underwear. She was seriously distressed at her lack of knickers and believed I was hand picked by God to provide some for her. Another patient, so ravaged by leprosy that he had no hands and only one stumpy leg, earnestly believed that he would make me a fine husband. You’ve got to love that level of self-esteem.

But my favorite patient was Meena, an elderly woman who had been in the hospital for a decade and would never leave it again; tuberculosis claimed her life shortly before I left Kolkata for good. My afternoons were spent with her while she told stories of old Kolkata during the reign of the Raj when it had been the jewel in the crown of the British empire. Meena talked of the beauty and brutality of colonialism. She spoke of Partition and that one week in time that ripped the city apart at its seams. Her voice was still tinged with sorrow fifty years later, when she spoke of how her family hid under a wagon for days to avoid the bloodshed and violence that erupted during the creation of India and Pakistan. And how despite the family’s best efforts, brothers, uncles and grandparents became the casualties of the birth of her nation.

Through her, I saw the Maidan as it was: a glorious hub of a cosmopolitan city not the peception as a home to beggars and thieves it had become. Meena told of the city’s pride upon completion of the magnificent Victoria Memorial Hall, homage to the Empress of India, Queen Victoria – and Kolkata’s sense of betrayal when the Queen never set eyes on the memorial. She spoke of war-time Kolkata, the choice spot for R&R in Asia during World War II. GI’s would swarm the city grateful for her hospitality. Meena’s quiet and unassuming stories enthralled me. She was Kolkata’s history, even while trapped in that dump of a hospital she still dared to dream big for her city. Through her eyes, the real Kolkata came into focus.

When people discover that Kolkata was my home for a year and a half they are usually shocked and offer condolences or, worse, the “how brave of you” comment. I just smile. Meena gave me the key to Kolkata – it was in her heart. It is now in mine.

I think this is the key to successful Development work. It's not grandiose ideas or big technology projects. REAL development is about listening, seeing past the poverty and finding the humanity. It's about investing your heart in a community and becoming part of that community. Real Development is coming to a community with humility and a willingness to learn. It is a shared experience that leads to community-owned, sustainable change.

During my time in Kolkata I began to dream of building an organization that embraced this type of Development work. Over the course of a decade I crystallized my dream and named it TARA. This is the work we do. I only wish Meena were still alive to see it.

-- Amy