AAROHI, SATOLI

Aarohi means ascent. For a plain ‘plains-fellow’ like me, the mere act of climbing up to reach Aarohi is an event in itself. Nestled in the Central Himalayan mountains, in the north-east corner of Nainital district is the village of Satoli. From most parts of the village, one gets a panoramic view of the Uttaranchal Himalayas – snow-capped peaks in the northern horizon, some fifteen peaks stretching from the west to east. Satoli is a remote village by the standards of these parts. Public transport is available only three or four times a day. While there are a few taxis available in emergency, people normally have to resort to walking up and/or down the hills to reach a clinic, market, or facilities like that.

The area is essentially Kumaoni, with a smattering of people who have migrated from the plains, particularly the Gangetic belt around Allahabad. The older inhabitants of the area have been there for three or four centuries – migrants from parts of Gujarat, Rajasthan, etc. The indigenous population of the Uttaranchal hills, Bhutias are now a minority, found mostly closer to the Nepal and Tibet borders. The terrain and climate have helped develop a unique way of life for the people; one would be hard put to find plain-characteristics except in those who have moved in, during the recent past.

Aarohi has been working in this area since 1992 founded by Sushil, a medical doctor, and Oona, a management graduate. Both were among the founding members of Chirag, another NGO, set up in 1986. Chirag, based in the village of Sitla, five kilometres from Satoli, is probably the first ‘professionally’ set up NGO in the region. It is, today, among the largest in Uttaranchal. In the early 90s, differences on the course of Chirag resulted in several of its members leaving to form new organisations.

Health
From its early days Aarohi has focussed on health care delivery and health education. Availability of a doctor, Sushil, made it possible to develop a comprehensive health sector intervention. Most people we met, here and elsewhere in Uttaranchal felt that access to emergency health care remains the most important issue for villagers. Not surprising, given the topography and settlement pattern. Steep slopes with houses spread out along them, as far as the eye can see. The main access road lying somewhere across the slope. Narrow paths, lead from the road to the houses, mostly negotiated on foot; or mules for carrying certain types of loads. Ambulances, when needed have to be improvised – four two-wheelers carrying a cot between them.

The clinic run from Aarohi’s campus in Satoli provides emergency care to patients of all types. The clinic also has an x-ray facility. This is particularly important given that a substantial number of cases that come to the clinic are trauma related – falls, accidents etc. Sushil mentioned that over the years, the nature of cases reported at the clinic has moved substantially from general illnesses to accident-related trauma.

This shift is probably also an indicator of the effect that Aarohi’s health education programme has had. This is carried out in two different fora – women’s groups and schools. The education programme focuses primarily on reproductive health issues with the women and hygiene and environmental sanitation issues with the children. Reduction in pregnancy and delivery related complications and deaths, have also come about as a result of a very intensive process of re-training traditional birth attendants.

Yet another factor that has contributed to the reduction in general illness in the population served by Aarohi, is its intervention in drinking water. The hill villages depend on hill streams and springs for drinking water. The traditional water structures, Naula, taps the capillary flows beneath the stream, capturing the water into a covered tank like structure. With the general ecological degradation – dwindling forests, soil erosion, drying up of streams – a lot of these structures have become dysfunctional. People had to turn to less protected sources like open streams etc. for water, resulting in many health hazards.

Tim Rees, an itinerant Scotsman who made the Uttaranchal (then UP) hills his home, developed the idea of an infiltration well. He developed the Naula idea further by deepening the structure to capture the total sub-soil flow into a well (normally 10-12 metres deep), protect it with a permanent concrete cover and provide a hand-pump for extraction. Several NGOs found in this a workable proposition and have adopted the technology. Aarohi, which had been mobilising communities to repair and restore traditional Naulas, has built several such wells, providing safe drinking water to villages throughout the year.

Livelihoods
Aarohi’s livelihood sector interventions are aimed at value addition to local products and creating conditions to generate additional income to families. The temperate climate of the hills allows the growth of a number of species of plants, produce of which enjoy demand in metropolitan cities. Aarohi has taken up two initiatives, processing apricot seeds and growing and processing of exotic culinary herbs.

Apricot orchards are an important source of income for the farmers in the area. However, the fruit which enjoys high demand in the cities is highly perishable and circumspect to vagaries of climate. Storms during the fruiting season cause damage to the crop and the fruits that perish in these storms normally go waste. Aarohi has developed an apricot oil pressing enterprise that uses the damaged fruits to generate income for the farmers. Nuts from the damaged fruits are collected by the farmers and sold to Aarohi. The kernel of the nuts are taken out and pressed in a traditional wooden mill (kolu). The oil is filtered, packed and sold. The oil is believed to have qualities of a skin moisturiser and is also used for massages. The de-oiled cake is crushed to make a scrub that serves the purpose of bathing soap. Both the oil and scrub carry a good premium in the market and Aarohi has been able to take advantage of this.

The apricot oil enterprise is among the early interventions of Aarohi and over the past decade has established itself as a self-supporting activity. Self help groups of farmers now do the nut collection in the villages.

The culinary herbs enterprise is of more recent origin. Herbs like basil, thyme, oregano, rosemary, peppermint etc. are grown by farmers in the villages. Aarohi had initially arranged for inputs and training. Lead farmers in the villages now raise nurseries of the plants and sell these to fellow farmers. Aarohi has organised groups of farmers around this activity. The harvested herbs are collected by Aarohi, dried, cleaned and packed.

Both the oil and herb products are sold through dealers and retailers in Delhi and Mumbai and through exhibitions in different parts of the country. The Aarohi Nature Shop in Satoli sells the products to tourists who pass by and to those visiting Aarohi.

Other activities
The health programme of Aarohi has a strong health education component, taken up in government primary schools in the area. The Aarohi Bal Sansar (ABS) is a primary school set up and run by Aarohi in Satoli, catering to children from neighbouring villages. ABS has been set up as a model education centre, to demonstrate a more child-friendly education process.

Aarohi has also mobilised women’s savings and credit groups in the villages. These groups serve as entry vehicles to the villages for different programmes.

Some thoughts
Aarohi could be a good example of a small, growing NGO. The thirty or so staff members of the organisation know each other very well, helped a great deal by the fact that almost all of them come from the local area. There is great feel of informality in inter-personal interactions. At the same time, fairly strong administrative systems are also in place. Weekly planning meetings on Wednesdays are the time for staff to sit together and plan activities for the week (they work from Wednesday to Monday, with Tuesday being holiday).

An aspect of Aarohi that needs mentioning is the profile of its staff members. Except for Sushil who is a medical doctor, and the person who operates the X-ray machine, nobody has any formal technical training. Village men and women, with varying levels of formal education have been trained on the job to take up different responsibilities. Whether it is delivery of curative health services or running an enterprise of Rs.7 lakhs, the quality of output can be rated as very high. What is more, it helps the organisation to keep its overhead costs low, helping it to deliver more with less external funds.

This said, one also feels a sense of stagnation within the organisation. The health programme is on a high trajectory, with Sushil being able to provide visionary leadership. The same cannot be said of the livelihoods interventions. While the existing staff are capable to running the enterprise at its current scale, they are at a loss when it comes to further scale-up and value addition. The growth so far has been aided by inputs from external consultants, but there is a limit to which such inputs can help. Recently, Aarohi set itself a target of achieving annual turnover of Rs.15 lakhs for its enterprises. It has been able to get consultants to work with it on developing action plans to achieve this target, but one needs to wait and see if without some strong leadership from within these plans can fructify.