KHOJ|Melghat

Gram Swaraj and Self Governance: A Study - MILIND BOKIL       

KHOJ Melghat

KHOJ evolved as a group of students from Mumbai in 1994. As the journey progressed some of us decided to come to Melghat and explore the rich forest biodiversity and the entailing problem of under nutrition and child mortality – a phenomenon tough to comprehend.It wasn't just under nutrition but related more to the idea of development and the marginalisation of the communities that were pushed to the brink of struggle for survival. It was an attempt to study the vast and rich stretch of our natural resources and the deaths of children due to hunger, underpinning that there was some-thing grossly wrong in the principles of sharing of natural resources, there was something grossly wrong in the way rights were accessed. It was an exploration to the processes that would help us address the inequities, the definition of Development, the processes that would help us devise mechanism to ensure effective means of sharing of resources in an equitable manner.