Leaving behind a job in the UK Government’s Social Services department, Amitabh Soni returned to India in 2014. A strong desire to bridge the ever increasing rural-urban gap, prompted him to start Abhedya, an NGO responsible for nurturing and facilitating the knowledge and talent of the rural tribal community, which, for the longest time has been unexplored.

The main reason I went to UK was to understand how a vibrant western democracy works and then come back and try to implement some of those ideas on ground. I basically went there to understand their setup. The social services department I was working for required me to undergo several intense training programs conducted by experts. So, I learnt different things about how to manage people, how to interview them, in order to understand their requirements and serve them better.

Mr. Soni talks highly of the untapped knowledge bank we have in our country, especially in the villages. The way the people in the villages are still so connected to the nature, lead a peaceful life, where less is more, all of this and more, inspired Mr. Soni a lot. The idea of assisting the villagers to improve in areas like education, water management, technology and governance while retaining the already existing knowledge bank and values, gave birth to Abhedya.

Abhedya, The NGO

Interestingly, Mr. Soni says that the “motivation behind Abhedya was that organisation like us should not be needed in the first place, the villagers should be self sufficient that way.”

When Mr. Soni returned to India in 2014, he took Kekadiya, a small village situated at a distance of about 250KM from Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, under his wings. At present, five villages come under the umbrella of Abhedya. His team, consisting of 20 members and a core team consisting of six people, working closely with the tribal community of “Bhalalas” residing in these villages.

Of the many feats that Abhedya has achieved, the most recent one is that of introduction of organic farming in these villages. It was started as an experiment, with only four farmers. The experiment has proved to be very successful.

Earlier, our farmers would sell Fenugreek at Rs 150 per crate, but after starting organic farming, the produce has been so good that the supplier comes to the village and buys it at Rs 450 per crate and also pays for the labour charges, this way the middle men system is completely eliminated.

The other area that Abhedya is working extensively for is that of eradicating the problem of water shortage. Talking about the same, Amitabh Soni said,” The village clusters are located by the Satpura range, so whenever it rains, the water flows through the hills, into the village. Until few years ago, due to large number of trees, the water was retained and villagers used this water for their daily activities. But now, many of the trees have been cut down. We made them realise that this cutting of trees had to stop and we helped them in planting trees in that area. A year and a half ago, we did an intensive survey for about 45 days and identified few GPS locations to build small sub dams.”

Abhedya has also made some sincere efforts in improving governance of the villages. Mr. Soni says that the Constitution of India has provided the Gram Panchayat with lot of powers, but unfortunately, they are not aware of it. Abhedya has taken the onus of educating them about the duties and powers of the Panchayat. They have also included some of the youths of the village to manage the education and health section of the panchayat.

Mr. Soni talks about the strong and reliable network which Abhedya has formed over the years. He says that the organisation doesn’t depend on the government funding. All of the initiatives are crowd funded. He, very enthusiastically speaks of 18 girls coming from the tribal families of these villages, who are pursuing their studies in one of the reputed private schools.

“The girls have been performing very well. The school, apart from providing quality education, also allows them to pursue extracurricular activities. Recently, these girls have made us proud by winning the third position in the game of Kickball. When I requested one of the members of our network to financially assist us with the education of these girls, he accepted the request and sponsored the education of these girls. This is the importance of having a strong and a reliable network.”

Another boy, coming from a below poverty line family has finally pursued his dream of studying in the coveted National Law Institute University, Bhopal, all thanks to Abhedya, which brought together people who could financially and morally support him to clear CLAT and get admission in the Law college.

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