Bhanupratappur Workshop – Day Two

Bhanupratappur is an unusual town in many ways. Like Narayanpur, it is very visibly affected by Maoist unrest. Fortified BSF (Border Security Force – transferred here by the government to deal with the insurgency) camps dot the road into town and men with guns hang around the bus stand. It is also a remarkably new town. Gokaran Verma, a member of our group from Chhattisgarh, told me that he remembers coming here ten years ago when there was almost nothing; now there are ATMs, mobile phone stores, hotels, a college and motorbike garages. Its growth probably has many contributing factors. The State of Chhattisgarh’s formation in 2000 and subsequent redistricting and intensification of government services is probably the most obvious of these but you could also point to overflow from the Bastar region’s (controversial) mining boom – Bhanupratappur is on a crossroads of two significant regional roads – or even the (albeit questionable) economic benefits of hosting large numbers of security forces.     

  

Luckily for us, many of the residents of this new town decided to come to our workshop. Over a hundred people were here for this morning’s session. 

The one hundredth name in our register

This group were quite a diverse bunch. There were some older, more traditionally dressed farmers, some members of Bhanupratappur’s motorbike riding middle classes, members of the Gondwana Samaj community (there is a small shrine here in the Gondwana Bhavan grounds) and social activists. We even had a visitor from the UN Development Programme who came to have a closer look at our organisation. Many of the people that attended are students at the nearby college. In fact, so many BJMC (Bachelors of Journalism, Media and Communications) students attended we decided to set up workgroup especially for them to teach them about the moderation side of our operations in case any of them want to join up on that front. 

Devlal, one of our contacts here, addresses a group

 These one hundred people will – hopefully – tell their friends, who will tell their own friends (and so on) and slowly knowledge of CGNet will spread and the good work we try to do will reach as many people as possible.