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- Murali Chanduri
We have completed another day of the walkathon. Making amends for Google’s failure to indicate some streets as closed, the total distance walked by us on the 7th day exceeded the 12.5 miles set for it.
So far, several of us who did not miss a single day have walked 102 miles each. The whole team has walked close to a thousand miles. Only another day remains in the walkathon.
 We have completed another day of the walkathon. Making amends for Google’s failure to indicate some streets as closed, the total distance walked by us on the 7th day exceeded the 12.5 miles set for it. So far, several of us who did not miss a single day have walked 102 miles each. The whole team has walked close to a thousand miles. Only another day remains in the walkathon. Will people from San Diego join the last 5.2 mile walk and or the dinner on April 9th, the last day? Will Ravi Palakodety’s multiple attempts to reach out to people at San Diego Telugu Association, SANTA, spur the local people to join? Will our efforts at SANTA’s last cultural program attended by some 400 people bring some of them to the walkathon? Will my visit two Thursdays ago to the lightly attended meeting set up at great effort by Ravi at Qualcomm bring anyone?
As we ended the day indications were that the Telugus, and the Indian community at large, have responded to this outreach walkathon with a big yawn, as I told a friend who said to me that he was a quiet supporter, and advised me not to give up. So far this year raising funds has been a little easier than arousing people to meet, greet or join the walk. We have already reached 62% of our target for the year, and are confident of ending the year fully meeting it.
 Giving up has never been on my mind, though, as the one lesson I have internalized from my living in the U.S. is to be never embarrassed by failure. I decided, therefore, to try something which should have been done at the very beginning. I decided to hang a banner at Bawarchi restaurant,sit at a table and try to recruit people that walked by. Not entirely unlike those hired minimum-wagers in funny costumes one sees at various intersections waving various come-hithers!
The restaurant is located in a plaza with a couple of other Indian restaurants, Indian grocery stores and a shop-front Hindu temple. Hanging the banner went smoothly, some of the shops allowed me to stick the posters readily enough but the temple did not allow one to be placed in its windows as the event was not a religious one. As is my wont, I asked myself if there is a more truly religious act than involving oneself in attempts to help ones’ fellow-humans?
So it was that I asked Murty and Ravi if they would join me in canvassing people visiting the plaza to join the walk and the dinner. They agreed. We spent the Sunday (March 3rd) taking turns at walking the chosen arena with little pamphlets which we tried to press into peoples’ hands. Some refused them bluntly, some walked away from us while most people took them politely enough, promising to visit our website. Until half-time our mission seemed to be failing with nothing to show for it except facial sun-burn, but as the day wound down we succeeded in signing up some and left the arena with reasonable assurance that we would have the fifty people we promised the restaurant.
And so, the answer to the question with which I began this installment of the diary seems to be, yes, we will have some San Diego-ans joining us, after all!
*****Day 6
 I want to write today, not about the beautiful white sand beaches, the refreshing breezes, soothing wave-sounds, brave surfers, the amazing sunset, the enjoyable lunch we had by the bluff overlook in Carlsbad or the entertaining stories told between the walkers. All of that was great, and reason enough to spend a beautiful March day walking.
But our walk has a bigger purpose, and we don’t talk enough about it. It is about a vision for a country that cannot seem to get a firm enough hold over its present, let alone its future. For those that can look beyond the turbulent present, the future might be about two disparate visions of India.
The vision that TELSA promotes is ‘in-place development’. It means development that helps people stay and thrive where they live, the vast majority of them, in any case. Where people live in larger numbers currently is in villages. Even though the percentage of people living in villages has fallen from the high nineties at independence to low seventies now, the absolute numbers of both urban and rural populations have increased several fold. Every city has suffered overall degradation by every quality-of-life measure. Job creation in the modern sector has been predominantly confined to a few metropolitan centers. Modern industry and high-end service sector are concentrated in cities, and a very small number of towns. Development in villages has meant no more than nominal electrification, pump-set irrigation, a bank branch, a school or two, and occasionally a primary health center. These are nothing more than symbols of development as they are rarely integrated into the local economy, and have not led to job-creation of any kind. People employed in these outposts of modernity are rarely drawn from the village, and even more rarely resident in the village.
No young villager today imagines a future in the village. It is a place to flee from.
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