This week in Kerala

Travelling through villages in different parts of India gives you such different shades of experience. I've been to villages in about 12 states. I just realised, I'm not as big a city slicker as I had been sadly admitting to thus far. True, I havent really lived in a village, but I can say this - I have had the opportunity to spend time interacting with people and trying to understand their reality in many of these states.

I was in Kerala last week. Went for a film recce to a village called Kodakara. To the poorest part of the village. And things are sooo different from almost anywhere else that I have seen in India. "Poor" still means a bricks and concrete house here. The community believes that the poorest family too, should at least have this much.

Radically different from Andhra, where I was last month and the poorest people I met there had only a thatched shack to live in.

Education and shelter have such a priority there. Parents clearly want the next gen to have a better life than they did. Of course, this does have a tragic side effect of stress and a high suicide rate in young people, but the changed circumstances and determination to get ahead is evident from many stories I heard there.

The local self government initiatives have worked really well in rural Kerala. But some areas have taken this forward to form children's panchayats - councills where children reflect structure of the local elected bodies and actually meet every week. I was told of a boy, who met a candidate in the recently concluded local body elections and told him, "Sir, I know you are saying that you will do this and that. I want to know specifically what will you do if we were to elect you". And the candidate was actually speechless. Another boy took a panchayat chief up on his word that pan masala sales had been banned in the vicinity of schools. He said that he could by some in the shop right next to his school. And he did so in the next minute and told the chief, politely, to get a reality check. Brought a smile to my face when I heard this.

That's how empowered people can be, if given an opportunity.