India

The village of Bagad is located on a hilltop in the district of Udaipur, in the state of Rajasthan. The community is located in Kumbhalgarh tehsil. A tehsil is a unit of government that consists of a number of small villages. The government for each tehsil exercises certain scal and administrative power over the villages and it is the ultimate executive agency for land records and related administrative matters. Bagad is a large village that encompasses over 300 households. The closest major towns are Kelwada and Gogunda. Bagad is approximately 85 km away from Udaipur City. This community is extremely unique in that it is home to ve di erent castes including individuals

designated as Scheduled Tribes (ST) also known as Adivasis, Scheduled Castes (ST) also called Dalits, Other Backward Classes (OBC), and other Forward Classes including Brahmins, Rajput, and Lohar. The main occupation of community members is farming and agriculture; however, an extreme lack of rain and resources has forced many to leave the town in search of work and many have migrated as far as Mumbai.

There is only one primary school in Bagad and only one teacher that serves the communitys schoolaged children. The school is comprised of two classrooms that accommodate ve grades. Due to a lack of infrastructure, an insu cient number of teachers, and crowded classrooms, only 40 children are registered in school and only a fraction of those attend classes regularly. The state of the current school is not conducive to a positive learning environment as there is no designated area for play and during the rainy season, rainfall collects in the roof and begins to leak within the classrooms. Over 100 children are not able to attend school for other reasons including severe poverty. The drop-out rates of children are very high but worse amongst girls who are often expected to leave school after grade ve in order to help their families with work. Because the importance of education for girls is not emphasized within the community, there is markedly less participation from the girls who are attending.

The community relies on wells for their drinking water. There are only eight functioning wells to provide water to all 300 households. Most women have to walk a minimum of two or three kilometers to collect water every day. These wells are also relied upon to irrigate crops. Community members are dependent on crop production for their own sustenance as well as for the livelihoods of their families. However, overuse of the wells and frequent drought have meant that there is not enough water to meet the needs of all the villagers. The inaccessibility of clean water has had a severe e ect on food production, health, and the overall well-being of community members. Sanitation facilities are available but are all in very poor condition.

Within Bagad village, there are no medical facilities to meet the health care needs of the entire population. When community members are in need of health care services, they have to make the trek to the nearest town for treatment. Furthermore, there are no vehicles or methods of transportation available for patients, so in emergency cases community members must try to nd someone from the town to take them to the nearest health care centre. Currently, there is an Anganwadi or health resource centre in Bagad, but it is in complete disrepair. Despite the poor condition of the centre, a small number of children still visit the centre to receive much needed nutritional supplementation and medical care. In particular, the community needs a more cohesive primary health care system to meet the needs of maternal and child health, provide immunization services, and provide training and information resources on hygiene and sanitation.

Traditionally, the main source of income generation for community members in Bagad is farming. Because farming is dependent on water from wells, the community su ers particularly hard summers when wells tend to dry up due to poor rainfall. With little access to water, farmers can only produce one crop, mostly maize. The hard farming seasons have forced community members to leave the village and migrate to larger towns to nd general labour jobs. A large percentage of men now work outside of the village. They travel long distances to Mumbai, Surat, and Ahmadabad to earn an income to support their families. The majority have found work as jewelers or as construction workers. Without the help of men, women live laborious and strenuous lives having to take care of all the general household and agricultural maintenance at the same time as caring for their children.