In January 2014 Elissa Ward (from Melbourne) and Matt Sorenson (from Brisbane), took part in the Engineers Without Borders Dialogues on Development study tour in India. Elissa talks about her experiences:

I was walking along a single lane road in a rural area in Tamil Nadu carrying water I had bought from a street vendor not far up the road from our hotel. A truck was approaching ahead, a rickshaw and two motorbikes from behind. There was a deep ditch to my left and a large cow walking straight towards me along the side of the road. Prior to this trip I would have thought, what’s the problem? The cow will get scared and veer away or maybe I’ll just jump down into the ditch to get out of harm’s way. But after spending three weeks in India I realised that things were different here and I had to take a different approach. My instincts took me into the ditch that was lined with a not so pleasant sludge, and as I climbed out worrying it had splashed in my mouth I wondered if I had made the same decision a local would.

I definitely wasn’t taking on the cow (I had encountered enough of them to understand they are kings in India and don’t stop for one or anything) but I also know that Indian traffic, however hectic, responds quickly to road obstacles. Now I am not saying I would recommend you take on the truck, but it made me start thinking that every situation needs a different solution and that was very evident in the development work that we were experiencing in India.

Matt Sorenson and I had been spending three weeks traveling with 13 other engineers and four facilitators meeting Engineer’s Without Borders (EWB) Indian partners, learning about development in the Indian context. Our days were spread between some classroom work learning about Indian culture, politics, language and social systems and out in the field experiencing the work that the NGOs accomplish with the communities they work in.

We started in Mumbai and spent two weeks travelling in the state of Maharashtra meeting groups who cover a large breadth of work. This included working directly with individuals and communities in improving agriculture practices through to activist groups who are putting appeals through the Indian High Court and lobbying the World Bank to reject funding for developments that compromise communities land rights. We visited many women’s self-help groups, that from my experience have been the single most powerful concept I have seen in enabling families and communities transform their livelihoods. We then flew to Channai and dedicated the next week in Tamil Nadu, spending some time in Auroville, an experimental socialist city which encompasses an array of social enterprises from a solar energy company that uses its profits to help train and supply solar lighting and pumps to marginal communities, to a textile company that helps tsunami victims deal with grief through spending time participating in textile working groups. It was a unique opportunity that brought us in direct dialogue with remote communities that under most situations we would never have had the privilege to meet. It was both challenging and fun navigating through the journey, interpreting the Indian head wobble, eating curry for breakfast, and learning to accept that traffic lights are a mere suggestion.

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