Ekta Community Projects - The Communities

The communities | The staff

Ekta Community Projects forms partnerships with marginalised communities living in urban slums across India. In it's pilot phase, the organisation has chosen to partner with the Shikalgar community living in the Yerwada slum area of Pune.

The Shikalgars

	The Shikalgar Community belongs to a larger grouping of communities known as the Criminal Tribes or, more recently, the Denotified Tribes. This is a group of tribal communities that were legally classified as inherently 'criminal' by the colonial government in the mid 1800s. Though the designation was originally applied for armed resistance, it has become over time a powerful social stigma, resulting in severe marginalisation and poverty. Since independence, this situation has been further compounded by the failure to include these communities in affirmative action programs that have played a major role in the empowerment and development of similarly impoverished groups.
The Shikalgars of Pune have settled in a narrow strip of land between a heavy traffic road on one side and the slum area of Yerwada on the other. In this small area, the community lives tightly packed together continuing their tribal profession as blacksmiths and pig-rearers and has also taken advantage of the vicinity of the road to develop some trade in scrap materials to add to these activities.
Despite the ability to engage in some basic economic activity, the Shikalgars of Pune are extremely isolated. The difference in language, historical stigma and difference of religion all conspire to make them a feared and consequently discriminated against group. Adults find it difficult to find and hold jobs, and children frequently find themselves mistreated in the area's schools. This situation has also been aggravated by traditional practices such as marrying children in their early teenage years and more recent problems like alcoholism. The result has been prevalent illiteracy, a host of medical issues and a lack of access to basic hygenic and sanitary necessities.
In aknoweldging these problems, the Shikalgars have sought out assistance to address them. To this end, Ekta Community Projects and the Shikalgars have formed a partnership and agreed on a framework to tackle these issues holistically, aiming to break the cycle of poverty in a single generation through concerted action in adult and child education, microeconomic enterprise, public health education and work in advocacy and empowerment.