Chandigarh & New Delhi

talking with women from one of Arpana's Women's Empowerment groups

In the final stage of our research we spent 3 days in Chandigarh, which is a rather large city about three hours southeast of Gajnoi. Chandigarh is known for being the first planned city in India. The city is divided up into blocks, each of which is supposed to be able to independently support the needs of its residents (a little market and essential facilities in each block).  The layout of the city was actually designed by a French guy!

Each day we commuted to Baddi, an industrial area a little north of Chandigarh.  Here we interviewed human resource officers from several different companies to discuss employment practices.  We visited Colgate-Palmolive (maybe your toothpaste was made here!), Proctor & Gamble, TVS (they make motorcycles) and a couple other factories. Our objective was to learn more about the qualities they look for in employees and what their experiences had been like with employees from rural areas. 

The Arpana Medical Center in Madhuban

Then we spent a couple days at Arpana’s Headquarters in Madhuban!  We toured their hospital facilities, talked with some of the women in their women’s empowerment program, met some ladies who started a local dairy cooperative (and got to try some fresh paneer and a new cookie recipe they were trying out), and shared our project with more of the Arpana family.

driving through the rice paddies 

Now we’re back in Delhi. We’ve spent the last couple of days hoping between coffee shops, staring at computer screens, and writing up a report of all our data. Right now we’re pushing over 60 pages!  Crazy, but we have a lot of information. Tonight we’ll make some final revisions before everyone goes their separate ways on Friday.