Mittal Patel is a full time social worker based in Ahmedabad. She is the founder of ‘Vicharta Samuday Samarthan Manch’ -VSSM, which works for the nomadic and denotified and deprived tribes in 19 districts of North Gujarat. Her NGO also works in the field of Water Management and Tree Plantation.

When Mittal was preparing for UPSC, she joined a Journalism course as she thought it would be helpful in her studies. An organisation called ‘Charkha’ was giving fellowships to journalism students interested in research. She got a fellowship and started research on Condition of Sugarcane Workers in South Gujarat. She was not the type who does their research on google confined to their homes. She wanted to go into the field and do real research. In November 2004 she went to live in a ‘Padaav’ of the sugarcane workers. She was appalled at the conditions they lived in. She found that they were so desperate to find work under the contractor that they never complained about anything. She lived among them for one and a half months, eating their simple stale food, using chemical mixed dirty water and saw the real ‘Bharat’ there.

After understanding their plight and their troubles, she met many officers and politicians and raised the issue with them. They were sympathetic towards their plight but expressed their inability to do anything as there were no government policies or schemes for them. She was disillusioned as to why to become an officer because despite all powers and resources, everyone was helpless to do anything. She tried to write about the deprived workers in mainstream media but they too were only interested in political stories and did not carry her articles. She was disappointed with journalism too.

Meanwhile she got associated with an organization called ‘Janpad’ which worked on the study of nomadic tribes which roam around from place to place for their livelihood. She also started studying about their life. She was surprised to find that they could not claim any place as their native place as they did not have any identity papers. She found that there is a large population of such people in India. As they were not enrolled in voter lists and were not vote banks for any political parties no one cared for them.

Mittal fought for them. She took their cause to politicians and officers. After great efforts by her, a special law was made and she succeeded in getting voter identity cards for them. She strived for a policy to be framed for their upliftment. In 2017, she talked to both the main political parties of Gujarat. Finally, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi heeded to her pleadings and asked her to frame a draft policy for the nomadic tribes. Based on her draft a policy was adopted by the central government and in 2019, for the first time, a Welfare Board was formed for the development and upliftment of the nomadic people. Mittal was also included in the board as a member. She considers the formation of the board as one of her big achievements.

Mittal got her NGO VSSM registered in 2010. She started working on educating the tribal children. She started hostels for them. She also started providing the tribals interest free loans for their trades. She taught them the benefits of savings. Currently, about four crore rupees is being rotated among them. She is happy that till now there has not been a single default in the repayment of the loans. VSSM also provides rations to old people who cannot work now and who do not have anyone to look after them.

Mittal faced a lot of resistance initially from all quarters, even from the tribes themselves who were unsure of her intentions. No village community was ready to allow them to settle in their village. But, gradually with her persistent efforts things changed. Meanwhile she realised that conservation of water was also a big issue as the water table at several places had gone down. VSSM started working for water management too. They work upon digging ponds. Till now they have built 130 water ponds in different villages. They are also doing large scale tree plantations to increase the chances of rains. They appoint ‘Vriksh Mitras’ at all the places they plant trees at and take good care of the trees. For all her efforts Mittal gets support from the society, many individuals from India and abroad and also gets CSR funds from several corporate houses.

Mittal says she had a good childhood. She was born in a village in the Mehsana district of Gujarat. Her parents were not educated much but they had good agricultural income. They also had cows and other cattle in their house. Their financial condition was good and she had not seen any hardships in her childhood or while growing up. Her mother encouraged her in everything. She was the first girl of her village who was sent to a hostel in the city for higher studies. Mittal says the first time she saw abject poverty and deprivation was when she went to live among the sugarcane workers. She thinks all well-to-do families from ‘India’ must send their children to live in real ‘Bharat’, among the poor, for sometime so that they realise the true value of the resources and comforts which they get.

Mittal feels satisfied to an extent that after 12-13 years of constant efforts change has started happening in the life of the nomadic tribes. Now, welfare schemes are being made for them by the governments. She was awarded the ‘Nari Shakti Samman’ in 2017 by the President of India which she considers as one of her achievements.

Mittal says she has had failures too. Once she put a large number of tribal children in hostels of different organizations. But, the children could not adjust to the new way of life and all of them deserted the hostels. She realised that any experiment should be first done on a small scale. It was a lesson for her.

For anyone desirous of working in the social sector, Mittal says the first requirement is a sensitive heart. There is a lot of money coming from CSR funds and anyone working in the social field can earn their livelihood too by working full time in this sector. Besides, self satisfaction is the biggest reward which you get working in this field.

Talking about role models, Mittal says her mother was her first guru, as she pulled her out of her comfort zone and encouraged her to work. She is also influenced by Gandhiji. She is also inspired by one Rashmi Behen, who is a CA in Mumbai but who has done exemplary work as a social worker. She also gives credit to her husband Maullik, who despite initially being opposed to her cooperated with her always.

Her message is that there is a lot of work to do in the fields of upliftment of deprived people, the environment, conservation of water etc. and we shall all put in our efforts in these fields.