Shivaji Chatrappa Kaganikar has no place he can call home. But every place is home for this social worker who has has served Belagavi district for nearly five decades in several fields.

Shivaji Kaka, as he is fondly called, has just turned 70 and was recently given the Devaraj Urs Award.

Born to poor landless shepherds at Kadoli village in Belagavi district, Shivaji Kaka had a difficult childhood. He took odd jobs all along his school and college days to support his family. He briefly joined a PSU as an assistant after BSc., but his calling was something else.

Influenced by Pune-based Gandhian and Sarvodaya activist Sane Guruji, he travelled to Maharashtra to meet Guruji and Vinoba Bhave. Back in Belagavi, he found a group of social workers, including Srirang Kamat, Sadashivrao Bhosle and Ram Apte, and got down to work.

Mr. Kamat, who headed the Belagavi district Khadi Sangha, offered him a job as a gobar gas technician. Shivaji Kaka did the job so well that within five years, half the families in the villages of Kattanbavi and Nagenahatti had adopted gobar gas plants. “They were erected 40 years ago. Nine out of them are still working,” Shivaji Kaka says with pride.

He later worked on promoting watershed development in various places and the water-scarce village of Kattanbavi now has enough water to support three crops, thanks to his efforts. Lakhs of trees were planted through ‘shramadana’ (contributory labour) inspired by Shivaji Kaka. “What is more important is that most of them are surviving. It means that people who planted them took care of them too,” he says.

Later, as a volunteer of the adult education programme in the ‘70s, he opened hundreds of literacy centres and evening schools for women and farm labourers. He helped set up scores of anganwadis too. He led anti-arrack protests in several villages.

He continues to guide farmers in watershed development or permaculture.

Currently, he spends most of his time organising MNREGA workers. Apart from the Zilla Khadi Sangha, Shivaji Kaka’s work has been supported by German funding agencies, the Tata Trust and NGOs such as Jana Jagaran and Jivan Vivek Pratishtan.

‘No permanent address’

Sharad Gopal, of Jagruta Mahila Okkoota, says: “He does not have a phone or a permanent address. Whenever he has to make a call, he stops anyone, literally anyone in the street, or enters any shop and requests them if he can use their phone and they are more than willing,” she says.

It is difficult to find him in one village after two days. He keeps moving. “That is because there is work to be done in every village,” says Shivaji Kaka.

Does he ever feel sad about some youngsters not being worried about environment destruction or other crucial issues? “No. Sane Guruji taught us that we should do our work and not worry about tomorrow,” he says, with an unpretentious smile.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Karnatka / by Rishikesh Bahadur Desai / Belagavi – December 26th, 2018