``We have a social responsibility towards improving the quality of life of the people -- returning something to the community by working with it,'' says SIEL (Shriram Industrial Enterprises Ltd) Ltd chairman and managing director Siddharth Shriram. And to give real dimensions to his rhetoric, Shriram chose to focus on education and health, the two wheels on which any society has to cruise.

Eleven villages in the districts of Meerut and Muzaffarnagar provided the testing ground for Shriram's credo. A visit to the cane-rich heartland of Western Uttar Pradesh, the site for SIEL's Mawana Sugar Works, shows exactly how the benefits of development move in concentric circles--from the worker, to his family, to the community.

In the lush green hamlet ofJhinjharpur in Mawana Tehsil, some 125 kms east of the Capital, village elders lie sprawled on stringed cots in the verandah of a khabarghar (newsroom), animatedly discussing matters close to their hearts. ``We are praying for good rains this year. The trickle of rains in the second week of June was just an apology for the monsoon. Now, the time is ripe for rains,'' declares Godu, a 58-year-old peasant, poring over the `local' page of the Dainik Jagran.

The concept of khabarghars, where the villagers are provided with 12 newspapers, including two English and 10 Hindi dailies, in addition to magazines and special publications for children, is slowly transforming the reading habits of the populace in 11 villages around SIEL's sugar units in Mawana and Titawi. In association with The Indian Express and Amar Ujala, the availability of so many varied publications has opened a window on the world for the villagers, where even today, the sight of a jeep draws crowds.

``Earlier, theonly place to find a newspaper in the neighbourhood was the local lala or, sometimes, the barber shop. Now, we have access to facts about employment, politics, rights and duties,'' says Jitender, a village lad studying to graduate in Agrarian Economics from Krishak Gyan College, Mawana. ``Employment News and Rozgar Samachar are the most sought after, despite some irregularities in the frequency of their supply,'' he adds.

Today, 11 similar khabarghars cover 33 villages in and around Mawana, with each catering to three adjoining small villages, and making some 30,000 villagers better aware of the world around them.

Fauzia, 15, is one of these. A resident of Dhikauli, a village dominated by Solankis, she leads a life of quasi-exposure in a primarily patriarchal society. Traditionally, women played second fiddle in an agrarian lifestyle, where they attended to the needs of first the family and then the farm. Priority was given to the male child when it came to education and providing infrastructure forself-dependence. But with awareness, the equations are gradually changing. Being exposed to the stature of women in the urban milieu through vernacular gender magazines like Maya and Grihshobha, a sense of self-pride is emerging. And a nursery for these emotions is the silai ghar (stitching room).

At the Dhikauli village silai ghar, Anuradha Chauhan, 22, is explaining the nuances of cutting and drafting to a class of 25, who are listening in rapt attention. ``They will first learn to draw on the blackboard, cut patterns on old newspapers and then cloth and finally proceed to stitching,'' she explains.

Hazira Bi, one of the recipients of a six-month diploma from Usha International Ltd, reveals proudly that she now gets 3-4 clothes a week from within the village itself. ``The course fee of Rs 180 was money well-spent. I started with stitching for my family, but now I can earn something sitting at home,'' she remarks.

The SIEL venture of involving villagers in their development strategy hasworked better than ``adopting'' a village. ``Instead of adopting a village, where you bear all its responsibilities and create a feeling of total dependency on the sponsor, we believe in acting as facilitators, by harnessing the existing resources and activating the available institutional organs, which had ceased to function,'' says Anupama Mohan, manager, environment and social development, at SIEL.

Carrying this philosophy forward, in Rasoolpur Gaondi, one of the eight villages near Mawana, SIEL helped restore a school to the stature of a centre of learning. Owing to the lackadaisical attitude of the teachers, neglect of the building and the absence of even basic infrastructure such as separate toilets for boys and girls, the school was almost totally decaying. As facilitators, SIEL provided the building material. But it was the villagers who did the shramdaan -- acting as masons and carpenters -- to restore the building. In concrete terms, the number of children in the school, which had fallen to just45 two years ago, now stands at 200 students.

SIEL is now working with the State Bank of India to provide financial information on micro credit, especially agricultural loans, at the khabarghars. Future plans include career counselling and organising rural sports.

But despite these welfare statistics, a sense of dissatisfaction still skulks in the minds of villagers. Sugar milling being a seasonal occupation, the harvest is cut by October-end and the mills run for only six months.

Therefore, they feel that the subject of providing added alternate job opportunities for workers has been ignored. ``Just making more khabarghars won't help. The community would have been better served if the corporates had provided us with more employment opportunities. Vocational courses such as stitching for women are welcome, but similar courses imparting technical qualifications to men are missing at the moment,'' says Vikram, 52, who has retired from active farming, but is concerned about what the futureholds for his two sons. Little initiatives such as the silai ghars have started giving hope to a people on the look-out for new avenues. But then, don't small gestures pave the way for bigger steps?