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On a hot afternoon in late February Rajgopal, national convenor of Ekta Parishad, took time out from the youth training camp in Tilda to talk about his life, and the creation of Ekta Parishad.

You are a man from a middle class Keralan family who has decided to take on the struggle of poor people in India. Why did you decide to take this path?

When I was a child my father was a freedom fighter, and he was absconding most of the time. My mother was alone with five children, and I saw that she was struggling. While my father was away, we all lived in poverty too. So somewhere deep in my mind I feel that struggle. The second part of my memory is when I started in a Gandhian school. I was quite young and I was taught community life: how to live together, and eat together. Even as a child I didn't know an individual way of living. The third part would be when I went to do a five year diploma in Kathakali dance. This is a classical form of dancing from Kerala, but it is very, very rigorous in the sense you have to get up in the morning at three o' clock, then you have a massage, then you are into eight hours of exercise: of learning dancing and simultaneously also schooling. I had five years of this disciplined community life, and its formation is very interesting in my mind. So that was maybe how I got this habit of taking a difficult path in life. Then the fourth stage was when I was again in a Gandhian setting doing my education. It was a very simple setting. It was in Gandhi's ashram, in Maharashtra. And at the end of this schooling I was chosen as a volunteer in a large training camp. So then I became a kind of a guide of Gandhian philosophy, helping me to understand how this ordinary boy Mohan become Mahatma. Helping me to ask whether non-violence was clearly a possibility? After, I got an invitation to go to Chambal Valley and work among the dacoits and see how peace can be brought back to there. I took it. I was around twenty-one then. We set up an ashram that was away from the main population. As a result the dacoits came and attacked us. I remember the day when they came and cut me up badly and pushed me in the corner, and said, 'Leave this place in two days time otherwise we will kill you'. So the next day we were thinking what to do now? There were only three people there and we could have run away, but the secretary of that organisation had the responsibility to pull us back and say, no, we'll stay because our going will send a bad signal. Again there was a time when the dacoits came and took all our clothes, and torches and cycles and buffaloes, and the next morning we had only our underpants. They had taken away everything! I enjoyed it in a sense because, there is some kind of challenge in that. As a result, the appreciation of people grew. People were finding out that these boys are courageous enough to stand. We were hardly there for two years, and there was a large surrender of dacoits. So after this the responsibility became big because the ashram became a kind of centre. The difficulty came because I had to grow into a forty-year-old man at the age of twenty-one. I really had to behave as if I was somebody very knowledgeable. I would say I learnt on the way. Nothing was designed. I can now look back and reflect, but if you ask me was it all a planned move, I would say no. As challenges came I took them.

How important did you think it was in Ekta Parishad for there to be a leader?

In each state and each region we have found leadership. Locally they are okay. The kind of leadership that Ekta Parishad demands is less hierarchical and more of a cementing factor. You need to get a lot of activists and different personalities with different thinking together. People are people with likings and dislikings and some people find it very difficult to grow beyond likings and dislikings. So what I do is spend a substantial amount of time resolving conflict in the organisation. In a job like this where people are faced by difficulty all the time, the incentive that you can provide is what you call inspiration. So you inspire them to get moving. So while you also need a leadership that can face the state, the state is also asking whom should we talk to? You need to have someone at that level to match their demand and their position. Then you also need someone to get the activist's message across at the national and international level because they are working at the bottom level. So rather than seeing hierarchy as an authority I was trying to see it as a more responsible role in pushing the organisation ahead, and at the same time providing space for everyone to act.

As a leader you must have had a considerable amount of idealism. How did this match with running an organisation. Do ideals get compromised in some way?

To a great extent you don't have to compromise your idealism. In a world where leaders are behaving like selfish guys, you are challenging the present leadership model. That is your idealism. So you either project a different leadership model or you are with the people. The second thing is to draw some lessons from Gandhi and say, look, you don't become a leader by accumulating, you become a leader by giving up. The idea is also to say institutions may not be built only by brilliant people, but by ordinary people. It's the kind of idealism I find easy to practise because it only makes demands on me, not on anybody else. So what I am trying to explore is how much one can demand from oneself in order to create a different model. But still there are conflicts. Some people are in conflict with me because I am too much a Gandhian, and maybe that is my weakness too, because I am not a Marxist. It's difficult to move an organisation through a changing political climate.

During the period you have been working India's history has been turbulent, and you are treading a middle path. How have you managed that?

While the situation was changing the one thing I did was move to the real people. The real people are the ones who fight. If I was working with the middle class, they're interested in change through a globalisation process. But because I was with the people I was building my ideas from the people. Finding an instrument all the time to fight the changes: small corruption, big corruption, small globalisation, big globalisation. I was constantly educating people to understand this changing reality and take position. As a result, even in a fast-changing world, I have a group of people who are willing to move alone, to constantly help the local leadership, to understand how things are changing and deal with it. But the interesting thing was that, even when I look back, every organisation was shifting priority. As the agenda of the UN changed, the agenda of the voluntary organisations also changed because that is where the money is. My agenda is training young people from the village, helping them to understand the reality of the world, leaving them and saying 'Look, now do something about it.' And I never changed that. I never shifted, I never compromised on anything. Money came and went but I never took any of it. Some people said I was ignorant to resist, but then why should money be the deciding factor of my agenda?

But in building from the bottom you're facing limitation in terms of people's thought. You're promoting an egalitarian ideology and you have to convince people, when you know India is not an egalitarian society.

Yes, right. That is a big fight. Even if you ask me what is my dream. I would still like to do something very, very big. It will remain a dream for some more time. The thrust of the non-violent movement should be expressed in terms of large social, political and economic change in the country. What we do on a padyatra is a small, mini demonstration of that: the building up of peoples' power. A large group of people come out and say they want basic change. Anything bigger will be a big challenge for this country. But I strongly believe that poor people can change the social and political order of the country. What you call total revolution.

What about the caste system here. Would that also be something you want to break?

Yes. I want that. That's the problem here. You cannot get a lot of people organised because of the caste system. But moving with the poor people I am not facing much of these caste problems. Poverty is the agenda. We work mostly with the adivasis. A lot of non-adivasis are there also. Probably issues around poverty will be the boiling point. But then it demands a lot more: it demands a charismatic leadership. Somebody whom the people know they have total faith in. So the challenge is whether you accept that idea or you don't. If I say yes, then one has to do a lot more exercise to become that person. In order to become that person you have to kill yourself. It's a very tricky thing that you are asking for. The hard thing is also, when you say you want 5,000 people to come to protest, you are hardly able to get 2,000 people. It's very, very challenging because first of all you need to expand your base. You need a lot more workers at the bottom level. You need to travel around to mobilise the population.

How do you persuade, particularly the youth, who are fed up of being poor, that they shouldn't join a Naxalite group if they are desperate for change?

I think by-and-large that even if they go to a Naxalite group they will become disillusioned very fast. There you are working under a dictator. You are watched all the time. There is a limitation to the gun. People will use it out of fear. The responsibility of people like me is to create a strong non-violent movement, so people feel that problems can be solved that way. In that I am also telling the state, government and political parties 'Why are you pushing people to think that they finally have to take the gun. Why can't you solve the problem? This is the lack of understanding amongst the so-called intellectuals. They don't understand that promoting non-violence is better for the country.

But you must have to stay incredibly centred to do this job.

Probably I just enjoy what I am doing. The moment you don't enjoy something, don't do it. The reason why I keep going is because I enjoy to see young people coming up, I enjoy to see people fighting for their rights. I enjoy to see the poor people getting justice. But there are many frustrating moments. There are moments when I can't sleep because it is too much. Poverty is too much, problems are too much and I know I can't do much. There are times you are in tears because you don't know what to do. I have learnt to carry a lot. But that is better than expressing it every day, the disappointment and frustrations, and making everybody so miserable. So it is better to carry it as long as you can.

You are also asking activists and villagers to fight at risk of their lives. How do you carry that as a moral responsibility?

This is a big question. I know I am putting a lot of people into trouble. They're ending up in jail, they're getting beaten up. So one needs to make one understand that look, nobody else is going to do this. And in order to help, whatever risk you have to take, you have to take. If they want to take that, what I am trying to say is that I am behind you. But I have never seen anybody complaining. No one has ever said to me it is because of you I am in trouble. If I am always on the agenda of the poor people, then there is no complaint.

As a long-term development strategy it may be that people do have to move out of the forests, that more trees need to be planted in order to protect the environment. What do you think about this?

The primary responsibility of the state is to give people a place to live, to cultivate and to earn their living. This is a responsibility government cannot shrink from. Then the remaining area can be given out to the Forest Department. Don't decide that we need to house so many acres of forest. That is not how you begin. So take the responsibility in terms of rehabilitating the people, then you keep the forest, and you also give the forest to the people so that they can survive. Once people know it is their forest they will manage it.

Who are you fighting against, the State itself or the people within the State?

I am fighting against this notion that the state is created by people. It may be true in some countries, but in India it is not true. People are poor, people are illiterate, so they use different methods to get elected: by distributing alcohol, by threatening them, by forcing them to vote, by preventing them from voting. So first of all it is not true that this is a state created by the people. This is a government created by muscle power and money power. In a broader framework I am basically promoting the agenda of governance. What is governance? People's capacity to control the state when the state is abusing power. So from a Gandhian perspective what I am trying is through education, helping people to understand why they should use their vote more reasonably, telling them they are the leaders of the country. So outwardly we say this is the biggest democracy in the world, but this is the biggest mafia.

Why is it not your strategy to target the mafias and change them?

How does a mafia change? How does anybody change? One, you appeal to the heart of the person. What I understand is whether it is Indian or European, or American, the heart is not working. So appeal has no meaning. So you can use the second method, appealing to the intellect, but when your heart is not working, your brain is not working. How do you change mafias? It's only by making their lives uncomfortable. There are two ways. One is shooting; the other is to make your life uncomfortable in a non-violent way. So having failed to appeal to the heart and the intellect, I am using a pressure-building tactic.

How would you do this non-violently?

I can do this non-violently. I need just five lakhs people. Everything comes to a standstill, so I want to use non-violence very effectively. Some people are impatient. That is why they take to the gun. I am saying before you opt for that there is one more possibility.

How is international help perceived here?

It is not always good. While people know we are a very cost-effective organisation foreign funding is always something that doesn't go well with an Indian mind-set, especially with the purists. But what I am into local funding won't necessarily do. But because it is a globalising world the kind of reservations about international funding, the kind of negative view is much less now, because most of the government programmes are run by World Bank money. But in spite of all this if someone will beat you with a stick, it will be a foreign money stick. The best situation would be, rather than going for foreign agency money, it is better to have solidarity funding, whereby each of our workers has a scholarship scheme. Second, one should find a lot more funds from the trade unions, and other political groups. But this is becoming difficult. And the other area is to encourage the middle class Indians to support. People who only understand NGO culture will always speak in terms of result-based planning. How can I plan? In a mass organisation struggling for justice, how can you know for example how many acres of land will be distributed. Till a week back I thought I could not distribute much land, but with a task force formed, more will be distributed. So ever-growing dynamic political organisations have a very different culture from strictly NGO types.

Do you see the youth camps as the creation of such dynamism?

Absolutely. In a week's time they will go back to the villages, and there will be letters with new problems. I know I am creating my own problems.