Page 121 - Acharya Vinoba Bhave in 21st Century ISBN

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Village Mendha-Lekha

Village Mendha is located 30 Km east of the town of Gadchiroli on the Gadchiroli-
Dhanora road which goes further to Rajnandgaon in Chattisgad. The village is denoted as

Mendha-Lekha because it is part of the Lekha gram panchayat. Gadchiroli is predominantly a
tribal district. It was carved out of Chandrapur in 1982. In 2001 the district population was

9,70,294 of which the Scheduled Tribes were 3,71,696 (38.3%).
Mendha is inhabited by Gonds.At present, It has around 90 households and it derives its

livelihoods from two main sources: (1) forestry and forest labor (2) agriculture and agricultural
labor. It came in contact with a non-governmental organization, Vrikshamitra in mid-80s which

was established in 1984 by Shri Mohan Hirabai Hiralal and his colleagues who were inspired by
the Sampoorna Kranti (Total Revolution) movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan in the mid-

70s.The distinctiveness of Mendha, that it was a village following a collective and consensual
decision making process, was grasped by Vrikshamitra and the organization decided to work

closely with the community on its journey towards self-rule and local governance.
Vrikshamitra introduced the Gandhian ideal of sarvodaya (non-violent, truthful and all

encompassing development of everybody) to Mendha. It also complemented the sarvodaya ideals
with sarvayatan of Vinoba and that of Lokshakti (people’s power) by Jayprakash Narayan. The

net result was that the traditional tribal ethos of consensus decision making was enriched with
a sound theoretical and conceptual basis. Mendha thus began to experiment in this direction

and in this process coined a very innovative term:
“Our government in Delhi and Mumbai, We the Government in our village”

“Delhi-Mumbai me Hamari Sarkar, Hamare Gaonme Humhi Sarkar.” (Hindi)
Mendha became the first village in the country to get community forestry rights in 2009

under the ‘The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest
Rights) Act, 2006’. Since then it began a process of productive, equitable and sustainable

management of its forest resources.

Sarvayatan Principle: Consensus Decision Making
Mendha follows the sarvayatan principle i.e. ‘consensus decision making’ as against the

‘anekayatan’ or majority rule: The villagers of Mendha were following this principle even before the
present experiment started. It was part of their tribal ethos. However, the decision making process

involved only men. When Mohan started working with the village, he insisted that both men and women
should be equally involved. Any act of governance or development would be incomplete without the

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