A village can be a tough nut to crack, from the inside and out. Prasad Patil, a resident of Mangaon, a market town in Raigad district, nearly 140 km from Mumbai, says it could take years before you gain the confidence of an entire village. Fifteen years ago, Patil remembers riding pillion on a bike with a colleague, a TV set and video CD player in tow, negotiating hairpin bends on the hilly terrain, trying to make a case for an unusual project. At every village he visited, he’d hope there was electricity supply available long enough to screen a film—he mostly preferred the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Swades, which tells the ghar vapsi story of NASA scientist Mohan Bhargava who rediscovers his roots in rural India, and eventually chooses to settle down there. The movie was meant to be an ice breaker, he tells us. It was one of his many tried-and-tested methods to bring the villagers together to listen to what he had to say. “Convincing them,” he says, “would take five years... sometimes even eight.” But, it barely dampened the spirit of the young social worker.

Siddhi Gajanan Jangam, resident of Jangamwadi in Raigad, points to the newly-made nameplate at the entrance of her house that bears her name. Pics/Sameer Markande