Jignasha Patel

All of Jignasha's father's gas stations have telephones. Everyone who works at these gas stations knows that if a villager comes about an animal emergency, or any animal related problem, they can use the phone for free and call Jignasha and her family at home.

The gas station a little out of the downtown area of Jalna, is near a lot of the rural villages she works with, so it's very easy for them to get her. She says she can get a vet or her rescue squad boys to these villages in an emergency within two hours once called, for rural India that is fast.

Her sister in laws, mom and servants answer the phones at the house 24 hours, and, if Jignasha is not there, know what to tell the caller and how to get them help quickly. Her two brothers, father and mother all pitch in and help.

Medicine, hoof and mouth vaccine for cattle

She found that when the villagers went to buy the vaccines on their own, the government agencies who are supposed to sell it to them at a cheaper subsidized price were NOT. So she got the village elders, councils, to authorize her to pick up their government sanctioned subsidized vaccines.

Those that the government do not give at subsidized prices, she learned to buy wholesale in bulk quantity, passing the savings on to the villagers. She also found that the government subsidized vets who were supposed to go out to villages at least once a week, were NOT doing their job, were not going. So she took a course, learned how to do basic vaccines, first aid, and then taught key people in the villages.

She has trained many villagers in many villages to do these injections themselves. She also found a lot of vaccines were not kept refrigerated - by the time a villager could go get it and transport it back to their village, the vaccine was no longer viable. So she started keeping the vaccines refrigerated for them and taught them to pack it in ice when they pick it up, or she gets one of her rescue boys to deliver it in person. All this allowing cheap, viable vaccines to be administered by the villagers who own the animals themselves.

One of the most fascinating facts about Jignasha is that she does not believe in gaushala, panjarapoles, or cattle sanctuaries. First of all, as she says, it is too costly long term to care permanently for cattle. The gas station outside downtown Jalna is a temporary cow shelter- she built shelters. Gas station guys are also village farmers in the area, so they know how to care for the cattle. They bath them, milk them, etc. Trees are planted, grazing land for them preserved, all at a gas station.

But this is a temporary holding area, the only permanent resident is a big white cow with only three legs, she is the gas station pet. She rehabilitates cattle there (with the most at one time 22). If she has to, she has villagers who will help rehabilitate cattle, so she could do more in an emergency.

The goal is to get them well, rehabbed, and then adopted to good families. NOT poor families, not landless villagers, instead, wealthy villagers with plenty of money for the feed, and proper care. She checks out how they care for their other animals. Legally she still has legal ownership of confiscated, abused cattle so if anything goes wrong, she takes them back.

Families are interviewed by her, and there are surprise visits by her and her dairy man, a friend she has known since she was a little girl. Another amazing rapport - with the family milk man - now her head of dairy animal placement.

By the way we did NOT see any cattle wandering the street in Jalna, no donkeys, nothing - only goats and pigs wander, she cannot control that .. not yet. She found all the animals allowed to wander got hit by trucks especially at night, did not get good food, and were let loose so they could eat garbage. She seized many people's cows and kept them until they promised they would keep them at home and give them good care. it worked - none are on the street.

Also she has convinced the schools kids to stop plastic bag use. We rarely ever saw a loose plastic bag in Jalna. We saw her video of her first ever school contest. Kids dressed up as any animal they wanted, and gave details of their needs and problems. The costumes and masks these kids and parents made were unbelievable, I could not get over how great it was - again the support of the community. Now they all plan a year a head for the next contest - it has became a major event in the Jalna community life.

Jignasha has four, yes four, lawyers that work free of charge for her. They fight her cases in the high court - she has won every one she has gotten involved in. She has several pending right now. The high court is in Auragabad, an hour away. So that really helps, but free, absolutely free!

Right now Jignasha is waiting on the Jalna land commissioner, he has five (5) acres of state (Mahrashtra) government land to give her. The villagers living around the land have written the commissioner supporting the animal hospital to be built there. They want her there and have no objection, just the opposite, they are delighted to have her move in as fast as possible.

After all this testimony, etc. she should be able to pressure him to obtain the land soon. Maneka, Rita, and other supposedly influential people have pressured him on her behalf. The land has a ton of water grassland. So it would be perfect for temporarily housing big animals.

One of her villages, Mandwa, is divided in half. Half of the village is segregated off form the untouchables. The half that is untouchable is crude, no clean paved roads, etc. very obviously a divided village - we went out there surprise visit. The higher and lower caste villagers live still on one side. They had a lot of wells and would not let the untouchables use them. Separate wells, separate everything.

There are 82 Daulit (untouchable-Harijan) houses, about 600 people. When Jignasha was told about a Daulit lady that had found a baby chikara (wild deer) and wanted help to save it, she went out there and wound up getting them lawyers free of charge, teaching them their civil rights. She got the laws translated into Marathi (they were in Hindi and they could not read Hindi).

Money that was by law to benefit the entire village, was being used only by the non-untouchable caste part of the village. They were able to get clean wells, funds for building. In other words all their legal rights they obtained thanks to Jignasha's civil rights lawyers. Now they come into town by bus. She has taught 10 untouchable old women, mainly widows, how to save money in the bank - she deposits the money with them, makes sure they do it weekly. She checks their bank books for them, and thought them to make pickles, papads, incense, and other goodies, and easily sell them to shop keepers in downtown Jalna.

No wonder they will protect 'her' wild animals from poachers and now started keeping dogs. Of course each family has a a sterilized dog at their house. Before, they hated stray dogs.

The Dawalawadi village is the absolute opposite of the Mandwa village - immaculate totally integrated. Latrines looked like stone creeks - the water was that clean and fresh. Not manure, no dirt, and best of all, not one plastic bag. All trash is burnt in huge clay plumbing pipes. The model village, it won the Mahrashtrian government award for best village - healthiest and cleanest.

It looked like a Disney version of Indian village, even the little police station and police men in the village in yellow with turquoise blue trim, and each policeman was friendly and in a clean uniform. No dirt no where I searched.

In this village the untouchables are integrated into the entire village - we met one very old widow untouchable woman. The village built her house, a yellow house, with no visible difference at all from her neighbors next door (not untouchables).

The government corruption and how she 'fixed' it ..

Animal Doctors are SUPPOSED to go out to the villages on a regular basis, about once a week, to see the same village. They are paid by the government to do that, but they do not.

They would make the villagers bring the animal to town to them - when they come to town, it is legal for them to charge the villagers fees. By the time they can get the sick animal especially a large cow to town, with the cost of the transportation, the time factor, the animal is either dead, or the cost to save it too high.

What did Jignasha do? She got the government vets to come out to the villages one day a week. Especially for sick animals - she has their schedule, knows what villages they are supposed to see on what days, and then does surprise visits to make sure they are there. Not to mention the phone calls that come in from the gas stations if they do not show up.

She purchased vaccines herself, delivering them to the villagers, giving the injections herself and then teaching them. This is how she was able to convince them to sterilize the village dogs and get every household to keep and feed at least one dog. Because she would take care of their precious cows and bullocks, they in turn were ready to give dogs a try.

I know this all sounds like a fairy tale and believe me it is a real fairy tale.