Pandharpur Wari Seva (Pandharpur pilgrimage social service) - An Experience

Pandharpur Wari is an annual pilgrimage, which has been conducted for centuries.
The pilgrims start from Alandi near Pune and walk for 150 KM in 21 days to reach Pandharpur near Sholapur. The unique thing about this wari (pilgrimage) is that it cut across all caste, creed, rich and poor. Typically 1,50,000 warakris(pilgrims) participate in the wari. During this 21 day trek the warkaris ( pilgrims) night halt at 15 different villages, which unfortunately do not have any toilet facility.

We are a consortium group of individuals from Pune who wanted to do social service (seva) during this wari, and would like to share our experience with you.

The Seva project we chose was to provide toilet facility to Warkaris at Lonand halt, which is 77 KM from Pune. This gave us an opportunity to serve the warkaris for 2 ½ days on 24x7 basis. This was a pilot project as we were serving only 10% of the warkaris stationed at Lonand.
The purpose of the participants was to do manual labour seva along with the donation contribution towards expenses of building these toilets

The Participants consisted of sixteen persons who had come together with a common cause & goal. All the participants were from different background; doctors, engineers, Chartered accountants, advertising professionals, technologists, housewives and students. There was no affiliation to any registered organization nor any attempt was made to advertise any banners on or near the toilet area. Everyone wanted to just “GIVE”, there was no interest in taking anything out of this seva nor any ulterior materialistic motive behind this.

The motive behind selecting this kind of seva were –
a. The sorry state in which the towns ended up after the wari had moved to the next town. The mess of defecating anywhere and everywhere exposed the villagers to health hazards and a chance of spread of diseases was very high.
b. The women folks had to face embarrassing situation of having to use open land for toilet purpose, which played heavily on their minds throughout the wari.

The thoughts uppermost in each of us while driving from Pune towards Lonand were;
a. Is the seva going to be worth it?
b. The time-money we had spent to build these toilets was it going to be a waste?
c. Were we setting up ourselves to become laughing stock of the town?
Little did we realize how much off mark our thoughts were as things unfolded in next 48 hours.


Upon reaching the place we found other participants ready with the tools to handle the inflow of warkaris. Our tools were simple; A cleaning brush, Phenol liquid cleaner, bleaching powder, buckets, and jugs. The job was to give water filled jugs to warkaris who wanted to use toilet. Cleaning the toilets after every use was a must for hygiene and to spread the message among the warkaris that if they want to continue using these toilets they better speed up on keeping the toilet clean after every use.The message to the participant team was simple; serve them with water, they mess it you clean it.

Total twenty toilets were provided ten each for men & women. Even though these were temporary toilets we had used proper drainage pipes & septic tanks to maintain hygiene in the area.

As the rush started it kept us on our toes, with little time to breathe any fresh air!

The reaction from the crowd really stumped us. Here are some excerpts –
a. One old lady told us that she had been regularly participating in the yatra for past thirty years and this was the first time she had come across a toilet facility in between the entire stretch from Alandi to Pandharpur. She was so happy to see us providing this facility that for next hour or so she couldn’t stop from blessing us.
b. Another veteran warkari told us that this was first time he had seen toilets being maintained on 24-hour basis.
c. Several warkaris from villages were excited at the low cost investment to build these toilets (around Indian Rupees 60,000 for twenty toilets, i.e. Indian Rupees 3000/- per toilet), and were enthusiastically seeking toilet sketches & layout plans so that they could implement the same on return to their villages.
d. Almost everyone took time to bless us for this service!
e. Several warkaris used to stay back for hours to see the action going around near the toilets! It was as if this was the main attraction in Lonand rather than the Saint Dyaneshwar Palkhi! (Saint Dyaneshwar Palkhi is the most important procession out of other processions in this pilgrimage)
f. One warkari told us that he was impressed with the way we had organized the seva without using it as an opportunity to put hoarding or marketing banners.
g. The woman folks were the ones who benefited the most. We could see the feeling of gratitude in their eyes.

As happens in many such waris, we had our doses of seeing the dark side of human behavior –
a. The brand new jugs given to warkaris for using the toilets were too tempting for some, so they just stole them hiding them in their clothes.
b. Some warkaris were callous in usage of water, even after repeated efforts from our side to make them use it sparingly.
c. Smoking bidis (local cigarettes), soiling the entire toilet, sitting inside for long time were other headaches we had to bear with.
d. Mostly the Men’s’ toilet were required to be cleaned after every use, they just didn’t give a damn on keeping it clean.

The reaction from the government bodies like Health & welfare department in-charge was OK. We were not looking for much support except any resistance & hindrance from any government body, which by grace of God didn’t happen.

Our biggest challenge was getting hold of water tankers at regular interval. There was no free water tanker support from the local authorities even after several attempts. So we had to purchase the water from the tankers. We were several times left in a situation where water level in our tanks was running very low, but were always saved by some higher guiding force, which was the hidden hand behind the success of this mission.

The only free time was between 12.00 am to 1.30 am! Balance hours were hard manual work for all the team members. Most of us lost the sense of smell after cleaning the toilets! It only returned back after few days of reaching our homes.
We slept in open on plastic mats near the toilets; luckily there was no rain that was our only luxury. There was no free time for drinking chai(tea), which most of consumed with one hand busy cleaning toilets or serving water!

Approximately 13,000 warkaris used the toilet facility during the three days time and consumed 21,000 liters of water. Our main intention in creating this blog is to generate awareness of this project among the public. We were able to serve just 13,000 people out of the 1,50,000 warkaris. So incase this has to happen on large scale definitely more such groups need to come forward at different halts of the wari.

To conclude our gains were -
We had come with a purpose to serve, that was achieved, along with blessings, which we never expected.
We hope some percentage of warkaris got the message of hygiene and necessity of having a proper toilet back in their home villages.
We also hope that this service of providing toilets will start a movement for future waris, which will be our biggest gain.


We look forward to your comments, suggestions on this blog. Please use the comments link at the bottom or you may send an email to us at paraswarigroup@gmail.com

Thanks & Regards,

ParasWari group ,Pune