Samarthya's emergency response to the July 2026 floods along the Ashadhi Wari — GPS-tagged, photo-verified Shelter-cum-Hygiene Kits and Thermal Blankets, delivered by intercepting pilgrims at their own daily halts rather than waiting for them to reach a fixed camp.
In under six days, 264.8mm of rain fell over Pune district and the Indrayani river flooded. Alandi — where the Sant Dnyaneshwar Maharaj Palkhi begins its 21-day walk to Pandharpur — was cut off, every approach road blocked or submerged, just as lakhs of Warkaris gathered for the 8 July Prasthan.
Most Warkaris are farmers and daily-wage workers carrying only what they need for three weeks on foot. Local administration moved people into 100+ municipal schools, but mats and bedding ran short fast. It was into this that Samarthya's kits, funded by Amazon through DonateKart Foundation, were sent.
A Shelter-cum-Hygiene Kit was never just a box to be opened once. Within hours of handover the same tarpaulin was doing several jobs at once — a dry floor over wet ground, a second roof lashed to a tree or a window ledge, a rain screen for a parked truck, an instant seating mat for a whole Dindi, and, after dark, the blanket that made sleep on the ground possible.
Warkaris travel in Dindis — self-contained groups of 50–500 led by a Dindi Pramukh. Samarthya reached each one at its own daily halt rather than waiting at a fixed camp.
Long before Samarthya's truck set out each morning, every Dindi already knew exactly where it would be that day — worked out, printed and carried as a schedule listing each halt, each night's stop and each day's annadata. Reaching a Dindi at the right place depended entirely on reading and trusting this existing system rather than replacing it. These are ten of those schedules, collected in the field.
Between the halts there is only the road. These fifteen frames were made along the same corridors the map above plots — Shirur at midday, the Daund–Patas stretch through the afternoon, the Supe crossing at dusk, and the Satara side of the route the following morning. They are what the printed schedules look like when they are actually being walked: a tractor towing a shrine, a numbered placard, a file of white caps thinning out to a knot on an empty carriageway.
Feedback collected directly from Warkari families at the point of distribution. Two of the six below have verified original Marathi transcripts; the other four were recorded in English in the field and are shown with a rendered Marathi translation, clearly marked as such.
The testimonials above are attributed, sourced and labelled one by one. These ten photographs are the other half of that record — Warkaris the team met, sat with and talked to across the three days on the route. They are published as portraits rather than as quotations: the words on this page belong only to the people named beside them.
Every kit was entered against a name, village, occupation, family size and kit number on the Warkari Flood Emergency Response distribution record — signed or thumb-marked by the beneficiary at the moment of handover.
Before any kit changed hands, each family was issued a serialized paper token carrying its own number, the beneficiary's name and village, and a tick-box for the exact entitlement — one Shelter-cum-Hygiene Kit and one Thermal Blanket. Every token was stamped VERIFIED at issue and marked ISSUED at collection, then matched back against the register, so no family could be counted twice and none could be missed. 234 of the 300 kits were released against a token held directly by the family; the remaining 66 went through the Dindi Pramukh, where rain made one-by-one matching impractical in the queue.
Every one of the 300 kits was moved by hand. With no loading bay or trolley at a roadside halt, Samarthya's team and the Warkaris themselves formed the chain together — off the truck bed, down the line, and then on foot into the tented camps or straight up onto the Dindis' own garlanded vehicles.
At every halt the team addressed the Dindi before distribution began — explaining the process, opening a kit and holding up each item so families knew exactly what they were receiving, and naming Amazon and DonateKart Foundation as the source of the support. The donor banner was displayed at each of these gatherings, and most closed with the Dindi Pramukh's own coconut felicitation.
Three hundred families walked on with a dry shelter sheet, a hygiene kit and a warm blanket they did not have that morning. These are some of them at the moment of receiving — at the distribution counter, and back at the tarpaulin shelters where the kits were opened and put straight to use.
Between the counting, the queueing and the paperwork, this is what the three days actually felt like — the Wari's own warmth, on faces rather than in numbers. Musicians tuning a tanpura in the shade, water shared hand to hand at a roadside halt, an elder helped up onto a trailer, a woman laughing outright at something just out of frame.
Samarthya Kalyankari Sanstha is a youth-founded, women-led grassroots organisation rooted in Dharashiv (Osmanabad), Maharashtra, with work extending to Pune and Raigad districts. We stand alongside De-notified and Nomadic Tribes (DNT) and Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTG) — communities that have carried the weight of historical stigma and systemic exclusion for generations, yet continue to organise, lead, and claim what is rightfully theirs.
Since 2008, our work has grown from a small group of young people challenging alcoholism and violence in their own tanda, into an organisation reaching 36,960+ women and 49,280+ children across 140+ villages.
Our work is organised across five pillars:
Together, these pillars build a community's capacity to lead its own transformation — at the individual, community, and systemic level.
We invite you to learn more about our work, visit our communities, and walk with us. For more details, visit mahasamarthya.org.