Artist： Navjot Altaf
Location： Bastar region of Chattisgarh,India
Media/Type： Communitarian public art
Date： The first Nalpar was completed in 2001, and by 2007 seven others were constructed
Commissioner：The initial research for the projects was seeded by the India Foundation
for the Arts, while the actual projects took place under the auspices of the Dialogue Interactive Artists Association in Kopaweda.）
Researcher： Leon Tan
The excellence of the project is attested to in many ways. Concerning the Nalpar strand, this may be considered a significant public intervention insofar as it directly addresses
the problem of State neglect of civic issues, here concerning the hygienic provision of basic necessities of life, water, to under-privileged groups, namely the Adivasi (indigenous) communities of Bastar. It has resulted in a significant improvement of living conditions, in particular, for the women of the region, at least in two ways.
Concerning the Pilla Gudis strand, this is significant insofar as it provides for new and beneficial experiences of place for children, where such spaces did not exist before. The Pilla Gudis is in fact a resurrection and transformation of the Adivasi Ghotul institution, repressed by the Indian government because Hindus considered it immoral as it allowed for unsupervised interactions between boys and girls, sometimes including sex. In facilitating aesthetic knowledge acquisition through direct sensory experiences, Pilla Gudis is outstanding as a communitarian public artwork, all the more so for its non-tokenistic engagement of an often neglected social group, children.
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