Baroda

On the 21^st-22^nd, there was a conference on Sajiv Kheti, or Organic Farming, in Vadodara, where friends we wanted to spend time with and acquaintances I’d like to know more about were in the audience and panel of speakers. We semi-attended the lectures, especially my dad, who found stepping out to chat with friends about their work and catching up with others during breaks (in one word – GOSSIP) more compelling.

I got stuck in one boring segment (I shall not reveal which lest I offend avid eggplant zealots) when my dad left me stranded for 2 hours to go fix our cellphone without telling me (I KNOW RIGHT WHAT KIND OF DAD DOES THAT?), but I had Orhan Pamuk’s White Castle with me so not too bad…

But there were some interesting lectures on Endosulfan as a fertilizer, and both sides sent their representatives to talk about and debate the two standpoints. Let’s be honest here, I tuned out half of it, especially because the discussions segment was cordial and respectful (who wants to hear that?), but I must elaborate on a few salient points of the raging endosulfan dispute, a heartrending tale for many.

I got this excerpt from an article from the Scientific American, which wrote in June of 2010 that the EPA in the States has banned endosulfan as it harms farmworkers:

“Endosulfan is a chlorinated insecticide that is chemically similar to DDT, which was banned nearly 40 years ago. Like DDT, endosulfan builds up in the environment and in the bodies of people and wildlife, and it is transported around the world via winds and currents. Nearly all other organochlorine pesticides already have been banned.” The EPA classifies endosulfan in its most extreme toxicity category (highly acutely toxic) because relatively small doses are lethal, according to the Pesticide Action Network. India, the largest producer of endosulfan in the world, banned the toxin initially. Then it succumbed to corporate pressures and lifted the ban, but in May of this year once again the Supreme Court “banned the production, distribution and use of endosulfan in India because the pesticide has debilitating effects on humans and the environment”.

There have been cases documented of endosulfan spraying in Kerala causing birth defects in children of farmworkers. More than 135 individuals died in Kerala as a direct result of the pesticide, and the government, after initially hesitant to admit the fact, was pushed to deliver compensation in 2006. The pictures of the poor children in the photos in the main speaker’s presentation, some with stag horn fingers (literally look like the two shoots of deer antlers) and others suffering mental retardation, evokes such disgust at the entire charade of these industries.

Remember the whole DDT episode in US history and Rachel Carson’s investigative journalism? Well forty years later, similar disastrous toxins are pushed onto developing countries with much more sinister human effects. This not only occurs in India but happened all over South America, the Philippines, SE Asia… Thank the lord of sajiv kheti that the world finally embarks on the road towards eliminating the use of the toxic pesticide.

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The group of presentations that I felt was the most captivating dealt with adivasis and sajiv kheti. Our friends Michael and Swati live in a village an hour and a half from Vadodara. After graduating with degrees respectively in Engineering and Physics – they were studying at college at the same time my parents – they went on motorcycle adventures throughout India – North to South and East to West for months as newlyweds.  Then they settled down in what was an even more remote tribal village in 1991. I am really close to this couple individually, and love them like my aunt and uncle.  

They wrote short synopses about their adventures integrating and winning the support of the community, and the first entry titled “She’s Our Daughter Too” explains their initial reactions to becoming citizens of this village. If any of you want to read it, I have a copy ;). Two members of the village names Ishwar and Jayanti do a lot of work with the two, and gave their own presentations about local farming, the hardships, and their experience with chemical and natural fertilizers. With very informative pictures and some funny one liners, it was definitely the top presentation.  Ishwar and Jayanti were young kids when the Mozda experiment started, but these two young men are such all-rounders now and contribute such vibrant voices; from engineering solar panels and wind mills to speaking their minds and personal experiences in forest rights or organic farming seminars. These two are so well-accomplished and motivated but composed. Then Neeta Hardikar, a founding member of Anandi organization, also gave a very comprehensive and insightful talk. But more about that in a few days.

Presentations and discussions at this seminar enabled me to appreciate what the critics of the present development model were striving towards creating, a more sustainable and masses-friendly alternative.  Again I emphasize these men and women do not fancy a green world where everyone wears hemp skirts and live in self-growing food collectives. What I mean to say is that their visions for India’s future does not offer a view restricted to environmental and human rights colors. It also incorporates cost benefit analysis in terms of money and net return to the farmer. That is how any practical businessman would make his economical decisions!  The farming based on heavy usage of chemicals was actually failing to turn out high returns after the introductory few years.  The industry overly reliant on government largesse was becoming sick – creating such negative effects in the now that it hampered growth in the long run. Like using agricultural land for BT cotton (a widespread phenomenon), a quick cash crop that actually plummets the quality of soil after an initial few seasons. Remember I talked about fisherman knowing the limits of their current profits so they could keep a replenish-able stock for their future livelihoods in a much earlier blog post?  There are these tradeoffs that common sense and years of village wisdom can accept, but free market profit making cannot.

Why not help people create more locally adapted alternatives that they can control and do not require such massive centralized investment decisions? Decentralization, loose local decision making processes allow for the most sustainability, in terms of environment, human lives, AND prosperity. The farmers in this meeting who were reporting back their successes with organic farming are in fact true entrepreneurs, innovators, and modern risk takers! Who says they’re regressive? It seems some times that the people who do not understand the various shades of one monoculture of agriculture or industry do not understand the future.   If you want to know more about all of this, the main organizer, Kapil Shah, again a friend of my parents runs Jatan Trust, which promotes organic farming.

After the meeting we went to our friend Trupti and Rohit’s place, who my parents have know since they were 19.Trupti has a PhD and teaches economics at M.S. University and is the found of Sahiyar, a women’s group in GJ. She just finished a four volume study of the women’s movement and feminism’s history in India. She had finished the first two volumes when we visited her two years ago, and finally completed the set this summer. She gifted us a copy in Gujarati and although the set is translated into Hindi, hopefully one day I will be able to read them in English! Her volumes are acclaimed all over GJ. Later, when I went to St. Xavier’s University in A’bad, I saw the books with the intricate cover art sitting on their “recommended” shelf! She also revived “Manthan,” a youth group that R&T, Michael, Swati and my parents and many others we met in this trip formed like 25 years ago that I will speak about later. 

Rohit studied engineering, and now reads and writes and acts in the field of environmentalism. He even argues environmental cases in front of the High Court, representing the workers of a union, and sometimes even the Supreme Court, though he did not formally study law! He is such a daring man and gets in trouble frequently for his sleuths and published writings. The couple and their son who is my age live amidst almost an entirely Muslim neighborhood, when they are not Muslim.  Many of the members of sahiyar & manthan are from both the communities, in what is called ‘sensitive areas’.  Rohit told me about how he was going to an area of Baroda where factory workers work and live, and was told about the massive health problems they deal with. He noticed holes in their noses and birth defects in their children. First unsure about the cause, and standing for days in front of the gate of the factory trying to figure out the culprit, he suddenly had an epiphany and went to the law library. There he found a special case documented in England in the mid 20^th century of factory workers demonstrating the same deformities and health defects, realizing the cause was chromium! Rohit is himself affected by spending so much time with the factory and workers.

At the end of our visit, their son Manav and I went to a local ice cream store and brought back ice cream for everybody. I had such a good time in the family’s company that it saddens me I only get to visit these people once in a couple years.

This is the best time for me to say I had sooooo much fun with my 30+, 48+ year old friends. As I’m sitting at home in Charlotte recounting my experiences in GJ, I am missing them so much.

I really want to share some of my interactions with these activists, their dynamic histories, and the great insights and teachings I have received from them. Many of us have long histories of knowing each other; some are very close to my parents. Others I just met, but felt really strong connections to. I am really lucky to know such people advanced in their fields and vocal at the national and international platform from Delhi to UP to Bihar to Ahmedabad to Vadodara to Baria to Mozda to Rajpipla to Mera to… It’s unreal. So I really want to share all this with many of you all, I just don’t feel comfortable posting it all on the internet yet. Really, the relationships I’ve fostered were the most organic and fruitful part of my trip.

I worry this blog has been more fact based than feelings based, so I hope any of you can approach me and have individual conversations with me if you are interested. Most of you live far away, so please email me. Or like Maku, send me an endless list of deep questions to answer. No don’t. Just Kidding Maku, I definitely owe you that much for all that you’ve done for me, Obelix. (And I’m getting there after I finish all this…)

The next morning we went to our family friend Shreya’s place in Vadodara. She volunteers her time by helping design books and magazines of an independent, non-profit Gandhian publishing collective.  Swati, my friend, is the co-editor of its bi-monthly magazine. Shreya has also worked with a woman’s empowering organization during her free time, and visited the women in slums to build prospects for their lives and discuss how to approach personal conflicts like domestic violence. We decided why not indulge in slum tourism as well for a few hours? I assured myself that though indulging this cursorily was morally questionable, I still had the right intentions. Urban poverty was something we skipped on this trip for a closer scrutiny in the future, but I believe those who work in the slums of cities have the most seemingly hopeless and painful day to day grind. Dealing with the filth and the factory worker/ maid’s labor situations are unimaginably difficult; there are entrenched matters of power relations and unorganized labor issues that impede progress, swamped by aggressive politics as well. With slum dwellers issues of gender (saw a couple of girls who work as prostitutes at night), domestic violence, and sanitation are often compounded.

Also, there are mafias that control local politics and economics. Most of the shacks are home to squatting owners who pay the mafia to live there without police notice, though they can get evicted easily. We went to two slums, one only got sewage two years ago. The other was the ‘upper end’ of slums, a basthi. Still lower middle class, but the residents were most likely small-scaled entrepreneurs who owned pani puri stands or coffee carts, etc. Others drove rickshaws. Most were not factory laborers.

In slums, Muslims and Hindus are neighbors and there is rarely friction –Mosques and mandirs are literally right next to each other. But when Hindu Muslim riots break out, they can be deadly. Your neighbor could be watch you get slain without protest, or even be your killer. In such close quarters when situations like water pump issues or derogatory language or some riot in another city blow up, dangerous outbreaks of violence become intensified.

Oh and seeing some more posters of the chief minister just outside the slum reminded me of the whole new dimension of desperately amassing political power in shady, even brutal ways. The CM, Modi, basically sanctioned the 2002 communal riots, where many BJP supporting Hindus mercilessly killed over 1000 Muslims in ways that makes the body shudder and head hang low in shame. Interestingly, a coalition of secular and minority Indian Americans including Gujaratis like my dad in the US were able to get the States to ban Modi from stepping a foot in the country.  There are still some high profile investigations and cases and controversies raging on about his adminstration’s role nearly ten years later.

Anyways, if you want to know more about slum life, read City of Joy. It is seriously an excellently written book by Dominique Lapierre about a European priest who comes to live in Anandnagar, a slum in Calcutta in the 60s. I recently found out Patrick Swayze was in the 1992 film version of it. But don’t take the easy way out this time people. Read the book! I have it if anyone in Charlotte would like to borrow it.

We lunched at Shreya’s home. Dhosas – my favorite. I met her sons, and made two new friends!

Then, we were off to the bus station to go to Ahmedabad. It was a motivating first week in GJ.

the GJ Adventures Begin

Our activist friend, a young journalist, my dad, and myself went on a road trip to the south of Gujarat through Narmada, Tapi, and Valsad districts. We spent the night at our mutual friend’s ashramshala in the most stunningly luscious landscape I’ve ever seen. She runs an ashram shala, a Gandhian boarding school for kids from surrounding villages. This was the site of Gujarat’s plan to construct 7 dams to allegedly provide drinking and irrigation water to villages in central Gujarat with water shortages. This beautiful ashramshala would be drowned if the project were to take place, and so would more than a hundred villages.

Rice Paddy Fields

The Guesthouse at the School

A Painting by the Adivasis of the Region

Beautiful, Right?

I browsed the report made by the government of Gujarat on the dam and it is obvious that the implementation is not even economical, bringing negligible tangible profits. The return is 8%, or 8 paise on one Rupee. That is absolutely nothing for a project devised on such a massive scale with definite result of pushing out thousands of people, leaving their livelihoods destroyed, enormous land under farming and forests submerged.

Opponents question the dam’s published intentions mentioned in the preceding paragraph. The water that flows north in a 400 mile (WOW) canal is most likely meant to satisfy industries’ insatiable water needs.  Because the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada River was supposed to provide for the water hungry regions of Kutch and Saurashtra, but fell short of the claims originally made, the government is now looking for additional sources by diverting waters from rivers in these poor tribal areas.  The industries, farmers and city dwellers of the state in the powerful Ahmedabad-Vadodra urban-Industrial corridor got the lion’s share of Narmada waters and the water from these rivers too will go the same route. 

These three pictures were taken at the site of the dam

What’s quite sick is that no representative of the government nor any literature or notification informed the villagers of the fate of their land. After seeing two scientists regularly come to the river to take water samples, some tribals confronted the men, who claimed they were there to build check dams, small-scaled dams meant for local use. After our local host called our friend, he alerted them of the fishiness of that answer, as water samples are unnecessary for small dams. He did some research and found the information on the website and enlightened the villagers on the immensity of the project. The villagers were able to stop the scientists and engineers, but how long before the government gets violent?

All photos taken of check dams along the road.

Villagers we talked to are adamant in their refusal to leave, knowing no other form of work to feed their families and supplement their income besides farming. They will stay their ground – shunning bleak prospects of being shoved to the cities for unskilled labor. Many say they will risk being drowned rather than leave their homes.  These hilly villages are divided by border between Gujarat and Maharashtra, two of the most industrialized, urbanized states in India. The village leader we briefly talked to said that villagers from both sides of the border are suffering from this project implementation –GJ and MH jointly sanctioned this project. As a result, the two sides unite in rallies and coordinate campaigns against the 7 dams, believing together their forces will advance resistance efforts.

I do not mean that economic growth through industrialization or urbanization not encouraged.  But put yourself in the positions of these villagers. Would we willingly give up our land, houses, jobs, or neighborhoods for the greater progress of our state or nation? Moreover, most of the villagers in these affected communities have only recently come on the government’s radar –they have lived outside its constituency in the past. The only face of the State they end up dealing with is apathetic, corrupt, even violently intrusive one.

What happens when the prime agricultural land that serves as a nexus for the economic growth of entire communities, that bulwarks strings of livelihoods, is put on an official list for usurpation, without any local knowledge of the fact until it is often too late? What should occur when those whose lives have not only been sustaining on their own, but based on wisdom and practices adopted by generations, are offered little to no compensation and a complete lack of future job security? Those affected get their land taken away at prices far below the established market price; what is this but exploitation?

In published government report, externalities and hidden costs remain silent though in reality their presence becomes ugly.  I have take both AP micro and macroeconomics and I know the way the textbooks teach inquisitive and gullible students that the market will correct both good and bad externalities, or it is taken for granted that the government will fix the difference between the externality and market equilibrium, or that externalities also become damaging for the producer so everything will even out in the long run and the sticks will cross again. But this, in reality, is all BS. The negative externalities burdening powerless humans and the ecology isn’t factored in published costs or balanced sheets—completely absent as if there are none. This selectivity is a noxious form of propaganda.

A very important fact that I am perpetually reminded by locals is that these adivasis, like the man we talked to in Dharampur block about the 7 dams who refuses to leave even when the state machinery comes, are not romantic villagers frolicking in their paddy fields who only want to hold on to what they know without adapting to the ways of the modern world. The villagers weigh the future cash-flow of earnings from their piece of land and other supplemental products from the commons (forests, rivers…..) against the empty promises of compensation and urban jobs. Then they stage their ground.

They have seen the plight of displaced people who suffer because of these dam/factory/SEZ etc. constructions many times over and know what kind of power they are up against.

Narmada Bachao Andolan struggled for 20 years to oppose the Sardar Sarovar dam construction, one of the biggest movements in India? And still there are plans to build another network of displacement dams that can have the same consequences.  Through these projects, more problems are created than solved.

Most of these activists or cause supporters, including us, are not crazy lefties taking our cues from the 70s, but only want human development, ecological sustainability, and community inputs to be the primary instigator of industry and expansion. So we all, as citizens of this world, must internalize the fact that our free market ideology has several assets that are polluted by propaganda inherent to the modern laissez faire economic model that, in other words, is globalization. In most of these development schemes there is no fair competition, there is no rational self-interest. In fact, such displacement and rural dilution destroy free enterprize, annihilate local competition and market diversity.

By the way the activist friend circle I know some about is not widespread –most middle class urban people fully support Narendra Modi’s State policies. In fact I shouldn’t even specify Narendra Modi because the majority of middle class individuals in developing countries and the developed world DO silently suppress such andolans by fully backing the stability and progress of such adverse development power structures everywhere, on an international scale.  We all equate free market ideology with democracy.  But really, how can we tolerate processes akin to forced migration from the rural sector to urban labor, a migration that occurs without any significant quality of life improvements. In many cases, it is in fact a significant deterioration! I cannot imagine what the life of an unskilled laborer must be like, when he actively knows the air he breathes while mixing the chemicals for the industrial plant he works in 12 hours a day is slowly poisoning his blood. Or having one’s child subject to the harshness of cotton picking for a mere pittance. And in the case of India, the urban fate does not offer hopes of skilled factory work – most eke their miserable living from informal, seasonal day labor in construction work or other odd jobs. Some work in richer irrigated farm lands, maybe the agro-businesses that bought out their own plots. Truly is a subsistence economy…

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Gujarat’s roads and infrastructure are more up to date and better maintained than many parts of the other States we visited, thanks to a rigorous “development” policy by the Chief Minister, Narendra Modi. What is driving what the Economist magazine calls “India’s engine of growth” is industry, on a scale so massive that entire expanses of land have fallen to non-agricultural development. There are some significant projects in the name of economic growth that are being shoved down the throats of locals that those of you who don’t know should. GJ, like the entire developing world, has Special Economic Zones, tracts of land where companies are exempt from following national economic laws to incentivize foreign investment. Gujarat has 45.

Moreover a newly proposed Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor is going to take up 38% of Gujarat’s land. According to the DMIC’s website, the “Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor is a mega infra-structure project of USD 90 billion with the financial & technical aids from Japan, covering an overall length of 1483 KMs between the political and business capitals of India, i.e. Delhi and Mumbai.”

Their mission is this: “This project incorporates Nine Mega Industrial zones of about 200-250 sq. km., high speed freight line, three ports, and six air ports; a six-lane intersection-free expressway connecting Delhi and Mumbai and a 4000 MW power plant. Several industrial estates and clusters, industrial hubs, with top-of-the-line infrastructure would be developed along this corridor to attract more foreign investment.” 

Think about what is going to happen to the millions of people who will be pushed off, all the agricultural and forest land that livelihoods depend on eliminated, the cycle of these farmers, adivasis, or rural poor having to integrate themselves as low paid manual laborers in dangerous conditions… the ramifications are enormous. 

God did it rain! Monsoon season almost ruined our plans to see Vapi, an industrial waste-ridden town that jarringly marred the lush greenery that naturally enveloped the region. Gujarat is considered a more developed state now – it is even pushed back on major aid agencies’ (like Action Aid India) lists to make way for priority states like Bihar and Jharkand.  The Chief Minister of Gujarat would not mind this as it suits his vigorous campaign to propagate the state’s international image as a success story. Let me tell you, Narendra Modi is kind of a creepy dude. His pictures are on billboards EVERYWHERE; he is like a Big Brother watching over his Golden Gujarat.

Gujarat is clearly on the path to Americanization, where suburbs and right wing politics steer a middle class individual’s aspirations and faith.

Anyways, I digress. Back to Vapi. The article in New Earth magazine is eloquently and clearly written, and explains the situation better that my attempts. Please read this before continuing! See Here: http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/gentle-critical-pollution

I can tell you in my own words what Vapi looked like though. As I said, the rain ceaselessly poured from the sky. We almost decided the two-hour drive was not worth it because we would only be able to see two of the hotspots of pollution, and making our way in the toxic wasteland in heavy rain would be impossible. I thought what the hell, we came for this, lets go! So we did. Eating boiled corn and peanuts and having intensive discussions while listening to Bollywood tunes and staring at the paddy fields through the rivulets of rain streaming through the glass.

Then it all changed: Himalaya mountains of waste comprised of wires, plastics, chemical discharges. Some people were illegally operating open waste collection facilities. There was one authorized adjacent to the massive makeshift piles watched by guards. Right across the road men were selling paan and soda. The air smelt like pesticides. Worst of all, there was a disfiguring beauty to the streams of khus green and iron rust red water that pored out on the sides of the major roads in Vapi—dye factories unleashing their toxic waste into the open gutters in front of apartment complexes and bazaars. At the next place, we went to see the large scaled version of chemical dumping we saw on the streets. The story of Down to Earth that you read above was the cover story, and the picture on the cover showed the chemical saturated water being pored into the rivers nearby through pipes. Because it was monsoon the spouts were underwater and the toxic sludge we carefully walked through that horded the pathway didn’t allow us to go any further. Our guide is a risky guy and has to be careful when he ventures in these areas because he is involved in the struggle to bring the rampant pollution under control and call attention to the side effects of such waste. Powerful industrial tycoons are not fans of such he-who-must-not-be-named. We were being watched so although we came all the way from the northern end of the state to the southernmost part for this short experience, I wasn’t allowed to take pictures! How sad.  Sorry, use your imagination to experience the thrill and suspense of this clandestine operation!

These streams were EVERYWHERE

Vapi is the second most polluted area in India (!!), behind only Ankleshwar, which also happens to be in Gujarat. It was put on a list of such critically polluted cities that the government imposed a moratorium on their expansion. Now the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests is being a slacker and disregards its previous assessment of pollution, though the areas require environmental rehabilitation. In light of this blatant flaunting of national regulation and the dubious claims that pollution in these industrial hotbeds has been tamed, activists boldly confront this injustice.  Please, Please, Please take the time to read the full article on Vapi. Fake overtures by the government itself coupled with the alliance of foreign money and domestic giants pushing for industry expansion form a veritable opponent, but the area is a hothouse for confrontation and environmental activism.

What I saw was incredibly depressing levels of garbage and toxins carelessly externalized onto the Vapi community. So I wonder how many firms would survive if they were actually forced to clean up their mess, a useless word to use here as I use it to describe my room once in a while.  How does the destruction of health, land, and water figure into industrial development?  This corridor in Gujarat has the highest concentration of chemical industries in India. The mindless dumping and routine externalizing of costs hurt our eyes and our psyches, but also hurt our justice bones. We shouldn’t just feel pity, but feel anger. Why are these abundant waste creating factory cities hurting the people of GJ. Is it because they are illegal or uneconomical or politically impossible in the developed world? And why? With just a couple hours in Vapi and spending a couple of minutes reinforcing my sights with the article, I can witness the politics of globalization, the uneven scale that tips to the developed world with invisible weights.

 Pure for Sure? You Sure?

Great place to raise children, huh?

On the way back, we stopped by my best friend (out of all my parents’ friends –sorry rest of ya’ll!) parents’ place in a nearby town. 85+, the couple were so funny, sharp, and affectionate. They started an institution years ago that is Gandhian, but not in the traditional sense. For example, everyday the students and teachers sit in a circle and explain what they have done and what they extracted from the day. Students plan the lessons! Teachers take the students, which are being trained to be teachers, on trips all over India. The institution is one of only two recognized by UNESCO in all of South Asia for doing exceptional educational work. Her dad is so hilarious and cunningly slipped in what appeared to be a joke but was actually a very insightful and pointed comment about, well, personal stuff. He is an avid reader and doesn’t just read books and books on Gandhi only like many other Gandhians I know do. He let me borrow some of his prized books specifically dedicated to him. On the way he pinched me and said that if I didn’t return them to his daughter, I would have to come all the way back from America to personally return them to him and bear the shame.

I cannot tell you how lucky I am to have such friends/uncles/aunts that I love so much and who treat me like their children but simultaneously treat me like their friend and colleague. I feel like I have special status; the number of people in these activist fields that adopt me into their affections is unimaginable.  Some I have met or stayed in touch with every few years, others I might have met once or twice as a child, and the rest for the first time now.  And it is not even that they are friends of my family members or virtual or long distance collaborators.  It is the bond between people whose lives temporarily run parallel courses, whose journeys briefly intersect for some moments. We do not necessarily go in the same direction on the zoomed out picture, let alone travel together. Yet it is the people who have dedicated themselves to the public life and social service – with open arms and warm hearts—whose company I found myself most happy in. With a great ability to love and share their lives with others, I have learned so much both about social issues and how I want to lead my life during my brief times with them. I really don’t deserve all of it. But I’m eternally grateful! 

I have an observation I’d like to share with you all. First, because of the wars the States are entangled in, the financial crisis fissured even more deeply because of vicious partisan politics, and the perception of it becoming severely weakened by its own follies, the rest of the world is starting to take us less seriously. Even I thought our image was still sturdy before hearing what a lot of people were saying.

I have similar criticisms about the US. US policies and history can often be repulsive, but sadly few people acknowledge that some revolutionary thinking, great movers of history, and innovations are unique to America only. People brush aside the States, as if we contributed negligible amounts to modern thinking. It’s easy for them to be dismissive, though in many ways they are being rational. The way they disregard its diverse and progressive history is a risk to them but mostly us too. We need to salvage this if we want the US to count in the minds of the citizens of developing countries because we are being collectively delusional about our power. Hegemonic wars and debt-ridden consumerism are not just who we are. Like watch this video another good friend showed me. All you Indians will probably laugh but even the most liberal Americans will cringe after a few minutes. (Sorry cannot load it yet. Will try again later).

                                     

In Familiar Places

That concludes our trip outside of Gujarat. A key reason we started our trip outside of GJ for the initial three weeks was so I could distance myself from GJ and relate to India outside of my comfort zone, formed by the fact that both my parents are from this state and we visit it regularly.

We both wanted me to form my own mental and intellectual foundations about how to delve into the social work sphere by transcending traditions and familiarities.  Sooner or later I have to break barriers and, like Buddha did, embark on the path to enlightenment not by venturing to a far off place unconnected with his present, but by seeing how the other side lives just beyond the palace walls.

This first leg was about total immersion, in terms of language, issues, places and individuals we met.  And so the most fruitful outcomes of visiting those initiatives in Bihar, Jharkand, and UP— areas with completely different political, cultural and socioeconomic “development” statuses was that I interacted with very distinct personalities and perspectives on how to include the “other” in India’s development process. They each approached tribal, Dalit or OBC empowerment and protection advocacy in different ways.  From rallies to organized work to social audits, andolans/sangathans, and NGOs, I could myself discover and weigh in on the merits of these different approaches through my own fieldwork and interactions.

Many activists in GJ and rest of India know each other and have important observations about each other’s work, but I purposefully didn’t want to be influenced by them from the beginning, until I myself plunged into first hand experience.  They must have their personal, ideological, and social resonances/disagreements with each other, having spent their lives as activists refining and coming to their own beliefs, debating with other in the vast change makers’ circle.  I tried to avoid asking about all these dynamics in the initial stages of my trip.  Sometimes people close to us unintentionally form a protective bubble around us, inhibiting us from grasping certain concepts and exploring ideologies or lines of work alien to them or “not the right one” in their opinions.  All the same, I am so much indebted to their advice and observations. I emphatically clarify this.

On returning to Gujarat, I got to replenish myself at my grandparents’ for a day in Anera, but even that included my talking to the entire assembly of their educational institution about our experiences – and that too in Gujarati!  We had no time to slow down.  There were so many people to meet and so much to do that we were on the move.  

Thus "the Adventures of Aashna the Indian-American" begin!

Finally in the Field

After spending time with the couple’s adorably badmaash (naughty) child and understanding the basics of the social audit process and the other work they are involved in, we met 8 student volunteers and their volunteer team leader who were the actual workers who sifted through the government records and did the meticulous work of sorting through stacks of papers and creating survey sheets month by month, beneficiary by beneficiary. The records in local government offices are on paper and aren’t computerized, adding an onerous difficulty on the volunteers.

They were spread out on the floor of a huge room doing the detailed work before the actual field visits, tallying numbers and identifying families by name the night we arrived. Most were urban young people studying economics at Delhi University, and for some the audit experience was the first time they had been to a village. But their resolve and persistence in their work was amazingly admirable and impressive, even in the field when the sweat became unbearable and the bugs inexorably vicious. The day after we all drove to a middle school, the headquarters of the week long audit process that culminated in a public hearing, where villagers would come from neighboring panchayats and speak out against injustices, retelling experiences and finding solidarity with other neglected recipients. When we went from hut to hut, several women and a few men gathered their courage and vowed to speak at the assembly by issuing an affidavit, a primary source that documents their plight. Some signed/ thumb printed affidavits saying for example that out of 36 kg of rice allocated in their name, they got absolutely nothing. Others documented experiences of being bribed by powerful members of the village to give fake answers to us. Also, a few government officials are invited. On our first day the student volunteers were culling through the sheets of paper and describing the process of interviewing individuals listed as recipients. Sadly, I cannot read Hindi, that too handwritten, except some printed words (when it is similar to Gujarati), so I could not man a file by myself because the sheets were in Hindi and all the answers had to be written in Hindi as well. I could recognize some letters, so I knew a Sandeep from a Dilip and a Yadav from a Thakor but that was it. The initial explanation process lasted a couple hours, so I wandered through the classrooms, talking to a few teachers and peeking at the students through the doorways. These teachers had a stick in one hand and would hit a student if he was whispering to a neighbor. Child abuse!

One teacher pulled me into the room and I had to embarrassingly choke out few Hindi sentences in front of a classroom of forty 6^th graders. I explained the ICDS – the teacher gave me a piece of chalk and I wrote it on the board! I am sure the kids were thrilled with this unexpected flustering guest speaker. Not. I told him I was Gujarati and he demanded I write a few words on the board. The languages are quite similar actually, so by the end of this trip I can understand 70% of conversations in Hindi. I have a natural comfort with learning languages and being thrown into an environment where English is not an option, forcefully developed my knowledge. Total immersion. Embarrassing nearly all the time, but it works.

Then the fieldwork began. My god, it was hot like a sauna. What are those Swedish people thinking? It was the days right before the rains so the sun was bright and the atmosphere suffocatingly humid. My dad and I joked that showering was rendered useless, we were literally drenched in sweat for days. That was the ultimate discomfort – the feeling that my skin was actually lit on fire. The sticky fuel became noxious bugspray. Only a daily Thumbs Up (an incredibly better version of Coke) seemed to provide temporary relief.

My dad and I, two Delhi students, and an American educated IT man wrestling with potent inner empathy and disillusionment with Western middle class lifestyle walked a km to the nearest group of villages to begin gathering information. With several files in hand that documented government claims by month on one half and space to verify the reality from the beneficiary on the other, we set off to find some answers. First we visited the Yadav cluster. The Yadavs had geographical supremacy –we quickly caught on to the phenomenon that the well off members of a community have easier access to the towns, lie closer to convenient areas like hospitals, schools, shops, and food markets. Brahmins, Thakors, and other higher caste members generally discriminated against Yadavs. The previous chief minister of Bihar being a Yadav was supposed to be a symbol of lower caste empowerment. However, the social dynamics of each locality differ, and in this hamlet the Yadavs were the landholders and the Dalits the laborers.

Dalit Tolla

Powerful worker-master relations brewed and overflowed into the child development and anganvadi attendance (preschool) schemes we were documenting. Marx got the worker master relationship dead on.  Many of the Yadavs had stucco houses and brick temples, several cows and livestock— a few even had tractors (seemed like a palace made of diamonds for the other total have-nots). They ended up being compensated 500 rupees per child for anganvadi uniforms, instead of the 250 they should have received. They also got more rice and beans when it was clear that though they were by our standards not exactly rich, they were clearly above the poverty line, even well off compared to the poor in their village. Spending on comfortably living rural families is unjust, when the pool of those who qualify for the malnutrition provisions is vast. But the Yadav clan had strong connections with the local panchayat – one even ran the local anganvadi and probably was in cahoots with the sevika! There were several claimants for the few spots that qualified –five brothers… think about how many “malnourished” children must be running around in their own households and how many women become pregnant or lactating over the years to qualify for those categories as well!!! And their powerful influence caused some of the other clans who depended on the Yadavs for their livelihood to hesitate before telling the truth. We could tell some gave us rehearsed answers.

My favorite kid ever

We continued on, wandering through the mud huts, asking locals with curious expressions where Mr. X lived, where the wife of Mr. Y lived, the names of their children. Throughout the three days we were there, we often walked through the same communal spaces between huts 6-7 times in a few hours, wandering directionless. They didn’t have addresses, so there was no way to locate anybody by a piece of paper! That added to the tedium. Also, many of the husbands of the other clusters, the Yadav Tola (neighborhood) was only one out of several where the muslims, dalits, tribals and others lived separately, went to Delhi or Panjab for labor, not finding sufficient arable land in their backyard. The women went to the field for backbreaking work from 7 till 5 in the afternoon, nurturing the few crops on the small plot of land they either owned or most likely tilled for a landowner for a kg of rice and a 1/4th kg of beans or some flour and Rs 5-10 a day (meager supplies). That is when 3 kg of rice and 1.5 kg of dahl a month make the most vital difference! Enough whereby a man could stay back for a couple months to be with the mother and child instead of migrating hundreds of miles away to provide for them.

The sheets of data

The process of getting affidavits by getting the person's thumbprint

Moving on, the Mahadalits (lowest of the Dalits, how low!) lived in huts made with intertwining bark and patched with glops of dried cow dung. They received nothing out of what the sarkar (government) said they did. Most of them didn’t even make the list. Others didn’t even know they were on the official Indian government ICDS scheme list. Most pregnant women got a few kg near the end of their pregnancy cycle but none when their baby was born. One women was supposedly allocated 60 kg rice, 30 kg dahl. She got 1 kg rice and 0.25 kg dahl! It is outrageous, in a country with the world’s most malnourished children. If some knew their rights and were enlightened by the social audit process and complained to those who handed out the supplies, the officials said take it or leave it. In our tallies, numerous got sub-standard rice.  There is a government social ladder, and each official from the small village to Araria to Patna gets a slice of the pie. For example, out of 11,000 rupees allocated to the anganvadi schools, government officials usurp 7,000!!! It’s absolutely madness! The IT volunteer who was part of the process for 6 grueling weeks told me that the issue isn’t only corruption. I was warned to understand that the government employee who oversees the entire anganvadi and ICDS scheme for the area receives a pittance for his salary. Believing he deserves more, he takes some from the pot. To appease higher officers, they get some too. Only 4,000 are used for the people, and then the land holding well-off few in the village take another chunk.

I believe when you read about my encounters with people in this last few days, how they each gently pulled on the strings of my psyche for a collectively forceful jerk, you will understand what has begun to fester in my heart.

The children in the Muslim and Dalit tolas we visited were mostly naked, the boys ran around underwear-less till the age of 5. The girls didn’t put on a top until 7 or 8. The women wore rubbed and torn polyester saris in the suffocating heat; cotton is breathable but expensive and easily browns. The men rarely had on a shirt. The old women didn’t wear a blouse. What a tight budget, when you have to worry about cloth for underwear or one blouse! Think about that situation! Let it sit in your mind!

Making Bubbles!

All pictures from the Muslim tola

The children were stained with dirt, their hair washed rarely. Rural poverty has a distinct smell, from the villages of Gujarat to the fields of northern Bihar. It has a pungency, an overpowering sensation of being engulfed and enveloped in the odor. It isn’t gross, it doesn’t make you gag or anything. But honestly, with the men gone for months and the women gone all day, the children are not watched over at all. We shouldn’t make these trips personal; we shouldn’t rant about the poverty, claiming it blows our minds. There is an injustice in that rudeness. However, I could not help but feel individually affected by the trends I saw. So many the girls above the age of 5 had a child on their hips. In the Mahadalit tola, almost all children but a handful had a skin condition – bumps, rashes, patches of white flesh. Others had eye cysts or inflated eyeballs, as if these signs were right of passage through childhood.

I was talking to a woman in the Muslim tola. She asked me if I was married. I smiled, I’m only seventeen. But most of the women, actually girls, are married off as soon as puberty hits, at 12 or 13. Those my age were pregnant with their second or third child. Puts my life into perspective in a glaringly, disturbingly, questioning way. Not even one woman, from the Yadav to the Thakkor to the Muslim to the Dalit tola signed their name on the affidavit. Few of the poorer mothers sent their children to school. To say schools are overcrowded is an understatement –50,70 students in one classroom. No place to sit!

Local anganvadi (kindergarten)

Teachers, some claimed, discriminate against lower caste members, hitting them with sticks if they forget an answer or a pencil, even down right ignoring them. Teachers may show up late and students may wait hours to get in a few lessons. Then there are private schools; often low quality institutions run like profit maximizing initiatives for a few enterprising individuals. We saw tuition classes at night with lanterns among the poor tolas. Several students get the fourth/fifth grade and cannot read a word. A grandfather can read and write better than his grandson. Is that not twisted?

One of the few people in the Dalit tola reading

The need is overpowering: we can’t say education is the most urgent need or healthcare is the pressing need or preventing land displacement is the only need. They are all so heavily interconnected and twisted. I also have some problems with the countless NGOs or government officials focusing their efforts on building schools or setting up clinics. Building is the easy part! What about teacher or doctor salaries? What about medicine or textbook costs? Who is going to make sure regular maintenance costs are covered? How are you going to prevent overcrowding? If someone has malaria, are you going to treat them with Chloroquine or medicine for TB b/c it’s the only tangible thing left to do as addressing the root cause is too hard to accomplish? How are you going to prevent local caste discrimination in providing services? What are you going to do to make sure the facility is running in 5 years? We saw a few abandoned schools near our field visits on the trip, and it glaringly pointed out the futility in individual thing based development.

Anyways, I had sooooooooooooooo much fun with these children. I loved that we were there for four days, so I kept seeing the same kids playing with sticks, carrying their siblings, day after day. I would say hi to them on their way to the town or on their way to school and I would get a bright wave in return each morning on the way to the villages.

Those smiles are tattooed in my heart. The kids absolutely fell in love with the camera – all of them became high fashion models. Move over Tyra. They were really shy at first, but soon they were climbing all over me and never stopped laughing. I hate those stupid foreign photographers who take pictures of poorer children all sad and forlorn. I highly doubt that for the time a new outsider comes to their village they ever stop showing their affection, generosity, and mischievousness. I resolve to do an exhibition on children where they are all smiling. Because that is my truth.

Unlike the rally in our earlier stop, we outsiders weren’t allying with the cause of the locals, we weren’t staging a demonstration for the city people and local media. It wasn’t romantic work. People who rightly claimed we were only there for a few days sometimes initially faced us with hesitation, skepticism or even some hostility. They cried that if some of the locals told the truth about their exploitation and the corruption or inadequacy of the anganvadis, then they would face the wrath of the people that they depended on for survival. It was less risky to lie to us. Our meetings were also brief. But through conversing with the locals, listening to their anger, showing solidarity, picking up their babies, I was able to selfishly gather a kind of happiness and tranquility I have rarely ever felt. I hope they felt at least a ray of that glow.

After spontaneously going to the beautiful Nepal for a day with friends of friends, we have finally arrived home to Gujarat, back to familiar places and faces. No more sleeping on the hard stone floor, no more toilet troubles, no more sweat, no more red ants, NO MORE RICE. Well, I can't promise myself all those luxuries, but I am adamant on the last one.