Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Post-India plans: set.

As sad as it is, I will have to leave India in August. Thinking of that day pains me, but at least now I have something very exciting to look forward to upon my return to the States:

I'll be pursuing a masters in mechanical engineering at MIT!!!

Here are my top 5 reactions to the news of my acceptance:

5. Mom: "My baby is coming back to the east coast!" (Implied: "my baby is coming home for Rosh Hoshanah!")

4. Brother Ben: "Welcome back to civilization!"

3. Someone, blanking on who: "You're going to die. (pause) ...in the snow, I mean."

2. Vijay the Dukanwallah (who is fluent in English): "MIT? Is that Massachusetts Institute of Technology? Which state is that in?"

1. Coworker: "Where...? Oh, N-IT." (NIT = National Institute of Technology, the second-tier Indian science and engineering university system [IIT being the first tier system].)

See you in Boston! :)

Friday, February 11, 2011

A thought...

I lost my Stanford hoodie in Delhi (I have since replaced it, don't you worry).

An Indian guy, who did not attend Stanford, was wearing a Stanford hoodie.

Connect the dots...

Next time I see him (if there is a next time--he might now avoid my bus stop like the plague), I'll have to check if the drawstring in the hood is missing and the kangaroo pocket is unstitched and floppy on the left. If so, HE IS WEARING MY SWEATSHIRT. Like, a sweatshirt I actually owned for 5 years. THAT WOULD BE PURE INSANITY.


Thursday, February 10, 2011

Stanford in Sanjauli

This morning, while waiting at the bus stop on my way to work, I noticed a cardinal-colored hooded sweatshirt out of the corner of my eye. At the angle he was standing in relation to me, all I could see were the letters "ORD." But that was enough.

I became stupid-excited. I ran up to this stranger, and as I expected, it was indeed the same Stanford hoodie that I have owned since high school and still wear with pride (oh how elitist I am). I practically yelled in Hindi, "मेरे पास यह स्वेटशर्ट है! मैं स्टन्फोर्ड गयी!!" ("I have this sweatshirt! I went to Stanford!" In retrospect, I'm fairly certain "sweatshirt" is not a word in Hindi, and I should've said "sweater.") His response? He spoke no words but shot me a look that whispered "please don't molest me."

Of course, I continued to molest him (not physically, only verbally, I promise):

Me: "Stanford? University? I went there!"
Victim: Stare pleading, "please get away from me."
Me: "Your sweatshirt! It says Stanford." Pointing at his chest: "See, STANFORD!"
Victim: Glance upwards, asking Vishnu or other Hindu god, "why won't this insane woman leave me alone?"
Me: "Stanford is a university, I attended that university, and I have the same sweatshirt you're wearing!"
Victim: Shifts his eyes back and forth, and then spins his head around, in a desperate search for someone, anyone, to rescue him from his attacker
Me, excitement subsiding: "FINE. I'll go."

Ok, I lied. My excitement still hasn't subsided. SOMEONE WAS WEARING MY FAVORITE STANFORD HOODIE, THE ICON OF MY UNDERGRADUATE EXPERIENCE, TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!111oneone.

(No, I do not know how Indians manage to get American university sweatshirts. I have seen Maryland, Florida, UMiami, Harvard, Ohio State, Nebraska, Brigham Young, etc. I assume these sweatshirts are donated by Americans to some organization or another, and then they end up being sold for super cheap in secondhand markets or on the street in India. How the sweatshirt travels from point A to point B is beyond my comprehension.)

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Follow-up to previous post: labor, farmers, and stigma

Molly, both in a comment on my previous post and on her blog, added a third suggestion as to why the quarry workers don't want to return to agriculture:

"in nepal, anyway, there seems to be a stigma associated with traditional agricultural and husbandry livelihoods among the younger generations. even when other factors might make agriculture a more viable option, it is viewed as undesirable and "backward" to continue the backbreaking labor of your parents' and grand-parents' generations."

I'm honestly not sure if this theory could be applied to this particular situation or not. In many regions of India, there is a stigma associated with labor--exactly the kind of work in which these quarry workers are engaging. That's why many states, including Himachal Pradesh, must import laborers from other states, usually Bihar (but sometimes Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal).* In fact, this quarry employs Biharis in addition to local people, because although many local people do work in the quarry, there are still not enough laborers. I was a bit surprised, actually, that any Himachali (ok, these people are culturally Punjabi) would partake in such labor. Even MNREGA, India's national scheme to provide paid employment through village construction projects (for instance, the government will pay villagers to work as laborers to build their own roads), has not been successful in these villages due to their aversion to labor. So it is quite an anomaly, at least to me, that they are willing to work in the quarry. My only explanation is they've somehow determined that this "stone-crushing" labor is different in nature from the MNREGA labor, or that perhaps they view this as a stable job opportunity, whereas most construction labor, government-sanctioned or otherwise, is contractual.

Ok instead of addressing Molly's query, I went off on a labor tangent. So is there also a stigma associated with the traditional agricultural vocations? I'm not sure. In some circles in India, there seems to be a concept of the "noble small farmer," largely thanks to Gandhi (as in Mahatma, but perhaps some of the other Gandhis as well), who famously declared that "India lives in its villages." True to this statement, these circles of Indians view the villages as the strongholds, and thus the villagers as the guardians, of traditional values, the threads that hold the sari of Indian society together.** These circles, it should be noted, probably do not include the small farmer. (Farmers may very well believe that traditional values are better upheld in their village than in a city. What I mean is that farmers may not be among the circles of Indians who subscribe to the "noble small farmer" notion.)

Life is no piece of cake for small farmers. Sure, some lead successful farming businesses and can support their family, but for many life is extremely difficult, as evidenced by the very high and ever-rising suicide rate among small farmers in India. Droughts can wipe out their crops (and thus their income) for an entire season, middlemen between the farmer and the buyer cheat them out of a huge proportion of their money, incredible debt accumulates, etc. My bet is that many, if not most, small farmers would prefer wealth (at least enough to support their families) to "noble" poverty.

I think that, in the words of my friend Jhanvi,*** young people's "dream is to go urban and go big" mostly because they've seen the suffering of their parents and want out. We all want better lives, right? So agriculture is "undesirable," yes, because it means a life of struggle. But do young people stigmatize agriculture as "backward"? I think that depends on the region. In Himachal Pradesh, for example, the apple crop has made farmers relatively wealthy. Apples are a newish crop, first introduced by an American in 1916, so in a way they represent agriculture moving forward. Plus the wealth apples bring results in less dissatisfaction with the agricultural profession. Meanwhile, my coworker Shatabdi, who is from West Bengal, says that in her state, agriculture is "out of fashion" among the youth because of the struggle associated with it. She thinks there is a stigma against these traditional professions in regions where crops have been failing, but that no such stigma exists in areas with successful farming businesses, such as in Punjab. Really, it's a stigma against poverty more than against agriculture.

But what about the concerned villages in Nalagarh? These villages, which straddle the Himachal Pradesh-Punjab cultural and geographical divide, have not seen as much agricultural success as their neighbors on either side of the divide, due to lack of water for irrigation (remember from my previous post, the quarry has pretty much dried up the river). Thus it is likely the youth do indeed have a stigma against pursuing agrarian professions--maybe animal husbandry could become a more viable option than working in the quarry, but these young people have never witnessed that.

Speaking of small farmers, check out Digital Green. My friend Indrani has won a number of big awards for her fantastic work in both this organization and with her research at Microsoft Research and for her PhD at IIT Bombay. Her work focuses on empowering farmers, many of whom are illiterate or low-literate, through text-free cell phone applications, some of which could cut out the cheating middlemen mentioned above. If she sees this blog post, I'm sure she'll criticize it for having a very Western perspective (which, obviously, it does. I am Western, after all!). Perhaps I should ask for her opinion on all of this, because she has significantly more experience in development than I do, has a much better grasp on Indian attitudes than me (she is Indian, after all!), and would be sure to have better insight.

*Migrant labor within India is a whole other can of worms I'm too lazy to open right now, but it certainly warrants further discussion.

**Personally, I believe that values are maintained by individuals and families, so place, urban or rural, has little to do with how people stay true to their traditional values or not. Sure there are outside influences, but those exist in both urban and rural areas, and it's up to the individual how to incorporate these influences (or not) into their value system. However, it's probably true that outside influences are less strong in rural areas, so perhaps that is why many Indians believe villages are the support beams of Indian society.

***While I'm pimping out Indrani, I might as well pimp out Jhanvi some more too. Check out her films (a different link than above). Jhanvi is an aspiring filmmaker who can beautifully depict any story, from fashion to education, from Stanford to South Asia (she also taught some of her tricks to young filmmakers in Bhutan). She's even on IMDB!! You should also know that Jhanvi specifically asked me not to link to her stuff. That's how humble she is. Jhanvi, I know I just deeply embarrassed you, but I do so because I love you and think everyone should see your great films. So stop blushing.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

The New Jersey of Himachal Pradesh

I just returned from a field visit to two villages in Nalagarh Tehsil, Himachal Pradesh. Nalagarh is an industrial area and looks like that section of the Jersey Turnpike with all the smokestacks and polluted air and general nastiness. This was my first visit to industrial India (as opposed to rural and urban India, though I guess this is still technically rural). While Nalagarh's situation is probably not nearly as bad as the steel plants in Jharkhand or the mines in Orissa, it wasn't pretty.

One village we visited, Baglehar, is home to a "stone-crushing" operation. Turns out this means a quarry. The other village, Melheni, does not host any industrial projects, but its residents participate in the "stone crushing." Basically, villagers go to the quarry, cut out large rocks from the earth (I didn't catch what type of rock), fill up tractor-pulled truck beds with these rocks (I didn't actually see any crushed stone), and deliver these rocks to cement companies, who I suppose are the real stone crushers. The main road in the area is clogged with tractor traffic going to and from the quarry.

This quarry has caused a number of problems in Baglehar, Melheni, and surrounding villages. The quarry appears to sit on a riverbed, and the river has all but dried up. What little water does remain is heavily polluted and unusable for drinking water or even irrigation. Therefore these villages have no water, which is, obviously, a tremendous problem. I was shocked to see the toilets at Melheni's primary school were locked. Apparently they have no water to flush the toilets, so they cannot use them--better to lock them so people don't try to. Instead, children must practice open defecation and urination. Melheni gets water delivered by large tanker trucks every few months, and this limited water supply has led to many conflicts among villagers. While Baglehar utilizes ground water, it is not enough (not to mention far from clean), and when tankers come some women must wait for 3 hours or more to collect their share of water.

In addition to the water problems, the workers are exposed to all sorts of harmful chemicals and will probably suffer from (and possibly die young of) some avoidable respiratory disease, like at any quarry or mine. Plus much of the quarry activity is illegal and run by a cement cartel that exploits the workers. All sorts of health and human rights issues. The cement cartel, like all cartels in India, wields its power through big politicians, and this corruption means stopping the cartel is next to impossible, unless India can successfully eradicate corruption from its political and bureaucratic systems--a very, very difficult task in this country.

One coworker was particularly distraught over the situation. "We need to protest!" he proclaimed. "We need to stop these illegal, harmful operations!" Well, it's just not that simple. This quarry has been successful in providing much-needed income that the villagers have thus far been unable to earn otherwise, as evidenced by the relative wealth in Baglehar (this relative wealth incited another coworker to comment, "Why are we even here? Look at these houses! This village is wealthy and does not need our help!") If one were to protest and shut down the quarry, who would really lose? The villagers. The corporations would simply move the operation elsewhere and still make their money (and harm other environments and people), while these villagers would lose their jobs. But I don't think the villagers would support a protest in the first place, and if they don't support it, then the protest could not be successful.

The upset coworker went around asking villagers if they would leave the quarry if provided with additional buffaloes so that they could sell more milk. After all, they only make Rs 150 per day at the quarry, and they could certainly make more than that selling dairy products--plus they wouldn't have to suffer the health costs. Their answer? No. And I do not find this surprising at all. Why?
  1. They don't understand the health costs. Sure, it may seem fairly obvious that if you're being exposed to harmful chemicals that you will have to seek expensive medical treatment. But (a) they don't know about the effects of the pollutants and (b) many will not seek medical attention anyway. (This is a big problem in the cookstove world. We say "hey all this smoke is killing your lungs" and they respond "well, everyone has a cough.")
  2. They don't want to go back to agriculture and animal husbandry. Yes, breaking rocks and loading them onto a tractor is very labor intensive. But so is taking care of buffaloes. You need to feed them, bathe them, clean up their excrement, milk them, take them to a veterinarian when they fall ill. And caring for animals could cost more than going to the quarry--for example, you need to buy fodder (there are no forests in the area, and while the fields provide some fodder after harvesting, that is only once or twice a year, and it is not enough). Plus agriculture and animal husbandry can be unpredictable, whereas the quarry provides a stable source of income.
So how could you convince villagers to leave the quarry? Devise an alternative livelihood opportunity that provides them with a stable income greater than Rs 150/day. And that is quite difficult--new ventures come with a great deal of uncertainty.

To me, this problem is similar to the global oil problem, or the deforestation problem in Madagascar. You can only stop these environment-degrading activities if you cut the demand. As long as there is demand for cement--and as India continues to develop, pave more roads, and construct more buildings, and upgrade its infrastructure, this demand will not be declining any time soon--there will be quarries and the associated environmental and social damage.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

I can haz computer? No, I cannot haz.

My laptop died. I tried to borrow one of IIRD's 7 laptops, but none of them work either. So now I have no computer and thus no Internet at home. So no more blog posts for a while (even though I've been working on one particular post for a while). Sorry!