Everyone is talking about Hitler.

Remember how I blogged about the new Hitler store in Ahmedabad? Twice? Well, I'm not the only one talking about it. The NYTimes is talking about it, too: click here to read the article and see a picture of the storefront (the picture I couldn't manage to get because I was passing by in an autorickshaw). This quote by the store owner pretty much says it all:

“None of the other people are complaining, only a few Jewish families. I have not hurt any sentiments of the majority Hindu community. If he did something in Germany, is that our concern?” Mr. Shah asked.

He said he thought Hitler was a “good, catchy” name for his shop. In fact, his business plan seems to include cashing in on the name to attract customers. “We have not written anything below the sign or on our cards to indicate what we sell to generate mystery,” he said. “The customers who come in tell me they came in seeing the name.”

Update: Israel plans to ask Chief Minister Modi to force the Hitler store to change its name. Click here to read more.

Red is not the only color in Gumla.

I'm making up for my recent boring, all-text posts with some photos from a week of field work in Gumla District, Jharkhand:

On my first day I visited some villages in Raidih block. It turned out many villages were almost empty because Monday is the weekly haat, or market. People from every village in the area flock to the haat, which sees about 5000 people every week. Adivasi haats are famous for having a party atmosphere and a lot of drinking. I did not witness that here, so I guess that reputation comes from another adivasi region. Here are some photos from the haat:

And photos from my village visits, during which I held group discussions about irrigation:

For some reason the self-help group thought it would be funny if I pretended to be their accountant in the photo.

That man in blue is covering his face because he was sneezing.

Drawing a map of their village.

This house was painted for a wedding back in April. The doorway says "swagatam," or "welcome."

 There was a solar panel store in the district headquarters. Or more accurately, an electronics store that also sold solar panels so that you could actually use the electronics you purchase--because what good is a TV if you don't have reliable electricity? The solar panels are fairly cheap (and maybe secondhand?): Rs 1800 for the small ones, which are rated at 20 W and can power 2 light bulbs for 4 hours (the store also sells light bulbs, of course). 

There are missionaries all over the adivasi regions of India. This village is one of many that has converted to Christianity.

It may be hard to tell in this photo, but this woman has tattoos on her face (note her forehead). Many adivasi women in this region have tattoos all over their bodies. The heaviest tattoos I saw were on women's forearms. I didn't want ask about the tattoos because I thought it might be a sensitive issue. Luckily, I didn't have to: sometimes the women would ask me where my tattoos were! I took advantage of this and asked them why they have tattoos. They believe that the tattoos are required to allow their spirits to leave their bodies after death; without the tattoos, their spirits would be trapped. However, this traditional practice seems to be on its way out, as many of the younger generation do not have tattoos (perhaps because of the influence of Christianity in the region?).

 carrying wood to be used as fuel

typical village house, with an awesome jackfruit tree

And some agriculture/scenery:

animals grazing on land that hasn't been tilled yet

People are finally sowing!! (See this previous post to understand why this is exciting.)

rice paddies--that actually have rice, despite the poor monsoon! here's hoping the yield is alright come harvesting time.

forest near Palkot

forest near Palkot. the terrain was very bouldery, not unlike Hampi in Karnataka.

mango on a tree

 I got around on a motorcycle. See, Mom, I wasn't lying when I said I wear a helmet.

 

...and yes, "red" in the title of this post is referring to the Maoist presence in Gumla. Don't worry, they have given permission to the NGO to operate in the area and do not bother them. Because I was with a Maoist-approved NGO, I was safe. (To clarify, this is not a rebel NGO. They are also friendly with the Indian government. They just do what they need to do in order to get work done in these communities.) To be honest, nothing seemed out of the ordinary and I never would have known I was in a Maoist area if the NGO hadn't told me.

Follow up to Hitler: Opening Soon

I got some interesting responses to my previous post, and I thought I should share:

1) One friend of mine from Delhi thought I was unfairly picking on Hindus by only discussing the Ahmedabad riots.The reason I chose to discuss Ahmedabad is because the Hitler store I saw was located in Ahmedabad--I thought that if my racial politics theory about Hitler's popularity had any legitimacy at all (and I fully admit that it might have zero legitimacy; I'm no expert), then it would make sense that I saw a store celebrating Hitler in a city like Ahmedabad, which is home to particularly tense ethnic relations, as evidenced by the riots.

This friend felt (or at least, I think he felt) that I should have balanced my argument with an example of Muslims killing Hindus. He mentioned the murders of millions of Hindus crossing the border from East Pakistan into India during Partition. However, I think he might be equally unfair as I was with my Ahmedabad example to only mention the devastating massacres committed by Muslims against East Pakistani Hindus. Hindus killed Muslims too, on both eastern and western borders. Muslims also killed Sikhs and Hindus on the western border in addition to the East Pakistanis. Sikhs killed Muslims. Basically, everybody was killing everybody as they fled across newly-formed borders, and millions from all these ethnic groups were brutally murdered. My friend also did not need to go as far back as 1947 to find an appropriate example of Muslims violently attacking and killing Hindus. There are many examples in more recent history, including several bombings. It is a back-and-forth cycle of violence. Wikipedia provides a summary of religious violence in India and gives many examples of various groups killing each other. Read it here.

2) Two other friends of mine thought the fascination with Hitler had more to do with the fight for independence against the British during World War II than with present-day racial politics. Following the age-old adage of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, the leader of the Indian National Army (INA), a group of soldiers who broke away from the British army during WW2 in order to fight for their independence, sought the support of Hitler and Mussolini.

A huge percentage, if not the majority, of the British army consisted of Indian soldiers. I visited some WW2 battlegrounds, war memorials, and cemeteries in Northeast India (specifically, in Nagaland and Manipur) in May 2011. At the cemetery in Kohima, there were very few British names among the hundreds of Indian names (even if people had been cremated, they had a tombstone). I soon crossed the state border into Manipur and learned about the soldiers who abandoned and fought against British (really Indian) soldiers such as those commemorated in Nagaland. In Moirang, I visited the INA Museum, which proved enlightening. I knew that the INA worked with the Japanese against the British in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, and I knew that they would basically ally with anyone who was against the British, but for some reason seeing a photo of Bose shaking hands with Hitler was like a smack in the face. I should not have been surprised at all to see this, yet there I was, confronted with evidence of a man fighting against the oppression of his nation joining hands with a man inflicting oppression upon another nation--of an oppressed hand-in-hand with an oppressor. It felt quite unsettling to see someone I had repeatedly heard lauded as a hero with someone I have always thought of as a villain in the context of my own family history. Because I'm a bad daughter who only ever buys her father books as gifts, I purchased a book entitled Bose in Nazi Germany by Romain Hayes (read a review here) from the museum gift shop. I haven't had the chance to read it yet, but my dad said it was very interesting and I should pick it up.

outside the INA Museum in Moirang is the spot where the INA first raised the Indian flag

I admit that Hitler's connection with the INA and the independence movement was my first thought as to the rationale behind Hitler's ubiquity as well. However, there does not seem to be an equally popular fascination with Bose himself or with the history of the INA's role in India's independence struggle. In fact, Hitler's autobiography outsells Gandhi's autobiography (not that Gandhi had much to do with the INA, but he is by far the most popular figure associated with the independence movement--if people are more interested in reading about Hitler than about Gandhi, then they're likely not going to read as much about Bose). This is why I thought there had to be more behind Hitler's popularity than only the Bose/independence tie. Though of course my friends could be right and I could be wrong. Or maybe they're right in the sense that Hitler's popularity simply carried over from an earlier time, even if today most people are not terribly interested in studying that history.

3) One of the above two said something about the middle class admiring Hitler's discipline. I have no comment on this, because I'm totally ignorant about that. He may be right.

Well, I guess I have reached no conclusions on this issue. If you're interested in more takes on Hitler's popularity in India, check out the following articles:

Hitler Usurps Mahatma, NDTV: This suggests that people are looking to learn about strong leadership.

Indian Business Students Snap Up Copies of Mein Kampf, The Telegraph: Business students think they can learn about management skills from Hitler. This article says that students "see it as a kind of success story where one man can have a vision, work out a plan on how to implement it and then successfully complete it." However, an Indian professor "cited Mein Kampf as a source of inspiration to the Hindu nationalist BJP" and thought that Hitler's popularity is due to political tensions.

Hitler Memorabilia Attracts Young Indians, BBC News: Young people admire Hitler's patriotism and discipline. Hitler "is seen as someone who can solve problems. The young people here [in India] are faced with a lot of problems."

The Advent of Hitler in India, Dr. Aafreedi: I disagree with a lot of what this guy says, but he brings up much of what my friends and I have discussed: the rise of race-based political parties and right-wing extremists, the WW2 history wherein Bose allied with the Nazis, and the admiration of strong leadership.

Hitler: Opening Soon!

I'm back in Ahmedabad for one day between salt pan sites (they are quite far away from each other and I had to go through Ahmedabad to travel between them). I took an auto from Law Garden to Bodakdev, and from my auto I noticed a store called "Hitler" with a banner proclaiming "Opening Soon!" The store sign was decorated with a swastika. A swastika in India never has to do with Nazis; it is a traditional symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism. But the connection with Hitler here was more than clear, and it's something I've never seen before. There was no indication about what kind of store this will be or what it will sell.

Anyone who has traveled around India has probably noticed the tremendous popularity of Mein Kampf. The book is ubiquitous: you see pirated copies of it being sold in railway stations and on the street as well as legitimate copies in high-end Western-style bookstores. It seems to be a perennial best seller here. The first few times I saw it being sold by some street hawker, I would feel deeply offended and start yelling at him, how could he sell such a blatantly racist book written by one of world history's most evil figures and perpetuate hateful stereotypes about a group of people Indians otherwise have little to no exposure to? Of course the hawker would stare at me with a blank face and have no idea what I was talking about. The yelling was pointless anyway, because it's not like he was going to throw the book out. Eventually it became too exhausting to yell at every book hawker selling Mein Kampf, because there are just too many of them.

Don't cry anti-Semitism just yet. I'm fairly certain this has absolutely zero to do with Jews. Most Indians who discover I'm Jewish--including Muslims--have no idea what that means. Most either hear "Jain" when I say "Jew" or assume I'm a type of Christian. The vast majority of Indians have never met a Jew before and are unaware of the centuries-old stereotypes. They really have no reason to like or dislike Jews.

Instead, it probably has to do with the racial politics within this country. India has hundreds of political parties, and of its two most dominant, one of them, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), promotes Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism. They believe that pre-Mughal India belonged to the Hindus, and India should be reclaimed by members of its indigenous religion (this is a distorted view of history. Hinduism was brought by the Aryans, who invaded the Indus Valley civilization from the steppes of Central Asia, so that they could impose the caste system to control the indigenous population. The Aryans are no less invaders of India than the Mughals; they just came millenia earlier). Regional ethnic-based political parties have emerged as well, in pretty much every region. It is easy to see why Hitler's theory of racial purity would appeal to these parties, some of which are quite militant. (In one particularly upsetting episode a few years ago, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) supporter told me he loves Jews because the Israelis are fighting the good fight of "getting rid of Muslims" to "reclaim the land for its rightful owners." It was a gross misunderstanding of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, not to mention that it was extremely insulting to associate my entire ethnic group with racist politics. I'm sure he finds Hitler inspirational and identifies with Mein Kampf, but he harbored no hatred against Jews.)

If the popularity of racial politics is the true reason behind Hitler's ubiquity, then I should not be surprised to see a store celebrating Hitler in Ahmedabad, which saw the some of the worst Hindu-Muslim riots in Indian history in 2002 and remains an ethnically-divided city. Even after ~2000* Muslims were brutally beat to death and burned alive by Hindu extremists, the people have Gujarat have continued, for the past 10 years, to re-elect the same Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, who is believed to have instigated the riots (or at the very least, even if he did not start the riots, he held back the police from intervening to stop the rioting. He was by no means an innocent bystander). Many consider Modi a mass-murderer; Sonia Gandhi of the Congress Party famously called Modi a "merchant of death." The BJP thinks of Modi as a very serious contender for their Prime Ministerial candidate. It will be a terrifying day for Muslims and other non-Hindu minorities if or when Modi is elected as Prime Minister.

(*This number is contested and highly controversial. I've read figures everywhere from 500 to 5000.)

My Gujarati translator for the past few days was Muslim. I discovered this only after he forgot about lunch--or rather, he was fasting for Ramadan, and I forgot to ask him for a lunch break. After dinner one evening, we were watching the news about the humongous blackout that affected 19 states, and Modi came on TV to, as usual, talk about how awesome his Gujarat is while the rest of India is falling apart thanks to the Congress Party. Javed, my translator, muttered in Hindi, "Modi is full of shit."

Javed then started telling me about his experiences during the riots in 2002. He was 14 years old at the time, and he said it was the most terrifying time of his life. His parents pulled him and his siblings out of school because it was too dangerous for Muslims to go outside. He did not leave his house for six months. He was lucky enough not to live in the main Muslim area that had been burnt to the ground by rioters, but he had several friends from that neighborhood who were killed. When I asked him why his family didn't just leave Ahmedabad, he retorted, "Where would we go? Where else in India would be safer? Hindus and Muslims kill each other everywhere in this country. Look at Assam right now. Hindu Bodos and Muslim Bangladeshis are at war. Ahmedabad is my family's home. We have been here for generations, and we do not want to abandon our home. All we can do is hope for a more peaceful future."

For a more peaceful future, India will have to navigate the tricky ethnic politics that have arisen thanks, in part, to migration bringing communities together that would otherwise have had little contact--and to these communities now struggling to take advantage of the same limited resources. The violence in Assam between the Bodos and the Bangladeshis is, at its core, not a religious disagreement. The Bodos, who are an indigenous group, are pissed off because they feel the Bangladeshi immigrants are impeding on their land rights. Likewise, the militant Shiv Sena has emerged in Mumbai to protect Maharashtrian interests against the influx of Bihari migrant workers. This pattern has been multiplying nationwide due to both internal migration and international immigration.

Many Indians will point out that much of the ethnic tensions started during the British Raj, when the imperialists employed divide-and-conquer tactics to take over the country and control the population. I don't doubt that the legacy of colonialism plays a role in ethnic tensions, but I don't think that's the entire story.

(Of course the US has become less welcoming to immigrants and certain ethnic groups, and I'm not implying that there aren't ethnic tensions at home too. The root cause is actually the same: immigration. I just think these kind of tensions sometimes take on a more violent manifestation in India.)

All of this is to say that I believe Hitler's popularity stems from India's racial politics and has little or nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Or you can read what the BBC had to say about this two years ago here.

Happy 5th Anniversary, India!

I first set foot on Indian soil five years ago today. And I certainly had no idea at the time how much my life was about to change.

I still remember that first day in India. The very first thing I noticed about India, before even reaching the subcontinent, was the profusion of mustaches. When I reached my gate at the Bangkok airport, I found myself surrounded by an unusually high number of mustachioed men. (I was flying to Chennai, which I now know is the mustache capital of India. While mustaches are popular all over the country, a higher percentage of men seem to fancy them in South India than in North India.) At the time I wondered why so many people would choose to adorn their face with the ugliest style of facial hair. I still wonder a bit, but I think it is some sort of symbol of manliness.

When I stepped off the plane in Chennai, I was immediately hit by the intense heat and humidity and shortly after by the smell. Those of you who have been to India know that smell. I'm not sure how to describe that distinct smell of India, but I think it's what you get when you combine a plethora of spices with a plethora of animal poop with a plethora of tropical flora. (You get used to this smell after a while. I never notice it now.)

At the baggage claim, I waited and waited and waited for my luggage to show up on the carousel. It didn't. Thai Airways had left it in Bangkok or possibly in Los Angeles, where I started my journey. There was no Thai Airways representative for me to speak with, so some baggage handlers came over to help me out. They didn't speak a word of English, but somehow they managed to communicate to me that I should put my name and Indian address on the back of some piece of scrap paper and my luggage would be delivered. There was no computer to check where my luggage was, no official form for me to fill out, nothing. I completely flipped out. I thought I was never going to see my bag again.

(The next day, my bag showed up at the university, just as the baggage handlers promised. This was an important lesson I would learn again and again in this country: somehow, things always work out in India.)

After the lost luggage ordeal, I finally went through customs. Someone from the university was supposed to pick me up, but there was no one holding up a sign with my name. I was suddenly barraged by taxiwallahs who wanted to take me to my hotel, madam. I was already flustered because of my luggage, so this overwhelmed me. I had no idea where to go or what to do. I managed to find a payphone and called my contact at the university, who quickly resolved things and sent the driver. Apparently he thought I missed my flight because I didn't come out with the rest of the passengers.

The streets of Chennai, even from the window of the car, were just as overwhelming as the onslaught of taxiwallahs. I had never seen so many people. And are those cows in the street? So that's not just a stereotypical view of India that my grandfather joked about before I left the States?! Oh my god there's an elephant! And monkeys! Is that pickup truck filled with people? There are dozens of men sitting on the roof of that bus!

I thought--and I remember this verbatim very well--what the hell have I gotten myself into?! 

Since then, nothing has been the same. Apparently, I got myself into a powerful experience that would alter my life forever. That first stint in India changed the course of my career (at least up until now): upon witnessing the incredible disparity between the lives of India's poor and my own privileged life, I decided to work in development, to apply my engineering skills to trying to help raise people out of poverty through sociotechnical interventions.

I have spent half of the last five years in India: a semester in Pondicherry, a year working in Delhi, and a year working in Shimla and studying Hindi in Varanasi, and now this summer doing research. I have been fortunate enough to travel to 26 out of 28 states, from Kanyakumari to Ladakh, from the Pakistan border to the Burma border, over the course of my time here. I have celebrated almost every major festival, many more than once. I have ridden on an elephant into the depths of the jungle to see tigers and leopards and crossed waterways on trees that were trained to extend their roots to the opposite riverbank. I have walked with a migratory tribe and their herds of buffalo from the high Himalaya to the plains of Punjab. I have shared chai with people from all walks of life all over India, from an upper class Princeton alum in the Delhi Gymkhana Club to Buddhist monks and nuns in Sikkim to adivasi villagers in Jharkhand to a tribal chieftain in Nagaland to an autowallah in Gujarat ("unity in diversity" is India's favorite slogan. I'm convinced chai is what ties people in this country together). Most importantly, I have made some truly great friends who have shown me unparalleled kindness, who have made me laugh until I peed a little, and who have made my time here unforgettable--they are the real reason I keep coming back.

Happy half-decade, India. Thank you for turning my life into an unbelievable adventure. I can't wait to see what the next half-decade will bring.

Adivasi Economy and Water Access (or lack thereof)

Pranam dobara, Jharkhand. (Or in English: Hello again, Jharkhand.)

I'm back in Jharkhand conducting a feasibility study for a solar thermal pump. Why a pump? As the tribes of Jharkhand have traditionally been engaged in hunting and gathering, they are relatively new to agriculture and thus have no irrigation infrastructure. Only 5% of the state of Jharkhand is irrigated; the rest rely completely on rainfall (this monsoon season's lack of rain is having serious consequences, which I will discuss later). Why solar thermal? Because diesel is soon to be deregulated and, without subsidies, it will become too expensive for poor farmers to purchase the fuel to operate their diesel pumps (assuming they even have pumps). As it is, legal diesel is not easily available to these communities. The farmers explained to me that they must buy diesel on the black market, and this diesel is often adulterated and thus the pump often does not work properly. Electricity, which is free or close to free for agricultural purposes in India, is either nonexistent or extremely unreliable in these villages. Meanwhile, the capital cost of solar PV pumps is too high. Solar thermal is much less expensive than solar PV, plus the fuel (sunlight, duh!) is free and available, so this could be a good irrigation solution. For some reason, I'm not sure why, it seems no one has attempted to develop a solar thermal pump, other than an NGO in Ethiopia, but they have faced some mechanical issues and their pump is priced too high for Indian farmers. I am also thinking about possibly including a built-in filter or still so that the water that exits the pump outlet is clean, but maybe this is getting too complicated. (I have not made a final decision about what my project will be; next week I will be doing a feasibility study for another, totally unrelated, project in the salt pans of Gujarat.)

I am spending my time in some of Jharkhand's poorest communities: adivasi (tribal) villages in Gumla district. Most villages I have visited belong to the Oraon tribe, who speak a language called Sadri, and the other villages belong to the Khadia and Lohar tribes, who speak their own language as well as Sadri (since Oraon is the dominant tribe in the area, the other tribes have learned their language). Their Hindi is at times difficult for me to understand because (a) it's a different dialect and accent than the Hindi I have learned (it is similar to Bihari Hindi), (b) when they don't know a word in Hindi (after all, it is their second or third language) they substitute a Sadri word, and (c) they don't use the usual English and Urdu loan words that I've gotten used to in Delhi and Shimla--they use the original Sanskritized word.

I have been interviewing farmers about sinchai (irrigation), and, obviously, this involves a lot of questions about khetibari (agriculture) and more generally about their livelihoods. I also stumbled upon a fantastic book in the NGO's office, Mainstreaming the Margins: Water-centric Livelihood Strategies for Revitalizing Tribal Agriculture in Central India* by Sanjiv J. Phansalkar and Shilp Verma. I don't think a more perfect book could exist for the project I'm currently researching. So, let's talk about the adivasi economy. (Note to Jhanvi: you had asked me for some more context to understand the coal cycle wallahs. Here it is.)


*The use of the term "mainstreaming" here does not mean assimilating the tribal communities into mainstream Indian society. The authors emphasize that there is "no inherent conflict" in preserving tribal identity and culture and an approach to tribal development that involves mainstream water technologies and ties to the mainstream markets. Besides, I tend to believe that cultures are dynamic. What culture has really stayed the same throughout the centuries? While there is certainly value in protecting certain aspects of culture, I would argue that it is more important to live a meaningful life free of poverty--not that being free of poverty necessitates sacrificing traditions. Of course it is preferable to both preserve culture and promote development, when possible. Anyway, the Christian missionaries have already altered tribal culture; a huge percentage of adivasis have converted from their animist religions to Christianity. As a reaction to this, Hindu missionaries swooped in and converted many adivasis as well. Fairly few people still practice their traditional tribal religions. Although I'm usually very anti-missionary, I have to admit that they have done some good: in Northeast India, especially Nagaland, Christianity has brought high literacy rates and an end to intertribal warfare. Ok, tangent-rant done.

Phansalkar and Verma explain that the adivasis participate in three economic spheres: (1) forests, (2) agriculture, and (3) migration. It is a very common misunderstanding among the mainstream Indians that all adivasis depend only on forest activities (forest activities basically means gathering "non-timber forest produce (NTFP)" such as wild fruits, tubers, and mushrooms). Each Central Indian adivasi group is different from each other, and while many (if not all) groups have roots in hunting and gathering, their engagement in NTFP today varies widely. The communities I have been visiting in Gumla have largely abandoned that way of life in favor of a settled agrarian lifestyle.

Well, settled to an extent. Phansalkar and Verma emphasize that tribal agriculture is not modernized and thus cannot sustain a community for an entire year. Tribal agriculture is rain-fed and has no irrigation inputs, so during the non-rainy seasons people must migrate to other parts of India to work as laborers. Some bring their families with them, while others send money back to their families.

After reading a bit about migration in this book, I decided to ask the villagers what they do during the rabi (November/December to February) and garmi (March/April to June) seasons if they don't cultivate their land. As expected, many answered that they migrate. I asked to where, and the answer surprised me: to brick industries in Uttar Pradesh and cement industries in Himachal Pradesh.

Wait, did I hear that right? Cement industries in Himachal Pradesh? They couldn't possibly be referring to Nalagarh, where I had worked with IIRD in 2011, could they? (You may or may not remember my two blog posts discussing Nalagarh's cement industry: the first and the follow-up, in which I briefly discussed the migrant workers I had at the time believed to be Bihari.) I asked them, "do you go to Nalagarh?" and now it was their turn to be shocked. "You know Nalagarh?!" "I worked in Nalagarh on village development planning," I told them. Apparently I had been wrong about the migrants in Nalagarh being Bihari; they were Jharkhandi, and from these villages! Who knew these two very remote, very different areas were tied to each other? And what a coincidence that I had worked in both the area that was demanding the migrants and the area supplying the migrants! India continues to astound me with what a small place it is, despite being a country of over a billion people. (Yes, I'm aware I've written that sentence before, possibly more than once. The smallness of India really never ceases to amaze me.)

Phansalkar and Verma argue that this migration is the biggest obstacle to the development of the tribal belt. What good are health and education initiatives if people aren't around to receive the benefits? They claim that the government and the missionaries (who have historically been the only ones helping the adivasis--that's why there are so many Christian adivasis) are attacking the symptoms, not the root cause, of the communities' poverty problems. To lift the adivasis out of their poor living conditions, they must be given assistance to build a more stable livelihood in their home villages, to build a life without migration. Only then will these health and education programs become effective. The key to ending migration? Irrigation that will allow year-round agricultural productivity. The root cause of tribal poverty, then, is poor access to water, according to the authors.

As I stated earlier, right now the vast majority of tribal communities depend solely on rain for their agricultural livelihood. This means most adivasis only grow one season of crops, the kharif (monsoon) crops. Unfortunately (unfortunately is an understatement), this year has seen drought-like conditions (the Government of India is refusing to declare a drought, but the Jharkhand state government is considering it). This is my sixth consecutive monsoon season in South Asia, and I can say it has certainly been the driest I've experienced. It is unbelievable to ride a motorcycle through these villages and pass acres and acres of land covered in grass and weeds from the previous season--at the end of July! Rainfall has been so low that farmers didn't even bother to turn the soil, let alone sow the seeds. Why waste the money on seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides if there isn't enough water for the crops to grow? I do see a few tilled plots scattered here and there, but I haven't seen much of the beautiful, healthy florescent green rice paddies that I'm used to seeing in the monsoon.

This lack of rain is terrifying for several reasons: the kharif crops provide these communities with food for the rest of the year. If the kharif fails, then they will not have enough food to eat (and they have very little money to buy food from elsewhere)--people will go hungry. Additionally, people will go thirsty. In every village I have visited, people tell me that their wells dry up by the end of summer (which in India is April to June) and that usually the monsoon rains re-fill the wells. This year, however, the wells have remained dry. These wells provide the only source of drinking water for the entire year, and villagers depend on the rains replenishing these wells during the monsoon. Even after a good monsoon their drinking water supply is limited (this is why there is little to no agricultural activity during the rabi and garmi seasons; the wells do not have enough water for both irrigation and domestic purposes, and the communities consider drinking water more important), so a poor monsoon can be catastrophic. I cannot properly articulate how grave these circumstances really are and how scared I am for these communities for the upcoming year.

What does my pump idea have to do with all this? Well, I hope that by increasing access to groundwater (which is actually quite accessible in Jharkhand, where the water table is high at less than 15 meters), I could help reduce the dependence on rain. Of course the groundwater level itself depends on the rain, so utilizing groundwater wouldn't completely eliminate the problem. However, especially if coupled with groundwater recharge methods, pumps to access groundwater could certainly alleviate some of the issues (worst case scenario, just keep digging deeper until you hit water). The NGO facilitating my visit here has developed earthworks methods that have proven quite successful in aiding groundwater recharge; they have actually seen a rise in the water table where these techniques have been implemented. I hope that, if ultimately I do decide to work on a pump, the implementation would include groundwater recharge earthworks.

Not only would an affordable pump reduce rain dependence during the kharif, it would allow for additional crop seasons. A second (rabi) or even third (garmi) crop season utilizing groundwater irrigation would significantly increase a family's income as well as provide them with a stable year-round livelihood. They would no longer have to migrate for work. And, as I explained earlier, Phansalkar and Verma believe the end to migration is integral to raising these communities out of poverty, because staying put allows them to take advantage of social services.

Bas.

(PS: Sorry there are no photos. The Internet here is waaaay too slow for me to upload any.)

Cool and Phool

That title is a lie. "Phool" means flower, but I'm actually going to talk about fruit, or "phal." It just didn't rhyme as nicely.

I am currently sitting in my friend Marena's apartment in Orakhan, Uttarakhand. Uttarakhand is in the Himalayas, so I am surrounded by gorgeous green mountains right now. I came up here to hang out with some NGOs. ...But to be more honest, I am using the NGO visits as an excuse to escape the heat of the plains and the pollution of Delhi for a bit. And the cool weather and clean air have been sooooo nice. Definitely the break I needed. Returning to the mountains feels oddly like returning home, thanks to my stint in Shimla. For some reason (probably the natural beauty), I always seem to feel happiest up here in the Himalayas.

view from near an NGO

The area around Orakhan is home to many different types of fruit trees (apple, pear, peach, plum, apricot, etc) and Marena is determined to take full advantage. She taught her host mom how to make peach jam (but her host mom made it a bit too sweet, with a 1:1 sugar to peach ratio--meaning one kilogram of sugar for each kilogram of peaches) and fried up some apple pie samosas with her coworkers. Nom nom nom. Marena should open a phal ka dhaba.

(I'm very tempted to bore you with details of Himachal Pradesh's successful fruit and fruit products business that has basically lifted the state out of extreme poverty (along with hydropower) and how it would be smart for Uttarakhand to replicate this. However I will restrain myself, as I have given you many boring development-related blog posts recently.)

Marena chomping on a peach tree.

The cool, clean air, delicious fruit concoctions, and beautiful mountain views have rejuvenated me, and now I'm prepared to do some serious field work in Jharkhand. More to come.

Is "Self-Help Group" a misnomer?

For those of you unfamiliar with the terminology of international development, a "self-help group," or SHG, is a group of women who take out microloans to start up small businesses. The idea behind taking out loans as a group rather than as an individual is that a woman would feel responsible toward the rest of her group to continue contributing her share. Thus a group is less likely to default on loan repayment than an individual. (There has been some criticism, particularly in Bangladesh where this system was pioneered, that this structure not only takes advantage of but reinforces the culture of shaming one another.) The goal of SHGs is to empower women to take control of their lives and raise their families out of poverty.

But the name "self-help group" can be misleading.

These women do not help themselves, at least not initially. NGOs help these women (or perhaps the NGOs would argue that they help the women help themselves). The most successful SHGs can and do wean themselves off of the NGO and become a self-sustaining enterprise, but my impression is that the NGO is usually hovering somewhere nearby, ready to swoop in should the women need them.

These groups, for the most part, do not form on their own; they are organized by NGOs (I say for the most part because in Jharkhand I met an incredible group of women who did in fact start their own group--but only after witnessing the successes of an SHG in a neighboring village. And they had to approach an NGO for help in how to organize themselves). If an NGO does not give an SHG enough support, not much will happen. An organized group of women is unlikely to start any sort of economic activity on their own--and not because they don't want to, but because they don't have the resources and know-how to. They do not have access to information about how to take out a microloan or how to take care of accounts. Even if they did have access to such information, it would likely be in written form, and many of them are illiterate (only thirty-something percent of women in Jharkhand are literate). Additionally, most likely they need training in whatever economic activity they engage in.

I met two SHGs who were organized by NGOs and then not given adequate support. One group had received absolutely nothing after they were brought together, and three years later, they're still waiting for even the first capacity building session. They don't even know what kind of livelihood activity the NGO wanted them to engage in. When I asked them what kind of activities they might be interested in, they just shrugged.

The other group actually did receive training in an income-generating activity: soap and detergent making. This was seven years ago, and nothing has happened yet. When I asked them why they hadn't utilized their soap-making skills since the training, they explained that they did not know how to acquire capital. They received training in keeping accounts, but what accounts were there to keep? Apparently the NGO forgot a crucial component: linking the SHG to a bank. And thanks, again, to lack of access to information, the women have no idea how to create that link themselves.

So are self-help groups really self-helping? I say no. They are help-receiving. However, my friend Marena disagrees and is quick to point out that for these groups to be successful, these women must be deeply committed to helping themselves improve their lives--in this sense, they are self-helping. In her words, "In terms of the self generated finances, I think it's true to it's name. I think that the fact that they can and very often fail shows that success does require the participants to help themselves/commit to it." Fair enough. 

All of this is not to say that SHGs are a bad thing. Quite the opposite. If the women are given appropriate support, SHGs can be a powerful method to raise women and their families out of poverty and to mitigate gender discrimination and domestic violence as women finally gain the courage to project their voices.

I visited an SHG  in Kin Village, Hazaribagh District, Jharkhand that had been established 17 years ago and runs a business making and selling glass bangles. These sassy women displayed much more confidence than most village women I meet. They explained that when the NGO initially tried to recruit women they were a bit resistant to the idea, as those who joined the group were seen as "characterless" by others in the community. These women decided to ignore the stigma and accepted training in bangle-making, accounting, bookkeeping, marketing, sales, etc. As part of this training, some women learned how to read and write numbers (but there was only one fully literate woman in the group, and she was in charge of bookkeeping). When this SHG and the NGO agreed they were ready, the NGO facilitated the giant leap to take out that first microloan--and nothing has been the same since. 

I asked these women what has changed in their lives. They joked about their past lives wearing veils by playfully pulling each others' saris over their faces, which apparently have not been covered in years. Their husbands no longer make any decisions without consulting them first--after all, most of the families' money is now earned by the wives! Thanks to their breadwinning status, these women have been able to successfully convince the men in the village to outlaw child marriage and have stopped all illegal liquor production and gambling. They have also raised awareness about domestic violence by forming a theater group that walks around the village acting out scenes of women being beaten by their husbands (the husbands being played by women wearing fake moustaches and turbans), thereby successfully publicly shaming the men into ceasing (or at least reducing instances of) such behavior. The NGO that initially organized this group took little part in any of these wider social changes--the women felt empowered by their financial security to fight to make their village a better place to live. The NGO's primary role had been the initial stages of capacity building, and after a few years the SHG had grown into a successful self-sustaining business and the women into social activists. 

the theater group. the "men" are women rocking fake moustaches and turbans.

This NGO also organizes the SHGs into larger groups--representatives from each SHG join clusters at the panchayat level, blocks at the block level, and federations at the district level. These structures provide additional support, such as monitoring finances and raising awareness about rights (among other activities), for these women. The federation's expenses are paid for by annual membership fees from the members. Hazaribagh's federation consists of 932 SHGs (13,546 women), and the cumulative annual income from these SHGs is about 550 lakhs (55 million) rupees, or US$1 million. The NGO insists setting up these higher-level organizations is crucial to the success of individual SHGs.

I had one final question for the women of Kin Village: of all their accomplishments, what achievement are they most proud of? "Our daughters can read and write."

Aaaaand that opens a whole other can of worms: educating the girl child. I'll save that for a later post.

Under Construction: Please excuse the mess.

As much as I liked my previous blog name, Adventures of an Energy-Wallah in the Mad, Mad World of Delhi Shimla, I thought it was time for a change. I know I could have just crossed out Shimla too and changed it to a more generic "India" and maybe changed Energy-Wallah to "Grad School-Wallah" (I might not even work in energy... it's unclear), but I thought that would get pretty messy. Plus I've been in the mood for change recently (I even replaced my eight-year-old glasses!!).

I will be experimenting with a few different blog templates, backgrounds, titles, and title photos over the next few days until I settle on something I really like. I apologize if you come to this blog and it's a complete mess. I appreciate any input on how much you like or hate the changes.

Thanks for putting up with me!

Jharkhand's Illegal Coal

Sorry I haven't blogged in the past month. I wish I could say it was because I didn't have access to Internet, or I was too busy even in the evenings, but that would be a lie. The real reason? I've just been super lazy.

To recap: since arriving in India, I have spent 2 weeks in Delhi, a week in Ahmedabad with day trips into rural Gujarat, a few days in Pune, a few days in rural Karnataka, and a week visiting villages in Jharkhand.

While traveling around Jharkhand, it is impossible to miss the hundreds of "koyla cycle wallahs" plying the highways. The koyla ("coal") cycle wallahs are men who push bicycles carrying huge loads of crudely-coked coal in jute sacks. My first thought upon noticing these men was this can't possibly be the Big Coal supply chain. Don't the coal companies use trains or at least trucks? They must make millions of dollars a year, so surely they can afford a more efficient transport system than men pushing bicycles! In fact, doesn't their business require a more efficient mode of transport?

koyla cycle wallahs on the Ranchi-Hazaribagh highway

 koyla cycle wallah gliding downhill (they walk the bikes uphill and sit semi-sidesaddle downhill)

My first stop in Jharkhand was Hazaribagh, where I stayed with my friend Surabhi. I asked Surabhi what the deal was with the koyla cycle wallahs. She launched into a rant about how India isn't a developed country like the US and here industries just are not mechanized the way they should be. It may very well be true that India's industries are not mechanized enough, but I didn't believe this could really be the answer in this case.

I joined an NGO called PRADAN around some villages (more to come on that in a future post), and I asked the employees there about the koyla cycle wallahs. They told me that these people are part of an illegal coal mining industry and sell the coal on the black market--so, in fact, I was right to think they were not employees of major coal mining companies. I tried to further probe--where do they get the coal from? are they stealing from the companies' mines or did they dig their own illegal mines? who runs these operations? is there an illegal coal cartel? where are they taking the coal to? who are the customers buying coal from the koyla cycle wallahs? how much money do the koyla cycle wallahs make from one cycle worth of coal? how much coal are they carrying on one bike? how many hours does it take to transport the coal? how many times a week do they do this? where are these guys from, local villages or are they migrants from other regions of India?--but the PRADAN employees told me they did not know anything more.

A few days later I visited villages with another NGO, the Gene Campaign, and I asked them all these questions as well. They told me that the koyla cycle wallahs are their own employers and there is no one orchestrating the operations. They said the koyla cycle wallahs participate in every step of the supply chain: they go into the mines themselves, cut the coal from the rock, coke the coal, load up their cycles, transport the coal, and sell the coal to consumers. The operations, according to this employee of Gene Campaign, are not run by anyone, and the mines are illegally constructed by local villages. It takes 2 days to transport the coal from the mines to Ranchi, and the koyla cycle wallahs earn Rs 1800 in one trip.

Some of this just didn't seem right to me. How could these men really do every part of the supply chain? Their bikes just have so much coal on them, more than could certainly be carried out of the mine by hand (or more likely, on their heads) in one trip. If this activity is illegal, then what would stop someone from stealing the coal off your bike while you go back into the mine for a second or third or tenth load? Plus it would just be terribly inefficient.

A quick Google search brought up this incredible article that answered all my questions: Coal Distribution Network Through Bicycles in Eastern India. According to this article, the koyla cycle wallahs are just one element of the supply and distribution network: different people cut the coal from the rock, carry the coal out of the mine, coke the coal, transport the coal (that's where the koyla cycle wallahs come in), and sell the coal. There is a coal mafia that steals coal from the legal major mines and transports the coal in trucks, but it operates at a much larger scale than the koyla cycle wallahs and does not seem to be involved in their operations. Instead, the illegal mines belong to the villages, and the coal from these mines meet the cooking, heating, and kiln demands of smaller users, such as households, tea shops, dhabas, and local workshops, who cannot acquire coal from either the state-owned companies (most legal coal goes straight to major power plants) or the mafia. The police collect bakshish (bribes) in exchange for turning a blind eye to their activities. Some of the mines are old abandoned mines originally built by large state-owned companies, and other mines are inexpertly dug by villagers. In both cases, the mines are extremely dangerous, because they are not structurally reinforced in any way. Collapses and accidents are not uncommon, and miners have zero safety equipment--no helmets, no headlamps, nothing. The mines are dimly lit with smoky kerosene lanterns. An average mine can produce 10 tons of coal per day. About 1000 koyla cycle wallahs deliver this coal to the town of Hazaribagh daily--and that's only one town. Throughout Jharkhand there must be several thousands of men involved. (Seriously, if you find this blog post interesting at all, you should really read this article.)

 

illegal coal supply chain (source here)

While walking along the highway, I spotted some koyla cycle wallahs taking a break and decided to talk to them. They thought my curiosity was strange and funny, but they were very friendly and patiently answered all my questions. They told me that they purchase the coked coal from a depot located near the illegal mine for about Rs 300, and they sell it to a distributor in Ranchi for Rs 1500 (or do they make a profit of Rs 1500, meaning they sell it for Rs 1800? I didn't have a translator with me so I might have missed or misunderstood some details). The distributors then sell the coal to people who would not otherwise have access to legal coal supplies, as I mentioned earlier. The load they carry on the bikes weighs 240 kg (~530 lbs). It takes 30 hours of walking over two days to reach Ranchi from the mines, and they ride the bikes back to the mines in one day. They make this trip twice in a week. The koyla cycle wallahs are all adivasi (tribal) and belong to villages surrounding the mines (so no, they are not migrant workers), and they often travel in small groups. All activities stop during the monsoon, as some of the mines become filled with water and these men must tend to their fields. The men I interviewed said their families grow rice and some vegetables.

Even if we assume the lower profit of Rs 1200, this is significantly more than the koyla cycle wallahs could make in a week of wage labor. The going rate in Jharkhand for labor is Rs 120/day. If you work all seven days in a week, you would earn Rs 840/week--versus Rs 2400/week schlepping coal. The income doesn't even compare, so it is clear why someone with no employment opportunities would choose this work, despite the dangers.

When I asked the koyla cycle wallahs what they use the extra money for, they told me they spend it on higher quality food for their families and their children's education. One man told me that the nearest secondary school was several kilometers away from his village, and the daily public transportation is expensive. He wanted to ensure his sons could go to this school so that they would not also have to become koyla cycle wallahs to support their future families (this man didn't mention whether or not he had daughters, and I didn't want to ask because that could have come across as accusatory, like how could you not educate your daughters?).

Arundhati Roy, a very outspoken author-activist who considers herself a champion of adivasi rights, famously wrote back in 2009, "will someone who's going to the climate change conference in Copenhagen later this year please ask the only question worth asking: Can we leave the bauxite in the mountain?" Well, Roy, I have a question for you: What if the adivasis don't want to keep the bauxite--or in this case, coal--in the mountain? What if mining, whether in legal state-owned mines or in small illegal village-owned mines, presents relatively lucrative employment opportunities that adivasis would otherwise not have? (If you click on the link, you'll see that she argues the Naxalite (Maoist) insurgency is evidence that adivasis do not want these mines. The truth about the Naxalites is more complex than she lets on. A lot of intimidation goes on to force villagers to support them.)

a similarly dirty industry--the legality is unclear--exists in the villages: stone crushing near quarries. all the haze in the photo was produced by the stone-crushing machines. people who work here can get lung cancer.

 a closer view of the stone-crushing machines. women do most of the heavy lifting here (note that woman carrying a dish of rocks on her head). sorry for the blurriness; I took this photo from a moving motorcycle.

In a related story, sometimes the Naxalites hijack coal trains and take the driver and goods hostage until the companies cough up a heavy "levy" to allow their train to continue to its destination, as was in the news yesterday (thanks Vincent for the link!). These Naxalite activities are separate from the mafia I mentioned earlier.

In an unrelated story, on the road toward Jamshedpur, a.k.a. "Tata Nagar" (it's a town completely created by Tata where they have many of their major factories, such as steel and car production) ("nagar" means town), I noticed there is an unusually large number of trucks. These trucks must be part of the huge Tata supply chain. I was bored during my travels so I started playing the license plate game, but only with trucks (all of you Americans reading this must know what I mean by the license plate game: I was counting the number of states the plates belonged to). During this game I noticed a disproportionately large number of NL, or Nagaland, license plates, and zero other license plates from the Northeast states. And then I noticed that the drivers were most definitely not Naga (Nagas look more similar to Southeast Asians than to "mainland" Indians, for lack of a better term). Upon investigation, I discovered the reason behind this profusion of NL plates: Nagaland's truck taxes are the cheapest of all the states in India, so many transport companies register their vehicles in Nagaland, even if they have no intentions of running operations in the state. Or at least this is what I was told by someone who runs a manufacturing equipment supply firm in Jamshedpur. Jharkhand was the first place I've ever noticed so many NL license plates, and I play the license plate game quite often--I wonder why trucks in other regions of India don't take advantage of the low Nagaland taxes to the same extent.

Alright, well, I think I have bored you sufficiently. I'm out.

State of the State of Bihar

I'm going to spare you the gruesome story of my salmonella (I know, it's rare for me not to jump at the chance to discuss diarrhea) and instead grace you with a boring discussion of Bihari politics.

Last week I met up with Vincent, an old friend of mine from Pondicherry University. We hadn't seen each since 2007 (5 years!!) so it was really great to catch up with him. Vincent is a journalist working the Jharkhand beat for The Telegraph, a Kolkata-based newspaper (but he doesn't actually live in Jharkhand; he is based in Delhi). Being a journalist, he's way more knowledgeable about Indian politics than I could ever dream to be. Of course, that's why I love talking to him!

I mentioned to Vincent that I would really love to work in Bihar, because there seems to be great opportunity for impact. Bihar is near the bottom on pretty much every count (education, health, income, etc) like their neighboring states, but governance in the state has been rapidly improving thanks to the efforts of the Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who has earned the nickname "Mr. Clean" for cracking down on corruption. Surely there is greater opportunity for impact than in horrendously corrupt Jharkhand, I thought. Vincent's response? Bakwaas. (Bullshit.) Bihar has not improved nearly at the rate advertised--key word: advertised. Apparently Kumar has a very good PR team and some friends in the media.

But what about all those articles in The New York Times lauding Kumar's work in the state? (See here, here, and here). Vincent counters with a recent, more critical article by Outlook India here. (Sorry I'm being lazy and referring you to news articles rather than explaining things myself.)

Now I'm confused and don't know what to believe. How effective have Kumar's initiatives really been? What is the state of the State of Bihar?

I recently met with the founder of an agricultural NGO that works in the Hindi belt, and I asked her about the state of the state. She told me that Kumar is, in fact, making serious progress in Bihar--but admitted that Bihar is still quite corrupt, there is still plenty of work to do, and "some may disagree with Nitish's approach."

Nothing is ever simple or straightforward in India.

(In any case, I don't have any contacts in Bihar, so I most likely won't be working there anyway.)

"Praise be to Allah, the rains are here!" ...or are they?

I'm in Delhi!! And the last few days have been super hot, like 115 F. I've only been here three days, so it doesn't really bother me too much yet (though the heat does make me very sleepy), but everyone around me has been enduring these temperatures since April and is anxious for the monsoon to begin--which is why yesterday's sudden downpour was cause for celebration.

The rain came very quickly. When I exited Cafe Coffee Day in Khan Market, it was sunny. By the time I negotiated an auto ride home (probably 3 minutes later), it was cloudy. About 30 seconds after stepping foot in the auto it started to drizzle, and by the first traffic light, the rain was coming down in sheets. Thicker than sheets. More like comforters. When we reached the Ring Road (perhaps 10 minutes later), it had flooded to become the Ring River.

At that first traffic light, my autowallah took the stopped-at-a-red-light opportunity to celebrate. He exclaimed in Urdu, "Praise be to Allah! The rains are here!" He did a little dance in his seat and put on a Bollywood song at full blast. Children ran outside to play in the downpour. And of course, being in an auto with open sides, I became drenched in seconds. Even my underwear and bra were soaked through. I don't think I've ever gone from sweating to shivering in such a short time span before (thank you, wind).

The weather certainly felt like the onset of the monsoon. But weather.com says it's going to stay hot and dry with zero precipitation for the next 10 days (actually, it forecasts "haze." Oooohh Delhi pollution, how I missed you. ...Not). So is the Weather Channel wrong (it didn't predict yesterday's storm!), or is Allah just playing with our hearts?

Here's hoping the Weather Channel is wrong.

I'M BACK!

Oh India, you thought you were finally rid of me. But you were oh-so-wrong. Only ten months after I left you, I'm coming back for more. Your monkeys can steal my underwear, your geckos can claw my face, your mosquitoes can infect me with dengue fever, your bandhs can trap me for days, your dense fog can cancel my travel plans, your FRRO officers can make me jump through bureaucratic hoops. But no matter what you throw at me, you can't ever get rid of me. I will keep coming back.

This means, of course, that my blog is coming back, too.

I've recently been awarded a fellowship to conduct research promoting sociotechnical solutions for bottom-of-the-pyramid communities. Pretty vague, I know, but that's because I don't have more details to share right now. Basically, I'll be spending my summer, from June 3 to August 19, running around India exploring project opportunities. Keep an eye on this blog for more to come as things develop.

India, I'll see you Sunday.

America, 5 1/2 months in.

I've been back in the States for about 5 1/2 months now, and it's been great catching up with family and old friends. I guess I didn't realize just how much I missed them all until I saw them again. Here are some pictures from the last few months.

PS: I ended up deleting my OKCupid account the day after I posted the last blog entry.