Dhala, according to the 2001 government census, is composed of 237 households and a population of 1,206 people, 92.5% of whom are tribal. The village literacy rate is 38.8%; only one-quarter of the village’s women can read and write. Of the village’s working population, 95.2% are employed in the agricultural sector, 77.9% as cultivators of their own land. According to the census, the village has two primary schools, two medical institutions, and two markets. I consider every bit of this information suspect. Imagine the difficulties inherent in collecting accurate census data in a country as large and diverse as the U.S. given, among other challenges, the multiplicity of languages spoken in homes and the geographic dispersion of the population. Now imagine the task of the Indian government, which must enumerate a population nearly four times greater than that of the U.S., with a literacy rate of only 65%, in a country where more than 1,600 languages and dialects are spoken, where infrastructure generally ranges in quality from bad to nonexistent, and where communities may be nestled in the mountains at more than 18,000 feet (Ladakh), become literal islands during monsoon (Kutch in Gujarat), or are menaced by Naxalite or Maoist guerillas inimical to any representative of the government, however provisional (the Northeast). Alone, the idea of accurately capturing a creature as loose and disorderly as Dhala seems daunting. Yet, in some sense, this is precisely what I am hazarding.
Dhala has been selected for the pilot, not for any reason of dire need, or because it represents in any sense the “average” village in which Seva Mandir works, but because, in theory, it offers a higher probability of success than most of the other 600 villages in Seva Mandir’s purview. The relationship between Seva Mandir and Dhala is longstanding, wide-ranging, and considered particularly fruitful. Seva Mandir has worked with the village extensively on the development of its watershed, an initiative that encompasses many activities; it has assisted with a horticulture program in the village; it has aided the community in creating a seed bank; it has worked with villagers through the government’s Joint Forestry Management program to restore government-owned forest land adjoining the village; and, as in most of its target communities, Seva Mandir is operating a balwadi in Dhala and has initiated a Gram Vikas Kosh (village development fund) managed by a Gram Vikas Committee there. This isn’t a complete accounting of the collaboration between Seva Mandir and the community; it represents only my incomplete knowledge of the extent of that collaboration. The idea, of course, is that familiarity, comfort, and a demonstrated willingness to undertake and follow through on largely externally generated initiatives will increase the likelihood of success, thus justifying expansion, the ultimate aim of any pilot project.
One, perhaps subordinate aspect of my mandate in Dhala is to observe the behavior, the practices, and the habits of the villagers, particularly as they relate to water handling, storage, and use. And even if it isn’t an explicit part of my purpose, I can’t help but observe every aspect of their lives that I am privy to, and I am privy to much of the village’s public life, and even some of its private. Of course one can’t really come to know much of a place, however small, in a mere five days. Yet I hope I could speak about some things with a measure of confidence, at least in a conditional sense, after my stay.
I learn that Dhala is, in my admittedly uninformed accounting, well-off, at least by the reckoning of rural southern Rajasthan. In the course of my perambulation, I am amazed at the number of wells that I encounter that have been outfitted with rudimentary lift irrigation systems—a diesel motor drawing water through detachable plastic piping. Seva Mandir has managed only with great difficulty and expense to install about forty community lift irrigation systems (and those only benefiting a fraction of each community) over the last ten years or more. But in Dhala, it seems a significant number of households (or more likely groups of households—several share use of the largest wells) have enough capital, not only to acquire the components of systems—a formidable enough expense—but also to make regular purchase of the expensive diesel fuel that is necessary to operate the motors (the prohibitive cost of diesel has resulted in the abandonment of several of the community systems that Seva Mandir has installed). Mechanized irrigation is a luxury that few farmers and communities can afford, and its potential economic rewards are considerable: not only does it result in increased yields, but it also permits farmers to plant two, and even three crops each year. Many farmers in Udaipur District, perhaps the majority, plant only one—a maize crop during kharif, the season following monsoon.
The irrigation issue is illustrative of, to my mind, a central truth of life in agrarian communities, and indeed, perhaps of life in the developing world as a whole. Existence at subsistence level is a quagmire; without economic security or savings, one can only hope to remain where one is, scrabbling for purchase in boggy soil. At subsistence, one cannot plan for or invest in the future in any way, and thus is doomed to indefinite scrabbling; more likely than the appearance of some sturdy branch of capital with which to begin climbing is sudden hardship or disaster—drought, flood, the illness or death of a family member—which inevitably leads to sinking. I think the logic of microfinance is founded on such ideas—that a microloan can provide enough purchase to permit one to begin to climb—but whether or not it is effective in practice is debatable.
In any event, the presence of irrigation systems shouldn’t serve as a gloss on the very real material poverty that exists in Dhala. Electricity in the village is nonexistent. Homes, with few exceptions, are constructed largely of mud brick, though it is not unusual for a wall or two to be made of concrete. Toilets or latrines are completely unknown. This last fact is of particular concern in a community that relies almost exclusively for its drinking water on open and often unprotected (without a wall or with an incomplete one) wells bunched around a low-lying watershed. During the torrential rains of monsoon, most everything in the village not rooted in place is washed downward, into the watershed and wells—plant matter, soil, and human and animal waste included. In addition, several of the wells that the village utilizes for drinking water teem with small fish and, most objectionably, frogs whose bodies are broader and thicker than my fist. The community has ten handpumps—covered tubewells that reach deep into the water table, where the water is largely safe from any form of contamination—but two are broken, and five aren’t utilized for household use because the rusting of their pipes has rendered their water unfit for consumption. I drink from one of the remaining three in use, and wash up at another—in both cases the water has a distinctive metallic taint.
I believe that isolation may also be considered a form of poverty. The village has but one phone, which is incapable of making outgoing calls, and cell phones are useless there—there isn’t a signal for miles. Transport is limited. I’m only aware of (which is to say that there are very likely others) one person in the village who owns a vehicle, a motorbike which is housed nightly in the balwadi. To leave Dhala one must walk, bicycle, or catch one of the few jeeps or auto-rickshaws that daily ply the only road into the village—and the road itself dead-ends close to Dhala’s southern edge. The nearest town is at least ten kilometers away, and the nearest settlement of any size, Jhadol, at least thirty. Without electricity, news arrives, if it arrives at all, not by radio or television (which, questions of quality aside, are the most accessible forms of media) but via a newspaper purchased in town—provided, that is, you are among the 38.8% of the population able to read.
I am stuck by the poverty of the village most viscerally when I confront the health of its children. It is not merely that some are underweight, malnourished, anemic, that their bellies distend, though this is certainly troubling enough. In fact, it is the comparatively smaller things, the milder manifestations of an endemic malaise that I find most troubling. For example: virtually without exception, all of the children of a certain age—let’s say under seven—that I come into contact with (and remember, the village preschool serves as my quarters for the entire stay), sniffle, cough, and have a perpetual apostrophe of snot hanging from one or both nostrils. They are dirty, their hair is matted and unkempt, and their clothes are soiled. One gathering on the porch of the balwadi is perhaps the most pitiful assemblage I have ever encountered—one small boy’s eyelashes are so caked with mucus he can open them no more than a squint. Who will take a damp rag to this boy’s eyes? Who will wipe these children’s noses?
The children play in the dirt among the cow dung, the goat excrement, the chicken shit, and any other ordure that might reach the ground in an agricultural community; inevitably their hands find their way to their mouths. One of the basic tasks charged to children in the village is the collection of cow dung for fuel and fertilizer. While still in bed one morning, I watch the four children who live in the house across the street (one of the wealthiest households in the entire community) gather cow dung in the general vicinity of their home. The youngest, a boy who cannot yet be two, assists, dutifully carrying a great clump in his tiny hands. He has lost a wide swath of hair to some skin disorder; the previous afternoon I have watched him squat not ten feet from his house to release a stream of diarrhea. I hesitate to suggest that it is a monstrous negligence on the part of parents that permits such insalubrious behavior and then seems to ignore its consequences. Parents are busy with the often exhausting labor of caring for their fields and their animals—they can’t keep an eye on their children every second, and so the burden of minding is often taken up by older siblings or geriatric relatives.
And I feel the greatest problem may be one of ignorance: ignorance of how illness is communicated, how disease is contracted, what may be done to forbear against infection and sickness. Though I am working under the aegis of Seva Mandir’s Natural Resource Development Unit, the clean drinking water pilot is a health project through and through. The fact that some people in the village acknowledge only a nebulous connection between the cleanliness of their water and illness is a huge barrier to successful implementation. How does one convince people to adopt technology and commit financial resources toward realizing clean water if there is no acknowledgement of a problem? Most of the villagers aren't in the habit of washing their hands with soap and water after defecating; this is especially troubling considering they don't employ toilet paper or eating utensils either. What use is purifying water if dirty hands will be heedlessly plunged into it during transport or storage (as I observed time and again during my stay)? It seems clear that implementation of the pilot will be as much about education and changing behavior as it is about making suitable technology available to the "target population." And, ignoring questions of the propriety of such a focus, development has been famously unsuccessful at changing behavior. Model community or not, following my stay in Dhala, the challenges to successful implementation of a pilot are obvious. The question, then, is whether I will be up to them.
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