Last Saturday night, I attended a party some distance from Udaipur—twenty-two kilometers outside of town to be exact. The party was held at a private residence, a high-ceilinged one-story place with a curving, interior marble staircase leading up to the roof. The house was secluded, surrounded on three sides by fields and fronted by a long, gated gravel drive and well-manicured lawn. Music could be played as loud and for as long as partygoers desired; there were no neighbors to complain. The roof was spacious and open to the stars, which shone with cool brilliance at this remove from the city. Food, beer, and transportation were provided free of charge—I, along with the others in my group—four Americans and three Indians—was picked up in Udaipur by private car and taken directly to the house.
The provenance of the party wasn’t clear, I think, to anyone in the group. It was hosted by a forty-something Indian, Surendra, who was acquainted in some manner with several East African university students who occasionally attended parties thrown by one of the Americans, Andrew. I had been led to believe that the party was a housewarming, but this proved not to be the case, as more of the truth emerged on our ride there. Shakil, who drove three of the other Americans and me in his little white hatchback (about half of the cars on the Indian road seem to be little white hatchbacks), owned the building in which several of the Africans rented. “They are my tenants,” he told us, more than once, by way of explanation. The party, in fact, was a celebration of the end of exams and the close of the academic year for the Africans. Andrew, by virtue of his acquaintance with both the Africans and Surendra, their apparent benefactor, had finagled an invitation for us all, not that it had probably taken much—foreigners, especially white ones, are hot commodities for any Indian celebration.
Ownership of the house was apparently shared by Surendra and Shakil, who were old friends. It was a retreat of sorts for each when necessary; both lived in the city, Surendra with a wife and thirteen-year-old son. Shakil had been a national field hockey team trainer and coach; Surendra was a businessman—he pointed out one of his gas stations on the ride home. I think that the house was newly built, which would explain the housewarming rumor, and why Shakil had difficulty finding it in the dark, as well as why he seemed uncertain as to which rooms lay behind which doors. We were the first car in our group to arrive, and the house was dark—we had expected the party to already be under way. “We may die here tonight,” someone joked. However, within fifteen minutes two more cars pulled up, disgorging our friends, the Africans, food, and an ample supply of beer. Things were, as they say, about to jump off.
In all, perhaps twenty students from East Africa —primarily Kenyans and Tanzanians, in addition to a few Ugandans—would populate the party, along with the eight in our group and a handful of Indian students. The night wore on, and the groups mixed with increasing confidence—talking, dancing to Akon, Sean Paul, and Fifty Cent, and enjoying the warm evening and delicious isolation (something to be savored in India). I discussed the Kenyan political situation with some of the students, talked about my limited experience of their country, and led one woman to cackle when I ventured a “How are you?” in her native tongue, Kamba.
Around midnight the music suddenly stopped. I was standing to one side of the roof, my view of the dance floor obstructed by the shelter of the stairway, which projected from the roof’s surface. I continued talking for a few minutes more, unconcerned, until shouting from the dance floor brought me around to investigate. The floor had cleared—in fact, nearly the entire roof had cleared—except for three Africans clustered together, the shouting, in incoherent Swahili, coming from a short but muscular Kenyan in a red t-shirt. I didn’t know his name, but I had found him to be jovial and spirited earlier in the evening—he had cracked several jokes for my benefit. Now he was agitated beyond reason; he had to be restrained by the other two from rushing downstairs. “His father is a poor man!” he shouted in English. “He is nothing!”
An incident had occurred near the dance floor that I was forced to reconstruct from disparate fragments of story. It was generally agreed that the Kenyan had been bumped into or had bumped into someone else, likely a Tanzanian named Eric; that words were exchanged; that someone, probably the Kenyan, had been pummeled to the ground and then repeatedly kicked by Eric and two other Tanzanians who had just arrived, uninvited; that a couple of the Americans had intervened to rescue the Kenyan; that someone had broken off a beer bottle and brandished it threateningly.
Some minutes after I had gone to investigate, Eric, chubby and baby-faced, in a white turtleneck with navy blazer, returned to the roof to make peace. As I stood among a clutch of Africans surrounding the two antagonists, Eric approached the Kenyan with hand extended. They seemed ready to shake until Gavin, another Kenyan who, not incidentally, was falling over drunk, reached from behind his compatriot and delivered a slap to the side of Eric’s head.
Things degenerated. Most of the partygoers collected in the driveway and front lawn. Both the Kenyan and Eric made their way downstairs, the former continuing to vituperate the latter and require restraint. Meanwhile Surendra turned his maroon Chevy SUV around in the driveway and part of my group piled in, preparing to leave, while others, myself included, continued to tend to a peacemaking role. At one point the Kenyan broke away from his handlers and pushed Eric over a two-foot drop-off between the driveway and lawn, sending him sprawling on the grass. When he rose Eric shattered a bottle on the coping that fringed the lawn and made for the Kenyan, before being restrained. “We should either get Eric or other guy in the car and go,” I said.
Geoffrey, a Kenyan, had another idea. “We should just let them fight now and everything will be fine tomorrow,” he said.
“Just get into the car and go,” a Kenyan named Michael told me softly. “We will take care of it.”
I told him that I didn’t think it was right to leave. However, after watching the Kenyan’s belligerence intensify with every passing minute, and perhaps fearing a general riot, I headed for the SUV. The Kenyan was raving almost incoherently. “I am richer than you!” he screamed at Surendra. “I am richer than all of you!” As we spent precious minutes corralling the rest of the group into the SUV, the Kenyan climbed into an open door and began to rant at its occupants. The vehicle was a “basket of shit.” Eric was a “cockroach”—shades of the Rwandan genocide. Meanwhile Geoffrey had turned on Gavin and knocked him to the ground with an open hand, before planting his foot at the base of Gavin's neck with a thud.
Andrew was having the greatest difficulty extricating himself from the crowd, and when the SUV finally took off, he wasn’t yet inside; he was forced to run beside the vehicle, hopping in at a gallop. The Kenyan chased after the car, beating his palms against the back window and bellowing menacingly. The gate at the end of the drive still had to be opened, but the SUV and its cargo—five Americans and four Indians, including Surendra—were safe. Shakil and the property’s caretaker—a middle-aged Indian—were left to quell the unrest.
Once on the road, with the success of the evacuation assured, Surendra seemed to sigh. “No more Africans,” he said. I protested, as did others. “They only want to fight,” he told us. Silence reigned for much of the ride back. A few minutes outside of Udaipur, Andrew received a phone call from Michael. Things had calmed down.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
More Disturbing Than That Bogeyman
Within the last week, I have seen Seva Mandir’s dysfunction manifest itself in ways both more baffling and more disturbing than that bogeyman inefficiency, which, even if occasionally staggering in its scope, can, in many cases, at least be comprehended. Last Tuesday, the day after the pilot received sanction, I learned that one of its components had received particular scrutiny from the Chief Executive—namely, the plan to regularly chlorinate several of the village's wells. This, as with the overall bent of the pilot strategy, I had disagreed with from the beginning—in my strategy paper, which was intended to inform Seva Mandir's approach to the pilot, as well as its approach to the drinking water issue in general, I had written, "Ultimately, chemical treatment of wells is a largely temporary solution to a persistent and tenacious problem." Thus, the objections regarding chlorination coming from the top seemed, at first, sweet vindication of my own misgivings.
However, over the course of the next week, as the background for those objections surfaced, my smugness was transformed to something rather more like disgust. I soon learned that, contrary to what I had been told, Seva Mandir had (as I had heard rumored on more than one occasion) worked on the drinking water issue in the past—and in the recent past, no less. And it had been a high profile effort! Four years earlier, as part of a collaboration with the M.I.T. Poverty Action Lab, the organization had undertaken four "action research" projects, including one to determine whether the chlorination of wells would be an effective means of improving the safety of drinking water in its target area. This particular research project had been led by Seva Mandir's Health Unit, and it was the only one of the four that wasn't ultimately scaled up to a full-fledged field project. So why hadn't I been informed of this work previously? And why, precisely, had the chlorination effort been abandoned?
Much of the answer to the first question is tangled up in the strained relations among Seva Mandir's various departmental units. The units—Natural Resource Development (NRD), Health, Education, Woman and Child Development, GVK (Community Governance and Development), and the People's Management School—often seem to function as six independent bodies bound only by the shared name of their parent. They don't communicate, frequently behave as if in direct competition, and at times seem to harbor a scarcely concealed animosity for one another. This has obvious repercussions for the functioning of the organization—beyond issues of camaraderie and cohesion, many projects don't fall neatly under the bailiwick of a single Unit, and sharing knowledge and experience across departments is essential.
Thus, as the NRD Unit has prepared to inaugurate its drinking water efforts, it has either been unaware of, or has chosen to ignore the recent and highly relevant experience of the Health Unit on the subject. What's more, even had the Health Unit known that the NRD Unit was taking on the drinking water issue—and it almost certainly didn't—it seems unlikely that it would have shared its experiences with the NRD, given the Health Unit's belief that drinking water should be its exclusive domain. The upshot of this foolishness is that, only four years ago, a major research effort undertaken by Seva Mandir determined that a key component of the NRD's current clean drinking water strategy was not viable, and no one said anything, or possibly even knew enough to say anything, until the pilot was preparing to launch.
At the behest of Seva Mandir's Chief Executive—the first to sound an alarm—I contacted a former long-term volunteer, a Canadian man named Bruce Daviau, who had worked most closely with the chlorination research effort in 2004. Beyond shedding light on the reasons behind Seva Mandir's decision to abandon well chlorination as a drinking water strategy, he wrote:
"it is unfortunate that you have only recently been made aware of previous work done in relation to clean drinking water. in fact, there has been enough research data around for some time now for an effective clean drinking water program. and this data is specifically relevant for the udiapur (sic) region."
And now, despite what I've come to know and share about Seva Mandir's previous misadventures in chlorination, the NRD appears determined to push forward with its strategy as originally conceived; that is, chlorination and all. It seems that in an organization where communication and solidarity are weak, turnover among staff is high (both Health Unit staff who worked directly on the chlorination research effort are long gone), and institutional memory is limited, learning from the past cannot be taken for granted. Mistakes, in such an environment, are doomed to be repeated—and probably repeated again. How's that for inefficiency?
However, over the course of the next week, as the background for those objections surfaced, my smugness was transformed to something rather more like disgust. I soon learned that, contrary to what I had been told, Seva Mandir had (as I had heard rumored on more than one occasion) worked on the drinking water issue in the past—and in the recent past, no less. And it had been a high profile effort! Four years earlier, as part of a collaboration with the M.I.T. Poverty Action Lab, the organization had undertaken four "action research" projects, including one to determine whether the chlorination of wells would be an effective means of improving the safety of drinking water in its target area. This particular research project had been led by Seva Mandir's Health Unit, and it was the only one of the four that wasn't ultimately scaled up to a full-fledged field project. So why hadn't I been informed of this work previously? And why, precisely, had the chlorination effort been abandoned?
Much of the answer to the first question is tangled up in the strained relations among Seva Mandir's various departmental units. The units—Natural Resource Development (NRD), Health, Education, Woman and Child Development, GVK (Community Governance and Development), and the People's Management School—often seem to function as six independent bodies bound only by the shared name of their parent. They don't communicate, frequently behave as if in direct competition, and at times seem to harbor a scarcely concealed animosity for one another. This has obvious repercussions for the functioning of the organization—beyond issues of camaraderie and cohesion, many projects don't fall neatly under the bailiwick of a single Unit, and sharing knowledge and experience across departments is essential.
Thus, as the NRD Unit has prepared to inaugurate its drinking water efforts, it has either been unaware of, or has chosen to ignore the recent and highly relevant experience of the Health Unit on the subject. What's more, even had the Health Unit known that the NRD Unit was taking on the drinking water issue—and it almost certainly didn't—it seems unlikely that it would have shared its experiences with the NRD, given the Health Unit's belief that drinking water should be its exclusive domain. The upshot of this foolishness is that, only four years ago, a major research effort undertaken by Seva Mandir determined that a key component of the NRD's current clean drinking water strategy was not viable, and no one said anything, or possibly even knew enough to say anything, until the pilot was preparing to launch.
At the behest of Seva Mandir's Chief Executive—the first to sound an alarm—I contacted a former long-term volunteer, a Canadian man named Bruce Daviau, who had worked most closely with the chlorination research effort in 2004. Beyond shedding light on the reasons behind Seva Mandir's decision to abandon well chlorination as a drinking water strategy, he wrote:
"it is unfortunate that you have only recently been made aware of previous work done in relation to clean drinking water. in fact, there has been enough research data around for some time now for an effective clean drinking water program. and this data is specifically relevant for the udiapur (sic) region."
And now, despite what I've come to know and share about Seva Mandir's previous misadventures in chlorination, the NRD appears determined to push forward with its strategy as originally conceived; that is, chlorination and all. It seems that in an organization where communication and solidarity are weak, turnover among staff is high (both Health Unit staff who worked directly on the chlorination research effort are long gone), and institutional memory is limited, learning from the past cannot be taken for granted. Mistakes, in such an environment, are doomed to be repeated—and probably repeated again. How's that for inefficiency?
A Favorite Parlor Game
Among those volunteers and interns who have been around for any length of time, it has become a favorite parlor game to dissect the many perceived failings—institutional, managerial, missional or otherwise—of Seva Mandir. Anyone who must daily navigate the organization’s strange and tangled byways soon finds that it is not a particularly well run or efficient entity, and neither has it been, by many measures, particularly successful at achieving its aims as a development organization. Theories, or pieces of theories, in the way of explaining these failures abound: the organization is too big, or it got too big too fast; upper management, such as it exists, is incompetent, out of touch, or both; the organization is plagued by a glaring absence of accountability at all levels; it is too bureaucracy-ridden; its employees are demoralized, cynical, and lazy.
Each of these accusations contains at least a glimmer of truth and in some instances perhaps a good deal more, but none is especially useful in pointing toward constructive and realistic reform of the organization. And Seva Mandir is very much in need of reform—its problems are not merely the imaginary outgrowths of the festering frustrations of volunteers. Evaluations of its projects are regularly scathing, turnover among the staff is dizzying, and within the last three years, a number of major donors, including the Ford Foundation, have cut off funding. Seva Mandir should be soul-searching, or at the very least reassessing its direction and purpose—yet it doesn’t appear to be doing either.
The standard prescription among the volunteer punditry is for a massive bloodletting (a fantasy I admit to having also voiced on at least one occasion), which would simultaneously reduce the size of the organization, improve accountability (theoretically), and jolt the staff out of its stupor (and savings could go toward supplementing the paltry salaries of those still standing), but such a step ignores an obvious truth about the not-for-profit world: unlike businesses, which may always trim fat in order to improve performance, even when already making money, non-profits don’t make cutbacks unless financial straits absolutely demand it.
But Seva Mandir isn’t a business and shouldn’t be run like one. Efficiency is a cardinal virtue for any organization, but a non-profit must be careful to always view it as a means to achieving their goals and never as an end itself. Business is as much science as art; it thrives on predictability, certainty, and the efficiency that naturally derives from the two. There’s a reason the private sector isn’t lining up to build clinics, provide clean drinking water, or organize women in the impoverished corners of the world: development isn’t an efficient, predictable process, and it isn’t profitable. Despite at least fifty years of close study, it is almost entirely art and very little science. No business would, for example, attempt to promote sustainable land use patterns among pastoral communities in the African Sahel in order to forestall desertification—not only is there no money in such an initiative, but the probability of success is too limited, and too dependent on forces beyond anyone’s control, to merit the effort, not to mention the resources. Businesses don’t want challenges, they want formulas with easy-to-plug figures, and they’re much better at exploiting existing demand for a product than creating demand for something new.
According to their natures, the private sector and the development world have both divergent aims and divergent approaches to achieving them. Are they then to be judged by the same standards for efficiency and success? One wouldn’t ask Seva Mandir to abandon its non-formal education program because it is expensive and because the majority of its students aren’t ultimately returning to the formal school system, as is the goal. It is understood that attempting to return drop-outs and never-wents to school is a worthwhile endeavor; it shouldn’t be given up simply because it hasn’t achieved a level of success commensurate with the amount of resources being invested in it, or because Seva Mandir is getting more bang for its buck in other programming. Development is like medical research: lack of progress can’t deter further trials, further investment. If a product line fails, it is discontinued; if Seva Mandir’s drinking water pilot fails, are its drinking water efforts to be discontinued as well?
Certainly development organizations should be held to high standards of both efficiency and effectiveness, and for the most part, they are. Donors favor the most effective, most cost efficient organizations—philanthropic foundations, international NGOs, and governments don’t enjoy squandering their money any more than businesses do. But quite simply, calculations of effectiveness and efficiency for the private sector and for the development world require different metrics, and we shouldn’t expect, nor should we even want development organizations to perform like corporations. That is not to say, however, that Seva Mandir has nothing to learn from the world of business, only that it won't better serve the rural poor of Udaipur District by eliminating programs that have produced disappointing returns on money invested.
Each of these accusations contains at least a glimmer of truth and in some instances perhaps a good deal more, but none is especially useful in pointing toward constructive and realistic reform of the organization. And Seva Mandir is very much in need of reform—its problems are not merely the imaginary outgrowths of the festering frustrations of volunteers. Evaluations of its projects are regularly scathing, turnover among the staff is dizzying, and within the last three years, a number of major donors, including the Ford Foundation, have cut off funding. Seva Mandir should be soul-searching, or at the very least reassessing its direction and purpose—yet it doesn’t appear to be doing either.
The standard prescription among the volunteer punditry is for a massive bloodletting (a fantasy I admit to having also voiced on at least one occasion), which would simultaneously reduce the size of the organization, improve accountability (theoretically), and jolt the staff out of its stupor (and savings could go toward supplementing the paltry salaries of those still standing), but such a step ignores an obvious truth about the not-for-profit world: unlike businesses, which may always trim fat in order to improve performance, even when already making money, non-profits don’t make cutbacks unless financial straits absolutely demand it.
But Seva Mandir isn’t a business and shouldn’t be run like one. Efficiency is a cardinal virtue for any organization, but a non-profit must be careful to always view it as a means to achieving their goals and never as an end itself. Business is as much science as art; it thrives on predictability, certainty, and the efficiency that naturally derives from the two. There’s a reason the private sector isn’t lining up to build clinics, provide clean drinking water, or organize women in the impoverished corners of the world: development isn’t an efficient, predictable process, and it isn’t profitable. Despite at least fifty years of close study, it is almost entirely art and very little science. No business would, for example, attempt to promote sustainable land use patterns among pastoral communities in the African Sahel in order to forestall desertification—not only is there no money in such an initiative, but the probability of success is too limited, and too dependent on forces beyond anyone’s control, to merit the effort, not to mention the resources. Businesses don’t want challenges, they want formulas with easy-to-plug figures, and they’re much better at exploiting existing demand for a product than creating demand for something new.
According to their natures, the private sector and the development world have both divergent aims and divergent approaches to achieving them. Are they then to be judged by the same standards for efficiency and success? One wouldn’t ask Seva Mandir to abandon its non-formal education program because it is expensive and because the majority of its students aren’t ultimately returning to the formal school system, as is the goal. It is understood that attempting to return drop-outs and never-wents to school is a worthwhile endeavor; it shouldn’t be given up simply because it hasn’t achieved a level of success commensurate with the amount of resources being invested in it, or because Seva Mandir is getting more bang for its buck in other programming. Development is like medical research: lack of progress can’t deter further trials, further investment. If a product line fails, it is discontinued; if Seva Mandir’s drinking water pilot fails, are its drinking water efforts to be discontinued as well?
Certainly development organizations should be held to high standards of both efficiency and effectiveness, and for the most part, they are. Donors favor the most effective, most cost efficient organizations—philanthropic foundations, international NGOs, and governments don’t enjoy squandering their money any more than businesses do. But quite simply, calculations of effectiveness and efficiency for the private sector and for the development world require different metrics, and we shouldn’t expect, nor should we even want development organizations to perform like corporations. That is not to say, however, that Seva Mandir has nothing to learn from the world of business, only that it won't better serve the rural poor of Udaipur District by eliminating programs that have produced disappointing returns on money invested.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
At Long Last, the Pilot Receives Approval
It was approximately four o’clock in the afternoon on March 31 when word finally came: the clean drinking water pilot project had received official approval from Seva Mandir’s Chief Executive. I arrived in Udaipur and began work on the morning of September 14; March 31, then, was my 200th day (if one counts vacation and weekends) with Seva Mandir. Work on the pilot hasn’t yet begun; it is at least another week off, and probably two. Had I been given some premonition of the start date of work on this, my project, upon arrival in Udaipur—a date attached to a fact, shimmering with the light of undeniable truth—I wonder how I would have received it. With surprise, certainly, but a surprise which may have quickly given way to fear. “Am I going to be hospitalized for an extended period?” I might have worried. Or perhaps I would have rationalized: certainly I was fated, in the months ahead, to be diverted for some time in work of more immediate interest to the organization?
But, alas, neither scenario approaches the truth. It has simply taken this long to assess needs, to craft a strategy, to explore the logistical dimensions of that strategy, to create a proposal reflecting those logistical realities, and to have that proposal approved. I’ve written previously on this blog about the incremental nature of development, about how its progress should be measured in generations, but if all development moved at the pace of my little drinking water project, I think we would do better to measure it in centuries.
Four months ago, on December 1, I received the results of bacterial tests conducted on six drinking water sources in Dhala, the pilot village. The previous day I had collected samples from four of the community’s most commonly used wells and two randomly selected households, packed them in ice, and whisked them off to the lab. The results of the tests were startling: None of the samples met the WHO’s minimum standard for levels of coliform (fecal) bacteria—a maximum of 10 organisms/100 milliliters of water. More distressingly, three of the samples—those from the two most commonly used wells in the village and one of the household samples—revealed bacteria counts in excess of 1,800 organisms/100mL.
In all likelihood, nearly everyone in the village was drinking unsafe water, and many were drinking water so contaminated it could give an elephant the runs. The two heavily contaminated wells provide drinking water for eighty-two households—30% of the village. How many others were ingesting hundreds of coliforms—literally—with each sip? And this was the beginning of December; the most dangerous period for drinking water is thought to be from May to August. During the months leading up to monsoon (May and June), many wells run dry and more dangerous sources must be drawn from; when monsoon arrives (July and August), wells are inundated by rainwater and effluent gushing down from the hills, a shit-dimmed tide mingling with the well water. What would tests reveal then?
It would certainly be enlightening to conduct a household health survey in Dhala now. How many cases of typhoid would be reported for the last four months? How many bouts of diarrhea? How many instances of hepatitis? Cholera? How many days of school will have been missed due to waterborne illness? How many days of work? How much income will have been lost? How much discomfort endured? How much misery? Meanwhile, Seva Mandir’s strategy is to deal first with protecting the community’s water supply. Purifying the water will come later, once sufficient momentum has been built within the community for the idea of clean water, the idea that it is something worth investing in. Besides, I am told, people aren’t yet ready to use and maintain a household-level filter, no matter how simple. It’s better to move slowly with these things. Communities must be prepared for changes in thinking and doing; things don’t happen merely because we want them to.
And they’re probably right. Certainly I’ve never implemented a project on the ground in the developing world—not in Africa, nor in India, nor in Rajasthan, nor in Udaipur District, nor in Jhadol Block, and certainly not in Dhala. I must take them at their word; I must trust in their experience, for I haven’t any of it. I make inferences based upon what limited observation I have done here; I calculate probability with a limited set of data. I am not so arrogant as to presume that I know better. Am I?
We will protect wells with walls; we will repair handpumps; we will educate the community. It can’t hurt. Some of it may help, even in the long-term. But I’m afraid that it won’t. Still, after nearly three months of bearing the private indignity of having my ideas undermined and ignored, I am now entirely resigned to the progress of the pilot as currently constituted. After all of this time, it is moving forward, and I am content in that. It is the three months that irks now, the 200 days, the four months elapsed since test results revealed horrific contamination. Certainly this isn’t a case in which torpor is a virtue. Contaminated water continues to be consumed. Volunteers and interns at Seva Mandir are told to scale back their expectations; perhaps Seva Mandir should be meeting us halfway. The notion that change takes time, that development is a painstaking process is a valuable, practical insight—it shouldn’t also be an excuse.
But, alas, neither scenario approaches the truth. It has simply taken this long to assess needs, to craft a strategy, to explore the logistical dimensions of that strategy, to create a proposal reflecting those logistical realities, and to have that proposal approved. I’ve written previously on this blog about the incremental nature of development, about how its progress should be measured in generations, but if all development moved at the pace of my little drinking water project, I think we would do better to measure it in centuries.
Four months ago, on December 1, I received the results of bacterial tests conducted on six drinking water sources in Dhala, the pilot village. The previous day I had collected samples from four of the community’s most commonly used wells and two randomly selected households, packed them in ice, and whisked them off to the lab. The results of the tests were startling: None of the samples met the WHO’s minimum standard for levels of coliform (fecal) bacteria—a maximum of 10 organisms/100 milliliters of water. More distressingly, three of the samples—those from the two most commonly used wells in the village and one of the household samples—revealed bacteria counts in excess of 1,800 organisms/100mL.
In all likelihood, nearly everyone in the village was drinking unsafe water, and many were drinking water so contaminated it could give an elephant the runs. The two heavily contaminated wells provide drinking water for eighty-two households—30% of the village. How many others were ingesting hundreds of coliforms—literally—with each sip? And this was the beginning of December; the most dangerous period for drinking water is thought to be from May to August. During the months leading up to monsoon (May and June), many wells run dry and more dangerous sources must be drawn from; when monsoon arrives (July and August), wells are inundated by rainwater and effluent gushing down from the hills, a shit-dimmed tide mingling with the well water. What would tests reveal then?
It would certainly be enlightening to conduct a household health survey in Dhala now. How many cases of typhoid would be reported for the last four months? How many bouts of diarrhea? How many instances of hepatitis? Cholera? How many days of school will have been missed due to waterborne illness? How many days of work? How much income will have been lost? How much discomfort endured? How much misery? Meanwhile, Seva Mandir’s strategy is to deal first with protecting the community’s water supply. Purifying the water will come later, once sufficient momentum has been built within the community for the idea of clean water, the idea that it is something worth investing in. Besides, I am told, people aren’t yet ready to use and maintain a household-level filter, no matter how simple. It’s better to move slowly with these things. Communities must be prepared for changes in thinking and doing; things don’t happen merely because we want them to.
And they’re probably right. Certainly I’ve never implemented a project on the ground in the developing world—not in Africa, nor in India, nor in Rajasthan, nor in Udaipur District, nor in Jhadol Block, and certainly not in Dhala. I must take them at their word; I must trust in their experience, for I haven’t any of it. I make inferences based upon what limited observation I have done here; I calculate probability with a limited set of data. I am not so arrogant as to presume that I know better. Am I?
We will protect wells with walls; we will repair handpumps; we will educate the community. It can’t hurt. Some of it may help, even in the long-term. But I’m afraid that it won’t. Still, after nearly three months of bearing the private indignity of having my ideas undermined and ignored, I am now entirely resigned to the progress of the pilot as currently constituted. After all of this time, it is moving forward, and I am content in that. It is the three months that irks now, the 200 days, the four months elapsed since test results revealed horrific contamination. Certainly this isn’t a case in which torpor is a virtue. Contaminated water continues to be consumed. Volunteers and interns at Seva Mandir are told to scale back their expectations; perhaps Seva Mandir should be meeting us halfway. The notion that change takes time, that development is a painstaking process is a valuable, practical insight—it shouldn’t also be an excuse.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Spring Comes to Udaipur
Spring has arrived in northern India and along with it a measure of relief at the discovery that the changing of seasons here is not merely accompanied by a change in temperature—it may be observed in other transformations as well. Winter had seemed nothing more than a cooler continuation of the post-monsoon autumn; granted the days were shorter (though thankfully not so short as I am accustomed), and a stubborn haze descended upon the city, but the sky was as cloudless and nearly colorless as ever, the sunlight seemed just as direct, if not as intense as it had when I arrived, and the city’s flora surrendered its verdure so deliberately that any change in its hue was scarcely perceptible. Now the coming of fervid spring has had a curious double effect on the plants of the city: some—the bougainvillea and its bushy and creeping brethren, marigolds, roses, and other perennial flowers—bloom riotously, as if in a hothouse; others, primarily trees, betray the pains of an unrelieved thirst. In the past month, the two silver oaks bordering my squarish courtyard, always untidy, have discharged their frond-like leaves onto its surface with a redoubled intensity. The leaves’ former mossy greenness has been subsumed by a sere brown; they crackle underfoot like a gravelly rasp.
The same divergent fortunes can be traced in the flora of the countryside. The hills have never been so ugly in the candid light of mid-day as they are now—even those not entirely denuded seem brown and barren and wretched. The effects of irrigation are manifestly obvious: where green greets the eye water has been channeled. No other living thing, in such impoverished circumstances, can hope to put on such signs of health. The lone exception is a native tree sparely distributed among the hills; its deeply orange blossoms seem unnatural, like the icing confections of a cake decorator. From a distance the trees are beacons, their blossoms fiery heralds of softer springs, lovelier worlds than this.
It is not only the plants that awaken, either; spring in India means rebirth and reawakening for certain segments of the animal kingdom as well. Insects suddenly pullulate: mosquitoes haunt my evenings and flies my morning walk to work; ants march; and a swarm of bees closed the balcony on the third floor of Seva Mandir’s library for days. Bird calls, never silenced, seem more spirited, more resounding. Puppies abound, presenting poignant miniatures of their mongrel parentage (but, alas, a less heartwarming sight when one contemplates their certain fate). The bulls, as if agitated by the heat, are quicker to lock horns and the bristle-backed pigs less active by day, likely for the same reason. A form scuttling along the wall in the kitchen one night proved not a mouse, as I had feared, but an unblinking gecko, returned to life from months of secretive slumber.
The light of the sun has altered too; it is whiter, purer, and, like a newlywed spouse, more honest and less forgiving. The world is better illuminated by degrees; the light, though, is not yet hard and cruel, only brilliant and vaguely unreal, almost otherworldly. Strangely, clouds have begun to appear in the afternoons, shading the world from the sun. Sunday night I heard thunder for the first time since arriving; Monday afternoon the world became gray, and the thunder returned. Lightning flashed in the distance, and a strong wind bent the trees and bushes, scattering the vibrant blossoms of the bougainvillea. A little rain fell. As I walked home, the road seemed newly made—I couldn’t remember when I had last seen pavement glazed by rainwater.
The small storm seemed a revelation, although of what sort, precisely, was not clear. In the India I have known, clouds never worry the face of the sun, and the air is eternally limpid and breathless; rain never keeps down the dust in the street. In such a world, the rumble and flash of a thunder storm assume a primal gravity; they brim with mystery and meaning. Only I fear I’m insufficiently attuned to tease out that meaning: I must be content with the knowledge that the world has indeed changed, as it is wont to this time of year, even in these latitudes. Perhaps the bland and featureless days of sunny calm have truly gone elsewhere, at least for the time being, and if so, I am glad for it. Even if this is as no spring I’ve known before—I’ve held no vigil for the purple-headed crocus or the first robin, harbored no expectation of tulip blooms and cherry blossoms, mourned the passing rites of March Madness and Opening Day, unobserved—the season remains a profound symbol of growth and rebirth. Even the sun can become a weighty emblem of death when it shines so long without opposition.
The same divergent fortunes can be traced in the flora of the countryside. The hills have never been so ugly in the candid light of mid-day as they are now—even those not entirely denuded seem brown and barren and wretched. The effects of irrigation are manifestly obvious: where green greets the eye water has been channeled. No other living thing, in such impoverished circumstances, can hope to put on such signs of health. The lone exception is a native tree sparely distributed among the hills; its deeply orange blossoms seem unnatural, like the icing confections of a cake decorator. From a distance the trees are beacons, their blossoms fiery heralds of softer springs, lovelier worlds than this.
It is not only the plants that awaken, either; spring in India means rebirth and reawakening for certain segments of the animal kingdom as well. Insects suddenly pullulate: mosquitoes haunt my evenings and flies my morning walk to work; ants march; and a swarm of bees closed the balcony on the third floor of Seva Mandir’s library for days. Bird calls, never silenced, seem more spirited, more resounding. Puppies abound, presenting poignant miniatures of their mongrel parentage (but, alas, a less heartwarming sight when one contemplates their certain fate). The bulls, as if agitated by the heat, are quicker to lock horns and the bristle-backed pigs less active by day, likely for the same reason. A form scuttling along the wall in the kitchen one night proved not a mouse, as I had feared, but an unblinking gecko, returned to life from months of secretive slumber.
The light of the sun has altered too; it is whiter, purer, and, like a newlywed spouse, more honest and less forgiving. The world is better illuminated by degrees; the light, though, is not yet hard and cruel, only brilliant and vaguely unreal, almost otherworldly. Strangely, clouds have begun to appear in the afternoons, shading the world from the sun. Sunday night I heard thunder for the first time since arriving; Monday afternoon the world became gray, and the thunder returned. Lightning flashed in the distance, and a strong wind bent the trees and bushes, scattering the vibrant blossoms of the bougainvillea. A little rain fell. As I walked home, the road seemed newly made—I couldn’t remember when I had last seen pavement glazed by rainwater.
The small storm seemed a revelation, although of what sort, precisely, was not clear. In the India I have known, clouds never worry the face of the sun, and the air is eternally limpid and breathless; rain never keeps down the dust in the street. In such a world, the rumble and flash of a thunder storm assume a primal gravity; they brim with mystery and meaning. Only I fear I’m insufficiently attuned to tease out that meaning: I must be content with the knowledge that the world has indeed changed, as it is wont to this time of year, even in these latitudes. Perhaps the bland and featureless days of sunny calm have truly gone elsewhere, at least for the time being, and if so, I am glad for it. Even if this is as no spring I’ve known before—I’ve held no vigil for the purple-headed crocus or the first robin, harbored no expectation of tulip blooms and cherry blossoms, mourned the passing rites of March Madness and Opening Day, unobserved—the season remains a profound symbol of growth and rebirth. Even the sun can become a weighty emblem of death when it shines so long without opposition.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Reduction, Third Attempt: Playing Fortune-teller, Pt. 2
The trend of farming supplemented by migratory wage labor seems a rough compromise between the desire of the Indian farmer to remain on the land and the desire of the Indian government to see him off it, and yet it is not a compromise that is acceptable from either an economic or social standpoint: under such an unregulated, ad hoc arrangement, too much arable land lies fallow, labor flows and productivity for those industries dependent on the migrant force are unpredictable, and the costs to families imposed by the ruptures of migration, though difficult to measure, are no doubt considerable. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) is, in some sense, an attempt to address this issue, and yet it is plagued by its own serious problems of graft and poor administration. Thus the question must again be posed: How to shift one-sixth of a labor force as large as India’s from the countryside, its ancestral homelands, the plow and the scythe, into the city, the SEZ, and onto the assembly line? Twenty-first century India is not Stalinist Russia; as Nandigram shows, the government can’t simply force people from their farms at riflepoint. Can it?
Meanwhile the pressures of the "agrarian crisis" continue to mount: Indian farmers must contend with the falling prices of many agricultural commodities, including rice; diminished state support for farm livelihoods; a dearth of credit; and, perhaps most ominously, the increasing adversity of meteorological events. Broad scientific consensus suggests that global warming will serve to intensify existing patterns of precipitation: wet areas will receive even more rain, thereby becoming flood-prone; dry areas will receive even less, becoming drought-prone. Semi-arid regions such as southern Rajasthan may tip toward desert and become largely, if not entirely, uncultivable; regions most buffeted by the monsoon in the South and Northeast of India, already menaced by floods on a nearly annual basis, may very well spend every June, July, and August under water. Thus Mother Nature, with an invaluable assist from human negligence, could, at least in part, do what the Indian government cannot: if the science of climate change is sound, many farm families may have little choice but to give up their land. They will migrate to the cities, downtrodden, aggrieved, and ill prepared for life outside of the village.
And global warming will make its presence felt in India in other, more insidious (though perhaps no less catastrophic) ways. Last year scientists were shocked to discover that ice cores taken from Himalayan glaciers revealed no evidence of the radioactive fall-out generated by atmospheric nuclear tests in the 1950s and '60s, thus suggesting that the glaciers have been shrinking for at least the past half-century. Given that the ice fields of the Himalayas provide drinking water for half of the Indian population, their diminishment is serious cause for alarm. A concerted national water conservation effort seems warranted, and the most logical first step would be to impose strict limits on the amount of water made available for irrigation, since the practice consumes far more of the resource than any other activity. From the Indian government's perspective, such an imposition would be doubly advantageous: not only would it conserve water, but it would further hasten the flight of the Indian farmer to the city.
Despite myriad hardships, most of the 16% of the workforce to be absorbed by the manufacturing sector will cling to the land. Farming for many Indians isn’t a way of life; it is life itself, all some families have known for millennia. Dozens of daily suicides attest to the fact that faced with economic ruin, many Indian farmers would rather die than forfeit their land. But if the Indian government is determined to thoroughly modernize its economy, to ensure that everyone shares in the rewards of the Asian Century—if it feels, as that old absolving saw goes, it must act for the good of the nation—by hook or by crook, it will have its way. Further blood will be shed, and the only matter in question will be whether more farmers perish by their own hands or via the clammy appendages of state sanctioned violence.
But for the loss of life likely to accompany a new, modernized, rationalized Indian economy, odds are that a rousting of the countryside wouldn’t threaten the legitimacy of the state. Repression would be decentralized and local, resistance fierce but fragmented, and the central government would be reluctant to intervene, both out of deference for state sovereignty and out of self interest. Those who remained on the land—after all, the overwhelming majority of rural Indians—would be grateful for their good fortune and inclined to remain silent, lest they also find themselves compelled to vacate. Nandigram, whose atrocities were well documented in the press, inspired the outrage of the intelligentsia and politicos in Kolkata and Delhi and a large demonstration or two, but little in the way of widespread condemnation from the masses—I have not once heard it mentioned in conversation in Udaipur. City dwellers might see little evidence of the enormities of their government’s policy and care still less; that is, until the displaced and destitute begin swarming into the cities.
Here, finally, is the event with the power to ignite the nation and all of its latent and not so latent prejudices. A migration of more than 100 million embittered and resentful village dwellers—one driven by resource scarcity, natural and man-made calamity, and government coercion, whether overt or not—into India’s already bursting cities over the course of, say, fifteen years, if not properly planned for and managed, could have disastrous consequences. Not only would such a migration strain already woeful infrastructure, thicken already clotted streets, swell the ranks of the unemployed, heighten competition for resources, and boost crime rates, it would also provide a ready supply of scapegoats for a political class whose strategy of first and last resort has long been one of divide and conquer. India is already a society of the aggrieved, and for the shrewd Indian politician, every grievance represents an opportunity. The opportunities proffered by a massive and rapid urbanization of the rural population (or at least a part of it) would be bountiful blessings indeed.
Put another way, the disaffection engendered by a Great Indian Migration—that belonging to both the dispossessed farmer and the put upon urbanite—would be a vein so deep and so rich that politicians would fall over themselves in their haste to exploit it. Disaffection, the fountainhead of Indian political power, is also malleable, particularly when felt generally, for general disaffection can be most easily twisted to desired political ends. Blame can then be assigned where most convenient: today to migrants, tomorrow to Muslims, the next day to upper caste oppressors. In the event of a face-off, both dispossessed farmers and put upon urbanites would have their cheerleaders, strategists, and co-opters among the political class—harboring excess stores of anger and resentment, the two factions would function as ideal instruments of political ambition. And it's not as if either side will require much goading in order to take up the lathi, cudgel, and torch, or much convincing to divert their wrath, as necessary, to other objects—those which best serve their political sponsors and their own preexisting prejudices—as, notwithstanding the Gandhian legacy, the impulse to violence is still strong in Indian society, as it is in most of the world.
It takes little imagination to conceive of a scenario in which the violence borne of such a conflict swiftly widens its clutches, spreads from city to city, escalates in ferocity, turning into something its political abetters can no longer summon, direct, and dismiss when convenient; the malignant feeling feeding such violence cannot be neatly allayed, being so deeply rooted and diverse in aspect that timelines for reconciliation must be understood not in weeks or months but in years. Of course such a scenario first depends upon a lengthy and improbable concatenation of neglect, misfortune, malfeasance, and treachery in order to come to life...but even that slight probability must be carefully considered. The Indian state is not nearly so stable, nor so assured of prosperity as is widely believed.
Meanwhile the pressures of the "agrarian crisis" continue to mount: Indian farmers must contend with the falling prices of many agricultural commodities, including rice; diminished state support for farm livelihoods; a dearth of credit; and, perhaps most ominously, the increasing adversity of meteorological events. Broad scientific consensus suggests that global warming will serve to intensify existing patterns of precipitation: wet areas will receive even more rain, thereby becoming flood-prone; dry areas will receive even less, becoming drought-prone. Semi-arid regions such as southern Rajasthan may tip toward desert and become largely, if not entirely, uncultivable; regions most buffeted by the monsoon in the South and Northeast of India, already menaced by floods on a nearly annual basis, may very well spend every June, July, and August under water. Thus Mother Nature, with an invaluable assist from human negligence, could, at least in part, do what the Indian government cannot: if the science of climate change is sound, many farm families may have little choice but to give up their land. They will migrate to the cities, downtrodden, aggrieved, and ill prepared for life outside of the village.
And global warming will make its presence felt in India in other, more insidious (though perhaps no less catastrophic) ways. Last year scientists were shocked to discover that ice cores taken from Himalayan glaciers revealed no evidence of the radioactive fall-out generated by atmospheric nuclear tests in the 1950s and '60s, thus suggesting that the glaciers have been shrinking for at least the past half-century. Given that the ice fields of the Himalayas provide drinking water for half of the Indian population, their diminishment is serious cause for alarm. A concerted national water conservation effort seems warranted, and the most logical first step would be to impose strict limits on the amount of water made available for irrigation, since the practice consumes far more of the resource than any other activity. From the Indian government's perspective, such an imposition would be doubly advantageous: not only would it conserve water, but it would further hasten the flight of the Indian farmer to the city.
Despite myriad hardships, most of the 16% of the workforce to be absorbed by the manufacturing sector will cling to the land. Farming for many Indians isn’t a way of life; it is life itself, all some families have known for millennia. Dozens of daily suicides attest to the fact that faced with economic ruin, many Indian farmers would rather die than forfeit their land. But if the Indian government is determined to thoroughly modernize its economy, to ensure that everyone shares in the rewards of the Asian Century—if it feels, as that old absolving saw goes, it must act for the good of the nation—by hook or by crook, it will have its way. Further blood will be shed, and the only matter in question will be whether more farmers perish by their own hands or via the clammy appendages of state sanctioned violence.
But for the loss of life likely to accompany a new, modernized, rationalized Indian economy, odds are that a rousting of the countryside wouldn’t threaten the legitimacy of the state. Repression would be decentralized and local, resistance fierce but fragmented, and the central government would be reluctant to intervene, both out of deference for state sovereignty and out of self interest. Those who remained on the land—after all, the overwhelming majority of rural Indians—would be grateful for their good fortune and inclined to remain silent, lest they also find themselves compelled to vacate. Nandigram, whose atrocities were well documented in the press, inspired the outrage of the intelligentsia and politicos in Kolkata and Delhi and a large demonstration or two, but little in the way of widespread condemnation from the masses—I have not once heard it mentioned in conversation in Udaipur. City dwellers might see little evidence of the enormities of their government’s policy and care still less; that is, until the displaced and destitute begin swarming into the cities.
Here, finally, is the event with the power to ignite the nation and all of its latent and not so latent prejudices. A migration of more than 100 million embittered and resentful village dwellers—one driven by resource scarcity, natural and man-made calamity, and government coercion, whether overt or not—into India’s already bursting cities over the course of, say, fifteen years, if not properly planned for and managed, could have disastrous consequences. Not only would such a migration strain already woeful infrastructure, thicken already clotted streets, swell the ranks of the unemployed, heighten competition for resources, and boost crime rates, it would also provide a ready supply of scapegoats for a political class whose strategy of first and last resort has long been one of divide and conquer. India is already a society of the aggrieved, and for the shrewd Indian politician, every grievance represents an opportunity. The opportunities proffered by a massive and rapid urbanization of the rural population (or at least a part of it) would be bountiful blessings indeed.
Put another way, the disaffection engendered by a Great Indian Migration—that belonging to both the dispossessed farmer and the put upon urbanite—would be a vein so deep and so rich that politicians would fall over themselves in their haste to exploit it. Disaffection, the fountainhead of Indian political power, is also malleable, particularly when felt generally, for general disaffection can be most easily twisted to desired political ends. Blame can then be assigned where most convenient: today to migrants, tomorrow to Muslims, the next day to upper caste oppressors. In the event of a face-off, both dispossessed farmers and put upon urbanites would have their cheerleaders, strategists, and co-opters among the political class—harboring excess stores of anger and resentment, the two factions would function as ideal instruments of political ambition. And it's not as if either side will require much goading in order to take up the lathi, cudgel, and torch, or much convincing to divert their wrath, as necessary, to other objects—those which best serve their political sponsors and their own preexisting prejudices—as, notwithstanding the Gandhian legacy, the impulse to violence is still strong in Indian society, as it is in most of the world.
It takes little imagination to conceive of a scenario in which the violence borne of such a conflict swiftly widens its clutches, spreads from city to city, escalates in ferocity, turning into something its political abetters can no longer summon, direct, and dismiss when convenient; the malignant feeling feeding such violence cannot be neatly allayed, being so deeply rooted and diverse in aspect that timelines for reconciliation must be understood not in weeks or months but in years. Of course such a scenario first depends upon a lengthy and improbable concatenation of neglect, misfortune, malfeasance, and treachery in order to come to life...but even that slight probability must be carefully considered. The Indian state is not nearly so stable, nor so assured of prosperity as is widely believed.
Reduction, Third Attempt: Playing Fortune-teller, Pt. 1
The answer does not much stretch the imagination; it’s an old story really, with a few contemporary twists. Too many people, not enough land—that’s how the most ancient strand goes. The trope about the government pushing to modernize its economy and getting pushed back has been around for a couple of centuries as well; a parallel tale is that of the agrarian nation urbanizing too rapidly. But too many people, not enough water? That’s more contemporary. And stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Climate change will make everything a whole lot worse.
The thesis isn’t terribly original, and the equation even simpler: Scarce resources that grow ever scarcer; an enormous, burgeoning, and largely uneducated rural population being herded against its will into cities; massive generalized resentment; a society divided against itself in more ways than can be counted; and a nation with a bloody history, a long memory, and politicians eager to exploit differences within the population for a soupcon of power. I’m not suggesting that large-scale civil strife in India is inevitable, or even that it’s likely; but I am suggesting that the Indian government—and the rest of the world, for that matter—ignores the elements in this equation at its peril. The future character and composition of the Indian state, and by extension that of South Asia, may very well depend upon the Indian government’s ability to relieve or sublimate the strain of those forces that have already begun to tug at the margins of society.
As has already been noted, 56% of the Indian workforce is employed in the agricultural sector; furthermore, seven of every ten Indians live in rural areas. For many reasons the status quo will not endure; for starters, agriculture is the least productive and least dynamic sector of the economy—if India is serious about achieving broad-based, pro-poor growth, it cannot permit the majority of its workforce to scrabble away in the fields at hardly better than subsistence levels. The problem is one perhaps inherent to the sector (no major modern world economy rests on a foundation of agriculture), but it is undoubtedly one driven by scarcity: ninety-six percent of Indian farmers work plots of two hectares (five acres) or less. It is the rural population that continues to drive population growth in India, and with each successive generation of farmers coming of age, family holdings are further subdivided, shares of land become smaller, and it becomes increasingly difficult to make a living from the earth.
It is already commonplace for farmers in India’s arid and semi-arid zones to migrate seasonally to towns and cities seeking work as wage laborers in construction and other unskilled trades (in fact, within Seva Mandir’s purview, families garner the majority of their income from wage labor, not from farming). Due to water scarcity and the absence of irrigation infrastructure, most are able to only grow a single crop annually, or two at best—farmers in those regions blessed by liberal rainfall are capable of raising three. However, given the inexorable carving of the fields, perhaps it will soon become common, if it hasn’t already, for even those farmers in high precipitation areas to spend at least part of the year as wage laborers in order to make ends meet. Yet in spite of the momentum of this trend, the hoped for demographic transition is no nearer as consequence; given the option, few Indian farmers will abandon their farms in favor of the better (though still miserably) compensated life of a full-time wage laborer. They will only turn from the land grudgingly, with rancor and bitterness, if they turn from it at all.
But given national economic imperatives and the exigencies of land and water scarcity, the pressure on the Indian farmer to leave his land is daily ratcheting in intensity. In 2006, current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh—the former Minister of Finance who oversaw India’s economic liberalization in the early ‘90s—said, "Manufacturing has to be the sponge which absorbs people who need to move out of agriculture in pursuit of higher incomes." The government has predicted that the percentage of the nation’s workforce in the agricultural sector will fall from 56% to 40% by 2026--this perhaps reveals more an implicit goal than any expectation of organic economic reshuffling. And if India is to have any hope of addressing the astonishing poverty of the bottom third of its population, this is perhaps a low-end target. Even at that, is it a realistic one? How to induce more than 100 million people to move off of the land if they simply don't want to?
Some clues have already emerged: in several states the government, citing powers of eminent domain, has seized farmland for the establishment of Special Economic Zones (SEZs)—manufacturing and industrial centers often gifted to foreign consortiums and bundled with tax holiday bows and ribbons of relaxed labor and environmental standards. Farmers and their political allies have opposed such seizures on principle and claim that owners of expropriated land have not been fairly compensated. Last week in Punjab farmers blockaded railroads in protest of one such land grab; last March, in Nandigram, West Bengal, recalcitrant villagers refused to abandon 10,000 acres destined to become a chemical hub and at least fourteen were killed in the subsequent face-off with police. Violence flared again in November when Communist Party of India (CPI) cadres attempted to retake the land on behalf of the government; dozens more were killed and the cadres burned homes and corpses in a clumsy attempt to conceal their crimes.
The thesis isn’t terribly original, and the equation even simpler: Scarce resources that grow ever scarcer; an enormous, burgeoning, and largely uneducated rural population being herded against its will into cities; massive generalized resentment; a society divided against itself in more ways than can be counted; and a nation with a bloody history, a long memory, and politicians eager to exploit differences within the population for a soupcon of power. I’m not suggesting that large-scale civil strife in India is inevitable, or even that it’s likely; but I am suggesting that the Indian government—and the rest of the world, for that matter—ignores the elements in this equation at its peril. The future character and composition of the Indian state, and by extension that of South Asia, may very well depend upon the Indian government’s ability to relieve or sublimate the strain of those forces that have already begun to tug at the margins of society.
As has already been noted, 56% of the Indian workforce is employed in the agricultural sector; furthermore, seven of every ten Indians live in rural areas. For many reasons the status quo will not endure; for starters, agriculture is the least productive and least dynamic sector of the economy—if India is serious about achieving broad-based, pro-poor growth, it cannot permit the majority of its workforce to scrabble away in the fields at hardly better than subsistence levels. The problem is one perhaps inherent to the sector (no major modern world economy rests on a foundation of agriculture), but it is undoubtedly one driven by scarcity: ninety-six percent of Indian farmers work plots of two hectares (five acres) or less. It is the rural population that continues to drive population growth in India, and with each successive generation of farmers coming of age, family holdings are further subdivided, shares of land become smaller, and it becomes increasingly difficult to make a living from the earth.
It is already commonplace for farmers in India’s arid and semi-arid zones to migrate seasonally to towns and cities seeking work as wage laborers in construction and other unskilled trades (in fact, within Seva Mandir’s purview, families garner the majority of their income from wage labor, not from farming). Due to water scarcity and the absence of irrigation infrastructure, most are able to only grow a single crop annually, or two at best—farmers in those regions blessed by liberal rainfall are capable of raising three. However, given the inexorable carving of the fields, perhaps it will soon become common, if it hasn’t already, for even those farmers in high precipitation areas to spend at least part of the year as wage laborers in order to make ends meet. Yet in spite of the momentum of this trend, the hoped for demographic transition is no nearer as consequence; given the option, few Indian farmers will abandon their farms in favor of the better (though still miserably) compensated life of a full-time wage laborer. They will only turn from the land grudgingly, with rancor and bitterness, if they turn from it at all.
But given national economic imperatives and the exigencies of land and water scarcity, the pressure on the Indian farmer to leave his land is daily ratcheting in intensity. In 2006, current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh—the former Minister of Finance who oversaw India’s economic liberalization in the early ‘90s—said, "Manufacturing has to be the sponge which absorbs people who need to move out of agriculture in pursuit of higher incomes." The government has predicted that the percentage of the nation’s workforce in the agricultural sector will fall from 56% to 40% by 2026--this perhaps reveals more an implicit goal than any expectation of organic economic reshuffling. And if India is to have any hope of addressing the astonishing poverty of the bottom third of its population, this is perhaps a low-end target. Even at that, is it a realistic one? How to induce more than 100 million people to move off of the land if they simply don't want to?
Some clues have already emerged: in several states the government, citing powers of eminent domain, has seized farmland for the establishment of Special Economic Zones (SEZs)—manufacturing and industrial centers often gifted to foreign consortiums and bundled with tax holiday bows and ribbons of relaxed labor and environmental standards. Farmers and their political allies have opposed such seizures on principle and claim that owners of expropriated land have not been fairly compensated. Last week in Punjab farmers blockaded railroads in protest of one such land grab; last March, in Nandigram, West Bengal, recalcitrant villagers refused to abandon 10,000 acres destined to become a chemical hub and at least fourteen were killed in the subsequent face-off with police. Violence flared again in November when Communist Party of India (CPI) cadres attempted to retake the land on behalf of the government; dozens more were killed and the cadres burned homes and corpses in a clumsy attempt to conceal their crimes.
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