Filling the vacuum

My time in India has been a bit of a clash of civilizations in part because India itself isn't quite firmly footed in its own development. A stunningly universal visual of this is the rubble. Everywhere you go - from the slums to the fancy neighborhoods, you will find bricks piled by the sides of the road, half-vacant buildings falling down, and a thin layer of dust on everything. Much of the country looks like it has recently been bombed, and no one seems to notice.

Being a privileged white Westerner, I am blessed to experience and am most accustomed to the nicer parts of India. Eating in nicer restaurants, taking nicer transport, and staying in nicer dwellings than most of the population can afford. Nonetheless, it would be impossible (and undesirable) to avoid the extreme poverty which is present here. Everywhere I go, there is someone who is needy, with children, broken limbs, and/or a debilitating disease asking for hand outs. The poverty goes past the point of overwhelming to a point where it becomes disturbingly ordinary and matter of fact.

India is currently making attempts to pull itself out of poverty through rapid Western style growth. The Indian government constantly compares itself to its northern neighbor, China - trying to demonstrate that they too are capable of rapid growth - and without the dictatorial government which has a stranglehold on China. India has an enormous split between the wealth of the rich and the poverty of the poor - and the gap is ever widening. While it is tempting to encourage any sort of economic growth which would help to bring any percentage of the population here into a reasonable standard of living, it is frightening to look at the devastating environmental, social, and economic toll that growth (and a couple hundred years of colonization) have had on the sub-continent. The gut instinct to throw money (or industrialization) at the problem is likely a poor choice.

I have never been such a fan of capitalism. For a long time I have been an avowed socialist, inherently distrustful of the notion that an individual's attempt to pull themselves up will in turn help others. I see the system instead working as a means for one person to screw over another. We have a finite amount of resources, people will fight over them, the end goal of each player in the system is to take the most they can (allowing for any applicable national and international law).

However, recently in conversation I have had capitalism explained to me in an amoral light. The argument goes as such; Thinking of capitalism in moral terms is impossible. Captialism, as such a complex system, cannot apply the black and white terms of 'good' and 'bad.' Thinking of the workings of an economy more like that of a natural ecosystem will present a more digestible and neutral system. Wolves eat rabbits. Is this bad? No. Is it good? Not really. Rabbits and wolves have equal worth and one must die so the other can live. If there are too many rabbits, the wolves will eat them, then there will be too many wolves, then the next season some wolves will move out of the area or starve. If all the wolves or rabbits were to die, it would throw the system out of whack, but only for a brief period of time. With time, all things will pass and a new creature will evolve to take the space previously occupied by the rabbit. Nature, and capitalism, abhors a vacuum. The only constant is change. Nature has no conscience. Businesses will come and go, some people will suffer while others succeed, and all will continue to roll on no matter what you think about it.

I am a progressive, and I think that things are getting better, though with some of the gains we have made much has been lost. Overall, I think that people are better off today than they were 100 years ago. I think people, especially people of privilege, romanticize the past and poverty. I admit it is tough to judge what should be seen as universal social goods. I don't think that technology is inherently good or bad. There are technologies which help people, and some that hurt people, and telling the difference between the two can be difficult at times, but possible.

But I wonder how one can put moral reigns on development. Individual actors have morals - but acting as part of the collective they seem to lose them. Why? Is a democracy of morals the best way to get the best for everyone? If we all try our hardest to do what is right are we more likely to do the right thing than if there were a law making us do it? Are good intentions enough? If the majority of people are unaware of the consequences of their actions, what then?

Addressing the merits of the Green Revolution has been tough because everyone is so freaking righteous and unwilling to examine their own position. Everyone is a little wrong and too much money has been put into too much development without asking follow up questions. I should have taken an ethics course in college.

The World’s Largest Retail Establishment: India.

When I was taking the bus from the Thai border to Siem Reap in Cambodia, I was talking with a young British fellow who had just come from spending five months in India. When I asked him his favorite part about the country, he told me that it was the amazing room service. “The whole country has room service. You walk down the street and want a beer, you just say loudly and clearly, ‘I would love a cold Kingfisher right now’ and BAM! Three minutes later, someone will walk up to you with a beer. They’ll ask for an extra 20 rupees, but you get your beer.” I don’t know if this actually works, but if it works anywhere, this would be the country. It seems like everyone here sells something, and if they aren’t selling something, they will gladly direct you to someone who’s got what you need for a cut off the top.

Selling is serious business. Retail is how a large part of India’s population makes a living. India has more retail establishments per person than any other country in the world (11 outlets per 1000 people) – with a greater diversity of vendors than any country I have seen – but that is all beginning to change just now.

India was relatively closed to the global market up until 1991 when an effort for liberalization occurred. Prior to liberalization the government hoped to help protect Indian companies, so without serious concessions, foreign corporations were not allowed into the country. By teaming with an Indian company some were allowed in, and starting in 1991 those rules were loosened. In the past three year it’s become no-holds-barred. The Indian government has suddenly shed any desire for protectionist policy with preference instead given to the idea of rapid and reckless development. To encourage foreign investment, corporations are given huge tax breaks (as in no taxes paid for the first five years of operation in India) and laws are changing so as to harm rather than help local small business.

In the US we are fairly accustomed to the commerce taking place only in a limited number of venues. Things are bought in stores. Food is consumed in restaurants or the home. Vending machines, hot dog stands, and newspaper boys all have their place, but are the exception, not the rule to being semi-mobile. In India, the general idea stands that if there is a person there who might want something it is legitimate to sell something there. Perhaps my favorite was an hour-long live infomercial by an excitable mustachioed man on a bus careening down a mountain about an amazing plasticized cotton cloth that can be used for just about anything – from a scarf to a shower curtain. He sold five.

The government splits the lines of sales into two categories; the organized and the unorganized sectors. The unorganized sector includes four big categories. Push-cart vendors walk the street with wheelbarrows, bags, carriages or trays of goods. Hawkers have blankets or tables set-up to vend their wares from. Corner stores are sometimes as small as a phone booth with a man seemingly built into a small desk in the wall. Larger retailers rarely have space enough to walk comfortably between rows and are usually located on the first floor of residential buildings.

Organized sector includes stores in commercial zones and shopping malls. Since the liberalization, we have begun to see western style stores taking over – overly lit, air-conditioned, and shiny.

The unorganized sector employs eighty times more people than the organized sector. Recently there has been a major push to make the percentage in the organized sector grow. Reasons and justification are shaky, but proponents argue that it will be healthier, more efficient, and help the country become developed. Opponents argue that this will take jobs away from the poor, destroy local foods systems, and westernize the country to an undesirable degree.

The clearest example of how this is happening was the shut down of street vendors in major cities in India and government locking of businesses which are operating in residential areas (overnight, unlicensed store owners literally had their doors welded shut this spring). The government claims that is it planning on training the millions of street vendors in proper sanitation and implementing a licensing system before allowing them to reopen and that restaurants which are currently in residential areas need to be relocated into what will become “food streets” and commercially zoned sectors, but many worry this is just a government effort to strong arm small businesses out. Many of the store owners which have been forced shut have had to sell their stores, large sections of the city are currently being bulldozed under to make room for foreign owned shopping complexes. With a middle class which is expanding by an estimated 35 million people a year (that's like opening up a whole new European country every year to the vultures) there's lots of opportunity for expansion.

One of the matters I am starting to try to tackle is how this shift in marketing is changing diet – because of course as stores westernize, as do their products. Fresh fruits stands used to abound, now they are being pushed out by packaged biscuits and the like. Cheap restaurants and food stalls are becoming increasingly difficult to find – a great loss to the millions who live on the streets or lack kitchen facilities. Yet another example of the perils of progress…

Sick of sick

I have spent the past couple days lying about in my hotel room suffering from a fever and making frequent use of the toilet. Generally back home I am a fairly healthy person. My time in India has easily been the most frequently I have been sick in my life. Seems like once a week I have to spend a full day chained to a toilet – requiring me to sit in my hotel room as public facilities are nonexistent here. I am eating reasonably; frequenting mid-ranged restaurants and only drinking bottled water. Unlike the one real illness I got in Mexico which I could trace to a particular foul food (some ice cream gone off), here I have no idea where these troubles are coming from.

I’ve made attempts at homeopathic, ayurvedic, and conventional cures. I’m drinking lots of fluids, keeping my salts up, eating odd combinations of rice, dal, yogurt, ginger, and bishop’s weed as a supposed magical cure-all, but to no avail. My bowels seem to decide for themselves irrespective of external forces; they release me from my semi-permanent post at the potty when they please.

Proper sanitation is a serious problem here Water contamination leads to 700,000 deaths a year. Poopy.

The local global

I have moved down to Delhi, but had written a post I dinb't get to post over my time in Dharamsala...

The wheat which Ramesh grows is a traditional variety which he is just beginning to sow. The fields have goent hrough a season of rice, but still much of Ramesh's grain holds out for use. Ramesh got his seed from local farmers when he started farming here a half dozen years back - the wheat is nameless - just called wheat. Though it maintains some of the distinctive propertiews of its parent plant, this 'local'variety is actually a mixture of what had been grown here prior to the Green Revolution and a hybrid seed which came from the research cetner where I was studying in Mexico.

The wheat has a very nutty flavour and is a little sweet, the flour it makes is golden in colour. It’s low in gluten (meaning it has less of the stretchy qualities which you generally look for when making leavened breads) and doesn't seem to have very strong proteins. Ramesh mills it himself at a local mills, only as whole wheat.

Eating it all week has been interesting and baking with it has been odd. Ramesh has the first western oven I have seen in India and he likes to keep a loaf around the farm because of his time in the US (though I actually haven’t seen him eat any of the bread which has been made here). I have spent some time in the kitchen with his cook watching him make bread, playing with the dough, and learning about the other bread products which he makes. The dough lacks any elasticity and the resultant bread is dense with a mealy crumb – but it’s certainly a noble attempt on the idea of leavened western loaf bread. To get an Indian spin on the notion, it’s flavoured with cumin and ajwain. The recipe likely came from a French woman who volunteered at the farm a while back, but Ramesh is starting to sell it in the local markets with relative success.

Lama Lama Lama

Out of the blue a couple days back Ramesh asked if I would be interested in seeing the Dalai Lama speak. Ramesh's farm is just south of Dharamsala. which is just south of McLeod Ganj, the place the Tibetan government in exile has taken up residence. It turns out that a Russian-Mongolian group of Buddhists had made a special request that His Holiness (which is what they call him around here) give a lecture on “The Three Principal Paths” of Buddhism. So, he obliged with an open audience given in Tibetan but simultaneously translated into Russian, French, English, Korean, Japanese, and a language which may or may not have been Mongolian.

The talk had interesting bits, though a bit difficult to really get into. Thousands of folks pile into the Lama’s temple to hear it. You aren’t allowed to bring anything into the teaching for fear of an attack on HH – so it’s pretty bare bones. You bring your own cushion to sit on for six hours, your own FM radio to listen to the teaching in translation, your ID badge, and a money belt. Nothing more. So, sadly, no pictures of this amazing event (included photo is from another stupa) – but it's quite the sight to see. The clothes were amazing: saffron robes on all the Tibetans, hippies in hippieware, Mongolians in flowing, furry robes, and Korean monks dressed in a graphite gray, with a few extra westerners as myself dressed in regular trousers.

The lecture itself was a bit confusing. Either something was lost in translation or the Dalai Lama speaks very cyclically – constantly repeating the same turns of phrase to reemphasize matters again and again. The subject matter was also a bit tough – though I am roughly familiar with Buddhist philosophy, I could make no claims to be an expert – and he was talking about some pretty heavy stuff. To add to my troubles, my butt was asleep for most of it. Having missed out on several other opportunities to see the Dalai Lama speak in the past, I was glad to have finally gotten the chance - and in his own temple to boot. Even if I didn't get too much from the talk, the guy is real cute - if it weren't for the men with machine guns surrounding him, he's the sort of fellow you would want to just cradle in your arms.

Doodley-Do

I like to draw a lot. I rarely do as much as I would like. A friend on the course at Navdanya a couple weeks back found this out and commanded me to produce some drawings for her. The following were the result.

"Will be eaten 4 food"

"It is a sad truth that many of our amphibious friends must suffer through an untold number of kisses from princesses when all they really want is another frog to love"

Over the Hills and Far Away

I have been spending the last week or so on the organic farm of a man named Ramesh in the hills south of the city of Dharamsala in the north of India. His farm encompasses around 14 acres and includes all sorts of beasts and plants. A small dairy of ten cows, lots of green manure crops, some traditional varieties of rice, wheat, vegetables, and an orchard full of virtually every fruit you could think of. Ramesh is an Indian man who spent much of his life living in California and has chosen to come back to India to retire and start an organic farm which will operate as a model for local farmers to go to for advice and inspiration.

The hills of Himalpradesh are interesting because the mountainous terrain makes it too difficult to imagine industrial minded agricultural development. Farms have to be small just to stop from spilling over the steep, rocky hillsides so have stayed manageable. But farms here, and in many other parts if India as well, are facing the problem of being too small. Constant subdivision of landholdings for inheritance is beginning to make farms unreasonably sized. If a farmer has multiple sons, he will traditionally split the land between them. The two acres you might have been able to eek a living out on turn into two one acre plots your sons will have mighty trouble trying to survive on. Urban migration is helping to offset this land crowding, but overall it’s leading to dire rural poverty.

Part of Ramesh’s goal is to figure out a way to help farmers add value to their crops to get them higher prices; maybe making a cooperative to turn excess dairy into hard cheeses or construct a mill to help make grains market ready. Until he gets something up and running, it’s been interesting to walk about and talk to his neighbors about how they make a living and their priorities. A sampling:

Currently, Ramesh makes paneer, the traditional semi-fermented white cheese which makes up a substantial portion of the vegetarian Indian diet. By heating and curdling the milk with some sort of food acid, milk can easily and cheaply be curdled and pressed to a soft cheese. He sells it to local restaurants and shops for a small profit.

A man who lives up the hill at the end of the road makes about a $1.25 a day making a milk candy which he walks into town to sell to local merchants. He can’t afford the bus which would take him back to the village and back and save him six hours of walking each day because it would take too much (twenty cents, round trip) from the precious little he has to support his family. He walks with a bit of a bow in his legs and a slow, steady shuffle.

There are a number of goat herders who are passing through the valley at the moment. With flocks ranging from 25 to 250 these adorable ungulates spend their summers in the mountains eating off of the pastures of public land, then go back to the lowlands for winter. This caste of people has been doing this for centuries, but as the wheels of progress turn, the nomadic tradition is being lost. Only about 20% of the children of these herders intend on continuing their father’s paths. Bigger herders actually make enough money to hire others to do most of the work for them – smaller herders still make reasonable money because of the non-existent operation costs and the nomadic lifestyle.

A family down the road has a stream running through their property with a flour and rice mill getting power from the water. The flour is ground by a traditional two stone grinder. The rice is hulled by a rickety machine steel machine with powerful teeth. Though such mills used to operate communally with in-kind payments for the mill owner, more are going the direction this has and asking for cash payments.

But most of the folks around here farm much less excitingly; simple subsistence plots of grains with small shares of pulses and some vegetables. Getting water from the stream requires a yearly effort to repair damage inflicted by the previous monsoon. Lately cooperative building efforts have begun to stall. On top of it, a government hydroelectric plant upstream has left a large number of farmers without any access to irrigation water. Market prices are low, etc., etc., etc.. Life here is relatively rough – and this is one of the better off regions for farming in the country. A little peak.