Go here for a few more photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/tyler.wilkinsonray/IHPPartI?feat=directlink
Monday, December 13, 2010
IHP Part I
Go here for a few more photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/tyler.wilkinsonray/IHPPartI?feat=directlink
Saying goodbye (tata in hindi) to India
I arrived in Zanzibar a few days ago, and already India feels like a distant memory. The blue ocean, relaxed atmosphere, friendly people, and overwhelming heat is reminiscent of Colombia's Caribbean coast. I am just starting to put my mind to learning Swahili, but the few words I already know go far with the locals. Interactions here are more relaxed, more familiar than they were in India, as if my brain runs on the same wavelength as the Zanzibaris. In India, I often felt like I was trying to communicate with a different species entirely or had woken up on another planet. So what about the last month in India? I'll try to summarize what still hasn't settled in my head.
I left India from the Mumbai airport. The last thing I did in India was drink a towering glass of hot chocolate at three in the morning in an airport cafe, while the beast of Mumbia was just beginning to stir outside. The drive to the airport (unfortunately the only time I got to spend in the city) did not fail to exceed my expectations. The entire city seemed blanked with wooden scaffolding rising out of the dust and disorder of street life. Children slept on cardboard side by side on the door step of towering office buildings. I was exhausted but couldn't let my eye lids shut.
How does one describe India? The underworld of Mumbai's slums, street children, and communal violence found a place in the American consciousness with the movie Slum Dog Millionaire, but unfortunately for the people actually living in the slums there is no possibility of game shows.
What did result is that Westerners with a few extra bucks can now get a tour of a Mumbai slum (a safari of India's charismatic macro-fauna?). There is a Facebook application called "Slumlords of Mumbai," so now Indians across the country can "cheat their friends" and rise to the top of India's now famous underworld.
Yet, these fleeting images hardly illustrate the complexities of the roulette with modernity that India is caught in. Friedman said the world is flat, but if you venture to leave your hotel room, such an analogy with be forgotten instantly.Other people have borrowed the opening from Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" to give perhaps a more accurate description:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way"
The government in Delhi, businessmen in Mumbai, and the growing middle class welcome India's bid to becoming an emerging superpower. Their main concern is rivaling China in its quest of regional supremacy. As I write this, India is seeking a spot on the UN Security Council, which would be a symbolic affirmation of their growing power by the West and also give them considerable diplomatic weight. As the Indian elites put development into overdrive, the rest of the country is wondering how much of the burden is going to be put on their backs. If India's past is any clue, the answer will be most of it.
It is this struggle over development-- for whom and on who's terms-- that we explored these past two months.
We arrived in Delhi to see India display its achievements, of which there are many, during the Common Wealth Games. We also saw the slums where those who don't fit into India's modern image have been hidden away to fend for themselves. We visited cotton farmers who have to compete with U.S. agriculture subsidies and inspected their failed crops supplied and engineered by Monsanto. We also visited organic farms that are fighting for the ability to plant their own seeds.
We visited Gandhi's last home before he died where he preached truth and non-violence, and we visited his home state of Gujarat. Its capital, Ahmadabad is known for its brutal history of communal violence between Hindus and Muslims. It's a strife that has been encouraged and incited by the BJP, the Hindu nationalist party, which has ruled the region for the past 20 years.
We visited dams -- "the temples of modern India" as India's first prime minister once proclaimed. Among the dams we visited was Sardar Surovar, the last dam on the famous Narmada river, which displaced 40,835 families by official counts and still hasn't reached its full height. We also visited one of the 800 communities displaced by the Ukai dam, then visited a community downstream that used the dam's irrigated water to grow 4-5 times the amount of food to gain considerable wealth. Further down chemical companies use a huge amount of the electricity produced and water to dilute the their industrial effluence to meets the regions loose environmental regulation. Dilution or simply paying the small fine is much less expensive than treating industrial waste.
We met "forest tribes," Their nomadic livelihoods halted by India's growing environmental consciousness and it's affinity for pristine forests.
We also saw resistance-- an academic from one of India's most elite business school supporting a slum's quest to avoid displacement, a formerly denotified tribe that uses theater to raise awareness of tribal issues, slum women who weathered blows from the police to protest the Common Wealth Games, and a farmers movement struggling to reverse the damage caused by GMO seeds, the green revolution's reliance on chemical fertilizers, and neoliberal agriculture policies to reassert their autonomy.
After two months in India, I am less sure of what to make of it. Yes, the food is fantastic and didn't make me nearly as sick as I had feared, but how can an outsider make sense of such a surging subcontinent. Overwhelmed by its shear size and foreignness, my first reaction is to block it out of my mind completely. It defies sense. Try as I may, I couldn't begin to enter the ethos, or plethora of ethos, that make up the contemporary state of India. One that is so diverse, yet young enough that its differences still show through the awkwardness of nationhood. However foreign India remains in my mind, such distances are no long significant. I can't stir a spoonful of sugar into my coffee without thinking of the masked children in the sugar factory we visited, nor can I buy a tee-shirt without thinking of the daily struggle of cotton farmers. I was hoping I would come up with something less cliche, but what I am taking with me from India is that every decision I make, from what I buy to who I vote for has more serious repercussions for those outside the US than it does for us inside. Behind the comfort we enjoy in the US, there are people toiling in the rest of the world to make it possible. I can't say I didn't know this before IHP, but the serenity of Vermont is far too strong of a sedative and makes the rest of the world seem more distant than it actually is. As for India, it is more than capable of deciding its own fate.
As always, please share your thoughts and experiences
I left India from the Mumbai airport. The last thing I did in India was drink a towering glass of hot chocolate at three in the morning in an airport cafe, while the beast of Mumbia was just beginning to stir outside. The drive to the airport (unfortunately the only time I got to spend in the city) did not fail to exceed my expectations. The entire city seemed blanked with wooden scaffolding rising out of the dust and disorder of street life. Children slept on cardboard side by side on the door step of towering office buildings. I was exhausted but couldn't let my eye lids shut.
How does one describe India? The underworld of Mumbai's slums, street children, and communal violence found a place in the American consciousness with the movie Slum Dog Millionaire, but unfortunately for the people actually living in the slums there is no possibility of game shows.
What did result is that Westerners with a few extra bucks can now get a tour of a Mumbai slum (a safari of India's charismatic macro-fauna?). There is a Facebook application called "Slumlords of Mumbai," so now Indians across the country can "cheat their friends" and rise to the top of India's now famous underworld.
Yet, these fleeting images hardly illustrate the complexities of the roulette with modernity that India is caught in. Friedman said the world is flat, but if you venture to leave your hotel room, such an analogy with be forgotten instantly.Other people have borrowed the opening from Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" to give perhaps a more accurate description:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way"
The government in Delhi, businessmen in Mumbai, and the growing middle class welcome India's bid to becoming an emerging superpower. Their main concern is rivaling China in its quest of regional supremacy. As I write this, India is seeking a spot on the UN Security Council, which would be a symbolic affirmation of their growing power by the West and also give them considerable diplomatic weight. As the Indian elites put development into overdrive, the rest of the country is wondering how much of the burden is going to be put on their backs. If India's past is any clue, the answer will be most of it.
It is this struggle over development-- for whom and on who's terms-- that we explored these past two months.
We arrived in Delhi to see India display its achievements, of which there are many, during the Common Wealth Games. We also saw the slums where those who don't fit into India's modern image have been hidden away to fend for themselves. We visited cotton farmers who have to compete with U.S. agriculture subsidies and inspected their failed crops supplied and engineered by Monsanto. We also visited organic farms that are fighting for the ability to plant their own seeds.
We visited Gandhi's last home before he died where he preached truth and non-violence, and we visited his home state of Gujarat. Its capital, Ahmadabad is known for its brutal history of communal violence between Hindus and Muslims. It's a strife that has been encouraged and incited by the BJP, the Hindu nationalist party, which has ruled the region for the past 20 years.
We visited dams -- "the temples of modern India" as India's first prime minister once proclaimed. Among the dams we visited was Sardar Surovar, the last dam on the famous Narmada river, which displaced 40,835 families by official counts and still hasn't reached its full height. We also visited one of the 800 communities displaced by the Ukai dam, then visited a community downstream that used the dam's irrigated water to grow 4-5 times the amount of food to gain considerable wealth. Further down chemical companies use a huge amount of the electricity produced and water to dilute the their industrial effluence to meets the regions loose environmental regulation. Dilution or simply paying the small fine is much less expensive than treating industrial waste.
We met "forest tribes," Their nomadic livelihoods halted by India's growing environmental consciousness and it's affinity for pristine forests.
We also saw resistance-- an academic from one of India's most elite business school supporting a slum's quest to avoid displacement, a formerly denotified tribe that uses theater to raise awareness of tribal issues, slum women who weathered blows from the police to protest the Common Wealth Games, and a farmers movement struggling to reverse the damage caused by GMO seeds, the green revolution's reliance on chemical fertilizers, and neoliberal agriculture policies to reassert their autonomy.
After two months in India, I am less sure of what to make of it. Yes, the food is fantastic and didn't make me nearly as sick as I had feared, but how can an outsider make sense of such a surging subcontinent. Overwhelmed by its shear size and foreignness, my first reaction is to block it out of my mind completely. It defies sense. Try as I may, I couldn't begin to enter the ethos, or plethora of ethos, that make up the contemporary state of India. One that is so diverse, yet young enough that its differences still show through the awkwardness of nationhood. However foreign India remains in my mind, such distances are no long significant. I can't stir a spoonful of sugar into my coffee without thinking of the masked children in the sugar factory we visited, nor can I buy a tee-shirt without thinking of the daily struggle of cotton farmers. I was hoping I would come up with something less cliche, but what I am taking with me from India is that every decision I make, from what I buy to who I vote for has more serious repercussions for those outside the US than it does for us inside. Behind the comfort we enjoy in the US, there are people toiling in the rest of the world to make it possible. I can't say I didn't know this before IHP, but the serenity of Vermont is far too strong of a sedative and makes the rest of the world seem more distant than it actually is. As for India, it is more than capable of deciding its own fate.
As always, please share your thoughts and experiences
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