Watching Uncle Ho watching us

As many of you know, I went to Vietnam two weeks ago for work. This was my second time to Vietnam, as my brother Ben and I visited the country for a few weeks back in 2011. I love Vietnam and highly recommend a visit!

I went to the Mekong Delta region--specifically, Can Tho and Soc Trang--to witness the launch of my organization's handwashing product, called the HappyTap, in partnership with the Vietnam Women's Union (let's be honest, without any Vietnamese language skills I wasn't doing much more than simply witnessing). The Women's Union has branches in every village in Vietnam, so partnering with them is a huge opportunity to raise awareness about the need for handwashing and create demand for our product in every corner of the country. It's a bit unclear to me if the Women's Union is a government institution or a wing of the Communist party or if the government and the party are one and the same, but I'm pretty sure that's how the Women's Union has access to every village.

I traveled from Phnom Penh to Can Tho, and then back to Phnom Penh from Saigon. I took buses between Vietnam and Cambodia (the distance from Phnom Penh to Can Tho is approximately the same as Washington DC to New York and to Saigon approximately the same as Philadelphia to Boston). The difference in the landscape at the border was striking. As soon as I crossed into Vietnam, the potholes in the road disappeared and I found myself surrounded by bright green rice paddies and lush banana plantations. The Mekong Delta is the most productive rice region in Vietnam, and because rice is one of Vietnam's most important exports, the government has invested a lot of money to ensure that area is irrigated and can produce rice year-round. In contrast, Cambodian farmers cannot afford to irrigate their fields and only grow rice during the rainy season, so the countryside was pretty brown. (Sound familiar?) It was incredible to me that Vietnam's economic edge over Cambodia was immediately apparent.

(To be fair, I crossed back into Cambodia at a different checkpoint, and there was pretty much no difference other than language and a bunch of casinos on the Cambodian side. [I guess gambling is illegal in Vietnam so people cross the border to play? not sure.] But that checkpoint was not in the Delta.)

A funny note about my Vietnamese coworkers (who are probably sick of foreigners thinking this is funny): they are named Ai and Quy, pronounced "I" and "We." And Ai's sister is named My, pronounced "Me." I love it. In the Phnom Penh office we have to refer to Ai as "Miss Ai" otherwise it gets too confusing and everyone thinks you are talking about yourself. Ai and Quy are wonderful people and the best part of my too-short trip to Vietnam was hanging out with them. Ai grew up in Can Tho, and she and My (who is still in high school and thus lives in Can Tho with Ai's parents) showed Quy and me around the town.

Quy and Ai eat soft tofu in jasmine water.

The rest of my Vietnamese coworkers were field staff and spoke pretty much no English, with one exception. That one exception told me that most of his family lives in San Jose, California. His father was on the wrong side of the war; he had worked as an officer of some sort in the US-backed South Vietnam government. At some point after the war, his father was sent to a Communist reeducation camp and upon his release sought asylum in the US. Since my coworker was over 18 years old at that point (he is now about 40), whether to go or stay was his decision. He chose to stay in Vietnam since he was already studying at university and wasn't confident that his English was good enough to succeed in an American college. He was the only one to stay. His younger siblings and mother joined his father in the US. My coworker hopes to one day move to California to reunite with his family and provide his children with an American university education.

I often feel like I'm running into American history that wasn't quite taught in my high school history class. And not only in Vietnam. I went to Laos during my Khmer New Year vacation in April. The US dropped more than 270 million bombs on Laos during the "secret" carpet-bombing campaign from 1964 to 1973--that's more than all bombs dropped everywhere by everyone during WWII. Laos still suffers from this everyday, as people inadvertently step on unexploded ordnance. Walking through Luang Prabang's night market, I came across several stalls of vendors selling utensils and bangles made from melted-down bombs (I bought chopsticks; the proceeds fund demining efforts and support the metal artisans). Much of the advertised tourism in northeast Laos involves trekking to "bomb villages" (I didn't go). I met several Laotian people, usually belonging to the Hmong tribe, whose relatives had fled to the US (mostly Minnesota) after the war. The CIA had financed and trained Hmong tribespeople to fight an insurgency against the Communist Party in Laos. The Hmong lost and the US granted asylum.

During the war the US rained bombs on Cambodia as well, in an attempt to oust the North Vietnamese from the bases they had established on the Cambodian side of the border. After the coup of Prince Sihanouk created the Khmer Republic and triggered the Cambodian Civil War, the US provided air support to the Khmer Republic to fight the Viet Cong and the Khmer Rouge insurgency.  To be honest, the American legacy is not nearly as apparent in Cambodia as it is in Laos and Vietnam (at least not to me), since the Khmer Rouge genocide following American withdrawal overshadows pretty much everything else. There might still be unexploded ordnance from the American cluster bombs, like there is in Laos, but I'm under the impression most landmines were planted by the Khmer Rouge.

Despite the brutal history of American involvement in Indochina, it seems that people don't really feel any animosity towards Americans. As Ai and Quy explained, these days Vietnamese people actually like Americans. Americans are open and friendly, and interaction with us is an opportunity to improve English language skills, which are necessary in today's globalized society. Their beef is only with the American government. People in Laos and Cambodia have told me the same thing.

While I appreciate the differentiation between people and the government, it's not totally legitimate, since in a democracy supposedly the people are choosing their government. Should American citizens not be held accountable for the actions of the American government? As an American, should I not feel some sense of responsibility and guilt for what transpired in Indochina? Does the fact that the US government actually withheld information about the carpet bombing from the public (and of course the fact that I wasn't born yet) relieve any of this responsibility? And what does it mean to be an American living in this region today, a few decades after the war?

When I mentioned to Ai and Quy that I really need to read up on the history of Indochina, especially American involvement here, Ai told me that she hated history in school. She said that schools feed children the Communist party's version of Vietnam's history and students are not allowed to question it. Even at university students could not engage in discussions and debate about various perspectives on history. Of course, in the US children are also taught certain mythologies about our history, but I do think in higher education debate is encouraged.

I found all the Communist propaganda in Vietnam amusing. I know it's not funny, but I couldn't help but laugh at it (I realize this reveals how very American I am). A bust of Ho Chi Minh, accompanied by a gold star, a hammer and sickle, and banners with Communist party slogans in Vietnamese, watched over every meeting and event we held (and in one location Marx and Lenin watched us, too). I found it a bit unsettling that "Uncle Ho" was always watching. Quy joked that, in fact, we were watching Uncle Ho watching us (especially because I kept taking photos of Uncle Ho). To me, it was particularly weird to be holding sales events--decidedly capitalist endeavors--in spaces decked-out with Communist imagery.

A sales event, with Uncle Ho, Uncle Karl, and Uncle Vlad watching from the stage (Ho Chi Minh is the bust to the left, and Marx and Lenin are in the oval picture to the right).

Uncle Ho is a very powerful man. Physically, too. That must be why he's in a government ad to promote exercise.

It was a bit difficult to tell what my coworkers thought about all this in-your-face propaganda, but my impression is that people mostly shrug it off. It's just a part of life in Vietnam. They don't think about it any more than I might think about a US Army recruitment commercial. People seem satisfied enough with the country's economic development, and the government isn't nearly as repressive as the Chinese model of Communism. (Facebook is blocked in the country, but one of my coworkers joked that the government was helping people develop their computer skills, as everyone figures out how to circumvent the restrictions.)

Communist propaganda aside, the sales events were fascinating. We held two events, one led by my organization, and the other led by the Women's Union. The idea was to learn from each other's strategies to inform a stronger sales pitch for the future. Our presentation emphasized the negative health implications of handwashing negligence, and the Women's Union's presentation mentioned heath briefly before launching into a demonstration of how to properly wash hands using items commonly found in a rural Vietnamese home. Interestingly, their demo required two people to wash one person's hand--someone else was needed to pour the water. The convenience of our product, basically a standalone sink with an attached water tank, stood in stark contrast. Women had reacted somewhat lukewarmly to the previous day's health presentation, but they loved actually seeing the convenience of our product. Many more women were interested in the product after the second presentation (we did the presentations with different groups of women).

The Women's Union demonstrates proper handwashing technique using objects already found in the home. Using a bucket and pitcher require the help of a second person.

Our product, in comparison, does not require a second person to help and it saves water. Plus it's adorable.

It was interesting, though not surprising, that illustrating convenience makes the product more appealing than focusing on health benefits. After all, who likes to get lectured at about how they're doing everything wrong for their families' health? And it's not just handwashing. Traditional cookstoves emit pollutants that give their families respiratory diseases. Open defecation poisons their water and food and gives their children diarrhea. Not boiling or filtering their water will inflict typhoid and more diarrhea on their children. Everything women do in rural Asia seems to be bad for their health, right? While of course knowledge of health impacts is vital, during a sales pitch it makes sense to put greater focus on something else for a change. As my coworker Lindsay, our resident behavior change expert, can tell you, knowledge of healthy practices doesn't necessarily drive change. For example, everybody knows smoking is bad for you, yet millions do it anyway.

People all over the world love convenience; it's human nature to do what is easy and fast and avoid what is difficult and slow. If I did not have access to plumbing and water flowing right out of my tap, I probably wouldn't wash my hands a lot either. This lesson is not new to our organization. In fact, our product's Vietnamese name translates to "Convenience." I think it would be wise for us to integrate the Women's Union's traditional handwashing demonstration into our presentations before introducing our product. It would also be great to have the women actually try out washing their hands with both the household tools and our product. Seeing and experiencing the difference between the two handwashing methods would have a powerful impact and, hopefully, boost our sales.

After our work was done, Ai, Quy, My, and My's boyfriend Giang (...not pronounced like an English pronoun) and I visited the floating market of Cai Rang. Ben and I had visited this same market almost three years ago, and it was interesting to see how the market had changed in a fairly short time period. The market was noticeably smaller. There were fewer boats and less activity.

Ai explained that the Vietnamese government had been taking measures to move floating markets to land. Traditionally, living and working on a boat in the Delta made sense. There are hundreds if not thousands of canals and boats were the fastest way to get around. These days, though, there are roads (and trust me, those roads are beautiful, especially compared to Cambodia's roads), so there is little need to depend on rivers for transport.

The floating market communities face many difficult problems, and the government believes moving onshore can improve their quality of life. They bathe, do laundry, wash dishes, drink, poop, and pee in the same water. The mobility of a boat means they do not have an address or residence. With no address, they are denied many social services. Their children, until recently, were not allowed to attend school without a permanent residence (though they are now admitted into schools, the families might still travel the canals between villages so that their children are not in the same place everyday and cannot attend school). Teen pregnancy is also a huge issue, as people live in very close quarters and do not have access to sex education. If moving these communities off the water really would have an impact on improving their health and wealth, I can see why the government has been pushing the move. However, they'll have to do a lot more than simply beach the market to tackle water, sanitation, education, and teen pregnancy. Even landlubber communities face these challenges!

Children of floating market families who do get an education often look beyond the river for economic opportunity. Those who go to college want to become office-bound professionals rather than boat-bound produce wholesalers. They want to provide a more comfortable, healthier life for their own children. The floating market communities are shrinking even without government prodding.

All this being said, people continue to live and work on these boats today, even with the roads. So some people do care about preserving the floating market way of life (either that, or they see no other options). The floating market is just one of many worldwide examples of a traditional lifestyle struggling to survive and thrive against the mighty wave of modernization. But culture is dynamic--today's particular snapshot of their culture is not the same as a snapshot of their culture from three hundred years ago--and ultimately improved health and education are good things.

Boats in the Cai Rang floating market

Pumpkin wholesaler in the Cai Rang floating market. The giant eyes were traditionally painted on the boats to scare away crocodiles, but these days there aren't many crocodiles left in the Mekong Delta.

We took a selfie on the boat. Front to back: Giang, My, me, Ai, Quy.

Finally, I end this absurdly long post with a shout-out to my brother. Ben, I saluted Can Tho's giant Ho Chi Minh statue again for you:

June 2011

April 2014

Ai and Quy, if you guys are reading this, I apologize if anything I said about Vietnam was mistaken. Please correct me if I'm wrong and I'll fix it!

Research findings from my thesis work

In my last post, where I shared my thesis, I promised you a short summary of my research findings. Here they are. (Well, some of them, anyway.)

First, a quick reminder of the research issue: In eastern India, ~85% of farmers irrigate their land using fossil fuel-powered pumps because they do not have access to electricity. Diesel and kerosene pumps have very expensive operation costs that farmers cannot afford, so they often choose not to irrigate outside monsoon season. With few other livelihood options, they migrate elsewhere for work. When they migrate seasonally, their families often cannot access social services such as health and education. I sought to address this challenge by developing an alternative off-grid pumping solution.

(Please do not confuse this with the opposite irrigation problem in western India, where free or near-free electricity for agriculture has led to unlimited pumping and severe over-exploitation of groundwater resources. The water table is not falling at a dangerous rate in eastern India. In fact some people argue that increasing groundwater extraction would reduce the incidence of flooding during monsoon season, because the soil would not be as saturated.)

For more about irrigation economics, see an earlier post here.

And now for my favorite research findings:

1. Rental costs are greater than fuel costs. This one actually surprised me. Everybody loves to talk about dirty fossil fuels and how the high cost of diesel (or in this case, kerosene) is what's keeping poor farmers from irrigating their fields. But I tested the actual performance of some pumps owned by farmers in Gumla and found that the flow rates were so bad that farmers needed to rent the pumps for an absurd number of hours to soak their fields--and hourly rental rates are fairly high. The implication? The focus of designing a new pump should be on increasing the flow rate more than fuel efficiency. The faster the flow rate, the less time it takes to irrigate a field--and the fewer hours required to irrigate, the less a farmer spends on renting a pump.

costs to irrigate one acre of land with 2" of water with a 12 year old Honda pump

2. Eliminating, or at least significantly reducing, suction head can reduce operation costs by up to 44%. I ran an experiment to test the hypothesis that eliminating suction head would increase efficiency and flow rates--and the experiment verified this hypothesis (see chapter 2 of my thesis). I then spent a great deal of time during my master's research trying to come up with affordable ways to run a submersible pump with a surface engine (see chapter 3 of my thesis), only to be outsmarted by the farmers (as usual): see #3.

3. Farmers already know #2. It turns out that farmers have already figured out that reducing suction head increases the pump's efficiency and flow rates (apparently, they experiment with lowering their pumps once the groundwater level falls beyond 7 m, the suction capacity of a pump, during dry season). Some lower the pump into the well with a rope, while others dig a trench next to the well:

4. Indian pumps are super leaky, but farmers know how to deal with it. I couldn't get an Indian pump to suck. Period. I tried a million ways to plug the leaks and just couldn't do it. That is, until I met a bunch of farmers who laughed at my teflon tape and showed me how it's done: slash an old bike tire and wrap those strips of rubber around all pump connections and hose fittings. Jugaad at its best! (But seriously, this is a problem the Indian pump industry desperately needs to address.)

5. Farmers claim Chinese pumps are more efficient than Indian pumps. Nobody knows why or if this is even true. Unfortunately I was unable to test a Chinese pump (I couldn't get them to work at MIT, and the villages I visited didn't use them--I would have had to go to West Bengal, and I did not have time). By taking them apart, I learned that they use a 3" discharge hose, rather than the 2" hose that Indian pumps use, and they have a smaller impeller-to-chamber volumetric fill ratio. The larger hose diameter makes sense to me: larger diameter = fewer pipe losses = higher efficiency. But I'm not sure how impeller-to-chamber volumetric fill ratio might impact efficiency, and I would be interested in exploring this issue further in the future (especially because I'm fairly certain Chinese pumps are going to take over the eastern Indian pump market).

6. Women don't touch engines. This one is not surprising. I heard from both men and women in the villages that "machines are for men" (though one women did pull me aside and asked me to show her how to start a pump engine when her husband wasn't looking). Women came up to me while I was testing the performance of their husband's pumps and asked, basically, "What about us? We're stuck with a bucket and rope. Our husbands may use a greater volume of water with their 'paani ki machine,' but we use water more frequently." To be honest, I had considered domestic water supply a completely separate issue from agricultural water supply, and I thought improving irrigation would increase the wealth of the entire family and thus benefit women too. But if I'm working on water supply anyway, why not think about a multi-purpose pump?

7. Manual rope pumps intended for irrigation end up utilized for domestic uses. Manual rope pumps have been installed all over the world as part of various water programs. In many cases, such as in rural Orissa (in eastern India), the pumps are intended for irrigation. Well, it turned out that in Orissa, the pumps were not used for irrigation. Irrigating a field requires a huge amount of water, and manually pumping that volume of water is time-consuming and exhausting, especially in the heat of the dry season (temperatures can soar to 50 C/120 F). Instead, it turned out that women used the pumps for domestic purposes: drinking, cooking, washing. The women love the rope pumps because they are way easier to use than throwing down and raising a bucket. Plus, children and the elderly can use a rope pump; otherwise they need the women to fetch water for them, since they are not strong enough to raise a heavy bucket of water.

8. Farmers like the color green. This is maybe a silly one, but farmers associate green with agricultural productivity. PRADAN, the grassroots NGO I worked with, told me that whenever possible they use the color green in their products and services, because the farmers respond better to it.

So, what did I do with all of this? I designed a dual-mode rope pump. The pump can be used in motorized mode for high-flow applications such as irrigation and in manual mode for low-flow applications such as domestic uses. The engine is removable, so it can be safely stored at home (farmers expressed concerns about theft) and one engine can be shared by or rented out to several wells, as is done now with the regular centrifugal pumps. Plus the men have no problem allowing women to use the pump in manual mode (the hand crank is removable so it doesn't injure someone when the pump is operated in motorized mode). And yes, I painted the pump green.

Below is a video of the pump in action, being tested by users. I got pretty good feedback from the users, and I have some ideas for future modifications.



Speaking of user testing, I employed human-centered design methodology throughout my research process. Here's a video explaining what I did:



Ok, so maybe this post wasn't a very short summary.

HUGE thank you to PRADAN and Swastik Engineering Works for their support. I could not have done this project without them.

My thesis

I completed and submitted my thesis about two months ago and, finally, earned my master's in mechanical engineering! I very ceremoniously received my diploma in the mail, so it's official.

If you are interested in reading my thesis (or parts of it), please click here. Warning: it's a 15 MB pdf file. I will soon post a summary of my findings, if you don't want to read the thesis but are interested in my work. You can read a bit about the problem I focused on in these posts.

So what's next? Well... I don't know yet. I'm in the process of applying to jobs. If you know of any awesome opportunities in international development/energy/water/all-of-the-above, please let me know!

Green Pune, Clean Pune

"Green Pune, Clean Pune" is one of several slogans painted on walls and concrete barriers all over the city. Pune is famous for having one of the most, if not the most, organized and effective waste systems in India. As part of a project my advisor has me working on, I investigated Pune's waste cycle.

"Green Pune, Clean Pune" painted on a wall, ironically next to trash. Photo taken from Google Images.

In Pune, there are several different avenues municipal solid waste (MSW) can follow. Each housing society is served by two waste pickers who belong to the Solid Waste Collection and Handling Cooperative (SWaCH), an enterprise founded by the Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat, the trade union of waste pickers. Each home pays a monthly fee of Rs. 10 to 30 (depending on the area) for waste pickers to directly pick up trash from their homes. This miniscule monthly fee is not how waste pickers make their money, though. They earn cash in the scrap market. They sort the waste and sell the very valuable recyclables to scrap dealers, who in turn sell scrap to larger dealers or wholesalers. Some of these wholesalers then either sell the scrap to "super" wholesalers or process the scrap into usable plastic pellets for manufacturing. 

Perhaps the most interesting recycle-cycle is plastic bags, which are slowly being banned by cities around the world for being non-recyclable. World, take a good look at Pune. One large wholesaler mechanically cleans these bags then processes them into pellets, which are sold to an irrigation company to be melted and molded into drip irrigation pipes. Since the recycled plastic bags are an absurdly cheap material--there is no competing demand for them--the drip pipes are among the cheapest in the world and can be sold at affordable prices to smallholder farmers.

(Actually I still think banning these plastic bags is a good idea. But for cities that are still using them, don't give up hope on them being non-recyclable!)

Waste that does not end up in home trash cans likely ends up in dumpsters or in the streets. This more public garbage is taken care of by the Pune Municipal Corporation, which employs safai karmacharis (cleaning workers) to sweep the streets and empty the dumpsters and then sort all the waste. Organic ("wet") waste is sent to either biogas power plants to supply the city of Pune with electricity or to fertilizer production plants. Recyclable waste goes to recycling processing plants. Non-recyclables mostly go to incinerators or landfills, but Pune has been experimenting with using the waste as syngas fuel for electricity generation.

Large commercial entities such as malls have their own custodial staff who take care of the waste in various ways. Some shopping complexes sell their waste on the scrap market to wholesalers while others send the garbage to major recycling plants.

This whole process is illustrated in the figure I made below (click on the image to enlarge). I'm sorry it's confusing and busy; this is the first time I've attempted to create such a diagram. Two caveats: (1) that process is what ideally happens and (2) that figure excludes the non-unionized waste pickers who go to the landfills to scavenge. A lot of trash slips through the cracks of the system, and the non-unionized waste pickers try to recover some of the valuable recyclable waste that has slipped through. This figure might imply that 100% of recyclables end up recycled, but that's not true. In Pune, almost 50% of plastics end up recycled. But keep in mind that is still extremely high: in the US about 8.2% of recyclable plastics get recycled. (Source.)

Pune's waste cycle. Click on image to enlarge.

Whenever I talk about waste management in India, I like to recall a story from December 2009, when my brother Ben and his friend Joel visited me in Delhi. We went on a trip to northeast India, and on our way back we passed through Kolkata. Ben ate a banana and could not find any trash can to discard his peel. After having seen tons of garbage in the streets (Kolkata can sometimes be particularly dirty), he decided to simply drop the peel where he was standing, in the middle of a plaza. An Indian man came over to Ben and started yelling at him not to throw his trash on the ground. Ben, of course, was exasperated: "Have you seen your streets? You have no right telling me not to litter when you treat your streets like landfills. Everyone else in this filthy city is littering. What am I supposed to do with my trash if there are no trash cans?"

But if you looked around more carefully, you would realize there was not a piece of garbage in the plaza itself--but tons of trash piling up in the streets lining the plaza's border. Street sweepers, like those safai karmacharis in Pune, pick up the trash in the street, but not in the plaza. Thus, Ben should have added his banana peel to an existing pile in the street, rather than dropping it anywhere. However, this is not obvious to an outsider who doesn't know anything about India's waste system and sees waste strewn about in a seemingly indiscriminate way. And really, Ben was right in a sense. It is unhygienic to allow trash to pile up in streets, even if street sweepers or waste pickers will come by later to collect it. Not to mention that it's far from aesthetically or aromatically pleasing.

So yes, the streets of India often appear filthy. When you walk around, you have to watch your feet lest you step in garbage (...or cow dung). But it's important to keep in mind that this littering is part of the waste system, and in fact, putting waste into the hands of professionals, rather than hoping the average citizen can sort his or her waste properly, results in higher recycling rates, as witnessed in Pune.

As I have learned again and again, nothing in India (or anywhere, really) is as it seems on the surface. It's too easy to judge and make assumptions based on first impressions, especially when those impressions are as strong as smelly piles of trash in the street--but those assumptions will almost always be wrong. We have to delve deeper to understand what's actually going on (and we probably still won't fully understand; I certainly have much more to learn!).

Open source rural technology?

I don't know much about intellectual property law. Especially not in India (other than, perhaps, as it pertains to pharm re: the recent Novartis case). But something IP-related has been bothering me the last few days.

I'm working with an organization that runs a vocational school of sorts for school dropouts. It gives the students technical training, but I don't know if you would necessarily call them mechanics at the end. The curriculum encourages creativity, and the students are involved in designing new, affordable technologies that address problems they face in their villages.

In 1983, students developed a low-cost, low-power tractor suitable for smallholder farmers--a very large group of farmers in India who cannot afford big tractors. Then in 2002, some students significantly improved upon the design. The organization decided to make the design "open source," with the idea being that any farmer anywhere could take this design and build himself a tractor.

But that's not what happened. Instead, or so the story goes, Mahindra, the largest tractor company not only in India but in the world, took the design and now manufactures and sells it, making millions of dollars in profit. (I have no idea if this is true or not. It's very possible Mahindra also came up with an affordable small tractor without any knowledge of this organization's tractor, since it seems fairly obvious that there's a large market for such a product.)



The organization's tractor

A Mahindra tractor

  

This organization views this story as a huge success.

I view this story as a huge lost opportunity.

If this story is really true--if indeed Mahindra just took (I would like to say "stole," but it was open source) and modified the organization's design rather than coming up with a similar design independently--then this organization lost out on a lot of money. Not that they have the capacity to mass-manufacture, or that commercialization is their goal. I understand that their primary focus is educating their students. However, had they patented their design, they could have sold it to Mahindra and made some royalties off of the profits. That money could have been invested back in the students by improving facilities and programs, without (or with less) dependence on donors.

This organization does great work educating their students, and their students come up with clever solutions that would improve the quality of life in rural India. I understand that this organization wants to remain non-profit, but it would be really fantastic for the students to see their technologies become a reality, to see their products being sold in villages around India. And maybe these students would earn some money from the royalties and start climbing out of poverty.

Honestly, I don't see how open source technologies could work in rural India. At least not yet. How would smallholder farmers even learn that this new tractor design exists? The organization did zero knowledge dissemination, other than to post some photos and specs on their website (which a poor farmer would never see). And if the farmers did learn about the tractor, how would they go about building it without the necessary resources and mechanical expertise? I guess rural mechanics could make the tractors and sell them--but again, how would they know about the tractor?

If this organization wants to see the technologies their students develop reach the people who would benefit from them, they should consider engaging in partnerships with major manufacturers who have large distribution networks. That way the organization doesn't actually have to do the scaling-up themselves; they can continue to focus on the education. I just think that working with established manufacturers is likely to be a more effective way to disseminate technology than to make the technology open-source.

Besides, people copy products all the time in India without any consequences. Knock-offs of every type of product are super common. (Case in point: I bought a gym bag in Lajpat Nagar that has the word "Reebok" on the front and a Nike swoosh on the side.) The organization could patent the product, sell it to or partner with a company to manufacture and sell, and the product would still effectively be open-source. What's to stop a village mechanic from copying a Mahindra tractor if he wants to?

Back in India again. And behavioral irrigation economics.

I'm back in India. Bet you didn't see that coming! It happened extremely quickly. I literally bought my flights two days before I took off. Highlights of flying Swiss Air through Zurich: free Swiss chocolate and amazing views of the Alps. Highlights of returning to Delhi: catching up with old friends and drinking mango shakes.

Two days ago, my first day back, I met with an agricultural economics researcher. He researches irrigation in Bihar and Gujarat, which is why I was meeting with him. He is interested in the groundwater economy and pumping behaviors. Like me, he finds irrigation fascinating because it lies at the energy-water-food-livelihood nexus.

I learned a lot from this meeting. For one, I learned that economics is really a study of human behavior. I guess that's obvious, but for some reason I never thought of economics that way. This makes econ a lot more interesting than what I had imagined it to be.

As I may or may not have explained before on this blog (I honestly don't remember), in eastern India where pumps are ~85% diesel- or kerosene-run rather than electric, pumps are not installed on a well. Instead, a handful of people own pumps and rent them out to their neighbors on an hourly basis, and pumps are transported on bicycles. These pump owners essentially run an oligopoly. They seem to agree on high rental rates. Interestingly, as more farmers purchase their own pumps and enter the rental business, increased competition has not driven down hourly rates, contrary to what one might expect. This researcher thinks he has learned why: the costs to the pump owner are so high he doesn't have any particular motivation to actually rent out the pump to more customers. He must deliver the pump to the well, which is a pain in the ass. A pump is a pretty heavy thing to strap to your bike. Then, the farmer who is renting the pump may or may not know how to operate the pump, so the owner has to start up the pump for him. Someone has to hang around near the pump to make sure operation is going smoothly and to add more fuel when necessary; sometimes, this someone is the pump owner and not the renter, if the renter is inexperienced with diesel engines. A pump is usually run for several hours at a time, and if the pump owner must babysit the pump for that time, he is losing out on hours that could be spent more productively (in most cases, the pump owner has his own farm to tend to). His time is pretty valuable, so he keeps rental costs high, and often he would rather have that time to do other work than rent out to another customer. Therefore more competition does not reduce prices.

Because of these high operation costs that do not even include fuel cost, according to this researcher, advances in efficiency of the pump would not make much difference to the pumping behaviors of farmers. I'm not taking into consideration all costs involved in operation. Yes, the farmers would spend less on fuel. But the time cost would remain high. Maybe if farmers are getting more water per liter of fuel or per hour, they would be able to irrigate more. But if the farmers want to translate the fuel savings into more hours of pumping, that puts a bigger burden on the pump owner. It is possible that the pump owner would raise hourly rates in response. So even if I make the most efficient pump ever, I might not have any impact on reducing operation costs. (But this doesn't mean a more efficient pump is a bad thing!) In that case, my hope should be that the farmers would get more water for the existing amount of time they irrigate. However, this increased efficiency in operation hardly matters if the pump has a higher capital cost than the cheapest pumps on the market (which, at least at this point, it certainly would). Capital cost reigns supreme over operation costs in financial decision-making. Though all the renters would benefit, the pump owner sees little advantage to his rental business to have a more efficient but more expensive pump--more demand for his pump means more work in renting out the pump, and the rental business is not his only source of income. So why bother spending money on a more expensive pump?

...I really need to learn more about economics.

In addition to enlightening me about pumping behavior and economics, the researcher confirmed something I already suspected: farmers lie about everything when surveyed. (Ok, "lie" might be too strong a word. Stretch the truth, maybe?) But I did not understand the whole picture. I had always thought that I couldn't fully trust people's answers to my survey questions because they were trying to give me the "right" answer. I thought they were trying to come up with the answer they thought I wanted to hear (for example, a woman might lie about keeping her child away from the stove while she's cooking, even if the kid sits right next to her, because she knows I would think the smoke is bad for her child's health). This is true in some cases. However, in many cases, especially when you ask about earnings and expenditures, people exaggerate to make themselves seem poorer. Says the researcher, "They see you, a white woman, or me, a city guy, and they think 'this person works for some NGO and is going to go back to Delhi and write up a report about how we need more subsidies or government assistance.' So they exaggerate how poor they are in order to get more money." Even if a fellow villager is taking the survey, the fact that the survey is taking place at all alters people's answers.

This is a very cynical point of view, and I assume this isn't true for every single person interviewed, but I can believe this does happen sometimes. Probably this behavior stems from a history of NGOs advocating for more government assistance based on field surveys. Like how kids in Kerala constantly ask white tourists for pens because about a decade ago an American group donated supplies to local schools there. (This researcher does not deny that these people are indeed very poor or in need of assistance, by the way.)

So how does this researcher deal with the untrustworthiness of survey responses? "Just add error bars. Uncertainty is part of the fun of social science! See, you want accurate numbers. That's why you're an engineer. You like precision. You don't get the same precision in social science, and you have to be willing to work with that." Well, we use our fair share of error bars in engineering, too. But I guess I see his point.

(To be fair, his research is not all wishy-washy. He gets real numbers when he can: he acquires irrigation data from electricity meters, flow meters, pressure gauges, etc. like an engineer would. But questions of income and costs are a lot trickier to answer in a village where people don't have good records. No receipts, bills, paychecks, etc. Without any paper trail, you have to take people at their word.)

I have been thinking recently about switching into the social sciences (maybe economics or public policy) (this is a topic for another post). But as someone who has training in engineering, will I find the fuzziness frustrating? Or will I find it to be an exciting puzzle to be deciphered, the way this researcher does? I have a lot to think about re: my future.

(As a side note, this researcher got his master's at Princeton and his PhD at Harvard. To those of you interested in studying public policy with a focus in international development, he recommended Harvard over Princeton.)

In other news, I noticed in my blog stats that I get a lot of traffic from a seemingly random blog out there in cyberspace. Apparently, a blogger named Vikram Garg called my blog "the best American in India blog." Thanks for the shoutout, Vikram. Shouting right back at ya! Check out his blog at http://vikramvgarg.wordpress.com/.  

Rare earths mining: what is the just way forward?

As many of you know, the fellowship program that funds my work in India holds weekly seminars. Each week, one or two speakers talks to us about various issues in India or developing countries or discusses a particular methodology (for example, cost modeling or randomized control trials). At yesterday's seminar, a professor in MIT's Department of Materials Science spoke to us about minerals cost forecasting. Specifically, he talked about rare earth elements.

For those of you who don't know about rare earth elements (I certainly knew nothing before yesterday), they are used in a lot of modern electronics, advanced motors, and other automotive parts. China is pretty much the only player on the rare earths market. China produces 97% of the world's rare earths, and India produces the other 3%. India has the world's second-largest reserves of rare earths, but those reserves have barely been tapped. India has tremendous potential to expand rare earths mining, especially in the states of Jharkhand, Orissa, and Chhattisgarh, home also to the largest concentrations of adivasis (indigenous people) and iron ore.

The professor somehow managed to talk about rare earth elements without talking about the sticky politics of mining those elements in India's adivasi heartlands, where a Maoist insurgency has taken root partly due to the perceived illegal exploitation of tribal lands for mines. To be fair, this professor is not a political scientist; he's a resource economist who tries to predict supply and demand curves of various minerals and then uses those predictions to advise mining corporations on how to prepare for future market behavior or engineering firms on which minerals to employ in their products. The point of his talk was not about the politics of mining in Jharkhand, Orissa, and Chhattisgarh, but about how supply and demand forecasting can influence material selection in engineering.

Last night, I briefly chatted with my friend Marena about the sloppiness and fuzziness of environmental justice, and it got me thinking about the rare earths talk. Mining rare earths is good for the global environmental cause: these elements are necessary for the magnets found in the motors of electric vehicles and wind turbines. If we want to ween ourselves off of petroleum-fueled vehicles and coal power plants to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate climate change, we're going to need a lot more of these minerals for our electric cars and wind farms. On the other hand, the mining process of rare earths devastates the local environment. Much like hydrofracking, the process is water-intensive and results in heavy contamination of local water resources. So, do we sacrifice the local for the global? What is the "just" thing to do?

Arundhati Roy would say the just thing to do would be to "leave the bauxite in the mountain." (Yes, I've referenced this quote before.) She feels so strongly about this issue that she declared the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks should focus on mining in eastern India rather than curbing worldwide carbon emissions. Roy is an ardent supporter of the Maoists, who oppose the mining operations. She implies that the Maoists represent the wishes and beliefs of all tribal people in the regions in which they fight. However, this is simply not true. It is difficult to quantify support for Maoism, as the Maoists tend to utilize intimidation techniques to garner support. While certainly there are genuine supporters, many adivasis who show support do so out of fear. Some agree with the Maoist ideology but disagree with their violent methodology. Others disagree with them altogether. Like any population, adivasis feel divided on politics.

I learned during my visits to Jharkhand that the poorest people do see the mines as a lucrative employment opportunity, especially because there are few other opportunities. It is very easy for the Maoists and Roy to paint the government and mineral companies as evil bullies stealing land from helpless tribal people at absolutely zero benefit to them, but it is not that simple. Mines do provide jobs, and jobs that pay well due to the dangers.

I'm not denying that the major mining corporations exploit the local communities. Of course they do. To admittedly simplify the issue: the forest lands belonged to the adivasis, and then the Indian government took those lands away and sold them to outsiders for huge sums of money--and adivasis haven't seen a rupee. But the answer cannot be to completely eliminate mining; the world needs the minerals (Japan definitely wants an alternative supplier to China!), and these impoverished states of India need the money. The answer has to involve some form of inclusive development. How can the benefits to the local communities be maximized and the risks to the environment be minimized? How can the profits be more equitably distributed so that adivasis see more advantages from these mining operations? The local communities need to be included from Day One in the planning of the mines--not just included for the sake of being included, but included as an equal partner with equal power--and the environmental damage needs to be adequately contained. (Ok, maybe I'm asking for a lot that is not realistic...)

For now, major corporations on the demand side, such as GE, are preparing for the potential decline in rare earths availability by trying to design induction motors that do not require rare earth magnets. One supply side player, Molycorp Minerals, has been developing more environmentally-friendly (or should I say, less environmentally-devastating?) mining methods that meet California's environmental regulations so that they can re-open the Mountain Pass rare earth mine (in 2002 California had closed Mountain Pass, the only rare earths mine in the US, due to environmental contamination). Certainly researching ways to reduce the demand for rare earths and ameliorate the environmental impacts of mining is a step in the right direction for environmental justice. But for the foreseeable future, rare earths mining is going to be in high demand and highly dirty--with potential for high profits. Given this reality, what is the just way forward in Jharkhand, Orissa, and Chhattisgarh?

Some further reading:
 
If you want to learn more about mining in India, it is definitely worth reading Roy,* even though I don't think she takes a nuanced-enough approach. She does make some strong points, so click here for her thoughts on mining and Maoists.

India Together's mining news here

Ernst and Young's "Mining India Sustainably for Growth" here

"India bets on rare-earth minerals," Wall Street Journal here

*My problem with Roy, really, is that she doesn't seem to recognize that the modern world has encroached on traditional tribal life. She never offers any alternatives for tribal development; she seems to think India should simply leave the adivasis alone. That might have been fine if they were always left alone, but now they're in this weird limbo between their traditional lifestyle and mainstream society as a result of various British colonial and Indian policies. The adivasis probably cannot revert to their old way of life given modern realities. I'm not saying India should force them to join mainstream society, but they should be included, somehow, in policy-making and be given the tools to make decisions about their own future. (Where I work, former forest-dwelling adivasis have been forced into a settled agrarian lifestyle due to various forestry policies. But they were not farmers before a generation ago, so they lack a lot of the knowledge and skills that are usually passed down from parents to children.) Ok, Roy rant over.

Red is not the only color in Gumla.

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

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

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

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

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

Drawing a map of their village.

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

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

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

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

 carrying wood to be used as fuel

typical village house, with an awesome jackfruit tree

And some agriculture/scenery:

animals grazing on land that hasn't been tilled yet

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

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

forest near Palkot

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

mango on a tree

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

 

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

Adivasi Economy and Water Access (or lack thereof)

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bas.

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

Is "Self-Help Group" a misnomer?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jharkhand's Illegal Coal

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

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

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

koyla cycle wallahs on the Ranchi-Hazaribagh highway

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

illegal coal supply chain (source here)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

State of the State of Bihar

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing is ever simple or straightforward in India.

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

Community Destruction Day

I was looking through my old posts, and found this little gem from back in January that for some reason I forgot to publish:

Electricity goes out quite frequently in my office in Shanan. The power outage usually lasts anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 or 3 hours. But one time, back in October, the power went out for the entire day. During a power outage, we cannot do work because, obviously, the computers are off. Instead of working, this is what happens:

some people read the Hindi newspaper

others sit around looking badass

and some people gossip (shh! don't tell!) and laugh

and others pretend to do work (here, Harsh and Mudit are translating something into Hindi that has already been translated)

and some go crazy with the boredom

but really, I have no idea what's going on.

On this particular day, our boss decided that if we couldn't do work, we might as well do something else useful: Community Clean-Up Day. People in Shanan litter, so we should pick up the trash. Sounds like a good idea, right?

Wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

I knew something odd was up when a coworker grabbed a box of matches before going outside. Matches meant fire. And why was fire necessary for picking up litter? Oh no, I thought. They're going to burn the trash! Because that's environmentally-friendly. I grabbed my pollution mask in preparation. And it was a good thing I did, because my suspicions were right: people threw the trash they had picked up into an ever-growing fire.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, my coworker Dinesh came running toward us wielding a machete. Where did he get a machete? And why did he require a machete in the first place? To my horror, I watched as he started hacking at a tree.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!" I yelled in English, too shocked to think in Hindi.

But Dinesh could not hear me over the roar of the fire.

"I think he's cutting down the tree," Shatabdi explained.

"Yes BUT WHY?!" I cried.

"I... don't know."

Then Harsh and Negi explained, "there is a lot of trash in that tree."

So let's get this straight. Instead of picking out the individual pieces of trash from the branches, Dinesh decided it would be more efficient to CUT DOWN THE TREE.

Wait, I think we need to back up even more. The goal of the day's activities was to clean up the environment. Instead of helping the environment, we were KILLING it. Oh, so that tree has a lot of trash in it? I have a brilliant idea! Let's just get rid of the tree altogether! Then surely the trash will be gone too! ...I guess that logic makes sense. Except that I thought we were ridding the environment of trash to save the trees?! Cannot. Comprehend.

Now, cutting down the tree was not enough. As I have mentioned earlier, the standard way to dispose of garbage is to burn it. Since there was trash in this tree, naturally the tree must also be kindled. The tree that never should've been cut down in the first place. The tree that, if it must be burned, could have been at least utilized to fuel a traditional stove.

The tree, though small, is still a tree. The fire grew quite large and probably threatened the surrounding houses, fields, and natural vegetation, hence threatening not only the environment, but also people's shelter and livelihood. But the worst was the immense amount of smoke. The entire village became enshrouded in it. Even my pollution mask was rendered useless as the smoke from the forest-and-trash fire penetrated through its filter and into my lungs. Great for people's health. Basically, Community Clean-Up Day had very quickly become Community Destruction Day.

Dinesh pushing the tree down the hill after his final chop, amid the smoke from burning trash

burn, baby, burn! felled tree on fire

final scene of destruction: trash and tree burning

All this turned out not to matter, because a construction project that started in December has completely leveled that hill. Nothing is left but a pile of brown dirt. [NOTE: Since January, that pile of brown dirt has become a paved parking lot for bus servicing and repairs.]

At the time, I was furious. Like tomato-red-face, steam-coming-out-of-ears (or was that just smoke from the burning trash?) furious. But now I cannot retell this story without laughing like a crazed hyena. Seriously. I could barely type this post I was laughing so hard. I'm sure there's some lesson to be learned from all of this, but I'm not quite sure what that lesson is.

Man vs. Elephant. And waterfalls.

Yeah, it's been a while again. Sorr about the absence. (And sorr about the absence of y in "sorry.") I've been really busy traveling around with Ben and then Maria and Nadeen, which means limited Internet access. I check my email and update Facebook regularly, I just don't spend enough time at a computer to actually write a blogpost. So here's a short one.

I visited my good friend Prashanth a few days ago. He has moved from the adivasi (tribal) villages of Narmada Valley, Madhya Pradesh to the elephant-infested area around Katur village, Karnataka. Yes, elephant-infested. He now works for the Wildlife Research and Conservation Society (WRCS) in man-elephant conflict. Elephants are lured from the forest by the delicious scent of man's agricultural livelihood and devour vast swaths of rice paddies. So the humans respond as they usually do when under attack: shooting the enemy. Clearly all this is no good for either side of the war. Prashanth's job is to draft a peace treaty and get both parties to ratify. Inter-species conflict resolution, if you will.

How does one resolve an inter-species conflict? Well, Prashanth researches various eco-friendly elephant deterrents, and he disseminates information to the farmers about the deterrents that work. For example, elephants hate chilies. Can't take the heat, I suppose. So one plan would be to plant a field of chilies in between the rice paddies and forest to create a buffer zone (or to continue the metaphor, a DMZ). Prashanth's organization will provide a particularly potent variety of chilies for the farmers to plant. Another thing elephants hate are bees, so farmers could start beekeeping. Not only would honey bring them an additional source of income, they'd have an entire army of stinging soldiers to defend the crops from intruding elephant marauders. And the benefit for the elephants is, of course, not getting shot. The elephants have plenty to eat in the forest anyway, so it's not like they're really getting the stiff end of the deal.

Prashanth's work is particularly important because this problem exists all over India, not only in Karnataka. Assam sees the highest number of man-elephant conflict incidents--many of which end in deaths of humans, not only elephants--but it is difficult to experiment with deterrents there simply because the elephant population is way too large. North Karnataka provides a good, small sample size. If Prashanth's techniques work here, then they can be tested in areas with a denser population of elephants.

Plus Prashanth gets to track elephants in the wild as part of his job. Which is effing awesome. ...I just hope he never gets killed by an elephant in musth.

While I visited Prashanth, we drove on his motorcycle into the Western Ghats to Jog Falls, the highest uninterrupted plunge falls in India. The primary forests of the Ghats were so unbelievably, beautifully lush, as they always are during monsoon, and the mountain air was refreshing and cool! A great, much-needed break from the heat and humidity of the plains. Despite a minor spill (that felt oddly slow-motion; I was able to tuck my knees into my chest before the motorcycle fell on top of me), we survived the day almost intact (I scratched up my elbow when I fell off the bike) (thank god for helmets!). Here are some pictures:

a self-portrait at Jog Falls. Prashanth doesn't know how to smile.

At the hydropower viewpoint, men admire the wonder that is electricity generation. They did not understand how a river could generate electricity, so Prashanth and I explained it to them. Ok fine, maybe Prashanth did most of the explaining--I don't speak Kannada! In any case, these guys were in awe, and I loved it. It's true, electricity really is an amazing thing! I need to be in awe of infrastructure more often.

We scrambled over slippery rocks in the rain to the top of the waterfalls. This is the vertigo-inducing view over the falls. This picture doesn't really do it justice because I was too nervous about dropping my camera to actually position it correctly.

Prashanth at the top of Jog Falls. (from where the previous photo was taken)

just chillin'. with a 1000-foot drop only inches away.

walking trash bags, as viewed from Prashanth's motorcycle

Moti Me vs. Waif Kaif

My friend Molly recently wrote a great blog post about body image in Nepal. Check it out here. I had been thinking about writing about this for a while too, so now that she's started the conversation, I'll chime in.

The other day the gym-wala complimented me on losing weight. The gym-wala said to me, in Hindi, "aapko weight loss hua!" I find this linguistically interesting because it literally translates to "weight loss happened to you!" whereas I would have translated from English "aapne weight loss kiya!" ("you did weight loss"--in English weight loss is something that we do, not something that just "happens" to us. Well ok maybe it does just happen but that's not how we would phrase it.)

What I find even more interesting is that he said "weight loss" in English--and this is a person who could not hold a conversation in English. There actually is a way to say this in Hindi ("vajan kam ho jana" = "to reduce weight"), but he chose the English. Often (but definitely not always), phrases borrowed from English are for concepts that are new to India and thus not expressible in the local language. Computer, mobile phone, TV, etc. The fact that this man decided to use the English phrase "weight loss" to me means that weight loss, as a goal that people work towards, is a concept imported to India from the West.

How was this concept imported? My guess is through the usual vehicle: Bollywood. While Bollywood is certainly unique from Hollywood, I do think Bollywood producers look to the West, especially to the US, to see what's "cool." Bollywood then projects these Western ideals and trends not only to the 1.2 billion people of India (according to the new census) but to all of South Asia, from Pakistan to Bhutan to Sri Lanka, and arguably to audiences all over Asia Pacific.

I'm not going to go into an extended discussion about body image in India, because I think one look at Bollywood's sex symbol Katrina Kaif, often voted the "sexiest woman in Asia" (who is actually not Indian, but British and raised in the US, with one Indian parent), says it all. Or maybe you need to see her most recent song, "Sheila Ki Jawani" ("Sheila's Youth"):

You should really click on that video. Not only because of its implications about how Bollywood projects women, but because it is a fun, catchy song with a good beat (you will understand my love-hate relationship with this song--I love the music but hate the lyrics).

This song easily shows up on the filmi songs channels at least twice an hour. Autowallahs, dukans, and dhabas blare the song. You can't escape it; it's ubiquitous, and has been for months (despite the fact that its movie Tees Maar Khan was a box office bust). And the message being conveyed to Indian women on a constant basis isn't even subtle: Katrina Kaif's body is the definition of sexy, the ideal woman's body. Men are supposed to want her, and women are supposed to want to look like her.

Interesting, related fact about Kaif: she didn't speak a word of Hindi when she entered Bollywood. All of her lines were dubbed up until last year (when her Hindi finally became passable). How can an actress act without speaking? Isn't that half the job? Her entire film career is based on her looks, her fair skin and skinny body, not on any acting talent.

By the way, I don't think it's fair for Katrina to represent the Indian vision of beauty; she's half Caucasian (and her Indian half is from the fairest of Indians: Kashmiri), and without those white genes, it's really not possible for an Indian woman to ever be that light-skinned. She is, quite literally, the unattainable ideal. As the lyrics of the above song say, "I know you want it but you're never gonna get it, you're never gonna get my body." True words, right there.

Switching topics slightly: a day before I got the compliment from the gym-wala, some Indian guy commented on a picture of me and my friend Neha in her Facebook photo album, saying "u looking gud but who is this aunty wid u??" Apparently, these days not only is being overweight not sexy, but is also associated with being an "aunty," which is a whole other stereotype in itself.

Although the stereotype annoys me, I actually think being overweight has been very useful in India. I get significantly less attention from men than my thin expat friends. Men don't stare at me (as much), men don't catcall or wolf-whistle at me (as much), and I don't get any stalkers or gropers (most of the time). My belly has probably kept me safer. So being a Firangi Round-Round isn't all bad! :) But of course I don't have a wildly successful Bollywood career.

Follow-up to previous post: labor, farmers, and stigma

Molly, both in a comment on my previous post and on her blog, added a third suggestion as to why the quarry workers don't want to return to agriculture:

"in nepal, anyway, there seems to be a stigma associated with traditional agricultural and husbandry livelihoods among the younger generations. even when other factors might make agriculture a more viable option, it is viewed as undesirable and "backward" to continue the backbreaking labor of your parents' and grand-parents' generations."

I'm honestly not sure if this theory could be applied to this particular situation or not. In many regions of India, there is a stigma associated with labor--exactly the kind of work in which these quarry workers are engaging. That's why many states, including Himachal Pradesh, must import laborers from other states, usually Bihar (but sometimes Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal).* In fact, this quarry employs Biharis in addition to local people, because although many local people do work in the quarry, there are still not enough laborers. I was a bit surprised, actually, that any Himachali (ok, these people are culturally Punjabi) would partake in such labor. Even MNREGA, India's national scheme to provide paid employment through village construction projects (for instance, the government will pay villagers to work as laborers to build their own roads), has not been successful in these villages due to their aversion to labor. So it is quite an anomaly, at least to me, that they are willing to work in the quarry. My only explanation is they've somehow determined that this "stone-crushing" labor is different in nature from the MNREGA labor, or that perhaps they view this as a stable job opportunity, whereas most construction labor, government-sanctioned or otherwise, is contractual.

Ok instead of addressing Molly's query, I went off on a labor tangent. So is there also a stigma associated with the traditional agricultural vocations? I'm not sure. In some circles in India, there seems to be a concept of the "noble small farmer," largely thanks to Gandhi (as in Mahatma, but perhaps some of the other Gandhis as well), who famously declared that "India lives in its villages." True to this statement, these circles of Indians view the villages as the strongholds, and thus the villagers as the guardians, of traditional values, the threads that hold the sari of Indian society together.** These circles, it should be noted, probably do not include the small farmer. (Farmers may very well believe that traditional values are better upheld in their village than in a city. What I mean is that farmers may not be among the circles of Indians who subscribe to the "noble small farmer" notion.)

Life is no piece of cake for small farmers. Sure, some lead successful farming businesses and can support their family, but for many life is extremely difficult, as evidenced by the very high and ever-rising suicide rate among small farmers in India. Droughts can wipe out their crops (and thus their income) for an entire season, middlemen between the farmer and the buyer cheat them out of a huge proportion of their money, incredible debt accumulates, etc. My bet is that many, if not most, small farmers would prefer wealth (at least enough to support their families) to "noble" poverty.

I think that, in the words of my friend Jhanvi,*** young people's "dream is to go urban and go big" mostly because they've seen the suffering of their parents and want out. We all want better lives, right? So agriculture is "undesirable," yes, because it means a life of struggle. But do young people stigmatize agriculture as "backward"? I think that depends on the region. In Himachal Pradesh, for example, the apple crop has made farmers relatively wealthy. Apples are a newish crop, first introduced by an American in 1916, so in a way they represent agriculture moving forward. Plus the wealth apples bring results in less dissatisfaction with the agricultural profession. Meanwhile, my coworker Shatabdi, who is from West Bengal, says that in her state, agriculture is "out of fashion" among the youth because of the struggle associated with it. She thinks there is a stigma against these traditional professions in regions where crops have been failing, but that no such stigma exists in areas with successful farming businesses, such as in Punjab. Really, it's a stigma against poverty more than against agriculture.

But what about the concerned villages in Nalagarh? These villages, which straddle the Himachal Pradesh-Punjab cultural and geographical divide, have not seen as much agricultural success as their neighbors on either side of the divide, due to lack of water for irrigation (remember from my previous post, the quarry has pretty much dried up the river). Thus it is likely the youth do indeed have a stigma against pursuing agrarian professions--maybe animal husbandry could become a more viable option than working in the quarry, but these young people have never witnessed that.

Speaking of small farmers, check out Digital Green. My friend Indrani has won a number of big awards for her fantastic work in both this organization and with her research at Microsoft Research and for her PhD at IIT Bombay. Her work focuses on empowering farmers, many of whom are illiterate or low-literate, through text-free cell phone applications, some of which could cut out the cheating middlemen mentioned above. If she sees this blog post, I'm sure she'll criticize it for having a very Western perspective (which, obviously, it does. I am Western, after all!). Perhaps I should ask for her opinion on all of this, because she has significantly more experience in development than I do, has a much better grasp on Indian attitudes than me (she is Indian, after all!), and would be sure to have better insight.

*Migrant labor within India is a whole other can of worms I'm too lazy to open right now, but it certainly warrants further discussion.

**Personally, I believe that values are maintained by individuals and families, so place, urban or rural, has little to do with how people stay true to their traditional values or not. Sure there are outside influences, but those exist in both urban and rural areas, and it's up to the individual how to incorporate these influences (or not) into their value system. However, it's probably true that outside influences are less strong in rural areas, so perhaps that is why many Indians believe villages are the support beams of Indian society.

***While I'm pimping out Indrani, I might as well pimp out Jhanvi some more too. Check out her films (a different link than above). Jhanvi is an aspiring filmmaker who can beautifully depict any story, from fashion to education, from Stanford to South Asia (she also taught some of her tricks to young filmmakers in Bhutan). She's even on IMDB!! You should also know that Jhanvi specifically asked me not to link to her stuff. That's how humble she is. Jhanvi, I know I just deeply embarrassed you, but I do so because I love you and think everyone should see your great films. So stop blushing.

The New Jersey of Himachal Pradesh

I just returned from a field visit to two villages in Nalagarh Tehsil, Himachal Pradesh. Nalagarh is an industrial area and looks like that section of the Jersey Turnpike with all the smokestacks and polluted air and general nastiness. This was my first visit to industrial India (as opposed to rural and urban India, though I guess this is still technically rural). While Nalagarh's situation is probably not nearly as bad as the steel plants in Jharkhand or the mines in Orissa, it wasn't pretty.

One village we visited, Baglehar, is home to a "stone-crushing" operation. Turns out this means a quarry. The other village, Melheni, does not host any industrial projects, but its residents participate in the "stone crushing." Basically, villagers go to the quarry, cut out large rocks from the earth (I didn't catch what type of rock), fill up tractor-pulled truck beds with these rocks (I didn't actually see any crushed stone), and deliver these rocks to cement companies, who I suppose are the real stone crushers. The main road in the area is clogged with tractor traffic going to and from the quarry.

This quarry has caused a number of problems in Baglehar, Melheni, and surrounding villages. The quarry appears to sit on a riverbed, and the river has all but dried up. What little water does remain is heavily polluted and unusable for drinking water or even irrigation. Therefore these villages have no water, which is, obviously, a tremendous problem. I was shocked to see the toilets at Melheni's primary school were locked. Apparently they have no water to flush the toilets, so they cannot use them--better to lock them so people don't try to. Instead, children must practice open defecation and urination. Melheni gets water delivered by large tanker trucks every few months, and this limited water supply has led to many conflicts among villagers. While Baglehar utilizes ground water, it is not enough (not to mention far from clean), and when tankers come some women must wait for 3 hours or more to collect their share of water.

In addition to the water problems, the workers are exposed to all sorts of harmful chemicals and will probably suffer from (and possibly die young of) some avoidable respiratory disease, like at any quarry or mine. Plus much of the quarry activity is illegal and run by a cement cartel that exploits the workers. All sorts of health and human rights issues. The cement cartel, like all cartels in India, wields its power through big politicians, and this corruption means stopping the cartel is next to impossible, unless India can successfully eradicate corruption from its political and bureaucratic systems--a very, very difficult task in this country.

One coworker was particularly distraught over the situation. "We need to protest!" he proclaimed. "We need to stop these illegal, harmful operations!" Well, it's just not that simple. This quarry has been successful in providing much-needed income that the villagers have thus far been unable to earn otherwise, as evidenced by the relative wealth in Baglehar (this relative wealth incited another coworker to comment, "Why are we even here? Look at these houses! This village is wealthy and does not need our help!") If one were to protest and shut down the quarry, who would really lose? The villagers. The corporations would simply move the operation elsewhere and still make their money (and harm other environments and people), while these villagers would lose their jobs. But I don't think the villagers would support a protest in the first place, and if they don't support it, then the protest could not be successful.

The upset coworker went around asking villagers if they would leave the quarry if provided with additional buffaloes so that they could sell more milk. After all, they only make Rs 150 per day at the quarry, and they could certainly make more than that selling dairy products--plus they wouldn't have to suffer the health costs. Their answer? No. And I do not find this surprising at all. Why?

1. They don't understand the health costs. Sure, it may seem fairly obvious that if you're being exposed to harmful chemicals that you will have to seek expensive medical treatment. But (a) they don't know about the effects of the pollutants and (b) many will not seek medical attention anyway. (This is a big problem in the cookstove world. We say "hey all this smoke is killing your lungs" and they respond "well, everyone has a cough.")
2. They don't want to go back to agriculture and animal husbandry. Yes, breaking rocks and loading them onto a tractor is very labor intensive. But so is taking care of buffaloes. You need to feed them, bathe them, clean up their excrement, milk them, take them to a veterinarian when they fall ill. And caring for animals could cost more than going to the quarry--for example, you need to buy fodder (there are no forests in the area, and while the fields provide some fodder after harvesting, that is only once or twice a year, and it is not enough). Plus agriculture and animal husbandry can be unpredictable, whereas the quarry provides a stable source of income.

So how could you convince villagers to leave the quarry? Devise an alternative livelihood opportunity that provides them with a stable income greater than Rs 150/day. And that is quite difficult--new ventures come with a great deal of uncertainty.

To me, this problem is similar to the global oil problem, or the deforestation problem in Madagascar. You can only stop these environment-degrading activities if you cut the demand. As long as there is demand for cement--and as India continues to develop, pave more roads, and construct more buildings, and upgrade its infrastructure, this demand will not be declining any time soon--there will be quarries and the associated environmental and social damage.