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!

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.