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November 27, 2003
Development at any cost Tuesdays Hindustan Times brought yet another heartwarming tale of a development project that has brought nothing but misery to those whose lives it was supposed to improve. The residents of Bhatwadi panchayat close to the Larji hydel (hydro electric) project near Kullu have filed a public interest litigation in the High Court against the Himachal Pradesh State Electricity Board who are responsible for the project, which is apparently making their lives a misery. Unauthorised dumping of project waste, encroachment of village land, thick dust that is causing respiratory illness are some of the complaints. Village cattle have been "dying in hordes" due to the effects of the waste and blasting at the site, which has also caused structural damage to homes in the village. One villager lost seven of his buffaloes to disease and the effects of the blasting.
To add insult to injury, the grand promises made to them about improvements to their lives - and more specifically jobs at the construction site - have failed to materialise. For four years the villagers have been petitioning HPSEB and the contractors, Continental and Satyam to do something about their complaints, with no effect - hence resorting to the court action.
These stories are all too common in the Indian and international press. Projects that sound great in the glass towers and plush offices of the World Bank, the various development agencies and the western media, are strewn liberally with promises of prosperity and empowerment as a condition of international finance. The reality on the ground is somewhat different, with projects often destroying or displacing the communities they were supposed to benefit, and the sound byte friendly promises made to locals turning to so much dust at the hands of ruthless and greedy contractors or corrupt officials. In the case of development in India, the damming of the Narmada river has attracted the most high profile protest in India and overseas, the visiblility of the cause improved by the involvement of celebrities such as writer Arundhati Roy. China's Three Gorges dam received similar bad press.
While global development financiers such as the World Bank stipulate conditions for loans supposed to ensure local people are not hard done by, monitoring the implementation of such conditions often seems to be somewhere between flawed and non existent. Whether they know and do not care, or are simply too incompetent to realise how these things work on the ground is a mystery to me. Hardly surprising as the single largest critiscism levelled at the US dominated World Bank and IMF is their extreme lack of transparency. It is questionable whether any notice whatever is taken of comments or objections made during the publicised "consultation events" with the local population that also form a condition of World Bank finance. I know from my own experience of being peripherally involved with inner city regeneration in the UK that such events are often pro forma, or at best an attempt to persuade local populations that its all in their best interests - and to hell with objections. The Great and the Good know best. Development projects that would be totally unacceptable if enacted in the villages of rural England, resulting in the displacement of populations and the dismemberment of communities, are rammed down the throats of the worlds poor whether they like it or not, spin doctored by western Governments and then applauded by the western press as a small price to pay for a bright future and participation in the global economy. The traditional livelihoods sacrificed at the altar of progress are replaced by others that are arguably more beneficial to western businesses than those who have lost a way of life.
In an ideal world, hydel projects such as Larji and the Parvati project should be a positive benefit to local people in HP and to India as a whole. One of the big problems India has in attracting foreign investors to set up shop in the country is the extremely poor power infrastructure. One of the first priorities of the Andra Pradesh Chief Minister when attempting to make Hydrabad a rival to Bangalore as a great centre for high tech industries was power. Without predictable power, no sane company at the cutting edge of technology will commit itself to India.
Any one who has spent more than a day in Delhi during June will be well aquainted with the shortfall in electricity availablity, exacerbated in summer by the power guzzling aircon plants on many homes and offices. Power cuts lasting an hour or more are common, and the misery of sitting inside in the 45 deg C + of Delhi summer without moving air cant be exaggerated. Delhi's power requirement for the peak of the hot season runs to about 3,000 MW, but as of 2002, only 2,000 MW was available. A system of "load shedding" rotated through the various areas of Delhi becomes the only way to manage the available resources.
Hydro electric promises to be the answer to many of the power problems; clean and efficient generation of power, from natural and renewable sources, supplied in adequate quantities. The hydro power potential of HP is a total 20,795 MW of which 4242 MW is currently generated. If all of this is realised, HP can more than provide for its own power needs, and make a valuable income for the state by selling power to those states who have trouble generating the amounts of electricity they need. The effects are already felt locally. Anyone who visited the Kullu valley 10 years ago would remember the lengthy power cuts; even when power was available, it was so low a candle would often be brighter. Now it is rare to have a cut of more than a few minutes. But whether those left living with the scarred landscapes and broken promises that have resulted at Larji would consider this worthwhile is another matter.
Residents of the Manali locality, specifically the villages of Jagasukh, Aleo and Prini (where Indian Prime Minsiter AB Vajpayee has his home) are about to become intimately familiar with the issues involved. A local friend from Jagasukh is currently trying to mount a campaign to raise the awareness of fellow villagers to the impact that the soon to commence Allain Duhangan hydel project will have on their lives and village. The project will, when completed, generate 192 MW of electricity utilising the waters from small streams that flow through Aleo and Jagatsukh. He is having trouble persuading villagers to take any active interest in the effects on their lives and environment that the project will have. As with so many such projects before work has started, most local people are happily licking their lips at the thought of the money they will make from selling land or starting businesses to service the construction, and giving little thought to the fact that 80 + trucks per day will be passing through the sleepy village during construction, 2,000 migrant workers will be settled there for 5 or so years, or that significant quantities of the incredibly beautiful wooded landscape will be torn apart to keep Delhi cool in summer.
The project page on the World Banks Web site states that interested parties should have access to the Enviromental and Social Impact assessment document, kept locally at the contractors office in Jagatsukh, yet the contractors have refused him access to this document - presumably on the basis that he may be out to cause trouble for them. In any case should he gain access he will still have problems as his first language is Hindi, and the assessment document is written in English.
The spirit of which was summed up rather neatly by Douglas Adams in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy when Arthur Dent is arguing with a man who is unexpectedly trying to demolish his house to make way for a bypass:
Mr Prosser said: "You were quite entitled to make any
suggestions or protests at the appropriate time you know."
"Appropriate time?" hooted Arthur. "Appropriate
time? The first I knew about it was when a workman arrived
at my home yesterday. I asked him if he'd come to clean
the windows and he said no he'd come to demolish the house.
He didn't tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First
he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then
he told me."
"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the
local planning office for the last nine months."
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight
round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly
gone out of your way to call attention to them had you?
I mean like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display ..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar
to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a torch."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was
on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck
in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware
of the Leopard." |
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Unwanted wildlifeAs much as I enjoy spending time in this country, I still hate most of the large and overactive bugs, spiders etc you find here. This BBC article is about the parasites that more and more people pick up as an unwanted friend while on holiday. Especially disgusting is the story of a guy that came back from Nepal with an 8-10 inch aquatic leech entirely up his nose. He was unaware of his guest for 3 weeks until it poked its head out while he was in a teashop back home, apparently terrifying the waiter.It sneaked in while he was taking a drink from a mountain stream. Ucch.
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November 22, 2003
Weddings, drinking and lost trousersThe wedding we attended in Old Manali yesterday had more in common with the marriages we are used to than the one I referred to last week. For one, it was a "love marriage", still a relatively uncommon occurrence in a country in which most marriages are arranged by family to one extent or another.
The house at which the marriage was to take place was only a couple of hundred yards from ours, so our landlord agreed to put up the dancers, who had come from Goshal village, and supply them with drink and food when they weren't dancing. So we had 10 to 15 young men dressed in the traditional white tunics, white trousers and black caps decorated with the feathers of the Monal (pheasant) ripping into the booze that was laid on and singing and drumming in the next room on the night before the wedding.
At the wedding party itself the booze flowed copiously, mostly Lugari - local "wine" made from rice, and at its best a fine drink, if something of an acquired taste being as it tastes very similar to how you imagine battery acid would. After the ceremonies were over and the dancing had started the men and women separated into two groups; men at the front of the house, women at the rear, sitting on mats laid out in lines in the orchards. The mens side were supplied with Lugari, bottled beer or "English", basically the local name for Scotch whisky. I suspect more than a few Scots could get irate and miss the irony of their national tipple being referred to by the name of the "auld enemy". The womens camp was supposed to be non drinking, but looking from the roof of the house down on where they were sitting, I could see more than a few mineral water bottles full of rather "thick" looking water, and a fair few wobbly looking women.
The dancing was led by the guys from Goshal, with wedding goers joining the circle for a while and then dropping out when they'd had enough. They lacked the stamina or pace of the wedding two weeks ago, but then that was a booze free event. One or two of the older people, as is common at any of these dances, did a bit of freelance dancing within the circle, often waving around borrowed swords. One or two of them were pretty good, especially one old and obviously inebriated lady of about sixty who whirled her sword with the enthusiasm of a Moulinex blender. I've always admired Indians in the respect that they are extremely unselfconscious about dancing at such events, not a trace of the embarrassment their western counterparts would suffer.
Our place was again turned into an annexe of the wedding, mainly for the younger guys to drink out of sight of fathers and older relatives, who almost certainly wouldn't have noticed the breach of etiquette as they were so pissed themselves by 6pm. Indians and Brits have much in common when drunk in that they tend to hassle anyone without a drink in his hand to do something about it immediately. My landlord has cultivated a reputation in the village as a non drinker in an effort to avoid too many hangovers, and nursed half a glass of beer without ever really drinking too much of it. We waded heavily into the Lugari with friends from the village and were quite happily toasted by 7 PM or so.
About 9.30 PM the main wedding party wound down, and our landlords wife decided enough was enough and sent the remaining (and now very, very pissed) village youth packing. They had made a more than respectable dent in the booze supplied, polishing off about 10 litres of Lugari, 20 bottles of Indian Scotch and 50 bottles of beer, not bad considering this was sideshow. A couple of guys too buggered to work out which way the village was were given a bed to pass out on.
One more enthusiastic soul hadnt had enough however. I could hear him crashing around the orchard behind the house when I was making the fire at 11 , and he shouting away in Hindi two hours later, although by then he'd moved to just outside my landlords room. I had visions of him seeing our light and pounding on the door, demanding a last drink so I switched the light off and hit the sack. About two minutes later there was a huge crash as he fell heavily into the corrugated iron fence outside the balcony hard enough I thought he'd knocked it over.
I couldn't understand how my landlord could sleep with all the racket going on about two feet from his door, but I got the full story the next morning. The local guys in Old Manali are extremely tenacious drinkers and my landlord was worried that if he'd opened the door and told the guy to bugger off, somehow the pisshead would have persuaded him to open another bottle - so better to pretend to be fast asleep. He wasnt; he didn't sleep a wink all night. this same guy had then apparently decided to go to sleep on the porch and had apparently divested himself of his trousers, cap and shoes to do so. Unwise as it was close to freezing outside, and had he stayed, he would probably have ended up "cello Pakistan" (dead) in the morning. At about 4 AM he must have had enough of the cold and headed back to the main wedding house and banged the door till he was given a place to sleep, an uncomfortable walk through the orchards as he left his trousers, cap and shoes strewn around our place. He wandered back this morning - in underpants and socks - to ask if anyone had seen his clothes, without a trace of embarrassment. My landlord had found the clothes strewn all over, the trousers apparently totally covered in cowshit to the point there want a square inch of clean cloth left. The guy had woken up with a filthy head, and no idea of where he'd left his clothes, and wandered over to ours on the offchance they were here.
Hangovers abounded this morning; my landlord spent most of the afternoon in bed nursing an evil head, as did I, and I rather suspect most of the village felt the same - a far cry from the stone cold sober wedding in the "Manth" village a fortnight ago. Wedding season still has 3 weeks or so to go, so their is plenty of opportunity for Old Manali's hardened drinkers to show their stamina or lose their trousers.
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Arranged marriageWith weddings here currently thick on the ground, many of our conversations turn to the different notions of marriage. Most Westerners (me included) find it difficult to deal with the concept of the arrangement of your marriage by parents, and being presented with a fait accompli; basically "this is the person you're going to spend your life with" as a result of informal contact, negotiation and - perhaps the strangest of all - horoscope matching. The degree to which marriages are arranged varies across India from that in which the couple have no say and will not meet before their wedding, to more liberal interpretations in which they can express preferences and may spend time together before tying the knot. A local friend, Surinder, who was married recently spent a year getting to know his prospective wife, Veena, before they were marrried, even though the marriage was arranged in the traditonal way.
Arranged marriage is a respected institution, even by the young, who I would expect to be more rebellious and prefer the more romantic notion of meeting someone and falling in love the Bollywood way. Even in the UK it is still widely practiced among families with sub continental origins and their born in the UK children. Many of those children are themselves advocates of the system although for many British Asian families sticking to tradition can cause massive friction between Parents brought up in India on traditional values, and UK born kids more comfortable with the freedom of their adopted culture.
I have had many conversation during my time in India on the subject of arranged marriage, mostly with those who are firm believers that love marriage is "irrational" and less likely to last in the long term. One guy on a train quoted to me what must be a common expression, but nevertheless had some resonance; "You westerners marry the women you love, we Indians love the women we marry.", the obvious inference being that Indians in arranged marriages grow to love each other for their unique qualities, whereas the western notion of love is more about mere infatuation and lacking in depth. Whatever the truth of it I suspect that India is as full of unhappy and unfulfilled marriages as the west, but that the stigma of divorce being far greater, people are far more likely to put up with an unhappy marriage. Expectations differ in India and the west in any case, and for 99.9 percent of those getting married in European countries the the idea that your mother would select your wife is as crazy as picking a future wife in a lottery. I rather suspect that the notion of arranging marriage might be substantially more attractive to Mothers however. Mine would almost certainly jump at the chance of picking out the ideal woman to put me on the straight and narrow.
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November 18, 2003
Bukari timeThe cold snap has reduced the temperature in our room to 6 degrees C at 6PM, and the one bar electric fire scarcely raised it more than a degree or two any more - time to dig out the bukari (a form of upright metal tandoor) and accompanying paraphenalia from its summer rest in the store. A double application of mustard oil has transformed it from a rusty looking lump to a respectable looking stove, but means the first firing will fill the room with evil smelling smoke. Last years trial and error installation is a thing of the past, and all went smoothly this time. The Heath Robinson arrangement involves removing a window and installing a metal sheet to route the pipe through, suspended from the roof by wire held up with brick. We're determined to reduce the leaking smoke this year and have bought tinfoil, tin sheeting and a few metres of wire to strap up the joins in the pipes. After last year, we could still smell the smoke on clothes and backpacks when we went briefly to Germany in the summer - 3 months after last using the Bukari.
The bukari is also a voracious consumer of forest - or more likely orchard this year. When we first got it we were utterly dismayed by the wood consumption which seemed enough to fuel a small power station. Unlike the normal flat metal "tandoor" commonly used, the Bukari is upright and has a grate - meaning it chucks out more heat with a correspondingly higher wood consumption. Our landlord commented that unless we somehow "choked" the fire a bit, we would need all of old Manali's winter wood supplies to run it. A double layer of chicken wire above the grate did the trick, and wood consumption reduced to the merely unreasonable. Feeding the beast last year took 13 quintals of wood for the 5 months we used it. The cost of heating one room ran to about the same as the cost of heating our entire house in London with gas central heating. A log burning fire is obviously far more appealing. the Bukari can also take coal (unlike the flat tandoor) for a bit of extra kick when its really cold.
Because part of the pipe runs horizontally, we'll also have the pleasure of a bi weekly decoking of the chimney. The pipe becomes clogged with crystalised coal tar We know this is coming when the door starts leaking smoke when the bukari is started. The unorthodox cleaning method (invented by my landlord) makes it all worthwhile however. Taking out the 4 sections of horizontal pipe in one piece and leaning it up against the roof is followed by emptying half a litre or so of kerosene down it while its tilted at 45 degrees. Lighting it up produces a thick disgusting yellow smoke from the upper end that lasts an amazing half an hour or so, The spectacle of a pipe connected to nothing belching industrial quantities of smoke is surreal.
Hassles aside, we'll be happy to have the room warm enough that brain function returns, meaning I might write this blog more often.
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Wedding rulesEven by the usual standards, this years wedding season is packed. Our landlord is complaining about the expense incurred by the pile of invites he has. 6 weddings between now and mid December - some for only one day, but one or two where he's expected for the full 3 days. At each he has to shell out some money or a gift, all carefully noted down, the size of which depends on how close family the person is. One very close family marriage can cost the same as half a dozen distant relatives.
On top of this there are 3 "special prays" in the village in the same period, where a villager "invites" the Hadimba idol to their house for a blessing. This normally involves paying for cooking food for the entire population of the village. These prayers are usually given as thanks for an especially good year, or a blessing for an upcoming venture.
Our own wedding invites currently run to 3, two of which are still to come. So in one month I'll have been to more weddings than I have in 10 years in the UK.
the wedding we have already attended was unusual - for us at least - in what intoxicants were permitted. Events of any kind in Old Manali are usually accompanied by copious amounts of booze; basically any excuse for a drink, as it would be in the UK. Smoking charas however is generally frowned on socially, something many Israeli tourists never quite seem to get the hang of ("but its your culture" is a frequently heard refrain). These days most people consider villagers who smoke (known as "charasies") to be lazy good for nothings, and so it is generally socially stigmatised, whilst getting hideously pissed is not really a problem. Ironic considering Manalis prodigious output and sales of weed. This is a more modern phenomenon and a few years ago partaking of the odd joint was less frowned upon. Some of the older guys in the village still do so, and respect for their age prevents any behind the back muttering.
The wedding we attended was in a different village mainly inhabited not by Thakurs, but by people of the "Manth" caste for whom booze is a total no-no. They do worship Shiva however, and so having a joint at the wedding was considered acceptable to the point that one family member was apparently going around handing out pre rolled spliffs, although we missed that.
This reversal of etiquette led to the odd spectacle (or us foreigners at least) of people getting very visibly stoned at the wedding, while Kirsten and I along with a few friends from Old Manali made some spurious excuses and headed out to the orchards - after surrepticiously procuring paper cups - to knock back a clandestine bottle of rum - exactly the opposite of the average UK wedding at which a group will usually be seen outside having a crafty joint.
Another unusual - and welcome - feature of the wedding was the two or three guys employed to walk around and keep guests constantly supplied with chai. As a major chai addict that was more welcome than the joints, a sign of age perhaps.
The drive home was less enjoyable. The friend who drove has only recently bought the van - his first vehicle - and as is customary round here assumes that buying a vehicle is roughly equivalent to learning to drive. A combination of his inexperience and overconfidence on the twisting mountain roads, and my atheist lack of belief in another life after this one left me an extremely nervous passenger.
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Go home Bush It is rare that I feel much empathy with the land of my birth and whose passport I hold, Britain, but today is one of those rare occasions with the arrival in London tommorrow of George Bush on a 3 day state visit.
One of the reasons I like to spend as much time as humanly possible outside the UK is the unhealthy state of civil and political life in the country, and in the world in general. Increasingly we are treated as little more than cannon fodder for politicians and big business, a vote bank to be ignored unless we are needed for a photo op or to put an X on a voting slip. The view of the UK from India is rather remote and painted in fairly broad brushstrokes, which stops me getting agitated at the latest piece of government idiocy passing itself off as policy.
One piece of idiocy it was impossible to ignore was the latest episode of Gulf War and occupation of Iraq, and harder to swallow was the embarrasing way in which the British Prime Minister made the nation a laughing stock yet again with his unseemly and uncalled for love in with Bush and his far right cronies. Once again, our political class had made it embarrassing to hold a UK passport in someone elses country, although in India that was at least tempered by India's own over hasty embrace of US policy after Sep 11th 2001.
Objection to war in Iraq in the UK was unusually high (peaking at around 70%), yet Blair decided to ignore public opinion and common sense entirely and engage British troops in a war that most of the populace did not want, and that was only ever designed to protect the US and open up a new source of wealth for US fat cats. The question of what it was that persuaded Blair to pitch in - the tenuous moral argument or the money - against the vocal opposition has become almost irrelevant. The fact is that yet again our supposedly European country has been used as just another US aircraft carrier.
And somewhere during the pre war period in March, some bright spark had the idea of inviting Bush for a State Visit, presumably in anticipation of the clean, quick success that Iraq was going to be. Bush, pre war, was almost universally loathed in the UK for his simplistic and violent approach to world events and his reneging on popular international treaties such as the Kyoto protocol. His popularity was scarcely bolstered by the endless repetition of patronising lines such as "you're either with us or with the terrorists" or the all time classic "people who love freedom."; phrases that might suit the mindless soundbyte politics of the US, but have no resonance in Europe. I have often pondered on what that last oft repeated rubbish actually means. It seems more of a brand identity than a meaningful concept; loving freedom equating to a love of America an its values. Most people in Europe do indeed "love freedom", but most do not need to recite a little mantra to it each morning with hand on heart facing a flag, codifying and narrowing the meaning of the word freedom till it has no meaning at all. We are familiar enough with recent history to know the difference between despotism and freedom of speech to ensure that Europe avoids taking the road to hell again. Blind, unthinking patriotism and the following of slogans is too much like the rabid nationalism of the 1930s and 40s - or the more recent Balkan nationalism of the 90s - for most Europeans. Such myopia leads to mass graves.
Ironically while Europe has a free and fairly vocal press, the "people that love freedom", the US, have substituted state censorship for the far more efficient corporate censorship enacted by the owners of media channels. As their interests are so often coincidental with that of the administration, US news output is a saccharin stream of simplistic assertions that simply bores its well trained target audience into mental and political inertia. The pathetic slur of the French as "cheese eating surrender monkeys" says much about the depths to which freedom of speech has sunk in the US.
The last US president to be accorded a state visit was Woodrow Wilson in 1918 in honour of the US role in helping to save Europes bacon in World War 1. Roosevelt, who led an even bigger bacon saving excercise in the 40s was not accorded the privelege - and yet Bush, who has thrown more bacon on the fire than anyone since LBJ, is getting the Full Monty; put up at the taxpayers expense at Buck House, his secret service being allowed to stage a military takeover of London lest some "terrorist" decide they have an axe to grind with the Leader Of the Free World. Reducing the Middle East from 'unstable' to 'imminently volcanic' in 2 short years, and returning Afghanistan once again to the tribal warlords would scarcely seem to qualify as achievements to be honoured.
Blair is on record as saying that those who do not like Bush "dont know his qualities as I do". This visit is evidently an attempt to introduce the "real" Georgie to the British people so that we can understand what Tony meant and love him too - something likea naiive girl taking her biker boyfriend home to meet Ma & Pa. How street closures, roadblocks, unprecedented security, snipers and allowing wild eyed gun toting Secret Service thugs with square heads and no necks to occupy central London will help with this Bush familiarisation drive is anyones guess. Anyone so loathed that they have to travel with a small army to prevent being slotted should probably re-examine their thinking.
I have always felt that Britains future lay with Europe. Faulty as EU is, the countries of Europe have largely left behind mass violence and colonialism as a major policy option and replaced it with a firm (if occasionally cynical) belief in reason, International diplomacy and the UN. Five years ago I would have thought we had more in common with Europe than America, yet now we are honouring a man with more in the mould of Julius Caesar than Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
I can only wish luck to the protesters on the streets of London tommorrow in making the voice of the vast majority of Europeans heard, and in letting Bush know how much we love his selective version of freedom.
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Snow comes early to ManaliWe've all been taken by surprise by the early arrival of snow in Manali. Usually the snow comes up here in late December at the earliest. Only a few of the oldies in the village can remember snow coming this early - many, many years ago. Its a nuisance for local people at the height of the wedding season and with winter firewood left to gather. A trip into town yesterday showed plenty of people taken by surprise and taking home hundredweight bags of coal. The local coal prices are very much "temperature sensitive", with the wily coal merchant taking advantage of peoples necessity and racking the prices up. Nothing like a bit of opportunism.
Plenty of tourists from Punjab and Delhi have come to Manali to take advantage of an early opportunity to see some snow. Yesterday a bunch of about 25 vehicles were snowed in at Marhi while returning from the Rohtang pass. The tourists apparently enjoyed the adventure, spending the night around fires at the numerous dhabas that litter the roadside at Marhi. Many enjoyed it so much, they apparently didnt want to return after being "rescued" by the chaps from the Manali mountaineering institute who dug the snow from the road.
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