I'm now in Dehradun at an internet cafe! Wow its really hard to be away from facebook and gmail for too long. Will post when I get back to Pune on the 8th.
-Nikhil
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Youth
Yesterday, in one of those unexpected little political victories, Rahul Gandhi jabbed back at Rajnath Singh- who had called Mr. Gandhi a 'baccha' in a recent interview.
"I may be a baccha, but 70% of India are bacchas. That's the change they want"
Now I'm no big fan of the Congress Party, nor a huge supporter of Rahul Gandhi, but I gotta admit that what he said was both clever as well as pretty gutsy. And from the media coverage that quip has received, I think it was a pretty successful maneuvre.
The fact is, it's true. India is an extremely young country! And yet, it has been ruled by a succession of dinosaurs- some of whom were relatively competent dinosaurs, but dinosaurs nonetheless. Even in the reform period, we've seen Narasimha Rao, IK Gujral, Deve Gowda, AB Vajpayee and now Manmohan Singh. All depressingly antique.
The other day, I was talking to a rickshaw driver, who after some slightly slanted questioning, figured out that I was American. Of course, the immediate leap in conversation was to Obama, and we started talking about the election. As I tried to explain to him why it was so amazing that we had elected a black man into the office for the first time, I realized that he wasn't really interested in the race issue. Instead, he kept repeating over and over again, "But he's so young!! Such a young man as the president!"
It's true, while much of our presidential race was focused on the fact that we could be electing an African-American to the presidential post for the first time, the reason why his message of change really stuck with us has gotta be largely due to his age. We could relate to the guy, his humor was kinda like ours, his interests were similar to ours, it explains the cult following. And its something that has been somewhat overlooked.
In India, where the population is even more concentrated in the 20-30 age range, I feel like the parliamentary democratic system is robbing the citizens of something huge. Without any primaries for the political parties, PM choices are largely political maneuvres, with much less effect on the final outcome of the election. Yes, often local MLA's are younger and closer to the people, but if there's one thing that this US presidential election has taught us, it is the importance of an inspirational leader at the helm.
To really move the country forward, India deserves a young leader. Today there's much talk about Mayawati, the Dalit leader who is challenging for the position of prime minister. While impressive and somewhat progressive that there's a prime ministerial hopeful from this historically maligned group, the truth is that she has run a campaign of divisiveness and hate, and there is little indication that this would abate if she won the post.
This at a time where the country is being pulled at its seams. Sectarian conflict, secessionist groups and terrorist activity seems to be constantly ravaging the country, and every couple months, a new party forms to greedily grab a piece of the crumbling vote bank pie. And then every five years, these parties cobble together a coalition with lots of duct tape, making a mockery of the term majority.
No, what this India deserves is a real majority, a real unifier, and in particular a prime minister who is young and who comes with a message of change. But the likely truth is, it won't happen until the entire political system is overhauled.
We can't wait!
- Nikhil
"I may be a baccha, but 70% of India are bacchas. That's the change they want"
Now I'm no big fan of the Congress Party, nor a huge supporter of Rahul Gandhi, but I gotta admit that what he said was both clever as well as pretty gutsy. And from the media coverage that quip has received, I think it was a pretty successful maneuvre.
The fact is, it's true. India is an extremely young country! And yet, it has been ruled by a succession of dinosaurs- some of whom were relatively competent dinosaurs, but dinosaurs nonetheless. Even in the reform period, we've seen Narasimha Rao, IK Gujral, Deve Gowda, AB Vajpayee and now Manmohan Singh. All depressingly antique.
The other day, I was talking to a rickshaw driver, who after some slightly slanted questioning, figured out that I was American. Of course, the immediate leap in conversation was to Obama, and we started talking about the election. As I tried to explain to him why it was so amazing that we had elected a black man into the office for the first time, I realized that he wasn't really interested in the race issue. Instead, he kept repeating over and over again, "But he's so young!! Such a young man as the president!"
It's true, while much of our presidential race was focused on the fact that we could be electing an African-American to the presidential post for the first time, the reason why his message of change really stuck with us has gotta be largely due to his age. We could relate to the guy, his humor was kinda like ours, his interests were similar to ours, it explains the cult following. And its something that has been somewhat overlooked.
In India, where the population is even more concentrated in the 20-30 age range, I feel like the parliamentary democratic system is robbing the citizens of something huge. Without any primaries for the political parties, PM choices are largely political maneuvres, with much less effect on the final outcome of the election. Yes, often local MLA's are younger and closer to the people, but if there's one thing that this US presidential election has taught us, it is the importance of an inspirational leader at the helm.
To really move the country forward, India deserves a young leader. Today there's much talk about Mayawati, the Dalit leader who is challenging for the position of prime minister. While impressive and somewhat progressive that there's a prime ministerial hopeful from this historically maligned group, the truth is that she has run a campaign of divisiveness and hate, and there is little indication that this would abate if she won the post.
This at a time where the country is being pulled at its seams. Sectarian conflict, secessionist groups and terrorist activity seems to be constantly ravaging the country, and every couple months, a new party forms to greedily grab a piece of the crumbling vote bank pie. And then every five years, these parties cobble together a coalition with lots of duct tape, making a mockery of the term majority.
No, what this India deserves is a real majority, a real unifier, and in particular a prime minister who is young and who comes with a message of change. But the likely truth is, it won't happen until the entire political system is overhauled.
We can't wait!
- Nikhil
Monday, November 17, 2008
Nanegaon
I visited Nanegaon for the first time last week- not too far from Pune, its a village nestled in the Kolvan Valley of rural Maharashtra. It's a beautiful area, no lush green or snowcapped mountains, but just rugged growth. As I was introduced to the projects being run by Gomukh in the area, for the first time, I started to see for my eyes some of the challenges facing agricultural and rural policy in India.
Although I was visiting the area to get a feel for the site of the renewables project, I assisted on surveys that Gomukh was conducting for a soil conservation project.
A couple notes on background. Thanks to good soil, decent rainfall, and NGO assistance, much of rural Maharashtra, particularly close to Mumbai and Pune, is moderately well-off, particularly compared to rural areas in other states. (It is also thanks to a sugar boom in recent years, but we'll get to that later). In general, farmers were growing sugarcane or rice, had some livestock, and sold their produce to markets in Pune.
As we sat with some of these farmers, in their small but well maintained homes (side note- its amazing how much effort these families put into their homes. The ground is always swept clean and dung washed for sterilization, the bed is always made, the few pictures on the wall are straight...even when the area inside the house is too small to even stand upright, the pride with which they maintained their homes really struck me), I started to realize some of their severe budgetary issues. It's a life with no margin for error.
When we prodded further, we found that their income never seemed to match up with their spending, sometimes not by a long way. It seemed that many of these farmers were playing a game of juggling loans, going from a Union bank, to a rural commune, to a community savings group- attempting to make minimum repayments so that they did not default, but never quite staying afloat.
Often, in truly dire straits, these farmers would be forced to sell their soil- a fact that they admitted with their voices low, their heads bowed. I did not catch on at first but when I saw one of the farmers, Santosh, glance nervously at a picture of a god on the wall as he spoke about it, I that for a farmer, his soil is his mother; it is everything that has nurtured him and provides for him. Selling soil is a good way to make a quick buck, especially because the valley is close to Pune where the construction business is booming, and brickmakers are constantly looking for cheap and plentiful soil. So the bricklayers come into rural areas, carting away trucks of fertile topsoil, at hardly a pittance in comparison to its real rate. But for the farmers, this is big money.
This raises a number of questions- 1. How do you protect the farmer against a punishing sale like that, and 2. How do you prevent them from selling the soil in the first place, which is severely hurting the agriculture in the area, not to mention their own sense of self-respect?
The answers are difficult because, like I mentioned, of the margin of error. Running a constant deficit, if any of these farmers have a marriage, or a festival (often taking up about 30% of the annual budget), or in a worst case scenario- an injury..then the bills throw the budget into havoc. Then its time to start selling high value assets, such as soil, livestock and even trees. That was the problem that Ankush faced. He had a relatively balanced budget, but a motorcycle injury followed by what seemed like endless medical bills up nearly 70% of his annual income. This meant that in all honesty, there was absolutely zero savings for little Vikrant who was running around the hut as his mother tried to get pants on him. Forget savings, there would almost certainly be a pretty significant debt.
How did they get into this kind of budgetary crisis in the first place?
Well part of the problem..the majority of the problem, is planning.
You see, a while ago, sugarcane was seen as a huge cash crop in the state of Maharashtra. It was easy to grow, needed hardly any maintenance, and you could make a lot of money off of selling it to the sugar mills. Farmers unionized, ran their own sugar factories so that rates were equitable, the entire situation was relatively peachy.
Then a couple things happened. Firstly, the larger farmers began taking control of the unions and factories, leading to corruption, and crowding out of the smaller farmers. Then, the price of sugar fell, and fell hard.
Many farmers, whose plots were completely invested in sugarcane growth starte dmaking huge losses. But the cycle was created, many of these farmers had become used to an easier life- sugarcane does not require much hard work- so they had resorted to relaxing, often drinking. The huge government subsidies continued to encourage sugarcane planting, as it was a cash crop, but the system was stacked against it being profitable anymore.
Had some of these farmers diversified their crops, been able to watch prices, looked into rural savings accounts, and/or received subsidies for other crops, the situation may not have been the same.
Ironically, the second farmer we surveyed, who had a much smaller plot of land than the first one, and much fewer assets, actually had a balanced budget- not just because he seemed younger and more clever, but also because he was cultivating rice, a proven crop which is work intensive if you want high yields.
Man, life just isn't easy when you can't make a mistake.
-Nikhil
Although I was visiting the area to get a feel for the site of the renewables project, I assisted on surveys that Gomukh was conducting for a soil conservation project.
A couple notes on background. Thanks to good soil, decent rainfall, and NGO assistance, much of rural Maharashtra, particularly close to Mumbai and Pune, is moderately well-off, particularly compared to rural areas in other states. (It is also thanks to a sugar boom in recent years, but we'll get to that later). In general, farmers were growing sugarcane or rice, had some livestock, and sold their produce to markets in Pune.
As we sat with some of these farmers, in their small but well maintained homes (side note- its amazing how much effort these families put into their homes. The ground is always swept clean and dung washed for sterilization, the bed is always made, the few pictures on the wall are straight...even when the area inside the house is too small to even stand upright, the pride with which they maintained their homes really struck me), I started to realize some of their severe budgetary issues. It's a life with no margin for error.
When we prodded further, we found that their income never seemed to match up with their spending, sometimes not by a long way. It seemed that many of these farmers were playing a game of juggling loans, going from a Union bank, to a rural commune, to a community savings group- attempting to make minimum repayments so that they did not default, but never quite staying afloat.
Often, in truly dire straits, these farmers would be forced to sell their soil- a fact that they admitted with their voices low, their heads bowed. I did not catch on at first but when I saw one of the farmers, Santosh, glance nervously at a picture of a god on the wall as he spoke about it, I that for a farmer, his soil is his mother; it is everything that has nurtured him and provides for him. Selling soil is a good way to make a quick buck, especially because the valley is close to Pune where the construction business is booming, and brickmakers are constantly looking for cheap and plentiful soil. So the bricklayers come into rural areas, carting away trucks of fertile topsoil, at hardly a pittance in comparison to its real rate. But for the farmers, this is big money.
This raises a number of questions- 1. How do you protect the farmer against a punishing sale like that, and 2. How do you prevent them from selling the soil in the first place, which is severely hurting the agriculture in the area, not to mention their own sense of self-respect?
The answers are difficult because, like I mentioned, of the margin of error. Running a constant deficit, if any of these farmers have a marriage, or a festival (often taking up about 30% of the annual budget), or in a worst case scenario- an injury..then the bills throw the budget into havoc. Then its time to start selling high value assets, such as soil, livestock and even trees. That was the problem that Ankush faced. He had a relatively balanced budget, but a motorcycle injury followed by what seemed like endless medical bills up nearly 70% of his annual income. This meant that in all honesty, there was absolutely zero savings for little Vikrant who was running around the hut as his mother tried to get pants on him. Forget savings, there would almost certainly be a pretty significant debt.
How did they get into this kind of budgetary crisis in the first place?
Well part of the problem..the majority of the problem, is planning.
You see, a while ago, sugarcane was seen as a huge cash crop in the state of Maharashtra. It was easy to grow, needed hardly any maintenance, and you could make a lot of money off of selling it to the sugar mills. Farmers unionized, ran their own sugar factories so that rates were equitable, the entire situation was relatively peachy.
Then a couple things happened. Firstly, the larger farmers began taking control of the unions and factories, leading to corruption, and crowding out of the smaller farmers. Then, the price of sugar fell, and fell hard.
Many farmers, whose plots were completely invested in sugarcane growth starte dmaking huge losses. But the cycle was created, many of these farmers had become used to an easier life- sugarcane does not require much hard work- so they had resorted to relaxing, often drinking. The huge government subsidies continued to encourage sugarcane planting, as it was a cash crop, but the system was stacked against it being profitable anymore.
Had some of these farmers diversified their crops, been able to watch prices, looked into rural savings accounts, and/or received subsidies for other crops, the situation may not have been the same.
Ironically, the second farmer we surveyed, who had a much smaller plot of land than the first one, and much fewer assets, actually had a balanced budget- not just because he seemed younger and more clever, but also because he was cultivating rice, a proven crop which is work intensive if you want high yields.
Man, life just isn't easy when you can't make a mistake.
-Nikhil
The Blog and the Explanation
The blog is created because I can't keep my thoughts to myself, and I enjoy hearing inputs and comments on my opinions. It's also created because the last time I traveled, I did not get much love for my textbook-sized emails. So hope to hear from you guys on here.
- Nikhil
- Nikhil
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