Monday, 3 October 2011

Rural Indian Villages

This weekend's service learning activity was to visit two rural villages outside of Bangalore.  I was happy to breath somewhat fresh air.  They do not speak English in these areas so most exchanges were through interpretations and other forms of intercultural communications I have become accustomed too.  We mostly spoke with women as most of the men were working the fields.  In one of these villages, the women have formed a "self-help"cooperative to lobby the government for basic services.  They explained how they have become empowered as a result and life has improved as basic services have arrived (power, roads, health, education).

Unlike in the US, where food may travel hundreds or even thousands of kilometers between field and plate, most food for Indian cities is grown locally (the exception is wheat grain, which is imported from Russia and US).  Feeding three times the US population on one third of the area taxes the land extensively.  This combined with child marriage and lack of family planning has created a Malthusian nightmare.  Out of this dilemma has emerged two perspectives, one embracing a "modern" chemical-industrial model and another promoting imperatives of "traditional" conservation and sustainable agriculture.  Much of India's mystery lies in understanding the clash between modernity and tradition and agriculture is no exception.  I could not tell which one was winning here, but was told that India had briefly experimented with the pseudo-scientific and disastrous Soviet Lysenko agricultural method in the 70's to great consequence.  I do not think there is a third way out of this.



Country roads about 1.5 hours outside of Bangalore 
A one-room school house where children learn in the native Kannada language.  


Students are singing a song to USAC students.  The USAC students returned the gesture. 

From what I can tell this is showing some sustainable agricultural and timber practices, like "don't chop down all the trees" and "don't put plastic bottles in your compost."  I'm not going to learn Kannada (a Sanskrit derivative) here, except to argue with auto-rickshaw drivers.

How cute is that?

Woman walking her pet bull on a long leash.  The house in the background looks quite fancy, but I was told that as many as 35 family members may be in a single home.

A meeting at a micro-finance cooperative.  It was pretty cool to interact with these women as they seem empowered and have talked of having their living standards improve since organizing.

I was invited into several homes, they were very welcoming and eager to share.  A rural home typically has a flooring made of cow dung, extended families are the norm here.

Kids playing on the roof of a home.  My mother would not approve.

A woman demonstrated to me how to "appropriate" power from DC lines running through the village.  You can see how they hook bare wires into the bare transmission lines.  I'm sure doing so often results in a jolt.

Kids waiving goodbye.

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