Impressions of Delhi

I’m feeling a bit glossed over by the combination of yoga and unbroken heat so bear with me as I explain my perceptions of Delhi, the largest city our group of thirteen has visited on our journey through Southern and Northern India. For each one of us there are over one million inhabitants of Delhi; an estimated from 18 to 22 million people reside in the city and the number of informal and migrant inhabitants makes exact counts impossible. Not only does Delhi have a high density population but it has an annual growth rate of 4.60%. By 2025 New Delhi is projected to have 29.49 million inhabitants. The city’s population size is astounding and really, just incomprehensible. Only by exploring the parts that make up the whole of Delhi by train, bicycle rickshaw, tour bus, van, and auto have I been able to piece together the blurred images that make up a metropolis of such proportion.

Delhi is ranked fourth in terms of population size out of the twenty six megacities of the world. A “megacity”, defined as having a population of over ten million people, sounds like something a ten year old boy might build out of Lego blocks over a whole rainy day’s time. He adds and expands without stepping back to examine the sprawling web of buildings and roads he’s laid across the family room floor, his mind transforming the black and white patterned carpeting into a global hub of commercial activity with no regard for the consequences of unchecked growth. I was able to look down upon the expanse of orange lights that mark the city from my airplane window as we descended at night from the south. They seemed to stretch on forever in all directions with no real organization or structure, just a twinkling mass. It was only once I was within the megacity that I found Delhi is indeed a singular, living, pulsing thing, and it’s also a decaying, sweltering beastly thing.

My perception of Delhi formed through comparison to what I’ve known before this trip- North America, Europe, East Africa and a hint of the Middle East. India is a second world country, but having only visited first and third world nations, I wondered upon arrival what that meant; what physical, social and economic components coexist to make India “developing” as opposed to “underdeveloped” or “developed”.

Sitting in the back of a red bicycle rickshaw propelled by a spindly-legged young man in Old Delhi, darting amongst taxis, buses and the occasional cow, passing under a grey twisted jungle of electrical wires strung over the chipping corners of grey buildings, I puzzle why this quarter of the city has been left out of development efforts. Refurbishment and preservation of urban dwellings that have stood through centuries of change is not part of the Indian government’s national development plan. Historical preservation is a privilege of the global wealthy nations. Delhi is not a first world city.

From the air conditioned compartment of our tour bus, our group cranes our necks to get a look at the bronze men dressed for battle reflecting the hot strong afternoon sun in a road rotary memorial. Bronze is not for the poor nations of the world. Speed walking to the Khan market I have to step off the sidewalk and into the street as two glossy-coated Cocker Spaniels strain to sniff at my bare legs, their owner oblivious to her dogs’ doings as she talks into her cell phone. Pet dogs are a sign of prosperity, of having more than enough to feed one’s family, of high class. Delhi is not a third world city.

Delhi is a second world city. It has paved roads and freshly painted crosswalks, but the mangy stray dogs and barefoot beggars who cross over them have no care for the electronic timers. They enter the road with hungry eyes on you, not on the countdown. Delhi is home to a perpetual game of cricket, a once pretentious sport brought by the British that is always being played on some patch of grass or in some hidden alleyway. Anywhere wide enough to swing a bat is utilized by dusty-haired youth while green private parks stand empty, their walls bar the common man from a rare commodity in this megacity: space. Delhi is a metropolis of contrasts where hardened poor rub shoulders with shiny rich, rickety establishments lean into newly laid concrete blocks, Rolls Royce’s are nearly nicked by dented rickshaws and the smooth white domes of Hindu temples mark oasis’s of calm amongst the horn-honking, neon sari blur. Delhi is always transforming, never immobile, for it is a city of the second world, neither underdeveloped nor developed, but as I now understand it, developing.

The Rickshaw Race

         Today was an adventure. We woke up at 5 am and ate nutrigrain bars in a lackadaisical haze, unsure of what to expect.  Then we boarded a series of rickshaws and started off toward the Periyar Tiger Reserve. In 1895, the Periyar Lake was created when a dam called the Mullaperiyar Dam was built in Thekkady across the Periyar River, which put 10 square miles underwater, thus creating what is now the Periyar Lake.  In 1935, 232 square miles around the lake where classified as a wildlife sanctuary. Since then the reserve land has increased in size to make up a grand total of 300 square miles and it was dubbed a “tiger reserve” in 1978.  The sanctuary is supposedly a prime example of how humans playing with nature don’t always ruin it, but can sometimes better the ecosystem. In this instance the lake, which formed has proved vital to the animals in the neighboring area.  However, there are also growing concerns about the impact of tourism on the preserve. Approximately 34 square miles out of the entire preserve area have been opened to the public with limited access.  There have been allegations that staff members of the preserve have illegally fished in the protected area. When the area is so frequented by tourists do the environmental benefits of having this preserve still outweigh the negative impact of human visitors?  

        Our group went to check out the reserve for ourselves and personally experienced the mad rush of a ritual that precedes a morning boat tour on the Periyar Lake. We were informed that we would need to race from the park entrance to the docks where we would try to secure boating tickets. I run cross-country for St. Lawrence so I was looking forward to a chance to race the masses.  Apparently the morning boat tour was so popular that securing a ticket ended up being a test of survival of the fittest. It turned out that I was in one of the two diesel-fueled rickshaws that were faster and therefore were selected to be the racecars.             Mine was readjusted, after many deliberations to include Anil (our translator/scholar), Professor Jayman, Paige, and me.  After a period of waiting, the drivers turned on their cars, buses, and rickshaw engines, and the race began.  Our rickshaw took over a bus right off the bat and then continued to cut off other vehicles.  The driver warned us that he would use the speed bumps to go faster instead of to slow down. I got smashed into the side of the rickshaw several times.  No one was obeying the rules of the road, especially the signs, which encouraged visitors not to honk for the sake of the tigers. It was every man for himself and it seemed like we were about to crash a number of times as we cut off other vehicles. As a smaller blonde female, I was at a disadvantage immediately. Finally we completed the 15 km racecourse and the 200 m sprint began.

            The vehicles were stopped in every which way all over the parking lot, avoiding the outlined spots all together and blocking out previously parked vehicles. There was, a little ways up, a fork in the road. The boys who were in the other lead rickshaw had turned left, but a rickshaw driver called out to me a warning that the correct direction was actually down the road on the right side. So I screamed out to the boys, without having time to verify that they had actually heard me, while continuing on to the left.  As we rounded the top of the hill and jetted past what looked to be a main office building, I saw a bunch of people, who had been ahead of Paige and me, slow down. We were able to overtake them and came upon a set of steep stairs leading down to a ticket booth. 

            On the right hand side was a metal structure resembling a squeeze chute for cattle. The fencing was claustrophobic; it was just tall enough to make it next to impossible for anyone to climb out and it would be difficult for wider set people to turn around backwards or even sideways. I had to make a split second decision to either descend the stairs on the left of the structure to see what lay beyond or to take my chances and enter the cattle gates. The cattle gates appeared to be more promising and we were soon proved correct. They served as a means of organizing people and ensuring order in the otherwise chaos of a situation. Paige and I snagged what appeared to be the 7^th and 10^th positions in line.  We were informed that only 250 people- in 50 person groups could make the first boat which runs from 7:30am-9: 30am each day.  Tickets ended up being 150 rupees apiece and each person was allotted two tickets.  We arranged the party of names, for our group, in alphabetical order and decided who would be responsible for which names. Luckily, it turned out that we had enough people in the top part of the line to secure positions for all of the other people in our 16-person group.

             Afterward, I walked toward the water and was accosted by a flock of about 30 local people wanting to take pictures with me because of my skin and hair colors. Our entire group, especially the women, has been targeted for photo shoots. We are treated like celebrities and the local people thank us graciously after we pose for pictures with them. It seemed like we were almost a bigger attraction than the actual animals living in the animal reserve. After this hoopla, we paid a small fee for carrying cameras and boarded the boat. 

            We had assigned seats and I was frustrated to be in an inner seat since I was one of the first people in line to buy tickets, but there appeared to be a system and an order to the seating. Another student was right behind me and we tried to trade seats with our neighbors so that we could sit together.  We awkwardly mimed and spoke slowly, explaining that we were friends and wanted to sit next to each other.  This charade went on unsuccessfully for quite sometime. Finally, getting frustrated with the language barrier, the other student grabbed my hand and said that we were together, miming intimacy.  At this point, the guy holding the coveted seat said something along the lines of “ I understand English. I just don’t want to give up my seat”. So, in the end, the joke was on us. 

            Ironically, right after this conversation ended, another group of people with debatably the best seats on the entire ship asked to trade with us.  The reasoning was that one of their group members was handicapped and couldn’t make it up the steep stairs to the upper deck, so this revelation was bittersweet. Two teenaged boys snagged the seats that were supposed to be for two more people from our group and refused to acknowledge that we were saving the seats. However, they ended up being a valuable source of information later on in the trip so it was all for the best. 

            We secured our massive orange life vests and buckled down for the ride, which was beautiful, but anticlimactic after our intense experience to get to the boat. We got to tour around the harbor and to see a pack of elephants as well as a variety of birds.  At the very end I ended up talking to one of the boys named Jaisper.  He grew up in Kerala, but has been to Mumbai and was shocked at how bad the garbage was when he visited there.  He said that, in Kerala, citizens must use trashcans because the police uphold a law for this, which includes a hefty fine. He said that the high literacy rate in Kerala helps it to be a cleaner/ more environmentally friendly place.  I asked if littering came about more due to a lack of education or because people quite simply didn’t care and he affirmed the latter.  Ironically, just as he was explaining that Kerala is so much better than Mumbai we passed some trash on the banks of water, that we were boating in, which is part of the wildlife preserve.

       Overall, our venture was highly successful; we traveled by rickshaw, foot, and boat to see wild elephants, cormorants, snakefish, and kingfishers. However, this came at a cost. The boat’s noise scares animals away and the presence of tourists causes added trash concerns.  Additionally there was an accident two years ago when the people on board got excited by animals and all moved to one side of the boat to get their pictures. The boat tipped and over forty people drowned.  The humans present were an issue for this reason and in a sense almost acted as the wildlife themselves, in their overzealous rush to see the true animals. Likewise I acted as an animal, as a source of entertainment for them.

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Check out the preserve here: http://www.periyartigerreserve.org/

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periyar_National_Park and

Eyewitness Travel Book: India London: Dorling Kindersley, 2008.

The Story of Santhwanam

Santhwanam is a home for homeless and abused women and children located just outside of Kottayam, Kerala. The women and children seek refuge from the perils of life on the streets or from abusive households. The orphanage/women’s center is run out of a beautiful two story white house, surrounded by jackfruit, mango and coconut trees. It is almost hard to believe that this building is an orphanage.

When asked, the head of Santhwanam told us that the house was a gift from God. Annie Babu is a Christian woman whose faith led her to open the center. The stories she told us about the woman and children were heartbreaking, but the story of how the shelter came to be was inspiring.

The story begins when Annie opened her home to a young girl that she found crying on a train. The girl had been abandoned; she was the youngest of three kids and was left on the train by her mother and siblings. Annie and her husband loved the girl like their own child; they even signed their names as parents of the girl so that she could go to school.

This first experience led the couple to expand their efforts to take in more children and even women whose husbands were abusive or had left them. Annie explained that as they began to expand they grew too large for their space. The government was going to be forced to shut them down if they could not find a suitable home.

Annie turned to the Bible for help. Opening to a random page she came across Psalms: 121:

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber . Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep . The LORD is thy keeper : the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

To Annie this was a sign from God; she encouraged all the kids to pray for God’s help. Annie believes that God answered their prayers with a story that ran in the local newspaper about the center as well as advertisements and a new website that helped Santhwanam to raise the money to buy a new home. In a matter of two days, over 50,000 Rupees were raised and Annie stumbled across a large and affordable house. It was the perfect size with the exact number of rooms and bathrooms required to keep Santhwanam running.

Today the house is home to over 50 residents, some as young as two months and others as old as 75 years. Santhwanam provides a temporary home, counseling for alcoholic husbands, legal help for the woman, even employment opportunities to get the women back on their feet. The kids there were so playful and full of energy, thier initial shyness was overcome when they saw the lollipops and began getting superman rides. One particularly mischievous girl would have everyone take pictures of her. She had a beautiful smile, but as soon as the picture was about to be taken she would make the most gruesome face she could muster. The home is run completely on donations. Annie refuses to take government funding. To receive government funding the mothers would have to be separated from their children. Annie explained that to do that would be against the mission of the organization. For more information about Santhwanam or to make a donation you can visit their website at: www.santhwanamkottayam.com

KERALA – what have I learned from her?

Kerala is a lesson to all of us, should be the lesson! First to Keralites who escape Kerala and come back with a foreign capital to build tourists resorts, and all of those who cannot stand relative equality; to Kerala’s plantation owners who have cash-crops and only cash-crops on their plantations, who do not feed their local community, who use the relics of casts and feudal and/or colonial system to exploit their workers just as some owners of resorts. The lesson to Keralites who would like to see religious tensions, because they think that their Hindu, Muslim, Christian, or Another rite is the proper one; to those who disagree with gender equality – Kerala is a ‘homework’; to some who want to have there the second Babri Mosque (demolished by Hindu in the 1992, after 700 years of its history), yet I hope that Kerala will win over radicalism and discrimination.

Secondly, Kerala is the lesson to the Indian government in New Delhi – as explains Dr. Usha Ramanathan, an independent law researcher and activist, in her talks, which I had chance to attend in India; as well as Arundhati Roy describes in her book Field notes on Democracy – India is being rotten by nationalism, religious intolerance, women discrimination, thoughtless privatization of the public goods and commons, structural adjustment programs that in many ways decrease social development, ‘wild’ capitalism, or even “state terrorism” – all of these not well-represented in Kerala can be healed by applications of Kerala Model to the Indian ‘Model’. Yet politicians and the new generation of people who became enriched on neoliberal ideology do not want to see Kerala in their ‘backyard’. It is easier to them to not see working policies of empowerment of the workers and the poorest; they do not know that change brought by current modes of development affects only small number of people immensely, and gives the leftovers to the rest.

Lastly, Kerala should be the lesson to all of us. It teaches, as Bhutan (that refused to measure the Gross Domestic Product - instead measures Gross National Happiness), that real achievements can come not always from the economical growth. The civil society, awareness, and ability to take own fate into own hands are what we need the most – those after all are the symptoms of alive democracy. If we believe that by giving our future and our lives in someone else’s hands either if those are hands of insurance companies, politicians, or economists… we are mistaken. After studying in the United States where so much is private and so little is public – I learned that the biggest freedom is in public education and in public health care, just as it is in Kerala, or in some European countries. We are told by neoliberal capitalism and social adjustment programs that those are ‘unnecessary’ spending in the national budget, that they ‘limit’ our choices and freedom – Kerala shows that freedom means that health care and schooling are public goods, not the privileges. That the biggest freedom is not living in a beautiful villa with a swimming pool, and a limousine in a garage – but in living with ability to comprehend lack of freedom that those give to us. Lukasz W. Niparko

The Tea Plantation

After exploring the rubber plantation and learning about the harvesting, production, and selling of rubber, we drove several hours into the tall, palm filled mountains of Eastern Kerala.  Our bus luckily made it through the windy roads that hung over the edge of cliffs, and the mountains began to turn into big hills.  The landscape was beginning to look more like farmland again and the bushes that covered the hills were lined up in perfect rows.  This was the beginning of the tea harvesting area of Southern India.  We pulled into the plantation and ate our lunch before sitting out to tour and learn about tea production.

We were taken into a small room where we were given a presentation about the harvesting of tea leaves and how they are processed into the tea we drink.  At this factory they use a process called “CTC” (crushing, tearing, curling).  Here they only produce powdered tea (the most popular kind in India).  The top three leaves of the plant are picked and once the leaves get to a certain age they no longer can make tea out of them.  The tea trees are kept at a certain height that makes it easier to cut the leaves, so they all appear to be bushes.  A lot of labor is needed to harvest the tea and it is primarily women who do this.  Many of the women who work at the plantation are from other states of India.  This is because there are shortages of labor in some areas in Kerala because of the high education level.  Because of this many people feel over qualified for these kinds of jobs.  The women use a tool similar to a dustpan with a blade attached to it to cut the leaves off.  I never would have guessed that that was the way tea was cut.

After learning about the process, we went on a tour of the factory.  The leaves travel through a series of machines and are separated into grades based on size, the smallest being the strongest tea.  We were guided to the side of the factory where we were given a tasting of a mixed grade tea.  We drank it the Indian way, with a lot of milk and sugar.  It was burning hot and almost melted the little plastic cups it was served in.  The tea was strong and sweet, slightly mirroring the smell coming out of the factory.  We were given a tin of tea as a gift and were soon on our way to our hotel, driving back through the tea and spice fields. 

So far in Kerala we have had many opportunities to drink a lot of tea, and we are beginning to see a lot of varieties in it.  It was nice to learn how much work is put into the process and learn more about tea in general. 

Rubber Estate Tour

This past Wednesday the Wizard maneuvered our group’s bus, the Castlerock, into the Chittady estate rubber plantation in Mundakayam in Kottayam district of the state of Kerala. All seventeen of us departed and were immediately led on a tour of the plantation by the kind faced, bowl-bellied manager, Jagdish. He walked us down a gravel drive past sunny fields of pineapples and let us take a few with us. The pineapples crops are grown by other farmers who lease the land from the rubber estate owners. The estate owner explained that they often use cover crops in between the rubber trees so as to absorb nitrogen and enrich the soil. The acidic level of the soil is a critical factor controlled in the rubber industry, as the trees require a level of between 5 and 5.5 pH in order to thrive. Rubber trees grow quickly, I learned as I peered up the trunk of a twenty five foot tree that was only three years old. The estate has thousands of such trees, all ranging between one and thirty two years old. It is a prosperous sector in Kerala’s economy and produces everything from car tires to condoms, band-aids and tar.
The co-owner walked us into the shade of a latex tree forest, telling us as he stopped besides a trunk that each tree is tapped for twenty five years and each cut mark sealed with adhesive, patching up old wounds, marks one year’s use. After the trees have passed their prime latex giving age, they are used in the plywood industry. The whole operation sounds a lot more sustainable than I’d expected. No stories of human laborer exploitation, overuse of land, or overharvesting of trees here. Men and women are hired in equal numbers and while wages are lower than those of most agricultural workers, they are much higher than in many other parts of the world and in differing Indian states. I was pleased to hear that women make the same wages as men do.
Thomas, the thinner, spectacled estate owner told us that people are starting to appear from other parts of the sub continent in search of tapping jobs in Kerala. Tappers are done with their work by 11:00 or 12:00 in the afternoon and can then go work other agricultural jobs. Laborers are additionally aided by the state as small holders, who make up 95% of all involved in the sector, are initially subsidized. Each tapper’s job includes using machetes to cut slits in the tree trunks of the four hundred latex trees in their plot, collecting the white slippery liquid in pails, and later the thin stretchy extra drippings which are bundled and sold to tire manufacturers. Their wages are determined every three years by a tripartite group including the state, the worker’s union, and the owners. Each tapper has to sell a minimum of eight kilos of latex and currently priced at two hundred and twenty rupees for each kilo, that puts workers in a fair place.
Prices didn’t always used to be as high as they are now. Just five years ago one kilo collected only thirty five to forty rupees. The new price can closely be connected to the spiking global prices of oil. Additionally rubber prices are raising in accordance with global demand increases. China is the largest consumer of natural rubber and as the Chinese economy grows and produces much of the world’s goods, churns more cars out and puts more tires on tar roads, latex is increasingly involved. Thomas sees no need to worry about global competition undercutting Kerala’s rubber industry. Kerala produces 95% of rubber in India, 755,000 tonnes whereas India as a whole produces 825,000 tonnes. Thomas’ company is thriving, drawing 7,000 kilos per day; the cheaper producers of Indonesia are of no threat to Kerala’s rubber estates. This was my favorite component of our trip this far, as I felt like we were in the field communicating with local agriculturalist and getting an in-depth look at one of India’s leading industries.

Pallikoodam

Pallikoodam, the academic brainchild of Mary Roy, mother of famous writer Arundhati Roy, is a progressive, interdisciplinary, and highly educational elementary-high school. Nestled on a little hill in the town of Kotayyam in the backwaters of Kerala, Pallikoodam blends dedicated students and equally committed teachers, providing each student an education in Malayalam, English, and Hindi. On top of engaging in what one student called a “difficult course load,” with “the toughest marks in India,” the students spend half of their day practicing yoga, drama, and swimming, coupled with other untraditional school-time activities. As one might expect from activist Mary Roy, the students are taught the ever too untaught gift of community action, with significant emphasis on environmental and social activism.  Mary Roy's long, rich history of women's activism, peaked with her 1986 supreme court victory, is deserving of tremendous recognition, and in many ways, Pallikoodam bolsters her legacy of activism.

Upon our arrival, the students impressed us with a play about dowry marriages and the suppression of women. The play dealt with intellectual discourse far beyond the standard of most 10th and 12th graders. According to the students, some time ago they created an even more moving play about an Endosulfane plant in Kottayam. They performed the play outside the plant in protest of pollution and worker rights, which brought observers to tears and ultimately led to the closure of the plant.
The students at this school received what seemed to be some of the best, most diverse education in the world. Two teachers in every class, beautiful, carefully architected buildings, and a swimming pool were just a few of the benefits. But high quality education with luxuries doesn’t come without a cost; the students of Pallikoodam are of the elite social and economic tear of Kerala. In fact, only 1-2 scholarships are offered per class, and administrators stated that this was for the ‘students to interact with all types of people.’ Though activism was embodied in the curriculum, it was not carried into distributive justice through scholarship.  Mary Roy explained that she attempted to bring in students from a nearby orphanage, but that even their Malayalam was not satisfactory enough to keep up with the standards of Pallikoodam, which sheds light on a complicated slew issues of India's education and income gaps, even in Kerala.

According to Anil Verghase, the scholar, as well as June, a school administrator, there are basically two types of public school and three tiers of private as well as charter . The two types of public are state funded schools taught in English, and state funded schools taught in Malayalam, the latter being much more common. The private system, largely taught exclusively in English, has tiers divided by cost and quality. Pallikoodam is on the top of this hierarchy, as one of the most expensive and high profile schools in Kerala.

Overall, the school offers a high quality, alternative-style education. Yet, in order to truly embody the social justice mission of the school, changes must be made in the type of students who have access to such education. It is clear that certain financial obstacles stand in the way of empowering the poor through high-quality, attention to detail schools such as Pallikoodam. But if Mary Roy is to bolster social justice, mere teaching isn’t enough. Social justice is the tool of the poor for the benefit of the poor. Without educating the poor, the mission of social justice will never be achieved.

Luke Kaplan