The different world of India

I have written a lot about my thoughts on health, but not too much about living in India. I want to remedy that by discussing what I have learned about rural village life in India.

I believe this is an important topic to give you some descriptive and picture-filled insight into because understanding the reality of people’s lives here is incredibly crucial to successful health and development work. Some people, notably many in Liberation Theology, state that you must live like the poor in solidarity with them so as to understand their lives and to work amongst them. While that is an extreme call that not everyone can answer, I believe that it is indeed important to have at least some experience of the lives of the people with whom you work. The Aroles here spent 6 months on 45 rupees (7 dollars) a month back in the ‘70s to understand the context of their work. They found that a bar of soap crucial for proper hygiene cost 2 days wages and one flush of their toilet spent a month’s money in water. Quite a wake up call, certainly.

To begin, I think it’s important to understand the role of the industrial revolution in changing our lives. Through the replacement of inanimate sources of power (water, coal, oil, nuclear) for animate (horses, oxen, human) as well as the systematic search for more efficient machinery to replace human labor we completely altered our economy and lives. In our world of high standards of living, labor is worth far more than capital and substance such that when you buy a coffee the cost is more for the labor than the substance. Here in India, when you buy something you are paying mostly for the substance, not for the act of creating it and getting it to market. A cup of chai costs 5 cents. That is the cost of the tea. The person making it makes a few fractions of a cent on that, but if you add it up and sell several dozen or hundred cups then you maybe make a dollar – a good income for the day.

The effect of this is that people can’t really afford to buy manufactured goods as easily as we can, but instead can only buy hand-made goods. The opposite is true for us. Just think of the relative cost of organic vs. processed foods. Here, fresh, organic produce is several times cheaper than anything processed so that everything people buy is home-made and home-grown. You go to the market everyday to buy the food you need, and the farmer comes in to sell his own crops rather than to a supermarket where most everything is processed.

Let me show you what such a life looks like. It’s on the same earth but seems a world away.

Farming:

As I said, everything is done by hand or with animate sources of power (oxen, horses). The plowing is done with oxen and the seeding, weeding, and harvesting by hand (pictured). Once this is complete, then they dry and process the sorghum, onions, veggies, and other products themselves before hauling it to market.

Many families have cows, goats, and chickens that live with them and whose milk, eggs, and meat they consume (pictured).

Market:

The market here is a real place where sellers and sellers come together and exchange goods. It’s not an abstract world of supply and demand curves. It’s incredible to see fruit, cattle, and fish markets in full swing.

After harvesting, the foods are brought to the market using bullock carts or trucks. There is of course, change so that now people use fossil fuels but there are still a good number of very poor people who rely upon bullocks to move around.

Once they arrive in market you have to sit there all day and sell your goods, unless of course you sell it to a middle man. Most of the time there are individual sellers selling one product – like tomatoes or eggplant – and nothing else. There are literally hundreds of people selling individual items instead of supermarkets where there are probably 30 full time employees selling to hundreds. The need to employ many people is so key that India bars international department stores like Wal-Mart or JC Penny’s from coming in and unemploying so many smaller businesses.

One interesting bit is that most everything sells. Much of that produce will never see refrigeration so it has to be sold relatively quickly before it goes bad. The effect is that by the end of the day sellers are willing to cut a deal to make a profit, but unfortunately that means you get lower quality food. The best stuff always goes first.

Finally, we arrive at the huge cattle market. Jamkhed is a market town, meaning that for centuries surrounding villages have come here to sell costly goods like 500 dollar (over a year’s wages) cattle. The venue is huge – probably covering 10 acres – and the number of cattle must be in the thousands. The sale requires a middle man. Both parties sit down with the man and under a small handkerchief negotiate prices with him telling them how much they want and what their limits are. The man then finds a good middle point and both walk away happy.

Some smaller but still notable differences lie in the production of sugarcane juice. To have a bull move in a circle and push the gears that operate two wooden cylinders that crush the sugarcane into juice all day long is cheaper than having a diesel-driven version (5 vs. 7 rupees). It also tastes much better as one is made of wood and the other of greased metal. Every time I come into town I take a minute to watch this because I think it’s incredible!

One more is the production of meat. If you want to have meat for dinner, you send someone into town to the butcher to buy it. There is no freezer or packaged meat; everything is purchased fresh and used immediately. It’s incredible. I am convinced one of the reasons why food is so good here, outside of the spices, is its freshness!

Cooking:

Finally, we come to cooking. Once again, everything is done by hand. Imagine that you have all the fresh ingredients, unprocessed, and no running water. The first step is to collect water from the well or river, which in CRHP villages is nearby due to the installation of many tube wells, but in much of the developing world is far away. Ridiculous, mindblowing fact: the AVERAGE distance a woman (it’s gendered) walks in the developing world to get water is THREE POINT SEVEN MILES! That’s on average, meaning half do more. What a waste of time! Where do you get water for bathing and cleaning your house?

Anyways, you get that water to boil over a small fire. You have to process all the food by hand: sorghum seeds into flour, then dough, and finally bhakar (tortillas); onions and garlic peeled, cut, and mixed with ginger and cilantro, then crushed by mortar and pestle into a chutney; and then chicken defeathered, emptied, and then cut into pieces. Then you add it all into a mix in boiling water and voila! now you have a chicken curry meal.

It’s time consuming work. It helps me to understand how much running water and kitchen and household appliances freed up women’s labor and caused so much social change!

In the end, being here has shown me what America was like not too long ago and how our civilization has completely altered how we live through industrialization and machinery. It’s also incredible to know how many hundreds of millions live a totally different life on this earth – growing, buying, and consuming almost all hand-made biomaterial goods. It’s been quite a unique opportunity to spend so much time in the villages, including one unforgettable overnight.

I hope this pictoral and descriptive tour gave you a better sense of life here in rural India.