Two on Trail

Disclaimer:

My first way forward as an independent thinker commenced when I stepped into my Masters, since that was when I realized that I am a failed mainstream chemist, after appearing for 19 competitive exams. I was rather enthusiastic about the applications of chemistry in the environment. In the pursuit of my academic endeavor, I have come across multiple opportunities to pen down my thoughts in the form of writeups for class assignments, while I was doing my Masters. But not all of them gained points as high as the other well written research papers in the class. Sometimes it was because of the profound carelessness with which I might have written them. Other times, it would be because of the failed structuring of the piece as compared to a formal research article. The second type of articles was the most frequent kind that I have never given up on. Those were the pieces that somehow spoke for themselves and had a literary angle to them, as far as I could judge.  The piece below failed to prove its worth as a well written research paper as well.

 Much as a sequel to Wordsworth’s Daffodils, composed between 1804 and 1807, which was a vivid landmark of English Literature portraying the aesthetic essence of England in his time, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 echoed the aftermath of the historical use DDT, inspired from the intense use of herbicides and pesticides in the World War II in the heart of America. Wordworth’s daffodils had been infected by the germ of destruction. Nature at its core had suffered a setback. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring had successfully portrayed the paradoxical ability of the Americans ‘to devastate the natural world and at the same time to mourn its passing.’ (Egan, 1974) Environmentalism, the word, gained its prominence in the genre of policy framing and governance to gain the limelight and came to be considered as a movement thereafter. The principle behind the working of the world economy has always remained cyclic, energy and materials as input and waste as output. The sheer concept of environmentalism includes the idea of drifting from ‘economic benefit’ to ‘dematerialization’ of the economy.

In the winter of 1925-26, Aldus Huxley, an English writer performed a six months long trip to Asia. (Guha,1997) The tour made him see the actual face of the world, the nature at its true form at the tropics. He realized, poets like Wordsworth, who were considered the abode of romance for nature, had limited their knowledge of nature within the temperate zones of Europe, specifically England. (Guha, 1997) Huxley was one author who extended the realms of English literature beyond the temperate zone to the tropics. In his essay, “Wordsworth in the Tropics”, Huxley had envisaged that a stay of few months in the jungles of the tropics had convinced him about the diversity and curiosity of nature and had made him realize that, nature’s beauty and its worship is possible only when one dwells beneath a temperate and calm sky. “It is not the sense of solitude that distresses the wanderer in equatorial jungles. it is too much company; it is the uneasy feeling that he is an alien in the midst of an innumerable throng of hostile beings.” (Huxley,1923) The ferocity and wilderness of the tropics has a different essence of beauty coupled with terrifying hostility encapsulated in its sheer existence.

However, a different interpretation for the love of nature is revealed from the works of another British intellectual-aristocrat, G.M Trevelyan: “The beauty of field and wood and hedge, the immemorial customs of rural life – the village green and its games, the harvest-home, the tithe feast, the May Day rites, the field sports – had supplied a humane background and an age-long tradition to temper poverty.”(Trevelyan, 1944) According to him, love for nature is never merely an offspring of ecological benign, but is born within a secular economic and social backdrop. Love for nature is a genre, that grew and adapted itself in the era of Industrial Revolution. (Guha, 1997)

Since the World War II, from 1945 to 1970s, the Industrial Revolution had generated a cyclic mechanism for the working of the world economy, involving the inflow of energy and materials with an outcome of waste. The economy had adapted itself, after the period of crisis of the War, to satisfy the material needs and expectations of the huge population, resulting in the creation of a mass ‘consumer-society’. However, the late 1970s saw the rise of changing ideologies. Greening of the environment started to be considered as the ultimate requirement for a prosperous and luxurious consumer society. The ‘post-materialism’ theory gained an imperialistic hold on the society of the North since late 1970s. With this, the clean picture of the development and popularity of the concept of Environmentalism in the North came to the forefront. Interestingly, there was no echo of the need and charisma of the ‘post-materialism’ theory in the less-developed world of the tropics, like Africa and Asia. For the peasants of Africa and Asia, only fertilizers and pesticides to grow better crops could save and make life prosperous. They neither had the required knowledge for awareness, nor the money to invest in the environment. Development for them, was limited to the extent of personal economic welfare and growth, to combat poverty and unemployment, rather than coping the needs of the common, for a healthy and luxurious environment.

However, history has been benevolent enough to reveal extravagant examples of environmental conflicts nationally and internationally to portray the varying reactions of the people dwelling in the tropics to the ‘post-materialism’ theory for the conservation of nature and its resources. The most relatable incident that comes across my head in this context is the The Nandigram and Singur unrest.

The Nandigram dispute was a socio-political conflict between the state and the common people, in West Bengal during the communist regime. The state had taken a brutal decision of dispossessing the farmers of a huge portion of their land, around 25,000 acres, for setting up a SEZ(Special Economic Zone), to an Indonesian multinational group.(Report II, 2012) There was unspeakable hostility among the farmers and the state, and the situations took to violence all because the farmers rose against the dislocation (given the history of the plight of refugees during Partition of Bengal) and industrialization. After the historical Nandigram struggle, Lalgarh saw a similar scenario rise, once again. ‘The place called Lalgarh is situated near Jhargram on the northwestern side of the West Medinipur district of West Bengal. It is not very far from Salboni area located in the same district. Around 5000 acres of land have been acquired for the Salboni project, of which 4,500 acres have been handed over by the government and 500 acres have been purchased directly by Jindal from the landowners. According to newspaper reports, a large portion of this land was vested with the government for distribution among landless tribal people as part of the much-publicised land reform programme and also included forests tracts. Moreover, although the land was originally acquired for a “usual” steel plant, in September 2007, Jindal got SEZ status for the project, with active backing from the state government, which, as always, dispensed with the requirements for following most regulations for building and running the plant, including such crucial requirements as doing an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). A government that has in reality sold itself out to big capital—both domestic and foreign—is not at all bothered about the setting up of an SEZ having a polluting steel plant in the middle of a forested area, brutally displacing tribals from their land and endangering their means of survival. It is, thus, quite understandable that there could be major grievances among the tribals against this.’ (Bhattacharya, 2009)

REASONS BEHIND THE CONFLICTS:

(1) ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY (Neo-Malthusian Theory)

For agriculture-based countries, new varieties of seeds, new technologies for irrigation are all parts of Green Revolution (GR). Das (2002) has mentioned Michael Lipton’s view of how GR has helped the poor farmers of such agriculture-based countries and how without modern varieties (MV) of seeds, the poor would be poorer, because such seeds actually make use of the nutrients in the soil. According to Lipton, he mentions that the laborers are a poorer class than the small farmers due to their problems of wage, employment and price. However, Lipton’s view of MV and consequently GR as pro-poor comes in conflict with Das’ views when Lipton comments that any disfunctionality of the promise of GR is due to the population problems of the poor countries where the Malthusian Theory is functional. Das, however has come up with an innovative approach to this argument with his ‘neo-Malthusian’ concept.

The neo-Malthusian concept, considers the social aspects in consideration with the technological inputs. ‘The so-called oversupply of labour is largely a class issue: it is class relations between owners and employers that set limit within which population and technology work’. (Das, 2002)

(2) ROLE OF MIDDLE-CLASS

India’s Middle class is a sector of the society which draws its variation in terms of caste, religion and language rather than just occupation, education and income, unlike many other such middle class sectors of the society around the world. (Mawdsley,2003) According to Mawdsley’s analysis, the element of unity that had been shaken in the colonial era because of the intended stratification in the society actually improved the social relations in India and encouraged the upper middle class to play the role of leaders in the national struggle, thereby encapsulating the idea of unity. Immediately after the achievement of Independence, the upper middle class moved out rapidly to secure their own narrow interests (Gadgil and Guha, 1995), thereby putting the lives of the poor at stake. The definition of a ‘higher quality of life’ became associated with status and substitution of local commodities with branded and imported products (Mawdsley,2003).

Drawing from the example of the motive behind eco-tourism in forest reserves and PAS in India, the elite class or the nature-lovers perceive the behavior and conduct of the visitors comprising of India’s ‘ordinary’ middle class, as ‘frivolous picnickers’ who were blissfully indifferent to the aim of ‘policy formulation and academic analyses of wildlife conservation’ through eco-tourism (Mawdsley, et.al, 2009). All kinds of rule breaking clauses and indifference towards nature, are issues that have risen from the wealthy middle class. As power and privilege gained importance in the lifestyle of the higher castes of the society in the post-colonial era, there was dramatic change in the political and economic scenario that aggravated the indifference towards the environment of this rich middle class. (Gadgil and Guha,1995)

However, there does exist a very minor group of middle-class individuals who have active roles and participations in various movements around the world and are a part of various institutions and organizations that are fully run under environmental concerns (Mawdsley,2003). Hence, individuals from a given middle class sector of the society, whose indifference towards such issues of environmental concern actually stimulated the other minor group of individuals of the same class to think differently and engage themselves in a matter of public interest unlike their fellow-mates, maybe with a prime personal motive to stand out of the rest in the class, while for the others, they had genuine concern and interest for the welfare of the environment in relation to the need for healthy urban space, ‘which to a large extent would credibly drive the self-interest explanation’. The last and most important reason has been anticipated as the ‘post-materialism’ theory proposed by Inglehart, whose precursor had been mentioned by G.M Trevelyan, as has been already discussed before. Here we see a major connection between the idea of Ostrom’s major stratifications of human nature.

Ostrom’s Analysis of human nature:

As Ostrom had rightly pointed out, in the context of Common Pool Resources, that in the society there are three basic kinds of behavioral patterns, the narrow, self interested free-riders, the group which is unwilling to contribute anything towards the environment until being assured that they would not be exploited by the Free-riders, and the genuine group who actually have concern for the environment and work for the environment for the general interest of the group. (Ostrom,1999) She, being an economist, her analysis was in contrast of the conclusion of Garrett Hardin, a biologist of 20 years before her time, who predicted that human could be selfish, norm-free or maximisers of short-term results. (Hardin, 1968) However, in the context of the Middle Class, Mawdsley’s analysis was more in accordance with Hardin’s proposal of behavioral pattern. The effect of their civic indifference towards the environment or the environmental concern shown by a minority group, both had adverse effects towards the poor.

There has been arguments on the effect of these reactions and behavioral patterns on the society as a whole. When the Middle Class showed indifference to the environmental concerns, and focused on the need for power and position for status in the society, the poor were deprived of the natural resources. Again, when this Middle Class, India’s wealthier groups started taking hold on the environmental activism, their authoritarian influence in the environmental justice sector had negative consequences on the poor. (Ibid, page93) This has been well portrayed in the backdrop of the removal of slum areas, Jhuggis, in the heart of Delhi, the capital city of India. ‘The recent slum removals have been driven by the combining forces of commercial capital seeking profits through the `development’ of encroached public land and an emerging bourgeois middle class that desires a `clean and green’ Delhi and that tends to regard the encroachments as`disfiguring the landscape’’ (Veron, 2006).

Drawing from the examples of Singur-Nandigram conflict where the people were deprived of their land for industrialization, and the removal of slums of Delhi in pursuit of a clean and green Delhi, it can be discussions it is evident that, the influence of the middle class, which comprises the maximum percentage of the population, in a developing country, like India, whose population structure plays a deciding role in the global societal norms, on the environmental impacts is huge. The poor of the society is facing issues of inequitable distribution of resources and drifting towards the cities in search of employment, thereby becoming ‘ecological refugees’.(Guha, 1997) Such issues give rise to conflicts between the poor and the rich on issues of resource rights. The ‘Chipko Movement’ was one example in the history of India’s Environmentalism of the poor, which was a clear depiction of the rivalry on the resource rights of the poor.(Haq and Paul, 2012)

In a diverse global society, the variation in the roots of inspiration to rise against the depletion of natural resources differ due to the economic stratifications of the global society. Accordingly, there arose two forms of movement for the environment, one of the poor and the other of the rich, at the local as well as the global level. The origin of these forms of environmentalism lay back in the post colonial era, when the actual stratification of the society took birth. As a postscript of the reasons behind the rise of conflicts of the poor, the evolution of the two major kinds of Environmentalism becomes critical.

The discussion of the evolution of the Environmentalism of Poor, rising from the post World War II era, failure of the Post-Materialism theory, rise of environmental conflicts and the reasons underlying them, all end in the need for proper governance of the environmentalism of the poor, to provide environmental justice. The rules and regulations implemented would always be with the aim of just distribution of property rights. Some plausible questions that may arise is, who should make the laws? Or, how should the laws be made? The answer can be very variable depending on the existing situation of the region in context, including the resource capacity and occupation pattern; the history of origin of those situations and the pattern of environmental psychology or attitude in the region.

“You have not written in a while you know”, he smiled at me.

I looked away from his face and thought, indeed, I have not. I guess it is partly because of all the mess I have been in lately. In these last couple of months, I have moved from Texas to Maryland. A change of cities, home, school, friends and grocery stores. Indeed, when in grad school I believe these are the most essential 5 components that comprise your humdrum day-to-day life. I had barely known the word as a simple collection of four letters of the English alphabet before, until this one month revealed to me partially what it actually means. A simple act of moving from one place to another is not simple after all.

The decision of moving closer to each other after spending a lifetime apart, was taken on a sultry summer night of late May this year, by two fidgety souls who had grown tired with all the distance and the consequent complications. After an episode of agitated arguments, complaints, revelations and confessions, we realized, we had both become capable of all that life had planned to throw at us. Just one change was needed perhaps; instead of fighting the odds individually with 1500 miles between us, we decided to combat them together. I sent out a couple of emails and like an absurd story of quintessential coincidence, things materialized within a month and I got admitted to the same university as his as a transfer graduate student. Things have not been the same since then. I still feel new to the city. Home is the only place I find peace. With this I realize, if I go on writing about my emotions in the new city, which I am very much leaned on to doing, this post will be nothing better than a page from the diary I write. I have no intention of making blog posts about all that is going through my head lately, which might probably fill up volumes in the form of a book or script to a movie someday. However, I do have one particular idea I distinctly remember to have thought about a couple of times even after the incident.

The International Education Services (IES) which is the body dedicated to support the international students at the university by facilitating all the academic initiatives had organized an event for the incoming new students.  The event was about participating in the Swing Dance Trip to the Mobtown Ballroom which was somewhere in the downtown area of the city. I could see how excited he was when I told Aniruddha, sitting on the sofa, that I wanted to go with him. He was looking at all the youtube tutorials for dancing correctly. He even proposed to try it out with me once before going because that way it would be easier to follow the instructions on the dance floor that evening. He is a man who believes in practice! But, impulsive as I was, I was more interested in choosing what to wear and how to look. Perfecting the steps was not on my platter for then. He wore his dark green trousers and white collared shirt with blue freckles all over and black formal shoes, while I put on a black flared short skirt with a peach blouse and accessorized it with long trailed earrings and heeled pumps. I was too happy about wearing those shoes and equally worried whether they would be comfortable to dance in.

“You can dance barefoot if they hurt too much,” he suggested.

It was late in the evening when we reached the ballroom. The cab missed the location at first and drove us round the next block and back to finally drop us at the right spot. We crossed the road and checked into the hall. I stepped in and looked across the hall. Everybody stood in a huge circle with their partners. A few stood away from the circle, a little disheartened, I believe, by the fact that they did not find any partner. In the middle stood the two instructors, a girl in her mid-twenties and a guy about the same age. We found a spot in the circle and then the instructors started. They introduced themselves as Jared and Leena and showed us the preliminary steps. In swing dancing the man is usually the leader and the girl follows him and so is the follower. However, the pattern is subject to change with the course of the dance. Aniruddha got all ready, held my hand and tried executing the leader’s steps. I tried following him. This went on a couple of times and then Jared exclaimed, “Change”. This was the call for changing partners. The idea was to let everyone dance with everyone else in the room. At this some of the sad souls at the corner of the room who stood deprived of partners, gained some courage and stepped forward to join. We however, did not want to change yet.

The next few steps crawled in and I soon realized that Aniruddha was a perfectionist. He would redo a step every time we missed one and start from the beginning. He was of the idea that we do not really need to follow the instructions exactly but we need to do the steps, whatever we do, with clarity. So, he would do a virtual tour of 1,2,3 where he would revise the steps and then carry them out in one go. I was trying to follow him through this until I reached a point where I wanted to go wrong and still keep dancing. So, I told him, “You know what, let’s change for once. Maybe we will get a better hang of the steps that way”. He agreed and we changed our partners the next time.

He got paired with a rather middle-aged woman with black and white floral printed dress, while I was greeted by a bearded man by the name Anthony. He greeted me with a flashy smile from the back of his beard and said, “You can call me Tony.”I nodded lightly and swung into the dance immediately. Now, this man seemed pretty trained himself. He held my hand in a perfect position and did the steps in the right rhythm. My body seemed to have been set into a motion so well synced with his, it was as if his moves controlled me. He finished the dance by swinging me into the perfect roundabout move until he held my back to stop me from swirling at the right spot. He then smiled at me once again and said, “Thank you. It was a pleasure.” I looked at him and with the next instruction of Change, went on to the next man in the circle.

This one was an Indian guy, Prithwish. He was rather short and had put on one of his sharpest smelling perfumes. He introduced himself and said, “I am so confused right now with all the steps.” I smiled at him and placed my hand on his shoulder to dance. Jared and Leena performed a step where the follower’s hand went past the head of the leader and rested on the other side of his shoulder until the leader took her waist and pulled her back to the starting position. The step looked interesting to me and I glanced at Aniruddha across Tony. He looked back at me and smiled pleasantly. I could say he wanted to dance with me. But somehow it was too late to switch right now. So, I went along with Prithwish, and as my hand brushed against his head, I realized his hair was all sweaty with the dancing. I instantly understood the role of the sharp smelling perfume on him.

With the next switch I landed with a man who barely wanted to hold my hand. I introduced myself and I think he said his name was Sebastian. I turned to dance and I saw Aniruddha standing without a partner, looking at me. I quickly switched across the circle and landed back with him. As Aniruddha took my hand, it was something I felt that made me write this post today. It was not excitement. It was not a breeze through my hair. It was rather the opposite of it all. It felt home. Familiar. He still counted his steps into the dance and I tried following him. At the end, Jared instructed to dance the whole piece in a go and evidently none of us in the hall had picked up all of the steps accurately or even if we did we did not remember them all to execute in the right order. Everybody went everywhere and so did Aniruddha and I.

I wanted to rest for a while after this. As we moved towards the seating area, I saw a mother dancing with her kid. They danced playfully and once in a while the kid would bump his head into her belly and still keep dancing. And then they stopped for a while. The mother seated the child on one of the chairs and went on to dance with a man. The kid kept staring at her for some time, and then spread a deck of cards on the table in front of him and started playing. I believe he spotted me staring at him and looked at me with a jolt. I saw he had blue eyes and black hair. He held me in a constant stare and as I smiled at him, he pursed his pink lips into a shy smile and looked beamingly at Aniruddha. And then after few seconds he dropped back to his cards.

Soon the mother came back and kissed the child on his forehead and smiled at me.

“He is adorable. What’s his name? ” I asked.

“He is a sweetheart. He is Javier.” She said.

I looked back at Aniruddha.

“You have not written in a while you know”, he smiled at me.

I looked away from his face and thought, indeed, I have not. We sat there looking at people dance. The room had an energy, a positive vibe about it and it was all because of the faces that went swinging from one end of the room to another. As for me, I was tired after dancing and was resting beside the man I could dance barefoot with.

It was the month of April. Spring was drawing to a close. She was taking away my motivation to continue until the end of the semester with her. Just when a smokescreen was building up, an opportunity to clear it presented itself to me.

Ajinkya invited me to a potluck at his place – the guests of honour were Christina and Andreas. Yes, if any of you are thinking about the title of the post right now, you are in the right direction. They were our Greek guests.

Plans for making my favourite sweet dish to take to the party got spoiled. All because I didn’t plan it well. As Katherine Paterson said, “a dream without a plan is just a wish.” I had nothing, so I ended up taking a pack of sweets bought from the store. I felt terrible.

I walked to Ajinkya’s place and I was the last person to reach there. I saw him making Amrakhand and I realised food was ready as well. Everybody asked me what did I bring and all I could say sheepishly is I came to help you all. I could see eyes rolling but I had no courage to respond.

Ajinkya introduced me to his guests and as usual, it took me some time to explain how to pronounce my name. We talked briefly and then we gathered for dinner. There was Paneer curry and two different preparations of Chicken on the menu. Along with them, we had Jeera Rice and Rotis. Since I have been here in this country, the appreciation of food which was already there in my mind has somehow elevated itself. I loved the food, enjoyed it and I hope Christina and Andreas did too.

After dinner, our adda started taking shape. Everyone was curious about our new friends. So, all sat listening to them with rapt attention. We listened to Andreas’ medical school days, how he decided not to continue and dropout and about his love for trucks nowadays. He told us things about the human body which only people who have access to cut open bodies could know – things which don’t seem obvious from an external view reveal themselves on closer inspection. Isn’t this true for a lot of other things in life as well? Christina shared her stories about studying math, and how she shares her education by teaching other kids.

We looked at both of their native places in Greece on Google Maps – Thanks Google! We listened to the story about how one of their family members was a sheepherder and ended up losing all his sheep due to carelessness. Christina told me about her favourite Greek TV show. We learned how Greek letters are pronounced incorrectly by English speaking people and the correct way to pronounce them. One thing led to another and after a while, we were making requests to Christina to write our names in Greek on a piece of paper. It was really fascinating for me, learning about the intricacies of a different language. Who will forget those pictures of Santorini you grow up seeing. Andreas shared with us the story of his first attempt at deer hunting. The whole process of claiming a vantage point, patiently waiting and when the time comes, being adept at finishing.

We talked late through the night. It was well past midnight when they decided it was time to take leave. We bid our goodbyes. Christina invited us to a barbeque at her parents’ place later next month.

I walked back in the darkness – to home – the unopened packet of sweets dangling from my fingers.