Propane!

I have recently discovered that one needs to be an Indian Citizen to obtain a cylinder of propane gas for domestic use.

That is absurd. The only way for me to treat water in my house is to boil it. So I either have to lean heavily on the surrounding ecosystem to collect firewood, or use the only other fuel available; propane. The ecosystem is suffering enough from other human activities and firewood is very scarce. The only sensible thing to do is to act as those near national parks are legislated to do; don’t use firewood, but use a different fuel. No kerosene is available nor is any other fuel besides propane.

I understand there are lots of things that only Indian Citizens have the right to do. Many of these are sensible measures the purpose of which is to prevent re-colonization. I applaud these measures. For example, foreigners are not allowed to purchase land in Uttarkhand.

However, telling me that I cannot purchase propane and so must spend hours more every day heating drinking water and cooking food is a humiliation. Not only is it tremendously rude to treat guests of your country in this way, it is completely undignified that I should be forced to degrade the ecosystem in an unnecessary fashion just to drink clean water.

I hereby publicly declare that I have engaged in an act of civil disobedience; I have obtained on the black market a 14 kg tank of propane for the sum of Rs 2800. I am using it to cook rice, chappati, oatmeal and to boil water for drinking.

Deserts at my feet and clouds in my head

Hello all!

My time in Almora helped to solidify my interest in human made deserts. Looking at the history of the human race and our current situation it is obviously a major, if not the single biggest, source of real impoverishment. People destroy their land, and then what do they have? Nothing. No water, no food, no good air. Pakistan, Iraq, Greece, Cyprus, Crete, Sicily, Tunisia, Lebanon, Isreal. All great examples of beautiful lands destroyed by improper use. The same thing is currently happening in many parts of the world.

But there are areas and practices that have stood the test of time. Perhaps the big question for me is what these practices are and how to spread them, how to bring life back to the deserts.

I guess I’m studying this in the context of global warming and oil crisis also. I spent some time in activism, lobbying the government etc. But I suppose I got tired of asking other people to do things. It seem to me that we may have missed the boat on trying to prevent global warming, although not for lack of effort from groups like Greenpeace and Sierra Youth Coalition. International negotiation after negotiation has basically failed. So, in preparation for all the weird things that are predicted from a warming earth part of me has decided that studying ecological systems is the most useful thing I can do right now.

I wonder if central India will be evacuated as it warms. The temperatures in Delhi this summer reached 47 degrees C. Without abundant power how will people stay cool enough to even stay alive? Plants generally shut down at 42 degrees C and at some point begin to sustain heat damage. If this area of the earth experiences a rise of 4 degrees, will life as it is there now even be able to exist?

I’m beginning to question whether I’m really learning a whole lot about solutions in India.

I came to India with the hope of seeing a Satygraha campaign in action. To join one, work on one, and take those methods elsewhere. But from what I’ve seen, in India Gandhi is mostly history. His campaign methods are now a page in history books and are no longer alive and fully in use.

Where are the Satygrahi’s fighting corruption in India? Where are the campaigners standing with the Adivasis? Why did the Maoists even find it necessary to come to India, why do the Adivasis not use nonviolent methods? They don’t believe in them, of course. When organized crime was shooting up Chhatarpur, why did everyone in our ashram stay inside? Even with in “activist circles” I have seen nothing of what I was hoping to see. I have found a tragic absence of action based on the self sacrificing, well organized, disciplined model of Satygraha.

If you want to start a village industry, you have to pay bribe after bribe. Half the time the government offices aren’t even functioning at a basic level. Open at ten, take a two hour lunch and close early. Half the food in the public food distribution goes missing. Stolen by the very people who are supposed to be distributing it. That which remains doesn’t fit into the system properly because the is no recognition that half of it was stolen; how can as shopkeeper sell at the government regulated price when he has only half the food he paid for? Corruption in India is rife and for all the time I spent at Gandhi Ashram, Navdanya supposedly inspired by Gandhian ideals, Kausani Gandhi Ashram and other places I never heard of an effective non-violent compaign organized against it.

It’s not that I mean to really criticize what people are doing here in terms of activism. I just don’t see the reaching for the top, the struggling with the biggest issues around. I don’t see the big stuff being tackled. The things that Satygraha is meant to tackle. The issues that are so big you can hardly see them, the dangerous areas, the really deep-rooted, wide spread social problems. How can I criticize the organizations I’ve visited for their good work? Yet at the same time I’m just not finding a living version of the revolutionary philosophy I came to experience. The quiet work continues, like producing khadi, but it gets crushed under the larger issues that aren’t being addressed. Where’s the campaign, man?

Maybe Cesar Chavez is a better hope. Perhaps I should go to the US and try to become involved in the United Food Worker’s struggle.

Anyways, I’ve left Almora and spent a lovely two days at Kausani Ashram. I read Discourses on the Gita, which Gandhi wrote in 1929 at that same ashram. Then I went to Navdanya for a week to teach some children about testing irrigation water for salinity content. I had a good time hanging out with other foreigners, made some soap and distilled some essential oils. It was nice to look at the whole place again almost two months later. But it’s too expensive and dysfunctional for me to stay there very long.

I am now by myself in a little cabin near Chamba. I’m at an organic orchard overlooking the town, at 1000 m elevation. So far it has been very lovely although I had to set some things up with the cabin. The cabin is not quite fully functional. It’s mostly there but there are some issues. The water tank is filthy and leaks, I re-jigged the plumbing on the kitchen sink, jumped through hoops to get some propane to cook with and boil water with, bought a knife for the kitchen and so on.

I am at cloud level which is really beautiful when the clouds roll in. I have a great view of the town and lots of organic apples to eat. I pay for my own food. It’s nice and cool.

My job for the next three weeks is basically to think about how to bring the orchard back to production level. Right now it has been abandoned for a while. I don’t know much about orchards but the guy who owns the place knows even less it seems :-). So I’ll take a look, and hopefully get some help from the local university. It’s a great chance to learn about orchards on my own. Being an independent consultant is an idea I’ve been playing with, but I didn’t expect to end up in the situation so soon, albeit without pay!

I also plan to read The Pickwick Papers by Dickens and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad :-).

Here’s a view downhill of my cabin. 

SOS Continued!

Hello all!



First let me start with a shoutout to my friend Peter! I hope everything is going really well for you buddy! Here he is rolling seedballs at SOS Organics. He's gone from India now, touring through Europe visiting apricot orchards, drinking belgium beer and so on and so forth :-).


Peter is rolling seedballs by hand. Although it is common to include compost in the mix here we are just rolling some clay with larger soil particles (micacious rock in this case) mixed in, kneaded together with the seeds we want and rolled by hand into balls. This gives the seed protection against insects and animals while providing a habitat for it to germinate in. Just throw the seedball on the ground and it will wait until the rains come. We are just starting experiments really. How much compost to put in? What seeds to use? How to roll them? Some of them crack upon drying. The beans swell and can crack the balls. Our hand rolling method is slow. We're working on it.


Here's a baby goat playing by the spring where we collect our drinking water! So cute! But it's partly because of these guys that this area is on it's way to becoming a desert. There are many factors of course, including historical clearcutting, humans cutting down the existing trees, extensive forest fires and cows that eat anything small. The lack of vegetation eventually makes the rains stop coming. The seedball project is meant to battle this problem by sowing seeds on a wide scale. What will grow beneath these acidic pines, ravaged by fire, humans and grazing animals? This is our challenge.


Here's our goal! A bean and some grass growing out of a seedball. The seedballs obviously work but how to bring our knowledge to the level of being able to produce a lot, with the correct seeds in them and the right coating composition?


We decided that one of our first steps is to raise our ability to produce. Rolling by hand is just too slow for the areas we're looking at sowing. This is a photo of the metal worker and a fellow WWOOFer Jack building a seedball rolling machine. It's a very simple machine, just a rolling drum. With a bit of practice you could probably build one in an afternoon with a visit to the hardware store in Canada or the US. But in India it is a challenge to find the right parts and put it together. Or rather I should say it's a challenge for us in our situation with the language barrier and lack of local knowledge.



We're still working on it, carrying out our designs. It has been quite a balance between deliberate design and winging it with whatever equipment is available. I hope that in the next few days we will be able to get it working. Right now it spins too fast because we haven't been able to find pulleys to reduce the speed of the rolling drum. But we have a lead on some in a store in Almora... wish us luck :-).

Namaste,
James

So here I am at SOS Organics, in Almora. Elevation 1600m. It was a bit of an adventure to get here. I braved the 13 hour sit down bus along with my travelling buddies Remi and Peter, both from Guelph! The distance is only a few hundred kilometers but the speed that the bus goes is quite slow. We were lucky: for most of the trip we had lots of room to put our bags and stretch out. There are no bathrooms on the bus, they just stop periodically.
During one stop we pulled up to a curtain of towels and I found Winnie the Pooh staring back at me :-).

We arrived at Almora at around 5 or 6 in the morning. Remi took his own direction while Peter and I went on to SOS Organics, taking a taxi to Chitai. From there we asked around for SOS Organics and were pointed down the hill. It was a magical little walk down, through the terraced fields in the cool morning. Peter and I were both happy to be in such an interesting area, and one that seemed like it wouldn’t be so hot as Dehra Dun!


Here’s Peter, arriving at 6am to SOS Organics. At the time we didn’t know this but the house behind Peter is owned by Santosh. At the moment it is where Peter is living.

We were given a warm welcome by Santosh, the owner of the property and Sophie, a WWOOFer from England. Santosh is a very talkative guy, full of energy and he did his level best to give us an idea of the philosophy behind the farm and what is going on here. Some other places I’ve been could really take a cue from Santosh. His proper introduction to the farm made us feel at home fairly quickly. Moreover, for the first few days he paid close attention to what we were interested in and we quickly settled on some interesting and useful projects for each of us to work on. This is something that was severely missing at Navdanya; coordination of volunteers. Peter has mostly been building a greywater system to handle the waste from the sinks around the property. I’ve mostly been working as a chemist in the soap making factory. Fortunately we have have lots of other things to do to break up our day too, planting the garden, turning the compost, making a tree nursery, planting natural fencing (spikey plants that the goats don’t eat).

We’ve also done a fair bit of thinking about and making seed balls; seeds encased in clay. The idea is that once encased in clay the seeds are protected from being eaten by animals or attacked by fungi. Also, the seed appears to be buried so it is not necessary to form a furrow and plant the seeds in the normal fashion. Instead, the pellets can be distributed freely onto the ground. This lends itself to no-till agriculture as well as potentially the ability to re-vegetate large areas of land through large scale seed broadcasting. Santosh is applying for a $20 000 grant to start up a longer term project to work with seed balls. Seedballs themselves cost next to nothing but the money would be useful to set up a library and little research center that visitors could use while the work on the project. At the moment we’re hopping on and off the factory computer, with many people sharing a slow connection and able to use it only outside the hours of 9-5 (only when the factory is closed). So it’s hard to do any substantial research on the net and although there is an interesting book shelf there aren’t many books relevant to the specific projects we’re doing.

SOS Organics is a very interesting project. To have a factory here in a rural area in the mountains is very strange. Most factories are of course in large cities where all the facilities are provided. Here, the factory runs entirely off of rainwater. It has a backup generator and battery bank for when the power goes out, which it frequently does sometimes for days at a time. They arrange the work schedule to fit around power outages. Using gas stoves, written records and scales with batteries helps I’m sure. All the materials are transported down this little concrete path, barely big enough for one small car. And of course when finished all the products are carried up again! So in some ways the factory is situated in rather a difficult and contorted situation. But this is exactly what India could use right now; decentralized production, outside of the cities and in the rural areas. Having low input, low polluting, fairly low capital and necessary basic industries like soapmaking in rural areas is totally key. The people who work in this factory live in the nearby village, and have only a short walk to work in the morning. Having employment in the country helps fight the mass migration to the cities and curbs the whole disgusting trend of people leaving the country because they are miserable only to go to the cities and swell the slums. E.F. Schumacher would have thoroughly approved of this project I think.

When I stop to think about my life here it is quite strange indeed. Half the day I spend being an industrial chemist in a soap making factory. The other half I spend building a permanent agriculture project based on the ideas of natural farming and sylviculture. It’s good though, I basically am getting to do what I want with my life; to learn about natural farming and do some good work.

The past few days I’ve spent making a seed ball rolling machine. My experience making fireworks makes the whole process fairly familiar. It’s a great big rolling drum, the clay, seeds and compost mix is put inside and sprayed with water which rolls the mix into balls, just like making round stars for fireworks. These seedballs can then be distributed over land and provide the seed with protection and some nutrients. Seedballs lend themselves well to planting seeds on large tracts of land that is becoming desertified, and also in agriculture to plant without tilling or using any of the fancy no-till machinery.

Right now I’m thinking about staying here until June 20, then returning to Navdanya for a week before heading off to a different farm for a month. Once August rolls around I’ll start heading South again to visit friends in Nashik, Udaipur, one other place and then get to Sevagram to stay for a while there.

Until next time,
Good Night and Good Luck.

P.S. Here’s a photo of George the smiling seedball :-)

Just for Kicks at Navdanya Conservation Farm

Hello all!

I’ve spent the last month or so at Navdanya Conservation Farm / Bija Vidapeeth (Seed University). Navdanya is a non-profit trust with the goal of maintaining seed sovereignty for Indian farmers. They are involved in a lot of legal stuff around intellectual property rights, trying to prevent companies from patenting already existing plants and genetics that have been developed by Indian farmers over generations. The phenomenon is known as “biopiracy” when a company marches in, starts patenting existing genetic technology then uses the laws of the State to prevent people from growing their traditional plants.

Navdanya also has a network of seed banks set up throughout the country where they collect local seed varieties and have an active process of distributing them to farmers to re-grow them. The whole project is very much participatory, unlike many seed bank projects where their attitude is to take the seed and refrigerate it for many years, keeping it safe but unused. Actively re-growing the varieties each year is also very good because it allows the variety to adapt to the changing environs. A seed that has been kept safe for 20 years in careful storage may not grow well once it is planted because there may be new pests or climactic conditions that come as a shock to it.

The facility I stayed at was called Bija Vidapeeth or Seed University. Started in conjunction with Schumacher College (for those of you who have read Small is Beautiful, yes it’s the same Schumacher.) Compared to other places I’ve been the physical facilities were great. There’s a lecture hall, dining room, kitchen, office, library, residence buildings, the seed bank and a laboratory. It was a nice relief to be in a sort of small college campus, after the odd situations I’ve been in this was like a piece of something I’m used to :-).

This is the first thing you see when you walk in through the gate, after approaching the campus through the mango orchard. It’s the office/bookstore with the dining room and kitchen behind. If you want to see an overhead view, check out google earth, N31deg 55' 36'', E 76deg 05' 33.5'.

There are volunteers coming and going often; while I was there in ranged from about 4 people to 18 or so. The campus also hosts events of various sorts. Mostly these are targeted at middle-upper class people and the point is to teach them about the value of traditional knowledge systems. There is staff on campus who look after most things and volunteers or interns pay around 400 to 600 rupees per day to stay, depending on their length of stay and if they are OK with staying in the dorm rooms or want a private room. I stayed for over a month so it was 400 Rs per day (about $10 CAD). A lot of people who come are university students from different countries. There are lots of people who live in India and want to learn about organic farming, and also people from abroad. The only requirement really is to pay the fee and have a serious interest in organic farming.
Unlike most places I’ve stayed, since we are paying a substantial amount to stay here (400 Rs is a mid-range hotel rate) there is no substantial expectations to join in the farm work. But most people do to some extent, while others spend their time on other things.
While I was there the main work that came up was harvesting the wheat. Navdanya preserves a number of wheat varieties, does some experiments, as well as growing food for people who stay here and to sell. I was used to harvesting things by hand from my experience at Gandhi Ashram otherwise it would have been rather a shock to someone from an industrialized country! The wheat is cut using a small serrated hand sickle. I joined in usually in the morning while it was still reasonably cool for an hour or two. Some quick calculations show a person can harvest about 17 kg of wheat per hour which as far as subsistence is concerned is plenty. That’s not including the threshing, which is done by machine and takes relatively little time. Cutting wheat is a dusty job and they way they do it the job involves bending over a lot but once I got used to it I had a good time. It’s kind of like chopping wood; not really drugery, at least not if it’s only for a little bit each day.

Here is a photo of some of the staff harvesting wheat. The farm laborers for the most part are paid 3000Rs per month (about $75) and are given free food and housing if they want as well as an informal (but apparently generous judging from the operations Navdanya paid for for its cook Satya) medical plan but I understand no pension. This isn’t a high wage, even by Indian standards and in fact there is a bit of discontent about it.

Here’s a volunteer Aditya in the seed bank. There are roughly 500 varieties of rice kept here, and re-grown each year on the farm. Fortunately rice is self-pollinated for the most part so this large number of varieties can be grown in a fairly small space. Plants that pollinate each other can cross-pollinate between varieties so each variety must have a buffer zone around it in order to keep the breed.

I spent most of my time at the laboratory learning about soil science and soil testing. It was nice to spend some time on science after wading around in the Pranyam, expanded claims about Yoga and other slightly sketchy stuff. By the end of my time at Navdanya I was able to conduct tests on soil for potassium, phosphorous, organic carbon, pH and electrical conductivity. I also did testing on irrigation water to check for salinity hazard, determining the calcium and magnesium content as well as sodium. The lab was basically my hangout :-).
Sometimes working in the soil lab was frustrating, maybe partly because I am used to the nice labs at Chernoff Hall at Queen’s. Other things were just plain neglect though. The lab obviously hadn’t been used in a while and some of the pipetting equipment was very difficult to use; the latex bulbs crack over time, many of the pipette tips broken. A latex pipette bulb is hard enough to use compared to a normal syringe arrangement or an Eppendorf. Electricity would often be off, or even worse turn off in the middle of my using a machine while I was calibrating it or something. For this reason we weren’t really able to use the oven. We had to insist on some gloves and goggles before starting serious work, which took a long time. To me it’s blindingly obvious that a lab stocked with concentrated sulfuric, perchloric, nitric, hydrochloric acid, sodium hydroxide, blood poisons and carcinogens needs to have gloves and goggles too. In the end we got lab coats, googles, (very slippery thick latex) gloves and a fire extinguisher but no new equipment other than this safety gear.
In other ways the lab was well stocked, having most of the chemicals I wanted, a colorimeter, spectrophotometer, automatic stirring machine, water distiller, electrical conductivity machine (with a broken keyboard...) and pH meter. Their scale was shitty and caused a lot of extra work and hence frustration.
In the end I decided to be cheerful about taking twice as long and having half as good results as I could do with a decently stocked lab. What does it matter to me anyways? I was just doing soil testing for kicks :-). Actually the work I was doing is going to be used in a master’s degree project, I was basically the soil technician for some french students. The irrigation water testing is going to be used in a summer camp to teach kids about farming stuff. But the master’s project was kind of a makework thing that was half abandoned because the student’s hadn’t had anyone to help them for the first two months of their three month project and had since changed their focus. And the summer camp thing isn’t really a big deal either. No academic rigor or especially accurate results required :-).
On May 8 my new friends Peter, Remi and I took the 12 hour overnight bus to Almora. Remi went off to visit some other friends, while Peter and I went over to SOS Organics. More about this later!

Wait, just one more photo for cuteness factor, :-)


Namaste,
James

West Bengal, the land of sweets and large rice containers!

Hello all!

It has been a while since I posted... but I’m ok with that :-).

I’m in sugar cane territory now: outside Delhi on my way to Navdanya near Dehra Dun.


Gandhi Ashram, people saying goodbye after a meeting.




Gandhi Ashram, me carrying peas on my head :-).

Goodbye Gandhi Ashram! No longer shall I carry your fine peas on my head, or mustard in my arms. I will miss your fire cooked chappati and crooked daikon radishes. Your fragrant guava and yummy berries. Your interesting books, cool mornings and pleasant company.


The boy who is getting the Sacred Thread bestowed on him.

I left the ashram with the caretakers, Sanjoy and Damyanti. They took me as their friend to visit Sanjoy’s family in the Calcutta region. First we spent a few days in the Durgarpur area in a town called Bankura. There was a celebration going on to bestow the sacred thread on one of Sanjoy’s nephews. Sanjoy was the person who they requested to do the honors and hang the thread. I don’t know the full significance of the ceremony but it is a coming of age type of thing. The person who accepts the thread is dedicated to worshipping the sun every day as it rises and sets, for the rest of their life.
Here is the man himself, with the sacred thread around his left shoulder. He also has a carrying bag around his shoulder. Part of the ceremony is that people put rice into the bag, to prepare him for his journey of life. Damyanti is to our right.

The entire family was very nice to me. In return I showered them with slides shows from Gandhi Ashram and other places :-). Many of Sanjoy’s relatives are also involved in constructive efforts, weaving khadi, working with an NGO or being involved in a social campaign.


Women making thread ("spinning"), which will later be used to produce khadi cloth.

During the few days we were by not so busy with ceremonial things. It was very relaxed, and Sanjoy took me to many places to visit. We visited a trade show selling co-operatively made textiles, and a Gandhian NGO which makes textiles. We also visited an ashram growing date palms and rice. It was a lovely little place, where they take care of the pigeons by giving them nests :-). It was my first time seeing a mud house and the most remarkable rice storage containers, which are built entirely out of rice straw.

Rice container, made out of rice straw.

This rice container can hold approximately ten tons of rice. The walls are made from a rope twisted out of rice straw, and lined with more straw. Behind are mud houses with clay roofs. The mud houses are unusually cool buildings, and can last for a very long time (a hundred years or more) if properly taken care of. The walls must be re-coated every year to prevent the building from “melting”. They are constructed layer by layer, pouring a foot or so of mud/straw mix and letting it dry before adding the next.


Basudhra rice farm!

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The Sal forest

On a different day we went to see what I was really looking forward to. We took a beautiful drive through the cool, clean air morning, stopping at the mahua tree to eat some flowers, admiring the Flame of the Forest trees and passing through a brilliant green Sal forest. Then the three of us (Sanjoy, his brother and myself) piled off the motorcycle at a farm run by Dr. Debal Deb. It is a seed preservation project primarily, although they are also running some very sensible and simple other agricultural experiments concerning mulching and companion planting. Their focus is on preserving over 540 “folk varieties” of rice from West Bengal. Imagine that, 540 varieties of rice in only one section of NE India! The good doctor has done a meticulous and thorough job of characterizing and documenting the varieties. He has published a book about it. The farmhouse is made of adobe which is sun dried mud bricks. The straw roof has a water catchment system. It’s a lovely, clean and comfortable building. The pillars on the outside have slate carvings in them made by a nearby artist’s enclave which we visited on the way home.

Eventually we moved out of the town of Bankura into the village where Sanjoy grew up in; to his mother’s house. This was a really interesting experience to stay at what is basically a normal village house. There was the “house” or sleeping building, then there were sort of outbuildings; the kitchen, cow shed, and washroom. The outbuildings were made of mud or cement. The sleeping building was one floor, with easy access to the flat roof. The entire place was surrounded by a very high brick wall, maybe 4 meters high. Inside on the floor in the corner was piled loose rice, and rice in bags. This rice still had the husk still on it, although when people eat rice they eat mostly white rice. I thought the stoves were fascinating. They are dug into the ground,



Imagine this being your stove! This is not an improvised stove; the house I was at was not a camp. This was the kitchen stove, used every day for years. So simple, so elegant. Such efficiency with so little input. Ah, simpler life!

I departed Calcutta and made my way to Delhi to visit Amanda, one of my friends from Queen’s! The bus ride was a disaster, with as I like to say “breathing room only” for part of it: so packed you couldn’t even stand properly. People getting sick and vomiting their breakfast rice onto the floor (instead of out the window. Why? I suggested it. They didn’t like the idea).

Then I made it to the good old dirty ass train. It was labelled “express” but in fact was more of a local train, stopping at every station from Calcutta to Delhi. With a distance of about 1300 km you can imagine this is a whole lot of stops. In total the journey took about 36 hours on the train, which is about 5 hours overtime. Partly this is because people pull the emergency brake when the train is near their house! The Indian trains are often late but I have to say it’s not necessarily the company’s fault. I heard stories about people sitting on the track to stop the train then hop on it! In the story I was told this was happening every few km. The driver got upset and stopped the train, refusing to move until he got a village organizer to tell people not to do that! In general passengers are kind of badly behaved in many ways. Many people get on the train without tickets as the ticket collector is overwhelmed. Or perhaps the company oversells tickets, I don’t know. There is no doubt that the system is overwhelmed: with some trains you must book months in advance to get a seat.

Eventually I rolled into Delhi and met a chemical engineer who helped me to get an auto (three wheeled taxi) to United Service International where Amanda was staying. It’s a weird place, inside a military compound. Very quiet, nice gardens, very rich. In the diplomatic section of town, among all the embassies and such. Lovely except for the whole killing people bit. They have conference services we used: the meeting itself had nothing to do with supporting the military I promise!

The next day I attended the meeting that Amanda came to Delhi for. It was an annual get together and update for a project entitled Municipal Services Project. It is a roughly 12 year, one million dollar academic research project, involving a team from parts of Africa, South America, Asia and Canada. It is run by a professor at Queen’s. The goal of the project is to do rigorous research into alternatives to privatization of heathcare, water and electricity services. Ultimately in “alternatives” is included the traditional public system but there is a lot of analysis as to why it isn’t working, what can make it work better etc. It was great to learn about such a project and listen to what people had to say. They meet every year in some major city, which could be anywhere in the world it seems.

After the meeting was over I stayed at USI for a bit, and a few of us toured around Delhi for the day. We did tourist stuff. We went to the Red Fort, to an enormous mosque that wouldn’t let us in, and to Dilli Haut which is a kind of outside shopping center. It’s obvious to me now why shopping centers are catching on. Unless we can clean up normal markets so they don’t have garbage strewn everywhere, terrible sanitation, disorganization, sexual harassment and aggressive touts shopping centers will continue to grab market share by simply providing a peaceful place to look for goods.


From the left, Amanda, Susan (Prof. from U of Ottawa), and Julie (Prof. from Rhodes, South Africa). They are standing inside the Red Fort at one of the many gates. Susan went on to travel around Rajasthan for a while before returning to Canada.

After Amanda went home I lingered around USI for a bit before moving in with my friend Rajat for two days. I just took it easy at his house, playing with his kids and reading interesting articles he showed me. One of them was quite fascinating, about the Naxalites in Chhatisgarh. It shed some light on why the tracks were blown up on my way to Durgarpur. On the way to Calcutta area (Durgarpur station) our train was 10 hours late because a group of Maoists blew up the train tracks. Actually they didn’t blow up our tracks per se just ones nearby. Maybe we had to wait for other trains to be rerouted along our tracks or something, I don’t know. Sanjoy saw the damage out the window on our way by, but I missed it. Nobody was hurt. After reading the article written by Arundhati Roy for Outlook Magazine, March 29, 2010, it was not surprising that they had no apparent intention to hurt average citizens. The Maoists at least in Chhatisgarh are there to lend (violent) support to the public in their fight against exploitation from the state and corporate parties. Usually the exploitation involves mining and forestry. The state and certain corporations want to exploit the land and eject the people living there by raping, plundering and burning the villages (literally). The communist (in this case Maoist) party has established itself as allies of the people. The state is weak enough that they are able to wage a substantial geurilla war against them. If you can find the article I highly recommend reading it. Who knew there was a civil war going on in India? Now you know.

After spending some nice time in Delhi I came to Dehra Dun, arriving today at Navdanya, which is Vandana Shiva’s operation. There is seed saving and some great activism going on here. Arriving today I can say the facilities are excellent. The library is very nice, the gardens are beautiful, the experimental plots are well kept, they have a soil testing laboratory and a fantastic lecture hall. It’s quiet here now because apparently a lot of people are in Delhi running some sort of event. Its a bit of an oasis so far :-). I have high hopes for my time at Navdanya! It’s a bit expensive here compared to other places, 400 Rs per day but that includes everything. Compared to living in Canada it is quite reasonable and I think I will be getting a lot :-).

Good Night and Good Luck!

Updates from Gandhi Ashram

Hey all,

I’m still in Chhatarpur M.P., at the Gandhi Ashram. Life is decent here, threshing mustard and peas etc. for a few hours a day, eating and learning about Ghandi the rest of the time. Actually I’m fasting today because I find we indulge in good tasting food a bit much for my liking. I’m meeting lots of interesting people and having some good success finding what I’m looking for here. I’ll share with you some inspiring examples of success from non-violence.


On the right is a fellow who spent about 24 years in jail he was a violent criminal who robbed people (on the left is Anousha, another WWOOFer here at the ashram). His whole life he had been in and out of jail for violent crimes. While in jail he came across Gandhi’s book and philosophy. He was converted to a life of non-violence and now sells copies of Gandhi’s books for a living. I tried to ask what he thought would have happened to him if he had never gone to jail, but gotten away with his crimes but the language barrier was too much. It’s an interesting question to me, would he have stayed violent if it had not been for the violence of the state putting him in jail? Was being in jail and having that time an integral part in his philosophy conversion?

I have read about the Ahmedabad Labour Union, which was mentioned in Hind Swaraj. Gandhi uses it as an example of a labour union that has had gone from success to success using nonviolent means. I’d really like to know more about them.

The ashram that I’m at has a fascinating story behind it. The premise was originally owned by a king in the area, who in fact built the well in the 1400s (shown in the photo).


At some point it was forfeit to the British and used as a residence for a tax collector. The building we live in now was the home for the tax collector. It’s made of cement so must be relatively new. When India became independent the government gave it to the organization which was dedicated to carrying out Gandhi’s work after his assasination, Gandhi Smarak Nidhi.

What follows is what I suppose I should consider a failing of non-violent methods because somehow the ashram was lost. I’m not sure how, but Gandhi Smarak Nidhi seems to have had persistent financial problems. The ashram property, although still legally belonging to Gandhi Smarak Nidhi fell into the hands of the local mafia. For many years they used it as a gambling and drinking location although there are many parts of the ashram that were left untouched. Some people tried to reclaim the ashram for organic farming but were beaten by the mafia and apparently gave up.
Three years ago Gandhi Smarak Nidhi decided to reclaim the property and re-establish a real ashram. They recruited Sanjoy and his wife Damyanti, who at the time were living in Sevagram Ashram which Gandhi founded himself before his death. They reclaimed the property after substantial battle with the mafia during which the mafia used violent and coercion while Sanjoy and his team used non-violent methods. I would consider it a good victory except I don’t know whether the mafia still holds a grudge.

I met a man here who was some sort of official when India became independent and he was involved with the movement with Gandhi for independence. He is one of the few people still alive who worked with Gandhi. He told me about his involvement with the ‘decoirs’ who were essentially a band of violent bandits. They used to largely rule the are in Chhatarpur, making it practically impossible to live a normal industrious life in the area. He, along with others, brought a non-violent campaign against them and convinced them to surrender. In fact they laid down their arms right here in front of the ashram, at the library.
The nonviolent fighters received co-operation from both the police and the bandits, acting as effective go-between with a message that neither of them previously understood. They assured the bandits that if they laid down their arms they would be treated with respect by the police upon their surrender. Conversely of course they negotiated this treatment from the police. One of the nonviolent fighters offered to sacrifice his son if the police failed in treating them decently. This seems a bit weird to offer your son but understand that to such a fighter it is a higher stake than even his own life. Presumably the son was in agreement with the situation (???). The leader of the bandits would not have surrendered without this assurance as he had previously been abused by the police.
This sounds like an amazing campaign and I hope to learn more about it.

I was given a book called “Experiments in Moral Sovereignty; an American In Exile.” It’s about a man who after having much success with many entrepreneurial endeavors in the US decides that he simply cannot live with himself while paying taxes to the US government so that the government can kill people with his money. He sells all his businesses purposefully at a loss. This loss he is carrying over for the rest of his life. He is therefore no longer required to pay taxes but for some reason he has decided that he will also no longer file tax returns. In the US the IRS will harass you if you do not file your taxes, so he has moved to India to escape their harassment.

While I’m at it I might as well introduce you to one other fellow who won in a non-violent struggle. He is one of the few freedom fighters still alive, one of the people who spent many years in jail in protest of India’s enslavement by the British. He is wearing yellow as spiritual people often do, to indicate their inclination. Freedom fighters like him now receive a special pension from the government.


Despite these lovely examples, Chhatarpur still suffers from a lot of violence. This is why Sanjoy decided to set up camp here. The first thing successful farmers do if they have a good crop is to buy a gun. Guns are very much a social status symbol here. Two days ago we went out to buy some khadi from a nearby store and Sanjoy stopped to talk to the head of the leading local political party. He casually took out his pistol and was waving it about, who knows why. Last night there was a shooting at the market about 500 meters from the ashram and one person was killed. The past three days have each had a shooting in this city which really isn’t very large. The hits have all been performed by a motorcycle team targeting businessmen in the city. Sanjoy told me that last night the police station was overrun and the police fled. They have returned and established a kind of martial law ‘code 144’. All businesses are closed and people have been asked to stay in their homes.

At the moment my plan is to stay here until the 22nd at which point I’ll take the train with Sanjoy, Damyanti and their daughter Sri-Ja to Kolkata. There is a rice farm near there that I hope to see, growing about 540 different varieties of rice!

I read this today, and it seems so applicable to the concept of the tourist versus the traveller. Go out of the house to see the moon and you are like a tourist. Let it shine on your necessary journey and you become a traveller.

“Go out of the house to see the moon, and 't is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey.” - Emerson