In the land of Milk, Toil and Hope - a village visit diary

So, now, it is the time to describe our encounter with the ‘village-people’. As this goes through publication, hundreds of pens would be scribbling tonnes of gyaan into neat foolscap, fighting a deadly battle against the deadline, describing pretty much what I am going to put down here, though not in words so similar. Yes, we are turning in official reports of this whole encounter. So, the question comes up, what’s the need for this additional piece of garbage. Well, the reasons are many. First of all, the official report had to be objective, and so it was. This one will be subjective – and hence, true. Secondly, despite all the efforts of The Man to the contrary, I actually enjoyed this week long programme. So I hope to conserve a write up about the same for the posterity. The official report has to be turned in in handwritten paper. (As an aside, for a place supposed to train modern, efficient & techno-savvy managers, this whole establishment is pretty anal about using obsolete sort of technology – like notice boards, pigeon holes, and of course, hand written reports, in its day to day work.) So as I was saying, it’s a single copy of handwritten paper, with no backup, and no assurance of the end use there-of – reading, or wiping, God alone knows. So it is always better to keep it in electronic format. So, here it goes.

The run through

Well, we always knew it wouldn’t be half as bad as the trek (for those who had missed it, here it goes), & the senior batches were telling how they enjoyed their own village trips. But then, these were the same people who had supposedly had the best time of their lives in their Foundations, so, their remarks were to be treated with the same scepticism as one would treat the doomsday reports on popular Hindi ‘news’ channels. So, it was a mixed reaction when we finally knew we were going to Sandeel village, in the Alewa block, in the Jind District, in the State of Haryana ( for the citybreds who’ve never left Delhi, that might give some appreciation about the sheer scale of this country and its governance!) It was to be a much smaller group than the trek – and an extremely, and diversely, talented one. Our group leader was a bright economist from the LSE; next, our pretty, precocious and extremely talented doctor; third, a master veterinarian; fourth, a life scientist, and a poet sans pareil, and the fifth, an Electronics Engineer from BITS (from the era before BITSAT – when one really had to squeeze the Boards to get into BITS). And sixth, lowering this exceptional group’s average IQ by a few points, was yours truly. Well, the sixth member was already quite friendly with the third and the fourth member, so it was clear that we would be able to redeem some happiness out of it even in the face of utter disaster.

Unlike the last time, nothing dramatic happened during the journey – except for small things, like our driver losing his way and starting on an all Haryana tour, before getting back on route. The confusion led us to having our “day meal” at 1700 hrs – I call it “day meal” because we weren’t sure what to call a heavy meal taken at 5 in the evening – some of us tried to coin new words by combining ‘lunch’ and ‘dinner’ in the manner ‘breakfast’ and ‘lunch’ are combined in ‘brunch’ – but the better results sounded quite unprintable in Hindi, and since most my readers know Hindi, I’d rather leave it unprinted. Well, in the end, we reached the hostels of Haryana Agriculture Management Extension and Training Institute (HAMETI) by 8:00 p.m. And then we had tea and snacks! And then we had dinner too!! Turns out that the “day meal” was, after all, plain lunch!

Next morning, we had a briefing with the Additional DC. The DC (Deputy Commissioner / District Collector / District Magistrate/ District Officer) was out of HQ on some official business. It’s rather hard to recall exactly what happened in there, but one was surely boggled by the number of Departments a DC is supposed to command and control. In the hindsight, it shouldn’t have been a surprise – it takes 9-10 departments to run a ruddy train, it should take a lot more to run a whole District. However, it is certainly not a pleasant experience when all dozens of these Departmental heads try to tell you about their work, their achievements, and, most importantly, their statistics in a span of an hour. Few of the other groups’ members (also going to different villages in the same district) did, however, develop a liking for statistics, and kept calling for more of them. Anyway, it ended by noon – and we were introduced to our Block Development Officers (BDO), who were to be our ‘friends, philosophers and guides’ for the week. So we picked up our bags and boarded two out of the dozens of SUV’s of the Government of Haryana parked on the HAMETI tarmac. It certainly was an impressive scene as columns of blue beaconed Government vehicles roared out of the HAMETI gates for the great beyond.

It took around an hour of drive to get to the place. It is, in a sense, the last village of Jind District on the northern side. As we came to know later, this place was like a mini Kannauj of the Tripartite Struggle fame – it began as a village in Kaithal Tehsil in Sangrur District of Punjab. When Punjab was partitioned (the Indian State, not the Raj Province), it came to be a part of Kaithal Tehsil in Karnal District. Later, when Jind was made into a district, it came to Jind. And then, Kaithal was made a district in its own right, and it was separated from Kaithal and merged into the diminished Jind. Reads more like a tale of a fortress which is frequently changing hands between warring parties, isn’t it? Well, coming back to its description, it was an average sized village of 4200 people. It was one of the most backward villages of Haryana – had all weather metalled 2 lane roads, 12 hour electricity supply, and almost all houses of masonry and concrete work. Sounds like a decent town back home? Well, it was. We put up in 2 rooms of the Government School, with a recently constructed and really well functioning loo block behind (we later learnt it was constructed in just 3 days, when the village authorities learnt about the impending arrival of ‘high officials from Delhi’ !!) And we had traditional cots – the charpoys / khatia / khaat and heavy quilts, and a seemingly endless stock of plastic chairs. In short, everything was there to guarantee a comfortable stay. While there are proponents of the ‘काक चेष्ठा बको ध्यानं श्वान निद्रा तथैव च I अल्पाहारी गृहत्यागी विद्यार्थी पञ्च लक्षणं II’ (translation – not literal – a starving, sleep deprived vagabond is the best student) philosophy, I personally believe that the best learning takes place when the learner is left with no wants for his comforts. So, I was sure that we could do really good learning here – and we started as soon as we had dealt with an exceptionally heavy lunch.

Well, we had been given a schedule of activities we needed to be doing with / to the village folk. However, the poor village folk did not seem to have received a copy of the schedule, nor had they been raided by touring teams to ensure their presence as and when required by the schedule. So we had to make do with the best we could. We called a meeting of the gram sabha, and out of the 2300 odd members, some 150 turned up, which was exceptional, given the fact that the average attendance in gram sabha meetings which are not called by visiting IAS officers is often 60-70 only. Perhaps we did offer them a curious sight – or perhaps they had overestimated our ‘powers’. Well, we did get an idea of the village economy, the village polity, and the chief troubles. It was an agricultural village, which, till 1987, used to receive water from the canal, which was redistributed in the said year, and since then, the village had gradually declined in its output and its importance. In the evening, we took a long walk along the village thoroughfares, mapping out its habitations, and other places of importance. Again, for no particular reason (maybe it was because it was a Sunday), we had attracted a large crowd, which did include many ‘petitioners’ – it took some time to explain to them about the fact that even a worker in the Academy mess had more ‘powers’ than us, and since he has practically no powers, we, in effect, were totally powerless.

The next day, we had to interview important village officials for some questionnaire we had been saddled with. We called up a few persons, and a whole galaxy of the village / block level luminaries descended upon the school grounds – all the underlings of the Departmental heads we had heard on the first day at the District HQ. Soon, following their suit, many others, who thought themselves to be ‘important’ enough to be considered ‘quasi-governmental’ also came along – ex-sarpanches, their brothers and uncles, village contractors, the drunkard from the next lane. Not that we were complaining – we got a large sample size to administer our voodoo on! In the end, we had a detailed village map, a detailed village history, 2 filled questionnaires, a lot of loose sheets filled with unclassified loose comments, and quite a decent vocabulary of Haryanvi swear words.

The day three was for a more detailed walk around of the village, unescorted, as far as possible, in order to meet the marginalized – the lower castes, the poor, the women folk. It’s hard for city people, all dressed up as, well, city people, to roam unrecognised across a village. We did get some crowd again, but not as big as day one. We managed to find the poorest of the poor – their houses had just one or two rooms, and did not appear as ornate as the one’s we had observed in our earlier walk. However, they were no illiterate destitute masses that we had been told we were to study. All our briefing back home had been about tools meant to elicit responses from unlettered people in the form of colourful Venn diagrams and tally marks. What we found were very literate and knowledgeable people, who narrated to us, in facts and figures, their situation. It was not very rosy, but neither was it a third world picture postcard scene. We met the women (or rather, the two lady officers in the group met them) – under all the veils and silence, they had a really decent grasp of the village affairs – and they did not need coloured rangolis to reveal their mind. So much for the PLA techniques.

The day four was used for a study of the educational and health facilities – we were lucky to have a qualified doctor and an extra qualified vet in our group. So we studied both the Community Health Centre and the Veterinary Hospital. We also visited the private school, which, despite the lack of decent classrooms and other physical facilities was managing to have a much higher enrolment as compared to the sprawling government school which we called home these days. Puzzling, but true. The fifth day of our stay was for some hurried catching up for data not collected yet, and for packing up, as the departure from the village had been advanced by the District authorities. The people of the village, whom we had come to know very well, gave us a very moving farewell, and after an hour of drive, we were back at the HAMETI, where we had the debriefing with the DC the next day. The following day, we packed up and returned to these sad  hills.

The food issue

Any discussion about this trip would be incomplete without a comment or two about the food. First of all, the quantity was simply huge. For the first time in our entire lives, we saw that the unserved food left in the dishes was more than what we actually devoured, and I use the word ‘devoured’ with a purpose. We were taking long walks along the village, and that may have led to some increase in our appetites, but then it was nothing compared to the monkeying around that we do back here. Still, we managed to put away quantities of food which would have easily served 20 people back here. I think, being the competitive people we are, we took the mounds of victuals piled in front of us as challenges, and as they say, if you aim for the Moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars. Secondly, it was about the proportion of milk and milk products that was being served – buttermilk was being used the way drinking water is done at our places. All the tea being served was milk tea. But the real mind-boggler was the amount of butter and ghee we were supposed to eat. We heard, from another group in the same district, that one of the officers actually thought that the bowl of pure white substance in his plate was vanilla ice cream! It was pure butter – unflavoured and un-pigmented (that gives the commercially produced butter it’s ‘cream colour’). It was supposed to be applied on the rotis – but with that much butter, one could butter rotis enough for a week’s consumption! And ghee – oh – don’t get me started on the ghee. One of the accompaniments which we were served with chapatis, to be used the way vegetables or sauces are used, was a mixture of jaggery sugar and pure ghee; one can almost hear the health Nazis of the world heave a dismal sigh in unison! Third was the fact that despite the food being inherently simple in nature, we all liked it very much (may be that was one reason for the increased consumption too) – this was strange, for none of us were one of those who are enamoured by the romance for the countryside, one of those who believe that the countryside is the repository of all virtues and the cities are just the dens of sin! Still, all of us really looked forward to what surprises our next meal would bring, and we were never disappointed.

About Prohibition, and the Specificity of the targets of laws

One problem that we learnt about, other than the water scarcity issue, was the prevalence of rampant alcoholism in the village in particular, and in the region in general. Almost all the women we got to interview flagged this one as the problem numero uno – not only was it a significant drain on the family resources, it was also a cause of a large amount of domestic violence against the women and children. Even the men folk admitted this was a big problem of the village. An ex-sarpanch that we met told that he had enforced a total prohibition in his days in the office, way back in 1993. It could last only for a month and since then, the problem had grown manifold to haunt the village even more.

Now, as a part of growing up, I have always had a very liberal mind-set. On almost all issues in which it is to be decided whether or not the State should intervene in what a person does in his private life, I’ve voted with the nays. Some of my earlier articles on this very blog will confirm that. So, the idea of things like prohibition was totally abhorrent to me. However, the experience of the last one year has made me question myself – is there something like too much liberalism?

It all began when I took charge as AMM Mahalaxmi in Western Railway. It was here that I discovered how entrenched the problem of alcoholism is. Perfectly sane employees would, on some days, turn into total waste, all sozzled. They’d fight amongst themselves, get seriously hurt, and make themselves liable for serious disciplinary action. Now, drunkenness on duty is a very serious offence under the railway rules, and as the manager of a depot with already depleted workforce, one could not terminate more employees, so one walked a real tight rope there. Then, occasionally, one would have wives / children / brothers / sisters of these men coming to one’s office, and appealing to one to coax / threaten them into giving up the booze, as they foresaw their ruination in their alcoholism. There was not much one can do except for the occasional rebuke. And then, listening to the plight of the women folk of Sandeel, one was again faced with the question. Is prohibition so bad an idea after all?

Well, I’ve had friends who like their drinks. In fact, as I have progressed through the stages of life – from school to the job, the proportion of such friends in my ‘total stock’ of friends has dramatically increased! All of them are social drinkers – who enjoy a few pegs on the weekends / after dinner. I’ve not found any of them lying in the gutters in the morning, needing to be dragged home. Wouldn’t it be gross injustice to deny them their little drinks, just because some semi-literate village bumpkins cannot hold their drinks. And wouldn’t it be a gross injustice if the cowering women and children of rural Haryana continue to be thrashed black and blue, just because some city-slickers have nothing better to do on weekends. Both the presence and absence of prohibition will lead to injustice. This brings up to debate the very justification of ‘Equality before Law’ – one is reminded of the immortal lines of Anatole France – “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” While the quotation has obviously been written from the point of view of the poor, even the ‘rich’ – by which I mean the socially advanced sections of the society – are facing the troubles caused by this equality before the laws. Many of our social justice legislations were framed in response to genuine needs, more prevalent in the socially backward section of the society. However, the effect of those legislations is largely absent in this section, but these are being used more in the relatively advanced section of the society, with such an intensity that it has started to cause some strains in this section. Before the brickbats start raining, I must clarify that I am not claiming that the socially advanced section of the population has zero level of such problems. With that disclaimer, I’d bring about two examples. The first one is the whole plethora of ‘gender sensitive’ laws, under which, in short, the male of the species is guilty until proven innocence, with the full burden of proof on him. There are many organisations that have now started taking up issues of gross misuse of such legal provisions in the urban areas of the country, which must mean there is at least some element of truth in these claims. However, the plight of the women in the rural areas continues to be the same – evenings ending in blows and abuses. Another example is the provision of caste based affirmative action – it is also being opposed vehemently in ‘our’ section of the society, but when we look at the villages, the people of the lower caste are still the most marginalised. So, what is the solution out here? Should laws be made more targeted? It’s not that the laws are not targeted – in fact, the gender sensitive, caste sensitive, religious sensitive laws are targeting some section of the society. The trouble, as far as my understanding goes, is that whenever targeting is done at a group, how-so-ever small, the group always manages to align itself in some way in which some section of the group is more able to take advantage of the targeting at the expense of the others, leading to further polarization. The solution, I think, lies in individual targeting, and with the launch of exercises like Aadhaar, we are moving in that direction, as far as targeting benefits of schemes goes. I am not a scholar of law (or of anything), but I hope some legal luminaries in our country can come up with solutions, so that my oenophile friends can still enjoy their drinks while the rural women are spared of the violence.

The rejuvenation of the ideal and the justification for the Civil Services

Joining the Civil Services in today’s politically charged scenario has its disadvantages. In this era of the so called ‘popular feeling’ of “sab chor hain”, it is sometimes very easy to be disillusioned. Most people I know here still joined because of two main reasons – one, the respect the services command, and two, the potential to make a difference using one’s free spirit. However, while this place strives to kill the latter, the mass media campaign to paint the services as an embodiment of venality hits at the roots of the former. As an antidote to these two effects, this village visit fulfilled its role magnificently. The meeting with the DC, Jind, was an eye opener. The man had achieved a lot in some of the most backward districts, in the face of enormous odds – including total sanitation in a society with a proclivity towards crapping in the open! He was promoted to the IAS from the HCS, and most of my batch-mates had a rather Upamanyu Chatterji-esque idea about such men, in some degree. That was one stereotype which was broken that day, along with the sense of despondency that had settled on us since 3^rd September. For the first time since September, we were treated as sentient beings, and not as cattle. We met the village people, and saw the amount of faith they still have in the government apparatus. Their view of the government was that of a just, if overworked, ruler. They knew what their problems were, and just what was needed to solve them. They had not heard of many of the schemes that were in operation for rural upliftment – and surprisingly, most of their own ideas did correspond with some of the schemes. It’s not that they were totally besotted with the government. No, not at all. They spoke about various lapses, and what could have been done instead. They pointed out to the failures of the governance in the most candid terms. They even told us about how much cut were the lower functionaries taking in various schemes, and asked us to try and devise methods so that the funds release became more direct! They had a large number of problems, many of which could have been solved by the administration, at one level or another, and the people were angry. However, they were demanding solutions, and not baying for our blood, as the popular discourse in the urban media would like us to believe. Most pleasantly, they still had a lot of regards for the public functionaries – the MP’s, the MLA’s, the local patwaris. However, their highest regards were still reserved for the DC. By the third or fourth day, people knew that we were just ‘report writers’, but still, they queued up so that their problems could reach the DC’s ears through those reports. Such was their belief in the inherent goodness and potential of the DC that they thought that all their petty problems would be solved only if they could make the DC learn about them. It was then that I had an epiphany – the popular media and the social media may play the judge, jury and executioner in the case of civil services, but we still have a large chunk of the population untouched by all this mob frenzy, a chunk that still needs me, a chunk that will be the reason for me to go to my office and discharge my duties to the best of my capabilities in about 6 months. There is an on-going debate about the justification for the continuation of the Services in the modern day shining India, and the participants include senior officers, including members of the faculty here. I realised, that as long as the people like these village folk need us, we shall have every reason to be extant, and hence, it is very important for us to treasure and nurture this trust, because the day this precious chunk would have forsaken us, we shall be truly redundant.