Welcome to Tamil Nadu

"Chennai is a beautiful place," said the old man I was talking to while waiting for my afternoon departure from O'Hare. 'Chennai is sometimes referred to as the French Rivera of the East' said the uncited Wikipedia article I'd read beforehand about Tamil Nadu, the Indian state I'd be living in for three weeks. I left Iowa after an eight hour, twelve inch snow storm had rocked Council Bluffs and another was on its way so I was praying I'd be spending my winter vacation somewhere warmer.

And boy, is Chennai nice.

I hear it is cold in Iowa right now. As in -18 Celsius cold. The weather in Tamil Nadu is a sometimes-too-hot, usually-quite-acceptable 20 to 25 degrees Celsius (lower to upper seventies). Of course, it is winter time here as well and so you do see the occasional wearer of winter accessories. Something I can say I never would have guessed seeing in India is people wearing earmuffs and full face warmers. The camo earmuffs seem to be pretty popular and seem slightly hipster, to me at least.

Another thing I didn't expect to see while in India was one of the three churches in the world built at the grave site of an original member of the Twelve Apostles of Christ. Yes, that is correct, there are three places in the world you can go to pay direct tribute to the 12 Apostles: Santiago de Compostela (Spain), The Vatican, and Chennai.

A little random, but I was happy to pay respects to St. Thomas (a.k.a. Doubting Thomas) nonetheless. The results of his early mission trip/death here in Tamil Nadu can be seen in the strikingly large number of Christians, cemeteries, and churches here in the state today. And at this point, I'm really not even surprised when I walk through India and BOOM- end up at something random like the grave of one of the Twelve Disciples. Nope, you start to expect this country to offer nice surprises like that.


Another treat found in Chennai is the seven and a half mile long Marina Beach. In my mind, the beach setting really sort of clashed with all of the 'Indian' scenes inhabiting it. I guess I've only ever seen the colorful women's saris, little fruit stands, and stone trinket salesmen in the context of rural/desertous India before and the new contrast of such a classic Indian scene against the sandy shores of the Bay of Bengal was a bizarre sight to say the least. Then again, after some fresh coconut milk, feeling the sand between my toes, a horse ride, and a minute in the warm waters of the Bay, I was thinking less about how strange everything seemed and more about how darn nice Chennai is.



^There are Christmas lights and trees up everywhere. The big department stores in Chennai still have their Santa manikins up.

Day Two in the Dirty South

This ain't the crunk dirty south. It's the dirty one.

Southern India, to me, looks and feels very much like Northern India (except for the weather, which is about 35°F less soul crushing). Although I know that it only seems like the same because I never got to fully understand what the hell the north was all about so coming to the south feels abit like visiting Rajasthan 2.0. More on the good old north south divide to come, but for now I'll just type up some purdy words bouts the ornery projects our group members are a hankerin' to git started on here in the Dirty South:

1. Creating a transition plan for waste management companies who are started/run by our NGO. So far, the waste management firms Hand in Hand runs have a pretty solid business plan but no exit strategy- they want to be able to give ownership to the locals.

2. Creating a report evaluating/looking into the effectiveness and results of giving out vocational training alongside microloans (loans to poor entrepreneurs who do not have any collateral).

3. Assessing the state of so called bridge schools which try to transition and prep child laborers back into normal schooling (like the one i taught at in the summer)

4. Developing a pricing scheme for rural hospitals to become more financially independant because Hand in Hand is now worried their clinics are too dependent on government subsidies

5. Figure out how to deliver IT services and computer literacy to the7000 villages worth of rural Indian's who've never used a PC before. And make a business plan that impoverished women can follow which delivers on that goal.

Also, the side projects are to found an NGO in another state of India and start a Microfinance program in Iowa City, for which there is about $75 thousand in funding that is just waiting for our business plan telling them how to use it.

Some more side projects to be had are a possible University of Iowa research partnership with the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology on looking into the long term health benefits of giving out micro entrepreneurship loans to the poor. And another thing is that we are trying to pioneer a sort of social networking site for social entrepreneurship (think Facebook for groups of people that want to fix the world). As you can imagine, things are quite organic/dynamic/hectic with all these side projects flying around.


Update: It seems as though our Hand in Hand initiatives are seemingly more complex than I thought when I typed this (on my second day here). I guess there isn't any reason for them not to be, changing the world isn't an easy business. More to come on the more intricate details of the projects soon.

How To Get To India:

1.Brave the snow of CB and head over to Eppley Airfield Omaha.


2.Keep cozy in the Minneapolis airport to avoid the snow storm outside.


3.Take the orange line into Chicago. Enjoy the sights and snow in the windy city.


4.Depart your aeroplane at London's Heathrow and relax because you've FINALLY outran that damn winter storm.


5.Wohoo! You're in Chennai now.

Hey how about something NOT about India?

*This does have to do kinda with the theme of this here blog and so I guess I'll post it. I tried to fit paragraph summaries of some of my favorite stories (poor Korea turns into rich Korea, Bangladesh textiles appears out of thin air, Africa and poor countries selling their land to Korea) here in under 1.5 pages- yes this is a school paper. Also: those last India posts are a comin..



--------
According to Choson (ancient Korean) legend, there was once a dutiful son named Kang who prayed for 100 straight days to cure his sick mother. In a dream, a mountain god told him to find a plant with three berries, boil the root, and serve her the tea. Kang found the plant and used it to cure his mother, and, as legend goes, this is how the benefits of ginseng were taught to the Korean peninsula.

Great ideas and useful technology, such as how to cultivate ginseng, are things that have the potential to really help many people. Korea has a strong history of spreading such ideas, although in more modern times this has been done more with corporate partnerships and less with mountain god dream appearances.

In 1979, Korean garment firm Daewoo Corp. brought 130 Bangladeshi workers to Pusan. Daewoo trained the workers to create textiles with the most advanced methods of the time and over the next ten years 115 of these workers returned to Bangladesh to found their own textile companies. Before the Daewoo trainings in 1979, there were 40 textile workers in Bangladesh. Thanks to the Daewoo trainings Bangladesh today has a $2 billion garment industry, its top export.

---

The South Korean government has a long history of promoting Korean farm production. Around independence, one of its first ever tasks was to quickly sell 1.4 million abandoned farm plots to 600,000 war displaced farmers. The going rate for an acre of paddy land was about four tons of rice (inflation was bad back then so the farmers paid the government with their crops).

Unfortunately, the number of people living and working on farms steadily decreased in the years following the rice for land reform program of the forties and fifties. As South Korea quickly developed a highly advanced economy, rural flight and the growth of industry meant less people living in rural areas and less land for farming.

Today, South Korea is the world’s third biggest corn importer. Only 1% of wheat eaten in Korea is grown in Korea. As increasing land prices and the decline of the Korean farming sector continue, the Korean government is once again getting creative to increase the nation’s food security. It is now lending money and giving technology to Korean firms planning on developing farms overseas.

Korean cultivation of 2700 square miles of land in the Sudan and 380 square miles in Tanzania are already underway. Similar plans are underway in the Philippines, Mongolia, East Russia, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

These rented Korean farm lands will produce corn, wheat, and other crops to be consumed in Korea. Some of the land partnerships will also be used to teach locals modern farming and irrigation techniques, create jobs, and spur investment for local schools and hospitals. Only time will tell if these foreign land partnerships will yield the same kind of successes the Bangladesh-Daewoo and Kang-Mountain God pacts shared before them.

Hooch

In early July, riots erupted in the Indian state of Gujarat after more than 150 people were killed by poisonous methanol. The victims had purchased illegal bootleg liquor sold by a local retailer named Harishankar Kahar whom new the 700 liters of brew contained a whopping 48% methanol (drinking 0.0015 liters of methanol can cause blindness). Incidents such as the July Ahmedabad hooch tragedy are common in India as most of the marginally and extreme poor cannot afford legally brewed alcohol.

There is a gigantic hooch trade in India, as government regulation and taxes on the legit alcohol industry are perverse. The sale of cheap, potent, sometimes-methanol-containing homebrew is a profitable trade- sometimes even for local politicians and police who are paid to forget the strict Indian hooch laws (Gujarat, for example, is actually a dry state prohibiting ALL alcohol sales.)

Our NGO, IDEX, works in many villages throughout Rajasthan. Some deal with such harsh, object poverty (think child malnutrition/starvation), that IDEX does not send its young foreign volunteers to see them. Our village is not one of these. Some of our families own motorcycles, some own livestock, one even has satellite TV! Chandyi Kheryi is by no measure posh, but it is my opinion that the residents owe thanks for many of their better living standards to the illegal liquor trade.

One of the things said to be 'keeping the Kanjar down' is the negative stigma that comes from their brewing of moonshine. I don't quite understand this as it seems to me that a number of regular Jhalrapatans and even local law enforcement are regular customers of the Kanjar brew (buying only at night, of course).

Before I go on here, let me say this: I know neoliberalism isn't perfect; if I took anything with me from my anthropology classes out to India it was a constant second guessing of the whole "we have to save these people from their current lifestyles" mision. I mean, is it possible that slum dwellers and the tradition-ridden rural poor are actually quite happy with their situations (or at least content)? Perhaps the best course of action to be taken isn't one of development and seeking to raise income education levels... but that's another post. For now, I'll just put on my economist hat and assume that developing the rural poor's markets and 'living standards' is the best thing Westerners (or at least young idealists) can strive.

So here's my question for IDEX and the residents of Chandi Kehri: Why not join the country liquor industry? The twenty or so legal Indian alcohol manufacturers currently sell 200 million cases a year, pulling in a huge chunk of change for the wet states which license and heavily tax them. Now I know it's not all that simple (remember that negative social stigma with alcohol makers? not to mention the whole caste system thing making it nearly impossible for a Kanjar to land a janitorial job, let alone a major manufacturing license for a so called poisonous industry; but again, this is the econ talking in me, not the anthro).


^I wouldn't recommend entering the restaurant business to the Kanjar. It's not that it's a notoriously tough gig, but that Joney's Cafe in Agra makes food too good to beat (he even cooks kimchi!)

Other small enterprise ideas I've floated for the Kanjar include operating tuktuks (easy market to enter, but little profit power there); running a bus (harder market to enter and find a niche route in, but more potential revenue here); and, my favorite, running public pools (think about it! I've seen loads of kids playing around big mud puddles but NO pools. Probably have to work around the whole women showing skin and most people not knowing how to swim issues but after figuring those out, it'd be a gold mine maybe).

Of course, the biggest issue with a public pool would be the extreme water shortages in Rajasthan. Though here too is a story for another post.


^The possibilities for private transportation are endless in India!


^Is striving for unbelieveable riches always the best path? Probably not (my humble midwestern roots tell me money ain't everything), but generating enough wealth to send your kids to school seems like a noble enough goal. Therefore, I encourage the marginally and extreme poor to create enterprises.

Example: Manufacturing disposable bowls for sale to street vendors. Filling a market need with a biodegradable and cheap product? Absolutely brilliant!! More on these genius little business ideas this winter...


See: "Poisonous Mix." Times of India, July 14

Daily Class Schedule

8:30am Catch bus out to village. Make nice with friendly bus conductor who is obviously proud to call us his daily customers.

8:50am Get off bus at water tower, walk ~half mile into Kanjar part of Chandi Kehri village. If its been raining, an eight foot wide stream raises in a mud bank that cuts across our walking path; makes for an early morning adventure trying to successfully cross it and get to class unmuddy.

9:00am Greet parents ("Namaste") and hug the excited kids who run out to see us. Set up tarp for the class to sit on, tattered black board, retrieve school supplies (notebooks, boards, chalk, tooth brushes, etc) from neighboring storage shed that is also used to house the village reserves of bootleg moonshine.

9:15am Walk with Rick and a few students out to well to fill a metal pot with water (bannee) for the kids to drink during the day. Later, a bore well would be installed in the village.

9:20am Brush teeth! Followed by morning exercises (head shoulders knees and toes, etc).

--First Lesson--
Rick and I teach half the class English letters, simple math, or simple English vocab. Sometimes we play games like around the world or whatever else we can come up with to entertain.

11:30am Walk the smaller children to other side of village for government subsidized meals at nearby public school. Get harassed by local school children. The purpose of our transit school is to instill skills and confidence within the Kanjar children in order to set them up for success at this neighboring public school. The rural public schools in India are run notoriously bad and I always wonder/pray the kids make it through to the school and benefit at least somewhat.


--Second Lesson--
Sohan or Sarochi Tailor teach Hindi or tell stories. The kids start getting antsy so we usually just end up playing games. The kids love to dance, hit each other/me, cheer, throw things, smile, jump around/be lifted into the sky/on trees by one of us ("mierdacool, mierdacool") and all kinds of things kids generally like to do.

~2:00pm Recess. Marbles, dodgeball, cricket, gaparti are always popular choices.

~2:30pm Try and hail a ride back to town. Can take awhile as the rare passing bus is usually packed to capacity and a half; though we always find a way to either squeeze in.

Agra

I find myself taking less and less pictures as centuries old imposing mountain scaling walls, monkeys swinging on old buildings, old men laying around on the streets, bazillions of little side store retailers, and kids riding 40 pound bikes and jumping off massive piles of rubble just don't pop out with that old wow I'm in India factor they did six weeks ago when I first got into Delhi. Sure I'll pause when I see a shepard guiding his sheep with a stick and talking on his cell; hold my breath when a bus is almost run off the road by a stray camel; and yes, even bust out my camera at first sight of a slum house with nothing but tires and dried shit for walls, but, you know, it's all starting to normalize with me.

^Our bus got held up by some slow moving elephant traffic. Naturally.

Went to Agra this past weekend. Highlights include a ten hour bus ride up to Jaipur, followed by a charismatic bus sales agent who hooked us up with a second eight hour bus ride into UP, and finding both a sweltering 108 degree midday sun and great views of the Taj within the Agra city limits.

Something I realized while in Agra: the Taj Mahal is big. Like really big. The pictures in every Mahm & Pahp Indian lunch buffet cafe stateside really don't do it justice. Tack on miles of ornate white marble carvings, inlaid gold lacing within said white marble carvings, and the three gate entryways each bigger than the Old Capital, and you have yourselves one of the (New) 7 Wonders of the World.




About the only other thing to see in Agra is the so called Red Fort. I gained a small victory here by hiding my eyes under my aviators and having to pay less than the 'tourist' ticket price (though still more than the Indian price... I had my own rate. The clerk was clearly confused.)

About the only other thing to do in Agra is go to the bars. We had a blast (no joke) at the clubs (all guys there, interestingly enough) and danced to 90's eurobeat hits all night long! My memories fuzzy, but I believe Bara requested 'In the Rhythm of the Night' about sixteen times.

After a 90 minute detour through dirt village roads, during which our bus knocked down a power line, we took the 8 hour journey back to Jaipur for a night- enough time to dine at the surprisingly upscale Pizza Hut, watch bad 90's movies at the comfy Arya Niwas hotel, visit a few forts while dodging the unbearable sun, and hop on the bus back to Jhalawar for Monday class.