"Guest Labourers" - Day #7 (31 March 2020) - 21 day #Covid19 Lock down

Day #7 (31 March 2020)

“Guest labourers”

The Migrant workers are fleeing back home ! They call it reverse-migration. Everywhere in the world, Covid19 has caused probably the largest movement of migrants ever. Infact, it’s not the fear of the Covid19, but the lock down that has suddenly left them stranded without homes, food, jobs, salary and even basic necessities in the cities that they came to with the hope of building their lives. Most of them who came were not driven by the aspiration to emigrate and settle there, like many of our well-to-do settlers in developed nations. They left their villages because their villages were losing it’s future. They did not see the design, they only saw the effect. And millions left their homes, painfully, to work in the cities, make their daily money and build their lives. I remember a poem, I once read and am not able to trace it now. Nevertheless, I think it begins with these words “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark”.

Madhan was a migrant labourer. He was from Assam, some where on the banks of the River Brahmaputra. He did tell me the name of his village, but I have a poor memory. What I remember is his graphic description of the floods, when the Brahmaputra rises, and their fields of paddy get flooded, sometimes leaving their crop damaged. He was part of a team of five workers from Assam who stayed in our land in Karakulam, when I was building my house. Madhan worked with a contractor, associated with COSTFORD, an alternate building group in Kerala. COSTFORD was established by the master designer and eco-construction pioneer Laurie Baker. These workers had become experts in mud-based construction. Today, I proudly live in a mud and bamboo home, and I owe it all to these excellent workers, as much as I owe it to the Engineers and Architects who did the designs and supervised the work.

Madhan and team stayed in my land for nearly five months, in a make-shift shed. When the day’s work was over, I sometimes joined them in their evening tea. They always made black tea. Once in a while, I brought them some hot snacks to eat. This always made them happy, and made me a benevolent employee ! One day, over a glass of tea, Madhan said, “We are so grateful to you. We are poor people. It’s because rich people like you are building such houses that we get job, and are able to look after our family”. I asked him, “Your family?”. He said, “I live with my father and mother. My wife and two children are there with them. I go home once or twice every year”. I asked him, “But what were you doing there, before you came here; you must have had some job?”. “We are farmers”, he replied, and pointed to two of his relatives who were also in the team. “Ah!”, that interested me. It was too tempting ! I did a complete interview, unstructured, free-wheeling...and here is their story

Madhan and his family owns 20 acres of paddy land between his father, himself and his brothers. He alone has 6 acres. They were not small farmers by Indian standards ! The flood plains of Brahmaputra is one of the most fertile, and he told me that their land yielded 5 to 6 tonnes of paddy per acre, in a good year. Did I hear it right ? Acre ? Yes. This is super-bumper crop. I did a quick calculation; that makes 30 Tonnes of paddy and at the then minimum procurement rate of the Food Corporation of India which was around Rs 15 per kilo, he could easily get Rs 4.5 lakh / year. I asked him, “Why are you here ? Why are you doing this in Kerala” ? All this hardship, 3500 kms away from your village ?” He refuted my figures. He said they only get Rs 5-6 per kilo of paddy. “Some buyers come to our village and offer only this much. We have no choice. We sell”. That was just one-third of what they are entitled to. This is the Shark ! This is village in India ! A 6-acre farmer, migrates 3500 kms away, comes to a 21 cent Engineer, calls him rich, and works as a labourer in his building !! The irony of a cruel nation ! The design of making a migrant labourer out of a rich farmer !!

All migrant labourers are not Madhans. But each of them had a life and a livelihood, or atleast a possibility of a livelihood before he or she became a migrant labourer. Many of them may have had a history of prosperity, in their families, in their villages. Otherwise, we would never have been taught that “Villages are the backbone of India” or “Villages are the Pride of the nation” and so on. But in just 7 decades of growth that India planned and executed for itself, we have killed the villages !. The last two decades has been the worst !! Today, villages are more known for the extreme poverty and the suicide of farmers, as much as it’s still know for never letting this nation down on food security. What an irony !

Moreover, the way migrants were handled in this crisis exposed two different attitudes. One, entrenched in the relics of a feudal past, the nation threw lakhs of them into the highways, forced them to walk hundreds of kilometres to their villages, and when that shamed the nation, we herded them into buses ( during Covid19 times !) and sent them packing. We even sprayed chemicals on them to disinfect them, as we do floors and even animals, and later apologised to the nation ! On the other hand, we saw in Kerala, my home state, a Chief Minister instructing his officers that the migrant labourers demands be handled in a dignified manner.We set up 4000 odd camps, moved 1.5 lakh labourers into the camps, ensured food of their choice through community kitchens, and even provided cable TV for entertainment, to keep them engaged during the lock down. The CM even coined a new name for them. In Kerala, now we call them “Guest labourers” !.

Nevertheless, Migration of this nature can never be an indicator of prosperity or growth, as is sometimes justified by archaic economists and planners. Migration, especially from the rural to the urban, is a disease in itself, as serious as a Covid19. The disease needs a vaccine. Migration also demands a political vaccine, a revolutionary change in the way we conceive and build our societies, its relationships and its economic function !

After word :

While I was musing over the migrant issue for this day’s writing, Devinder Sharma, one of India’s best analyst of the rural sector, wrote a hard hitting and analytical opinion which is enlightening, and needs to be read - “Why the long march home?” https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/comment/why-the-long-march-home-819476.html

Now, where do I get my food ! - Day #6 (30 March 2020) - 21 day #Covid19 Lock down

Day #6 (30 March 2020)

Now, where do I get my food !

The Covid19 has hit us with the lock down. Now, where do I get my food ? Or, I had rather ask, have I secured my food ?

That’s a good question to ask especially when most of the shops in town are shut, and it’s only those shops that sell the most essential of food – vegetables, fruits, grocery, milk, egg, meat and fish is allowed to open, that too, for a restricted time. It’s a national lock down. Most states have closed borders, trains have completely stopped, airlines have all been grounded. This is not about people moving, this is also about things – food, moving. Even the shops that are allowed to open, have shortage of essentials like vegetables, fruits and fish. And there is serious uncertainty looming large, atleast in Kerala, where we are dependent on the neighbouring states for most of our essentials. Today we did hear the good news that vegetables from the neighbouring state were allowed to cross border and so it’s available in town. But milk supply is badly hit, with milk production affected by both the summer and now the lock down.

This is not a doomsday thought, but will there ever be a situation when we could face a food scarcity. One can surely not be certain with an answer, but some parts of the country, even in major cities, and many parts of the world are facing food scarcity, especially when production gets hit, the workers are sent off, and transportation gets restricted. Food scarcity is an imminent reality. Whatever is available will then get rationed, meaning, the most ‘needy’, the rich, could get it first and the rest of us later, and the poor below, never ! Now, this is not doomsday thinking, it’s there in history. It’s just a reminder of not just about food as an insecure commodity, but also the society itself as an unequal entity.

I was discussing the Covid19 lock down with a colleague of mine. Almost always, the only things that we discuss apart from organisational matters is climate matters, and environmental matters. What’s wrong with us ? That I promise is a full blog answer, later.

She said “I actually don’t fear the virus, nor other disasters as much as I would fear the possibility of food unavailability, or rather the scary thought that one day I would face hunger !”. With an atypical unease, she added, rather decisively, “I have to buy that small paddy land near my home village, soon as this pandemic gets over.” Her paternal family is already into vegetable cultivation and have quite a number of fruit trees in their undivided land, which she shares with her brother and cousins. Their land is literally a food forest, with many fruiting trees. Food insecurity would surely be a non-issue to such families. I tend to see Kerala as a land of homesteads and wells ! The traditional homes in Kerala is surrounded by a homestead that grew vegetables, trees, medicinal plants and trees, some cattle and poultry, and was a food forest in its real sense. And every house had a well, which was its nearest and most secure source of water. Even in the cities, this used to be the culture, till modernity engulfed it and created cement structures out of it.

A classmate’s mother in Trivandrum has a pragmatic way of looking at food security. Her family is into intensive kitchen garden, produces lots of vegetables and fruits through out the year, consumes them and what remains, they store in a small family-size deep freezer that she has at home. This ensures that those seasonal food, like the drumsticks or even fruits like mango and jackfruit, are stored and is used off-season as well. She even supplies them to her relatives and is a highly resourceful person. Traditionally, many of the seasonal fruits were dried or pickled for use through out the year in most households in Kerala. The mother that I am talking about is not living in a village with lots of knowledge and opportunity for doing this. She lives right in the heart of the city. That’s probably why she got a little modern and pragmatic about it. She is surely a way-to-go.

But then there are others. Soon, as the pandemic is announced and they get to understand that the lock down could come, they drive out their vehicles, with shopping bags, and sometimes sacks, rush to the grocery, and buy out as much as would be needed for a long haul. This is just normal behaviour, one can argue. This is securing food, as far as they are concerned. It begins when they know that the scarcity is coming, and then ends when the Government tells them that it’s all over. I have no commentary on them; such ones always exist. It’s only that we don’t call this securing one’s food, we call this hoarding.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN is right when they say that “globally there is enough food for everyone”. Experts, like Devinder Sharma also reiterate this for the World and India. . But the FAO also says that “Border closures, quarantines, and market, supply chain and trade disruptions could restrict people’s access to sufficient/diverse and nutritious sources of food, especially in countries hit hard by the virus or already affected by high levels of food insecurity.”

What should we be doing ? Simple, start dreaming of your own food forest, however small. Start building a community of them. And keep building them till we have a food village or even a food city. A resilient community is not a hoarding community, it’s a conserving cultivating one!

“Stay at home” - the Ubuntu way - Day #5 (29 March 2020) - 21 day #Covid19 Lock down

Day #5 (29 March 2020)

“Stay at home” - the Ubuntu way

Atlast we are all back home, most of us atleast ! In the close circle of our father, mother, husband, wife, sons, daughters, grandchildren, our pets...and nobody else.

The maids have gone to their homes, the gardeners have been told not to come. The traditional home-delivery vegetable and fish vendors – the pushcart man, the woman with the basket of vegetables on her head, the fish-vendor man who comes in the carriage-auto ( we call them petti-auto), the fish-vendor woman, again with the basket of fish, all have gone home. The distinctive horns, bells, hoots, shouts, calls have all stopped. Missing are those mornings when they come and we haggle with them, poor people. Its not as if we don’t know that they live by it, but we all have our opinions made about each one of them. “That Mary!, everytime she gives us the worst fish she has, let her come tomorrow !”. It’s like that. We know they don’t always give us the best of their stuff, but there was always a tomorrow, for them, and for us.

The Covid19 killed it all, atleast for now, and we don’t know for how long. We have been following the statistics that speak of how many people, world over, has been affected with the disease. For the record, at this point it is 685,782 cases affected by the SARS-CoV2 virus, and a frightening 32,239 deaths. But how many have been affected by the lock down to contain the virus? Statistics say it is atleast 25% of global population, with the worst in India, China, US, France, UK, Italy, South Africa, Columbia, Spain and Argentina having been impacted with a full lock down or a partial lock down. Everybody has been asked to “Stay at Home”. Again, for how long, we don't know.

When my mother sent her maid away, she had this worried look. My mother assured her not to worry and that her salary will not be cut. She also gave her some money to tide over the crisis. After all both her sons and their family will not be paid, as they are contractual workers. Before leaving, the maid asked, “Amma, but who will make food for Nair sir ?”. Nair sir, was this neighbour, down the lane, who was old and alone, for whom she cooked everyday and cleaned the house. His son was in the US and the daughter in Canada, and he had lost his wife a few years ago. Five days back, the maid cooked food for a couple of days, packed it all into the fridge, and left. Because he lives in the city, my mother believes he would order food through one of those apps and survive. I do not know whether he regrets this condition or whether he misses a family. His only recreation, a walk up the lane and into the main road, some gossip with more of his peer, has all been stopped with the “Stay at Home” order. His children do call most days and ensure he is fine.

In the last few decades, since the 1980’s, there was this trend, atleast in the urban centres...when we pushed all our children into a globalised world or it took them all away from us. I remember my family also encouraging me to follow the peer, and go to some prospective land, at that time, the Middle-east or the USA. I remember that strange fear that caught me and how emphatically I resisted the prospect. I refused to leave home. They call it Xenophobia. I deny the accusation. Loneliness frightens me, living away from family is unthinkable. But wasn’t it natural ? Now, I see so many of my parent’s contemporaries live the lonely life. Some escape the solitary life with their attitude, many turn recluse.

The “Stay at Home” for close-knit loving families, with some assured salaries or good bank savings is re-connect time, with all the Covid19 induced cautions. For those without assured salaries, and are in some business or service sector that has to work everyday for the money to come in, there is some worry. But many are taking their time to be with the family and reconnect, sometimes with their disturbed relationships. After all, life in the past so many years has not been smooth, with never a moment off for love or care. As a friend who I spoke to said “Many of us haven’t even looked at each other as we used to, way back, when we started life together”. Its mending time for all of us.

But then there are families who are having a hellish time staying together, forced by the order of the lock down - “Stay at home”, is a scream on their heads. These are those whose lives took a dive down, and relationships have become irreparable. As an instance, here was a family whose friend spoke to me. He intervened as a psychiatrist. The father, mother and daughter don’t see eye to eye and the way they cope is to use the home, literally as a lodge, if you understand what I mean to say. Now, they are all at home, together, 24 hours and for 21 days. That is nightmare, but the friend of mine believes this is also an opportunity to start introspecting, relate with each other and mend. But then “they have three separate bedrooms, three mobile phones and their own worlds”. The three are waiting for the parole, literally, to get out of each other.

‘Ubuntu’ is now known to most of us. It has many meanings with the most often quoted being “I am, because you are”. Its an assertion of dependence as against independence, of cooperation as against the individual. We see a lot of Ubuntu in the tribal communities, and even in some farming communities and so less of it in modern developed ones. I believe modern developed societies are as human and need to relate to so many things around, and more so with their own kith and kin, in a deeply dependent manner. If Covid19 can make it happen, so be it !

“You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.”

- Richard Bach

Future is in "Love for Farming" - Day #4 (28 March 2020) - 21 day #Covid19 Lock down

Day #4 (28 March 2020)

Future is in “Love for farming”

Three years ago we moved from the city to a village. Valiyavila in Karakulam is a peri-urban village, near to Trivandrum, and retains a lot of characters of a midland hilly Kerala village. But affluence is also here, mainly due to people migrating for work to the Gulf, bringing back money and investing on that sole gratifying act – building a mansion for their rather small family to live. One of the first things we noticed when we brought the 21 cents of land, four years back, was the land people in our neighbourhood lived in. Each family had a house, anything between 25 cents to an acre or more and it was rubber trees all over. Here and there, negligently, a jackfruit, a wild jack, coconut and mahogany trees could be seen. Even Mango trees were missing. The seasonal - Plantains, Banana and Tapioca were the only food crops a few of them were seen to cultivate, some were consumed; most were sold to the local shops. The hilly terrain - laterite and granite, and rubber plantations, small but very decisive ones overrode everything else.

Inspite of such a lot of land with the local community, we missed seeing anybody growing vegetables for their household needs, not even a papaya tree could be found in most homesteads. Most of the families were dependent on the markets and shops for vegetables. It has always intrigued me as to why people do not use their available land for cultivation. The probable reason is that they never felt like doing so. After all, money must be coming in from some hard working people at home or from the middle-east, and whatever was needed was available in shops.

When we started living here, we were cultivating vegetables, plantains, banana, tapioca, various yams and so on. We also planted a number of trees including mango, jackfruit, pomegranate, gooseberry, java apple, papaya, neem, drumsticks, coconut and many other flowering plants and trees. We even have two large vines of passion fruit. We called our home Vasantham. Most of the trees are very young and nowhere near flowering or fruiting, but we live with the hope of seeing them soon.

The Covid19, and the subsequent lock down of the country, has pressed the panic button in most households now. It is only 4 days into the lock down, and we are already seeing the scurry for buying and stocking vegetables and grocery. Shops open for reduced timings, and its a rush at these times. Kerala is surely managing the crisis much better than the rest of the country, but even here the heat is beginning to be felt. As the crisis intensifies, as has happened in most nations ( and I pray it doesn’t !), food supply would be affected and this will be the first priority that families, communities and the State would have to address on a war footing. Are we, as a people, ready for the long haul ? Can we not kick start an intensive drive to begin cultivation of whatever food crops we can and prepare for the worst ?

Two questions that I am always on the look out for answers is - How much land do we need to produce enough vegetables and fruits for our own consumption, and Why are most of us doing nothing with the land we have ?

Bindu and Bejoy are a wonderful couple and great friends of ours. Bindu studied with me in college. They are both Scientists(Engineer) at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, and are right now leading a voluntarily retired life, after nearly three decades of active employment. They have two children, both grown up. They live in the city in a medium size house on an 8 cent plot. Bejoy has always been very passionate about farming, and maintains a well cared kitchen garden in his 500 sq ft roof-top. He produces most of the local vegetables, and some exotics as well. From their garden, they get varieties of brinjal, ladiesfinger, tomato, chillies, bittergourd, palak, spinach, cluster beans, clove beans, ash gourd and many more.

In the first week of March, the unforeseen happened to them. Their family had to go into a self-quarantine at home, owing to their son who returned from Japan. Fortunately for them, they are all safe and healthy. The best part of this story is described by Bindu in a comment she shared with all our classmates. “...it was all so fast that we could not even visit a shop and prepare for quarantine... So the first thing was consuming all we had in store..even now we are able to survive on that...also our terrace garden was in the peak production and self reliance in vegetables is achieved... except for onion and chilly... also potato. Also two jackfruit trees yielding more than I can handle...”. This was two weeks through the quarantine. Today, when we were talking over the phone, Bejoy answered my query - this 500 sq ft roof-top garden, if well taken care, could easily produce all their local vegetable needs, except those onions and potatoes, for most part of the year. With some little more care and luck, they could drag through the rainy months as well.

This was a very inspiring story to all of us. Many of us regularly talk about the resilience that families must have at the way things are unfolding in our world now. And one of the most important part of the new learning is the “Art of Farming”, farming for our own food. This is not only for self-reliance, but for the joy of it. To see ones own land tended, ones own plants yielding the fruits of nurturing, and the joy of eating what one produces. For many, this is also money saved.

Sini is a farmer in Kovalam, who is a regular supplier of certified local organic vegetables to the Organic Bazaar in Jawahar Nagar, a social enterprise run by the voluntary group Thanal, which I am associated with. Sini lives in just 3 cents of land, and her house has a nearly 750 sq ft roof top. She is an intensive vegetable farmer, and uses that little space to cultivate enough vegetables for their need and to earn anything between Rs 4000 to 10,000 every month.

If you think Bindu’s and Bejoy’s joy in their kitchen garden is simply an exercise in love for farming, then Sini’s is an exercise in livelihood, and both carry the essentials of the future, that no Covid19 can take away from us.