Poverty versus Deprivation or threat thereof

“In developing countries, the root causes of food insecurity include: poverty, war and civil conflict, corruption, national policies that do not promote equal access to food for all, environmental degradation, barriers to trade, insufficient agricultural development, population growth, low levels of education, social and gender inequality, poor health status, cultural insensitivity, and natural disasters. In the United States, the primary cause of food insecurity is poverty. Low levels of education, poor health status, and certain disabilities also increase the risk of food insecurity for individuals and households in the United States. (The photo of the row of houses is from the Brightmoor neighborhood in Detroit said to be one of the poorest in the US. )
Globally, certain groups of people are more vulnerable to food insecurity than others. Vulnerable groups include: victims of conflict (e.g., refugees and internally displaced people); migrant workers; marginal populations (e.g., school dropouts, unemployed people, homeless people, and orphans); dependent populations (e.g., elderly people, children under five, and disabled and ill people); women of reproductive age; ethnic minorities; and low literacy households.”

There are over 1000 papers, articles, and other documents on the USDA website on Food Security/Insecurity. People get their degrees, go to conferences like the one picture of the women at the UN reporting on poverty, write papers, and get grants but the problems are chronic. I find it ironic that my apartment is surrounded by tarp/tent villages of laborer families. We are in the MLA (members of the legislative assembly) which runs the city. A recent report says that half of the world’s hungry live in India. We’re in one of the high tech centers of the country. The homily at mass every Sunday is about taking care of the poor. Yet the scene doesn’t perceptibly change.

What we take as knowledge is strictly observation such as the descriptions of food insecurity above. We can describe it, we can call meetings, but we, particularly in the West, can’t fathom the issue. It’s like a discussion I recently had with our daughter when she read about the deplorable conditions of the athlete housing for the Commonwealth Games. While it was a light discussion, there were some issues that Leigh just couldn’t believe. One was how the construction companies that built the venues for the games could skirt the child labor laws. Well, all the stakeholders: government, contractors, and the laborer families all are complicit in the circumvention. In the last post, I discussed how families from the area around the government schools have to make a choice: send the kid to school where they get clothing and a meal (thus less out-of-pocket [if one had a pocket] costs) versus having the child work or beg would bring in more revenue. And in a sense, that is the level of decision-making with which the folks that write the papers, give presentations, work on dissertations have no empathy. They may have good intentions, but most lack the ability to bridge the thought gap.
If you read my cathartic post a few days back, I related how our experiment with domestic help came to an unpleasant end for all parties. But it serves as an example of my inability to (1) understand the inertia under which decision choices are made and (2) to tolerate the consequences of decisions that are made due to that inertia. As we prepared to move into our apartment about two months back, I was tasked with set up and logistics. This brought me to Big Bazaar and a more in-depth relation with Hypercity as I bought what I considered the essentials for maintaining the apartment. We’re talkin’ real basics: cleaning items including mop, buckets (they were on a two-for-one special at Big Bazaar), cleaning products with brand names such as Lizol, the branded ripoff of Lysol. On the first day of work the domestic, Madavi, complained to our former buddy Buchi Babu that she didn’t like the mop we had purchased. It was a synthetic fiber. She strongly preferred a traditional cotton mop. Besides the fact that the new mop could be wrung out utilizing the mechanism on the handle, the fibers also picked up and held more material (read dirt) than the traditional cotton mop you have to hand wring out, and on and on. Anyway, what I realize in retrospect is that Madavi cleaned the way she knew how and didn’t want to deal with the new technologies including my microfiber dust mop for which she preferred the brooms you see sweeping the streets. The inability for us to resolve these differences, the consequences of which I contend are that MY way leads to a cleaner apartment, just could not be reconciled.

While my example is trivial, it points to the grander issue that if we can’t reconcile the mop differences, how can we possibly reconcile the larger issues? Well, the answers are home grown efforts, not the extortionist efforts of the UN to global transference of wealth as the whining, pantie-waist, hand-wringing reports of how far off the mark for the 2015 eradication of global poverty were center stage at last week’s general assembly.

Home grown is key. Most of you know that micro-financing first showed success in Bangladesh. Mohamed Yunus, now burdened by being a Nobel Peace Prize winner, started the practice from his bank he started with $27 USD in 1974. Now he has 6.6 million borrowers, mostly women. Mr. Yunus is a worldwide example of how entrepreneurship works for the poor. I’ve already related how there are efforts here in India to do the same and, of course, do it better than someone from, tisk, Bangladesh. Now, I’m proposing to my acquaintance, the Hyderabad homey now teaching at Bowling Green State University, that we look at what types of support are required to increase the likelihood of any one loan holder to succeed.

During a Skype conversation, our son, David, suggested that no more studies need to be conducted. His analysis: micro-financing works. However, I explained that Professor Gajjala needed to publish an article, so David begrudgingly relented as a favor. But David also points out that the interest that the micro-financed loans charge would make Chili Palmer proud and David did use “loan sharking” as a substitute for micro-financing. But David has that Jesuit tendency to cut through the clutter, much like his Mother.
You see pockets of these entrepreneurial activities throughout Asia and even some in Africa (which is the only ray of hope I see there). Small projects that help individuals, for which the initial monetary investment is very small, do not pique the interest of local government officials. I intentionally did not put corrupt as an adjective with local government officials as it would be redundant.

The long and short is, the US “poor” are not “world poor.” You have choices in the US. You have resources in both the public and private sectors. You can choose to be uneducated which is a key contributor to poverty which is a key contributor to food insecurity. You can choose to live on the streets. But in the US, you are never in a deprived state, at least for the long term unless you want to be. Here in India, you can be in a deprived state for generations, and in some areas, for millennia.

Here I’ve experienced a rudimentary system that tries to provide some level of education from the public sector and now some opportunities from the private sector. This gives people the opportunity to choose from some alternatives. What I have also seen is that a great deal of people choose to do something, even if it is an untouchable family living in and working daily in the “recycle” centers spread throughout Hyderabad.

The problem is one which I noted long ago for which evidence continues to pop up as we visit the various sites around the city. I will talk more about that in my post about Golconda and Chowmahalla Palace.



PTYL

Another Study in Contrasts

You will find Deb's experience at the Independence Day celebration at one of the Novartis-sponsored government schools in one of the earlier blogs. Deb and I went with the Rainbow Volunteers from Novartis to the Sri Vinayaka Nagar Government School on Saturday to deliver message of health and hygiene (the OTHER Novartis-sponsored school went to the planetarium) and to help with story-telling with messages of honesty, loyalty,and hard work. Be advised that the Rainbow Volunteers in Hyderabad have NO association with any American organization that has Rainbow in their name or Log Cabin or LGBT or Cave Bear, etc. Are we clear? All the stories and the presentations were in Telugu, so Deb would smile and appear to be listening intently so the kids would get the hint. That’s a pretty big task as each classroom has about 50 students – no desks, a few books, scraps of paper, bits of chalk. But the kids are pretty good to work with.
I had gone to Big Bazaar on Friday to pick up 100 toothbrushes and 100 personal-sized hand sanitizers. It must have set off a silent alarm. A department manager came over asking me why I was buying all the products. I explained about the volunteering, but they still accused me of buying them for resale. When I finally convinced the departmental people I was buying these for charity, the people at the register were freaked out counting and recounting 100 little bottles and 50 2-packs of toothbrushes. Of course, those people queuing up behind me were not amused.

The hygiene presentation was like the ones your gym teachers would give. At least at my high school, the male gym teachers had to take the male “health” classes which consisted of “wash your hands and brush your teeth.” Looking back, I think the football coach probably would have told us more, but anything about STDs would have brought the wrath of god down. Our women’s sports coach was suspected of being a founding member of local Sappho society along with one English teacher and a vocal teacher. However, Coach Coach’s health instructions to the girls were “wash your hands, and brush your teeth”. Again, anything else would not go down well. But we did have a PowerPoint presentation that was played on an 11-inch laptop so the 50 kids were scrunched very close together. However, as you can see, with the size of these kids, you can tight-pack them into a fairly condensed cluster. I was tasked with giving out rewards for participation. I really couldn’t tell if these were the kids that were actively watching, but we gave them the box of pencils just the same. We did have to watch giving out the hand sanitizers because – NOBODY has ever seen hand sanitizers. We gave them out to the older kids with specific instructions NOT to drink the sanitizers. One little kid who wandered into the room was given toothbrushes and then was bugging me for hand sanitizers. I could tell from his tenacity and skill at working through the bigger kids and continuing to tap on my leg that he has experience on the street begging.
All the girls wanted pictures with Deb. Eventually many of the boys did as well. Here’s the rest of the sights in the school.


And here’s where the school is located. Yes,that IS raw sewage running in the streets. Ashraf, Deb’s driver, was getting worried as we drove to the school. He kept saying: “This is a dangerous area. I would not go here at night.” Deb told him to “man up” and follow the Ambassador which was leading the way. We also learned that the meal that the kids got at the school was probably the only meal they get each day. Their parents have to decide to send them to the school and risk losing income or consider that it’s one less mouth to feed.

So wash your hands and be damned thankful for what you have. I've got the Chowmahalla Palace and Fort Golconda for my next blog. See you then!

Joyous Noise

Yesterday was the Ganesh immersion. That’s when the literally thousands of statues of Ganesh are taken to lotus ponds around the area and sunk to celebrate the end of the 10 days that Ganesh gets his due. There was, for the last two nights, singing and drums beating that you could hear from all directions around our apartment.
The Telugu language news stations were carrying the live feeds from various “official” Ganesh immersion sites around the city, the largest being the large lake at the center of Hyderabad. There thousands of men dancing, singing, or just milling around the thousands of vendors who were there, undoubtedly with Ganesh’s blessing, to ply their trade.
But this event reinforced some of my initial observations and information on how important this particular god is to the Hindus. One of the families in our apartment building came back from a ceremony and the father was dressed in a white robe much like you see on priests. He had a multi-colored bindi on his forehead, the meanings of which lies in the sixth chakra which is "command" center right between the eyebrows.
The military and police were out in full force yesterday as they say they will be as well tomorrow. The Kashmir continues to be a problem for BOTH Delhi and Islamabad. The Kashmiris who are under Indian rule want independence and the Kashmiris who are under Pakistani rule have welcomed Chinese troops into their northern region. I believe the Chinese President intimated in a speech to the Central Party in Beijing that the Kashmiris were revolting. I assume from the Chinese military response, he was referring to their stone-throwing, screaming-hissy-fit-running-through-the-streets-fists-raised demonstrations as potential instability. The present day Chinese hate instability, particularly in this area next to the tranquility of Tibet.
And speaking of Pakistan, or Paukeestaan as the US administration and State Department have been training all spokespersons to pronounce it, has been embroiled in a crisis of epic proportions, much to the glee of the Indians. You’ve probably read the entire page one, above the fold articles about the cricket game fixing scandal. Oh, you haven't? Well, at least five members of the Paukeestaaniii cricket team were sent back home after British newspapers published stories of a bookie and these Paukeestaaniii players were caught with their hands firmly placed around money for throwing, or pitching if you like, a game or two. Sticky wicket, what?
Well, of course, India is now being laughed at by the crowds on the Paukeestaan side of the border at Wagah. This is NOT the waga waga that Fozzie Bear used in his stand-up comedy gig on the Muppet Show, but the only legitimate border crossing between India and Paukeestaan. But if you go to this link: http://ishare.rediff.com/video/travel/india-pakistan-wagah-border-ceremony/393964, you’ll see what happens daily on the Paukeestaaniii side of the border. This is what you get when a colonial power leaves a power vacuum. Well, no one I know actually owns a power vacuum in India, but that’s because the floors are all marble. But. . . . . . . I digress.
India has 10 days to get its fecal matter together as the Commonwealth games are to start in Delhi. Leigh e-mailed me this afternoon with four photos of which only one REALLY gave you a picture of the desperate straits the venues and facilities for the games are really in. Below are some shots that the Times of India just published about the athlete housing. Now, all new construction is a little dirty before the facilities get a certificate of occupancy. I wrote to Leigh that our new construction in Raleigh, NC had a lot of construction dust and debris that needed to be cleared and cleaned before we moved in. But this is a little scary since the athletes arrive in the next week. New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland, and Britain are all saying they will be delaying sending their participants. The opposition party is calling for the chairman of the games to resign. Now THAT's really going to help. He's had seven years to get ready, that didn't happen (another surprise???) and now the games could just crater and it's Paukeestaan's turn to laugh. But we report, you decide.





Come on! Rome wasn't built in a day. Oh, and Canada, not to be confused with Oh, Canada, is threatening to pull out of the games all together, except for the Quebec attendees who say they will do everything opposite of the rest of the country, just like they've done forever. Viva la Quebec Lib!

As Predictable as the Sunrise

When we moved into the apartment, our relocation expert, Vinnie Kumar, suggested we have some domestic help. He said that there were people working in the building that could probably help. And who other than Buchi Babu was able to secure someone to help us. Buchi was arranging the timing, cost, and tasks.
Reluctantly Deb and I said “yes, we’ll try it”. Six weeks later, two mops, several ruined items, and a new street sweeping broom later, we’ve decided the experiment was really NOT worth it.
Now there is much more that leads up to this, so I will start with, whom else, Buchi Babu. Buchi’s assignment, according to Dr. Reddy (now she’s no longer one of the Reddy, Reddi, Reddy neighbors anymore since she and her family moved into a new villa in Secunderabad that combines not only their home but their “body and mind” clinic as well) is to maintain our apartment. Buchi initially took this task on by using his friends as maintenance which includes his friend that took the role of electrician/plumber/carpenter. I am reluctant to use the term handyman because I don’t want to embarrass Buchi’s friend or disparage some very good people I’ve known who were truly handy persons. Then there was Mr. Gums who is the husband of the doctors’ Reddy cook. Mr. Gums, I’m convinced, is the serial paint spatterer throughout the apartment. As I continue to remove paint spills, roller overruns, and the ubiquitous paint spatters on everything that shouldn’t have paint on it, I know that someone who has no idea what he is doing painted the apartment. Now, Mr. Gums is also the Reddy’s gardener. One of these days we’re gonna have to see their new place. Deb is convinced I’m beginning to show signs of dementia and that is one of Dr.-Mr. Reddy’s specialties on the “mind” side so that gives us an excuse to go. But for the second time in the last month, Buchi brought over nylon window screening as a solution to our lack of a metal-mesh vent screen in the range hood. But Buchi’s problems were compounded about two weeks ago when his father became ill. And this is where the predictability starts.
Now I have to stop here for a moment as one of the six green parrots who live in the penthouse on top of the Hill Top Residency is hanging on my broadband wire just outside my office window and squawking wildly to his friends and relatives. As with all the electronics cables for the building, our broadband cable was flung over the side of the building from somewhere above. The TV cable is the same way, only it cascades from an interior atrium area. But, as usual, I digress. Channeling Grandma Ruth’s storytelling again. All of a sudden, a squadron of the parrot’s family comes swooping in to displace the pigeons that also claim part of my office window ledge as their turf which they mark out and you can imagine how they do that. There is a whole community of at least a dozen different bird species that populate the building and cliff face around us. The one large raptor cruises by daily like Don Fanucci (the Black Hand in The Godfather II) causing the pigeons to fly off in all directions. One of the parrots returned to perch on the window ledge and tap on the window like the beggars tapping on the car windows.
Sadly, Buchi’s dad died after a couple of days and Buchi had to go to his village for the funeral and be with his family. Now, while tragic for Buchi’s family, Buchi’s departure exposed a great deal of what Buchi took to be his job of taking care of the apartment. Buchi had explicitly told me to pay him for the domestic help. As Buchi was away when the help was to be paid, we paid her directly, only to find out the amount we agreed on was 25% less than what the help was expecting. So sorry! We paid what we had agreed on with Buchi. The domestic was not happy, but then again, neither were we. Also, while Buchi was away, the power went out late on a hot muggy night and the inverter failed to work. Deb was certainly not happy. Fortunately the power failure only lasted about an hour, but it exposed a chronic concern about the quality of electrical work that was done to install the inverter. Upon inspection, I couldn’t help note that the inverter had actually been disconnected from the entire electrical circuit. Upon a simple switch-the-wires process, I reconnected the inverter. It began its charging process. The inverter was put to the test the very next day as a power disruption occurred early in the morning. I immediately went to the master bedroom where Deb was still asleep and noted that the fan was still working (a key criterion for the inverter’s successful operation) and then proceeded to the office where the florescent light was also working (the other key criterion). So, the system worked well. The power was restored, the inverter recharged. OK, OK.
Upon Buchi’s return to Hyderabad, Dr. Mrs. Reddy asked him to pick up some stuff for us which is a constant annoyance to me. Don’t get it for me, tell me where to get it. When he came to the apartment he looked like a feral dog that came out on the wrong side of one of the territorial disputes we hear each night. He gave me the materials and told me he HAD to speak with me. I told him I couldn’t that day, but the next day would be good. My initial thought was that the Reddys had fired him for all the things that had popped up during his absence. But I told him that we didn’t want the domestic help anymore and to tell them not to come – ever again. The next day Buchi shows up and says he’s waiting for the domestic help to arrive. Not good. So we have a row when she arrives and complains that she was underpaid and overworked. I think I sprouted another six arms (Angry Shiva Time) and started yelling. Deb came in and like an angry Parvati or even Kali, she was sprouting arms and I thought she might add a couple of skulls to her belt as well. I then gave half a month’s pay to the domestic and told her to leave. I told Buchi to leave. Stress levels declined dramatically.
But Buchi came back like a bad penny later in the afternoon. It was then that the predictability manifested itself. He showed me a picture of his mother he had on his phone. She was seated in the corner of a darkened room, looking terribly sad. He then showed me pictures of the orphans at the orphanage in his village that his church sponsors. Then he told me he wanted Deb and I to join him at his village in December for Christmas. But then he told me he was personally asking me for financial assistance for the orphans and for his widowed mother who now owes about 100,000 Rupees to the hospital where his dad stayed until he died. THIS is and was predictable. We had read in the literature, we were told by the cultural trainer, and we were advised by other expats: all the folks will be asking you for money for their sick relatives, funerals, or whatever. While this is NOT Buchi, you get the picture. Now I have to tell Buchi that Deb and I talked about it and (1) before we leave we may contribute to the orphans, but (2) we’re NOT contributing to the Buchi debt relief trust because (a) we don’t trust him, and (b) we’ve got debts of our own.
I feel much better now. It’s much like I imagine being hit by a speeding bus. You never believe it will happen to you until you step out into the street and in this case, over a pile of litter and into a pool of water from the street flooding from the monsoon.
Catharsis over and out.

Temple Tales

One of the unique places we explored in Chennai was a temple complex that housed shrines to Ganesh, Shiva, and Parvati. But the interesting part of the complex was the multi-purpose social aspects associated with each of the shrines and open spaces. You did have to remove shoes but there were entrepreneurs who would insure your shoes would be there when you exited – for a nominal fee.
When you entered the complex, the first shrine was, you guessed it, for Ganesh. This is where I observed the worshipers engaged in the ritual cleansing of Ganesh by the priest for a blessing that was bestowed on a couple who paid to have their names mentioned to the god by the priest.
In the open hall the temple offers food for those who need it. There were plenty of people who were taking advantage of this boon. I’ve chosen to let the pictures show the story here. This is Shiva's temple
The tower contains over 1100 images of gods and every three years each one has to be cleaned and/or repaired and painted as needed.

Pondicherry Meets Zardoz

There are three memorable things about Pondicherry: (1) our hotel/B&B, (2) the shore, and (3) Sri Aurobindo Ashram. I want to start with number 3 first because it was one of those flashbacks which might be like re-reading Carlos Castaneda’s “Conversations with Don Juan” even though you hadn’t read it the first time. Sherman, set the way-back machine to 1968 when “Mother” started the Ashram in honor of the guru for whom she was (most likely) consort. After his death in the 1950s, it took her a few years to found the Ashram. But how appropriate could it be: 1968? The Ashram was envisioned as a place with no religion, but totally spiritual, no governance, people living in peace and harmony. The first thing that flashed into MY mind was George Carlin’s role as Frank Madras (how appropriate) in Outrageous Fortune in which his response to Bette Midler’s exhortation to work for peace and harmony was “The 60’s were good to you”. The next thing that popped into my head was the very campy movie that Sean Connery did after his last James Bond film. It was about a Utopian enclave surrounded by the riff-raff like me. I still like Sean’s diaper costume in that movie.
But after 22 years, the vision that the “Mother” had is finally coming to fruition. Here is the dome in which only the truly committed and serious minds can enter to gaze at the crystal orb and meditate.

Deb and I were trying to decide if “committed and serious” really meant that the individuals that can go into the dome are the ones who have renounced religion, governance, and given their personal assets to the trust. Not THAT’s commitment or at least grounds for commitment. OK, I’m not going to get (too) judgmental or cynical. But of the 1500 (about 3 percent of the anticipated global village that will reside there – eventually) who live near the Ashram, I did not see them slaving away to build their Utopian village. In fact, all the laborers that I saw were definitely locals that are most likely the lowest caste. And that is just another reason Zardoz came to mind. But there were thousands of cashew nut trees from which the trust gets a bundle of money from (a) brewing a wicked local alcohol from the cashew fruit and (b) selling the cashews rather than letting the Iranians get the revenues.
Now our hotel was very quaint. It was an old mansion in the White part of town (the Indian part being the Black part of town). Let’s channel Grandma Ruth. The mansion had been on the verge of condemnation, which means it would have stood in a dilapidated state for another 100 or so years until two Indian entrepreneurs who just love French Provincial antiques, renovated it into a bed and breakfast for which you can see for yourself is rather charming

Deb and I strolled from the hotel in the late afternoon to the sea wall promenade and ended up at an eclectic restaurant for dinner.

The next morning we went to mass at one of the three main Catholic churches in the city. We had been told that the 8:30 mass was in English – NOT.
It was Tamil. And just like our Telugu masses in Hyderabad, you get the gist of the mass, but the music is definitely regional. After that, we took time to take a few pictures at the sea wall and then headed back to Chennai where Deb found some very good silks at a shop that Rajkumar promised that even HE purchased gifts for his wife there, meaning that the prices were very good. Deb agreed.
Got to go for now. Talk to you soon.