Rural India – The Untold Truth
“I’m going to have to cover a continent in a very brief period of time because that is what rural India is about! It is a continent within a sub-continent, and without exception,the most complex aspect of planet earth” began Mr. P. Sainath, former rural affairs editor of The Hindu, and winner of the Raymon Magsaysay Award for his passionate commitment as a journalist to restore the rural poor to India’s consciousness,moving the nation to action.
“When I talk about rural India, I’m talking about the 833 million human beings speaking 780 languages – six of which are spoken by over 50 million,three of which are spoken by over 80 million, and one of which is spoken by more than 500 million people! Andat the other end of
the spectrum, are a large number of languages spoken by a million or less.The Jeru language of Andaman, for instance, is down to its last speaker,while the Saimarese of Tripura, is left to only seven people(although there are about 300 tribals),the younger generation has completely lost the language.”
“Of these 780 languages, less than 4%, i.e., 32 languages,go beyond the 5th standard, and most of them end at the 8th standard.Thus, apart from the 780, you have 225 languages that died in the last 50 years This is because, languages only live if they are spoken at home and are taught in schools. So we have an incredible amount of wealth, the most complex linguistic cultures on the planet, but it is dying very fast,” he exclaimed.
“Every year, I take a 280 km drive from Kalahandi to Koraput in Odisha, a place in Malkangiri called Balimela or Chitrakund. It takes us, my journalist friends and I, a week to do it because we stop every half hour at every village market and talk to people. So why does it take us so long to travel a 280 km route? On that road arespoken 40 distinct languages! They are neither Indo-Tibetan, nor Indo-European.We don’t know what they are,but there are 40 unique languages spoken by about 30-70 thousand people. And this astonishing picture of linguistic diversity has no parallel to it anywhere on this planet.”
Mr. P Sainath then asked if any one had a count of the number of schools for weaving there were in the country? Or the number of schools for pottery? However, what we do know is that weavers are even worse off than farmers, due to the large number of suicides amongst them.
Today, the great Kanjeevaram saree is given heavy competition by the Chinese-made ones. The Indian Kanjeevaram sarees, which are made by hand, costs you anywhere between 10-25 thousand rupees. But the Chinese ones are made on powerlooms and sold for as low as three thousand! This is made possible as they have taken a community of about 80 weavers and settled them in Guangzhou and actually treated them like human beings. And using those designs, they are giving the Indian Kanjeevaram sarees a run for their money.”
Elaborating further, he talked about the most unbelievable occupational diversity that exists in the country. “There are some professions, which have ceased to exist in the rest of the world, but have survived in South East Asia – with a bulk of them being in India. Take for example the Toddy- tapper. He is the guy who climbs date palm trees to tap toddy, which can either be converted to toddy or into palm jaggery (gud).”
“Do you know how much work a toddy tapper does? In season, an average toddy tapper in Tamil Nadu, services 50 trees, three times a day. Three times because in the morning, when the sap is running, he makes an incision, ties a pot there onto the tree at 30 feet from the ground and comes down – all this while using only his legs for support. He’s got no ladder or no risk insurance, one drop and he could be dead. In three hours, the pot fills up, so he goes back with the second pot holding on the tree only with his legs, he removes one pot and puts the other. He does this three times a day, therefore on each tree he makes 6 trips up and down. If you were to calculate fifty trees into six trips, wherein let’s say, the average height of the tree is 20 feet (though it is much higher), in a single day, the Indian toddy tapper climbs more feet almost twice the height of the Empire State Building!”
“Then you have the Khalasis of Malabar, an entirely Muslim community which has been into hydraulics long before the time of Christ. This was essentially the West Asian trade route on which St. Thomas is said to have come to Kodungalloor in Kerala. So what do the Khalasis do? In the ancient times, one of the biggest concerns was to launch ships, which were built on dry land, without damaging them, as they were made of wood. The Phoenicians did that in Europe, but now only the Khalasis do it. They are still launching Barges and Dhows in Bahrain, Dubai and in Saudi Arabia with over 2000 years of technical expertise in hydraulics”, he confirms.
“In 2000, Kerala was hit by a cyclone which blew the train off a bridge in the middle of the river. The army was called to retrieve the train but they couldn’t, as the cranes couldn’t get close enough, and building pontoon bridges would be impossible due to the cost, so it was decided that the train would rest at the bottom of the river. The Kerala Government then officially contracted the Khalasis, who brought the train to shore in 100 hours! With the river being in spate, they created underground canals, channels, fake embankments and used the water current to push the train to the shore from where the army cranes picked it up and took it out.”
“However, apart from the brilliance and beauty of Rural India, there is also a substantial degree of Barbarism, atrocities of caste, or of oppression on women. The fact is that an incredible transition is taking place wherein the beautiful and the exotic are dying, and the barbaric and the negative are being strengthened like the Khaps of Haryana. Thirty years ago when I started, the Khaps of Haryana feared the law and order missionary. Today the policemen are Khap members; the police chief is a Khap member. What do you do?”
“And more importantly, all of this is completely missed by our media because they are revenue driven and will not cover anything that doesn’t bring them money – and I say this as someone who was only in mainstream media for 36 years. Do you know that as per the Center for Media Studies in Delhi run by N. Bhaskara Rao, forget rural India, we don’t even cover Urban