As It Unfolded - Dr. P Sainath's Speech on 13 December

I had gotten to know Dr. P Sainath for the first time in one of the editions of The Hindu Lit for Life, and later through his book, “Everybody Loves A Good Drought”. If the former was a preface as to who Sainath is and what he had been (and has been) doing through PARI (People’s Archive of Rural India), the latter was an eye-opener as to how government policies do not actually benefit the larger sects of rural India.

Yesterday (13 December), this man, whose talks and discussions I always love to listen to, came to my alma mater for the launch of the mobile application of Kurukshetra - the “techno-management” festival.

After every member in the dais had performed the ritual of reading out achievements of the Chief Guest with no enthusiasm, Sainath took over.

With a brief memory down the lane back to his school and college days, which revolved around Chennai (MCC School and Loyola College), and most importantly his witnessing Techofes - the “oldest, college-based cultural extravaganza” - 40 years back, he started off on how the thinking process of engineers and technologists should be.

Technology Stems From Social Context, and Why Swachh Bharat Is A Fallacy:

“All technologies unfold in a social context; if that context goes missing, that particular technology is going to be harmful and useless”, said he, following it up with ‘Thinking Tech, Thinking People, Thinking Planet’ - the three aspects of thinking that needs to be reinstated in engineers.

What followed was a bang. “One project that is doomed to fail in this country because it did not have the three aspects of thinking in sync is SWACHH BHARAT”, he uttered, and it was evident he was not speaking those words just because he is for or against a party or an ideology.

Dr. Sainath substantiated his claim with statistical evidence, stating that the amount allocated for the construction of a toilet in the Swachh Bharat scheme is double that proposed by a report from the UN, dealing with sanitation (he mentioned the name of the actual report, I could not take notes fast, and did not record the scintillating speech; my bad).

I smirked as the other dignitaries on the dais - important members of my alma mater, who either have no say in what the government does, despite being in such respectable positions, OR are not willing to move a stone against the government that is implementing Saffron workshops in college campus (State and Centre; by the way, do they make any difference now in Tamil Nadu?) - watched in dismay witnessing word after word that rained from a man who had seen and interacted with the people who formed the bottommost points of the economic graph of India.

The slaps on the face of this incompetent fascist government continued to rain, as Dr. Sainath took the problem of manual scavenging into context. “The nastiest practice which is non-existent in any other country, but prevalent only in our own land, is the cruelty that fellow human beings are forced to dispose and handle human excreta in human hands.” Data supplemented every statement of Sainath’s, and this was no exception, as he told half a million people are involved in this ruthless practice, half of whom are girls; not women, but girls.

“The focus must not be on the improvement of toilet cleaners, but rather on the complete annihilation of human toilet cleaning itself” - the words were not so loud, but the message indeed was.

Unprecedented Levels of Pollution - What Is Delhi Suffering From:

“Delhi is now officially the most polluted capital city in the world”, beamed Dr. Sainath, and continued, “We always dream of defeating China, right? Here we are, standing proud as the frontrunners in pollution.” Dark humor could be witnessed, as one of India’s first extensive photojournalists kept talking about actualities, the scenarios faced day-in and day-out by the 70% of the population of the sub-continent a.k.a rural India.

Tracing the problem of pollution, he opined, “It is a myth that paddy stubbles burnt in Punjab and Haryana contribute to the humongous levels of pollution in Delhi, because this paddy burning happens only during a fortnight during November/December”. Then came the inevitable question, eventually followed by the answer. “Why do farmers in Punjab and Haryana have to burn paddy stubbles? It is due to the commercialization of agricultural practices; they are left with a mere gap of only 10 days between the harvest of the first crop, and the sowing of the next. This brings the beast called ‘Harvester Combine’ into the picture; this gigantic machine can perform the tasks of a group of farmers working on a field single-handedly - the only difference is that this machine does ruthlessly what the farmers do mercifully. That is, the farmers cut the harvest carefully so as to leave certain parts of it as fodder for the next crop; whereas, Harvester Combine would trawl the entire tract of land, thereby leaving no natural fodder for the subsequent crop. The short span of time to sow means that the land has to be prepared soon, which makes farmers burn stubbles so as to prepare the land on time.”

As I was taking notes, I threw a look around the auditorium, only to observe that nobody was speaking. The meaning of ‘pin-drop silence’ could inexplicably be witnessed, as Dr. Sainath took a breath before continuing what had been an illuminating talk. “However”, he resumed - a five-second break was all that he had needed - “the main reason for pollution is the ridiculous mismatch in the ratio of public and private transport vehicles.” He pointed out that while private automobile production keeps increasing, the modes of public transport have significantly come down in terms of the number of trains and buses. To talk numbers, the metro rail transport of Mumbai, one of the bustling cities of the country, transports 6.3 million passengers to and fro every day; the number is 4 to 5 times higher than the specified capacity it can carry.

Democratisation of Technology - Who Decides, Who Controls:

“The problem of demonetization you people experienced, or watched in televisions and read in newspapers was not all; the problems of rural India post-demonetization were 30 times that of what we urban Indians faced”, was how Dr. Sainath started off when he mentioned about the democratization of technology. The Who’s and How’s that should have been taken into account were not considered, resulting in such a mess.

The spontaneity with which he could just point out statistical metrics on the go for each and every argument he made not only intensified the talk, but also made the audience picture the scenario completely. Of demonetization, the speaker gave away the following insights:

Less than one-fifth of ATMs in the country are located in the rural areas of the country which form two-thirds of India.

Out of those ATMs which are located in the rural areas, only 50% to 60% is operative at any given point in time.

Those ATMs that operate only do so for 2% of the total time in a day (do the math; 2% of 24 hours)

The questions that were indirectly thrown open to the listeners for deep contemplation were these:

Who decides what technology or what reform should be imposed?

How does the implementation of a policy come about? How should it actually come about?

The Less-Discussed Stories:

Majoritarianism:

With the pressing problems of the day - starting from environment and pollution, to economy and agriculture - being covered, Dr Sainath moved on to the next issue; perception of news. “There are 780 living languages in India, out of which six languages are spoken by 50 million people, 3 languages are spoken by 80 million people. What happens to the remaining 770?”, he asked, bringing the problem of majoritarianism to the forefront, supplementing it with a more relatable piece of information. “In the last years - between 2013 and 2017 - any news, whatsoever, about rural India occupied only 0.67% of the front page in all the major national newspapers combined. This is in contrast to the 66% of the front page news always being about New Delhi.” He also added that these nuances can be understood and questioned, only if we keep ourselves aware.

Land and sea:

The speaker also touched upon the day-to-day issues faced by the fishermen and the farmers. “We know fishermen are dying in groups every year when they venture out into the deep sea, but do we know why? They use Catamarans to go to deep seas, which is risking their own lives, and they know it. Catamarans are suited only for shallow fishing. They are not strong and stable enough to witness high tides, and hence disaster keeps happening.”

At this point in time, I was curious, because I always have had a lot of doubts as to what exactly happens during fishing, more so than the questions on their impoverished status, and the uncertainty of their community’s survival. Just when I thought of raising my hand to ask a question - nobody had asked any questions so far, and I was uncertain if I could, because (a) I was an unwelcome guest, and (b) The subsequent moments of the talk had so far answered the questions that kept arising - he started describing the problem with trawlers.

Trawlers are basically the aquatic version of ‘Harvester Combine’; they would just loot the fish near shore by digging deep into the water bodies, thereby damaging the mineral life in the Kingdom of Blue, eventually spoiling the chain of balance in the ecosystem.

“We all think that fishermen go to deep seas, because that’s where they get a lot of catch; this is utterly false. Nearshore is the place where you see a lot of bounties, but trawlers just loot them away totally. Smaller fishermen are forced to go to high tides for their survival, because they do not have a choice.”

According to Dr. Sainath, this oligopoly of sorts gives the major chunk of revenue to the trawler owners; again, an example to drive home this situation was highlighted by him with the Pudhukottai drought, which has become common and is becoming a very normal periodical occurrence in the course of years.

Here is a glimpse of what happened:

There is a village called Gandharva Kottai in Pudhukottai district. There was a chronic drought at a particular point in time, and it naturally led to water scarcity. The obvious immediate solution was to build wells at certain locations, so as to tap more water.

Now, there were two communities in the region - Reddiyars and Muthurajas. While the lands of Reddiyars were not as good in terms of the opportunities of getting water as those of the Muthurajas’, the Reddiyars had the wealth to dig deep mechanical wells; they went deep down fetching water. On the other hand, the Muthurajas could only muster up enough to build manmade wells (kenaru). Though the Muthurajas had good land which was capable of getting relatively larger quantities of water, the problem here was that both these lands had to fetch water from a common aquifer, which meant mechanical wells prevailed. The defeat of the Muthurajas meant they had to rest all their lands into the ownership of Reddiyars.

He told this and paused for a while; the auditorium was dumbstruck. There was absolutely no noise, and every pair of eye kept focussing on the podium and the speaker, with no slightest unwavering of concentration. This man had come, spoken for half an hour, changed the perspectives of the audience for the better, created a paradigm shift in the mindset, and was standing there, about to conclude.

“What I would suggest or rather request you, engineers, to do is, think of problems from a social context; see what best you can do, and do your best. Thank you!”

The applause from the 50-odd people who had filled up just over half the auditorium was enough evidence that it had been a meaningful evening.