Next stop Haryana

As of tomorrow morning I pack my bags and kiss Lucknow goodbye (for now).

Having just enjoyed a luxurious evening with an extremely gracious Indian Administrative Service Officer and his family, I feel my feet just briefly touching the ground in this strange city of contrasts. The Bhagavad Gita (2.45) councils freedom from the sorrows of contradiction ("the sorrow of the pairs of opposites") but that implies a detachment I have yet to achieve.

I returned from discussions of government regulation, EPZs, communist politics in West Bengal, and Calcutta's famous rasgoolas in a jasmine-scented Ambassador, with 3 forms of air conditioning , 3 types of pillows and at least 3 degrees of separation from the outside world. It's not that I feel guilty about the comfort I just enjoyed. I can accept comfort.

What unsettles me is the fact that I just effortlessly tread a bridge between a successful, hardworking government servant's abode and a small but elegant hotel. This bridge actually spanned a wide breath of broken road, open sewage, and lives too different and difficult to sketch here. It's easy to call such bridges 'modernity', 'progress', or 'development.' This is unsettling part - the strong desire to make these lofty bridges over continuing poverty count for something more than they are. I'd rather not equate progress with a comfortable shortcut, and yet it is a tangible metric, for me at least...

So on to Haryana. As one of the wealthiest states in the country and cradle of the Green Revolution, its capital, Chandigarh, is a gem: the wealthiest city in the country (income p.c. approx. $1,500), relatively high literacy levels (73%), and a pinnacle of modern design (architecture thanks to Paris's Le Corbusier). Yet progress has its own unique form in Haryana. Despite its great wealth and education, it has one of the most skewed sex ratios in the country (777 women to every 1,000 men).

What piqued my interest today was the new state policy providing incentives of Rs. 50,000 for inter-caste marraiges. This holds as long as at least one partner is from a Scheduled Caste. Yet the same papers that discuss this drive for increased tolerance report honor-killings in neighboring Punjab and shootings just East of Haryana in Uttar Pradesh due to inter-caste marraiges. Is Haryana really prepared for change?

The optimistic side of me says Yes, Absolutely! thanks to hard evidence of Haryanavis' willingness to hold state officials to their word. Apparently, as the weather gets hot villagers are making sure government power officials deliver on promised power provision:

While an electricity department officer was recently tied to a tree, another was bullied into standing in the blazing sun until he swooned.

Power was quickly restored after both the incidents, but that is not the point. ''The point, really, is that we are increasingly being targeted,'' said a fearful RC Jagga, deputy general secretary, All Haryana Power Corporation Workers Union.

''There have been incidents when villagers made electricity employees run around in the sun or house arrested them. Locking up power stations and electricity offices has become routine. There is a huge gap between demand and availability of electricity and it better get addressed fast.'' ("Akhada Tactics," Sukhbir Siwach, Times of India)

WOW. Now that's government accountability.

So I'll spend about three days in Chandigarh - as much time as it takes to meet several High Court Justices, lawyers, journalists from the Hindustan Times, and an IAS officer who used to be the District Magistrate of the Haryana district I'll study: Yamunanagar. Hopefully I'll also assemble a team of bright-eyed RAs who will shortly follow me to Yamunanagar district. Then it's a simple hop, skip, and a jump into the gaping abyss that is Field Research. Wish me luck!

Mixed praise for the Cinchona tree

This post can be compressed into one small shriek of rage.

I've been trying to be good, taking my doxycicline pills every morning and evening to ward off malaria . The first breath of the monsoons already graces Lucknow - quiet gray sheets of rain that come and go without warning - so I assume the mosquitoes will arrive shortly. Better safe than sorry, right?

Wrong. Unfortunately, the drug manufacturers don't seem to have my best interests at heart. Despite the fact that 40% of Malarial infections in the US are imported from India (and another 33% come from SE Asian refugees according to the CDC), they've gone and made Doxcycline useless for any respectable Indian as well as for anyone respecting Indian Tradition. Why, you may ask? Because Doxycycline cannot be taken within two hours of consuming dairy products.

Why is this problematic? CHAI. One cannot begin one's day in India without chai. It's not only unheard of, there's also really no other alternative. Parathas, omlettes, roti, all are lovely but they're later morning meals, more like lunch than breakfast, and never available for the early-riser. Why not have chai without milk, you might ask? Chai without milk is not only absurd, it's impossible. Given that most Indians use powdered milk to make big batches of chai in pots stirred for hours, there is no requesting your cup without milk. It just doesn't happen.

The well-intentioned uselessness of Doxycycline reminds me of the first, equally useless advice I received when traveling to the Developing World. I had stopped to visit an old friend, Christine, in southern France as I made my way to Senegal. I stayed with Christine's host family in Montpellier and was given a stern lecture on Safety by her kind but narrow-minded host father who had been a doctor stationed in Deepest Africa. He warned me never to walk barefoot on the sand, nor walk on a beach without a parasol, nor sit directly on a mat or blanket placed directly on any type of ground. The Insects, and their more sinister friend, Disease Lurk Everywhere, I was informed. You Must Evade Them At Every Step.

Now excuse me, but haven't the people of India and Africa found less absurd responses to tropical diseases than either (a) taking drugs that not only make you lactose intolerant, but also caution you to avoid EXPOSURE TO DIRECT AND ARTIFICIAL SUNLIGHT (yes, another benefit of Doxycycline which has brought me close to fainting more times than I can count), or (b) force you to bundle yourself up in cheese cloth before setting foot in Wild Africa? No chai, no sun, and ridiculous clothing? What a life. I'm hoping something better than sickle-cell disease will come my way.

Also, another note on false solutions. Take a look at the first happy picture of the Right to Information Act's supposed access to documents, then look at the actual documents I was able to access after last year's summer of research... Disappointing?

OPTIMISM: James John

“You pinch the administration and they will respond. The RTI act has kept hope alive.” RAVI NAIR, India Today

PESSIMISM: UP's Land Records



<- Storage facilities!

Food notes

Indian news headlines about inflation, particularly in food prices, suggests major cause for concern. Inflation rose above 11% last week, higher than anytime in the past 13 years. The BBC raises a particularly dire story from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, whose statistics say wheat and onion prices rose by about 50% in many small cities since January 2008. Additionally, the cost of rice has risen more than 40%. According to Indian Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, there are more "difficult times" ahead for the economy.

Both politicians and a recent Oxfam report claim inflation is a grave challenge in the fight against poverty. But rising food prices aren't all bad. Economist Esther Duflo notes that although net consumers such as the urban poor are hurt by higher prices, net food producers gain. Nationally, India is a net exporter of agricultural products such as rice, wheat, and sugarcane, which should temper concern about rising food prices. (EU MAP)

Individual-level effects are more complex. Angus Deaton's 1989 study of rural Thailand found that on average rural households benefited from rising rice prices. However, there was significant variation in whether individual households benefited: households that were neither too poor nor too wealthy benefited the most from price increases. UNICEF underlines the negative impact of food prices amongst the very poor in India, predicting that rising food prices will push 1.5-1.8 million children into poverty. Even now, 50 million Indian children under age 5 are malnurished. Projecting the costs of food prices on future development, UNICEF officials call inflation a “silent tsunami”. (ibid)

Clearly, the very poorest in India are vulnerable to inflation that increases the cost of basic commodities. What is to be done? Devesh Kapur, Partha Mukhopadhyay, and Arvind Subramanian argue that the government should simplify its vast array of centralized poverty eradication programs (currently numbering 151) and provide direct cash transfers to raise the poor above the poverty line. If current trends continue, the government could soon transfer Rs. 10,000,000 ($230,000) a year to each panchayat (local elected government) in the country. This would mean giving each poor person Rs. 2,140 per person annually (about $50, more than the rural poverty line and over 75% of the urban poverty line).

Unfortunately, cash transfers aren't a silver bullet. Cash transfers such as Mexico's PROGRESA have a strong record in poverty reduction. (See Santiago Levy (2006): Progress against Poverty: Sustaining Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades Programme, Brookings Institution Press) However, India's centralized transfers to the poor have a shoddy record thus far. At present, monitoring of outcomes is nearly non-existent and leakages are rampant in distribution. Kapur et al. note the Indian government's recent (2008) first plan for a centralized monitoring mechanism to track transfer scheme expenditures. Additionally, Kapur et al. cite the Planning Commission (2005) estimates that the Indian government spends Rs 3.65 to transfer Rs. 1 worth of food, suggesting leakage of about 70 per cent. While direct cash transfers cut down on administrative costs, their distribution may still be subject to local manipulation. Debates on the power and efficacy of local elected councils (panchayats) suggest reason for concern.**

Duflo (ibid) suggests an alternate use of transfers, focusing on insurance to reduce long-term income variability rather than using cash transfers as a short-term income boost. This may seem optimistic given the current kinks in India's distribution system. However a recent initiative by the Ministry for Women and Child Development (MWCD) suggests the government may be able to increase the fineness of its targeting scheme and increase accountability in transfer distribution.

The MWCD is finalising a scheme to provide insurance cover for every young woman from a below the poverty line (BPL) family.

Under the scheme, the government will provide cash transfers of Rs 5,000 at the time of the girl's birth and registration; Rs 500 after every three months, for immunisation; Rs 2,500 at the time of her school enrollment; Rs 1,000 every year till the completion of primary school; Rs 5,000 at the time of enrollment and Rs 1,500 every year till the completion of elementary school; and Rs 7,500 for enrollment and Rs 1,500 every year till the girl completes her secondary and higher secondary education. The rest of the money will be handed over at the age of 18, if the girl is unmarried.

Currently, the MWCD is running a pilot of this program in 11 blocks in the country, in 5 states with some of the highest numbers of female infanticide: Bihar , Orissa, Jharkhand, Punjab, and Haryana. 10 blocks are economically backward, while the 11th (Sirhind, Fatehgarh Sahib, Punjab) is wealthy. This allows the government to monitor the effects of transfers on poverty rates across economic contexts as well as their effects on gender equity.

Better targeting and monitoring of transfers may do more than cushion the shocks of inflation - such programs may actually reduce poverty in the long run.

**For a positive view on the use of reservations in Panchayat elections, see Chattopadhyay and Duflo. Panchayat elections are shown to produce less progressively-skewed benefits in Besley, Pande and Rao. A report of Panchayat's current ineffectiveness in Karnataka State is presented in an India Together article.

Day One

I'm thoroughly enjoying my garden perch in Lucknow. I have several sources of comfort in this first twenty-four hours of field work, luxury-style:

1) My Hindi actually seems functional, making my Rickshaw rides and negotiations much more interesting.

For example, from roadside billboards I've learned that बहिनजी मायावात्ति (sister Mayawatti) understands the country's future. (!) Additionally, I had the heartening experience of using my Hindi not only to negotiate my way to meet my old translator, Priya via multiple forms of transportation, but also to gain major support from an elderly shopkeeper. The last leg of my trip required private rickshaw and was much shorter than I expected. I tried renegotiating the price with a very displeased driver. Right then, a kindly shopkeeper approached me. I used my basic Hindi to explain my problem. He verified the facts with the driver and me and then proceeded to castigate my driver for ripping off a foreigner. The shopkeeper went so far as to agree to take the man to the police for overcharging me, luckily something we all avoided!

2) I've found secondhand support for my upcoming research from a few sources.

Given that it's a lazy Sunday in the big city, I made my way to one of Lucknow's shiny new malls (Waves). Thanks to Priya's advice I found a big chain bookstore (Landmark) and sat down to enjoy their selection. After a few hours of browsing with puzzled clerks in tow I've now amassed a small library on caste, fieldwork in India, Indian bureaucracy and Hindi dictionaries. These wonderful books tell me a few things...

MN Srinivas's (1973, c.f. Srinavas, Shah, Ramaswamy 2002: 26) "The Field Worker and the Field" gives me more faith that I'll be able to delve into disputes once I actually settle into a few villages. He writes: "Every society and culture has its own preoccupations, and in Rampura [Karnataka] and perhaps also in myriad other villages, it was disputes. Disputes were frequent and they arose over many things. There were, for instance, disputes over partition over property among brothers which dragged on for several months. In a sense, such disputes never ended. They took new forms.... Stories of ancestral feuding were part of a family's heritage."

Oliver Mendelsohn's (Shah 2002: 167-205) "Transformation of Authority in Rural India" makes me excited to search for the elusive "social institution" given his argument that a dominant caste no longer exists in villages. This counters Munshi and Rosenzweig's 2008 paper on "The Efficacy of Parochial Politics," where they make the case that a (numerically) dominant sub-caste (jati) acts as a superior selection and commitment device for local politicians. The argument reassures me that theories about the connections between caste, dominance, and politics in India are most certainly open for debate right now.

3) The music!

Although it's unfair to claim Hindi music as my own in any way, I love the fact that I now recognize a subset of Indian pop. don't love everything, but I do get a kick out of recognizing the lyrics to songs from Rang de Basanti and Chake De. They're just so catchy (and I'm a sap for movies with any uplifting message about contemporary politics).

4) I'm feeling pretty good about a choice of districts to venture into: Yamunanagar, Haryana (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamunanagar) and Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saharanpur). I'm hoping to rustle up some contacts in Haryana during my coming week of work at the Lucknow High Court and then head there at the following week's start. At the moment I'm just enjoying the fact that Indians read the Manusmriti from 100 AD alongside contemporary legal scholarship.

That's it for now!

Cottleson Pie

Getting ready to flee Shallow Alto for India requires a few things:
An excuse (not hard to dream up)
Some sense of grounding
A road map (hopefully better than what Bush worked out for the Middle East)

For number one I thank Stanford's comparative politics field.

For number two I owe whatever groundedness (yes, another non-Merriam Webster word Uncle Mark) I have to my week of pampering with the San Diego chapter of the Brule Clan.

For number three I defer to Pooh:

"Cottleson, cottleson, cottleson pie. A fly can't bird but a bird can
fly."

If I can follow this advice from the Tao of Pooh I may be fine.

Stay tuned for something meaningful but all I can promise is a fairly regular proof of my existence while scouring the Badlands of NW India for proof of disputes.

Rachel