Compassion.......

On a Sunday morning as I was reading the newspaper I came across an article about Khobad Ghandy. He was recently arrested for his Naxalite activities. He was one of the many who left the comforts of an upper class to join the struggle for the poor but one of the few who stayed back. One little part in the article is the reason for me to write this blog. It instinctively brought to fore many of the concerns that I am grappling with in my own life.

While I am writing this I am fully aware of the pains that Khobad Ghandy had gone through and is continuing to go through in his quest for justice. I cannot ignore the sacrifices that he has made in this quest inspite of the fact that I do not agree with extreme left wing ideology that he possibly upholds.

Let me reproduce the passage from the newspaper that I am referring to. This is in the context of a divisional commander of the Naxalite movement who surrended to the police and was being interrogated. He did not know Ghandy by name but was referring to a lecture that Ghandy had given to the cadre. The passage in the newspaper describes it as follows

".....When a divisional commander surrendered and the police took him in for questioning, he did not know Ghandy by his name, the official adds. "After much prodding, he talked about a long lecture Ghandy had delivered, nibbling dry cashew nuts while talking about revolution in France, China and Russia even as a huge classroom of cadre sat hungry and tired for hours. 'When it was over, we told him we were hungry and he looked angrily at us and left,' the commander said."

Arguably the "nibbling dry cashewnut" is a snide remark and should be ignored as such. But if the rest of the story is true, then I would urge you to compare it with another lecture. This time from my favourite book the Bible.

This is Mark Chapter 6 verses 34 to 36.

"And Jesus, when he came out, saw a great multitude and was moved with compassion for them, because they were like a sheep not having a shepherd. So he began to teach them many things. When the day was now far spent, His disciples came to Him and said "This is a deserted place, and already the hour is late. Send them away, that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy themselves bread; for they have nothing to eat." But he answered and said to them, "You give them something to eat."

The story goes on to describe the miracle of five loaves of bread and two fish feeding the multitude. Of course the minor matter of ability to perform miracles comes in between a comparison of Ghandy and Jesus. But what I would like to point out is the compassion that characterised Jesus' response to the situation. He was concerned about the hunger of the people in a very immediate sense. He had not ignored the immediate concerns of the people in favour of the long drawn out battle for Kingdom of Heaven. In some sense he was also talking about a revolution, perhaps a more difficult one, because there were no convenient despots to be thrown out but only the struggle against one's own sinful nature. After such a message, he could have expected to witness a multitudes fired with passion. But it was not to be. (In fact that never happened in his life time. Even his closest disciples ditched him in times of trouble.) It was the hunger of the multitudes that stared at him. And he chose to be concerned about it and respond to it. I think it was indeed a powerful statement. The king and the servant rolled into one.....

The central challenge for a manager

The following writing is a result of a vexing problem that I have at my end. A problem that has been of concern to me for many years now but beginning to increasingly bother me as I enter the third year of my work life. The problem is only a take off from one of the oldest challenges that human beings have faced. Specifically, ever since man has lived as a community, one of the confounding problems has been how to organise our societal life in such a way that each individual leads a life that gives him a sense of contenment. Within this realm, a secondary concern has been how to organise productive work which conforms to the ideal laid out above. Perhaps with my training as a management student in IRMA where one was sensitised to the idea of a humane society and trained to think of organising productive work to further the realisation of such an idea, I do have a partiality to this latter problem. I do realise that classifying this as a secondary concern and treating it separately from the main question laid out above is likely to result in eliminating some of the possibly desirous directions of organising produtive work and thereby divert me from the main question. I hope to guard myself against this by constantly revisiting the main concern in my mind as I pen my thoughts. This hope also rests on some assumption that I make about productive work and its nature. By productive work I hope to cover the entire range of work that leads to outcomes which supports the achievement of a sense of contentment in human beings. (This does not eliminate manufacture of pet foods.) Also I do feel that it is not possible for any unit in society to be fully self sufficient in material and spiritual terms. (Yes. Productive work does include work which leads to spiritual upliftment.)

Therefore, how to organise productive work in such a way that the ideal of a human society is achieved is to me the central challenge of a manager. If there is prayer that plays on my lips with regard to my 'professional work', it is only for grace and strength to live up to this challenge. (To be completed)

Farmers' suicide and my views

Over the past few years, to be precise from the beginning of this decade, we have been hearing of farmers' suicide from many parts of the country, namely Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Kerala etc. There could be many more in different parts of the country. But these are the ones that I have heard of more often. Here I am writing on my experiences with farmer's suicide in Kerala.

As part of my course in IRMA (year 2005), I was to study the livelihood crisis of pepper farmers in Pulpally village of Wayanad district over a period two months. This was a period when a number of instances of farmers' committing suicide were reported in mainstream media. Freshly inducted into IRMA, I was a novice and was diffident about conducting the study. However, I wanted to do this study to the best of my ability and went about diligently trying to understand the issue. However at the end of two months in Pulpally, when I presented the study to my batchmates and professors at IRMA, I was told by one of my professors that I was focusing too much on the economic aspect of the crisis with very little attention paid to the other factors that are in operation. I was disappointed and frustrated as I had put in considerable effort during the two months. But apparently I had spent most of my time trying to understand the cost structures of pepper cultivation, trading, its profitability and then linked all this to explain the crisis without going into the 'human' aspect of the crisis. During my stay in Wayanad, I did make many observations on these 'human' aspects like community, non economic factors that influence individual farmer's decision making with regard to cropping pattern etc. However these did not gain much prominence in the presentation and hence the comment from the professor. Now after four years, I think it is time I corrected the error and it is with this thought that I am writing this.

The crisis does have an economic angle to it. There is no denying that. I think anyone attempting to deny it would be blind to the reality. Just to illustrate. Most of the suicides were by pepper farmers who had to default on their loans. The fall in pepper prices wass dramtic in its suddenness and magnitude. It fell from about Rs.25,000 a quintal to Rs.5,000 a quintal in a period of about two years. No amount of business acumen would have helped any farmer predict this disruption in future cash flow. That was purely the result of certain policies followed by the governments of the time. Having said that I must quickly add that while that is a major part of the story it still is only a part. I cannot say that I have an insight into the entire story but I think I will be able to add a few further dimensions to it. What I have written below is largely based on conversations wtih people there and references to some publications. I cannot claim to be very accurate but I do believe that it is a fair description.

As a starting point for the analysis, it might be useful to go back to the history of Pulpally, specifically around the 1940s and 1950s. Till about the mid of 1940s (if I remember correctly) the place was largely populated by tribal population. Towards the latter part of the 1940s, there was a proclamation from the authorities that land belonging to the temple authority there would be allotted to farmers. This came as a boon for many farmers (largely Christian) in the southern parts of Kerala of the time. Many of them were reeling under debt and was finding it difficult to withstand the pressure of repaying the debt. Many sold their lands for a pittance to service their debt. So when the proclamation came it was an opportune moment for them as it offered them a chance for a fresh start in a new land. Accordingly many families decided to migrate to Pulpally. However there was a lot of fear also in moving to this new land. Wayanad then largely was covered in forests with very little infrastructure. There was the fear of how the local community would react. The irrational beliefs about tribal societies might have added further to the fear. The annual magazines of the churches in Pulpally describes the angst that many families felt. There was much distress and crying among the relatives and friends who were parting ways perhaps forever. It is in this context that the first settlers came from the central and southern parts of Kerala to Wayanad.

The early settlers found the new land highly inhospitable although blessed with spectacular beauty of nature. There were no roads, no hospitals nearby, extremely cold nights, the fear of wild animals, difficult relation with the local community and the like. The magazines mentioned above narrate stories of malaria claiming many lives, pregnant women dying on the way to distant hospitals, the long trek in large groups to sell the produce in the markets, the injuries due to animal attack, extreme cold etc. In spite of these difficulties through sheer enterprise and hardwork they slowly started rebuilding their life in the new land. The settlers exhibited a strong resolve and resilience as a community. Roads were built, collectives were organised to access markets, churches were built, events were celebrated together. (This was accompanied by the tribal communities loosing much of their land to the settlers and becoming agricultural labourers. Unsurprisingly the magazines mentioned above which I had read does not make a reference to this. I picked this up from conversations from members of the tribal community.)

Over a period of 40 years, many of the settlers became wealthy and lived a life of reasonable comfort. Pulpally became know in Kerala as the "Mini Gulf" as many people from other parts of Kerala came here searching for work. But the period was also marked by exploitation of the poorer sections of the community as evidenced by the long history of Naxalite activity in the region. (Interestingly a Naxalite attack in a police station in the region in the 70s led to the development of infrastructure in the region as the government wanted to bring in more forces and better control of the place.) Much of the economic growth happened in the late 80s and 90s with pepper fetching a good price in the markets.

The trouble for the farmers began in the early years of this decade with India entering into a free trade agreement with Sri Lanka and pepper from Sri Lanka flooding the Indian markets. The prices for pepper began falling from the highs of Rs.25,000 a quintal to Rs.5,000 a quintal. The farmers were hit badly. Education of children became difficult. Marriages for girls became a constant worry for parents. Debts began to mount. The resultant humiliation was more than many could bear. Some left Pulpally in search of jobs, some sold land and other property and some where caught between the devil and the deep sea. Some lost all hope and took their own lives. During my stay in the village in late 2005, the tea shop were I went for my breakfast would have people discussing the latest suicide.

A question that began to bother me was that if the previous generations of the farmers, namely the settlers could display such resilience in their early days in Pulpally and also before, why was the current generation finding it difficult to overcome the crisis. More worryingly the churches that dotted the landscape of Pulpally did not seem to have been able to prevent these suicides. These were questions that I had in mind. I found it difficult to ask these questions openly to people. But since my study was closely linked to this, many of my conversations seemed to throw a light on these questions. In one such conversation, as an aside a young man was explaining to me how life in the village had changed over the years. He took the example of how weddings were celebrated to illustrate his point. Earlier when a wedding was to happen in a family, all the relatives would gather a couple of days earlier and start the preparations. The friends and neighbours would chip in with help. It could take the form of bringing in chairs and other furniture for guests, helping with the decorations and other arrangements, cooking etc. There was a sense of ownership among the immediate community atleast about the wedding in one particular family. However nowadays the relatives, friends and neighbours are like the guests. They turn up on the day of the wedding and leave as soon as the ceremony is over. Everything arrangement is 'professionally' handled. Decorations are done by caterers, chairs and cooking vessels are rented and organising everything becomes the responsibility of the immediate family. When one reads this along with the earlier mentioned stories of collective action, I think it does point to a certain shift in the sense of communitarianism that existed among people.

In the context of the farmers' suicides, I think the absence of this sense of communitarianism meant that the cushion provided by the immediate community vanished in times of distress to the farmer. When burdened with debt, he possibly did not find anyone around him who could provide him the comfort. Alone and humiliated, deprived of hope, a man would be driven to end his life. The absense of crisis is not the hallmark of good life. The ability to withstand a crisis is. Some crisis can be withstood individually. But some can be withstood only collectively. The true crisis in Pulpally was possibly the slow but steady erosion of the values of the collective which left hapless individuals fighting a lone battle against the forces of the global world order.

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

The title of the blog is from the Bible. It is Nathanael's response to Philip when he depicts Jesus as a native of Nazareth and claims that Jesus is the messiah spoken of by Moses and the prophets. (Nathanael and Philip later went on to become the disciples of Jesus.) I am writing this blog to explore some questions regarding human judgment and its basis. To be more precise, I am trying to see how we, as individuals, use prejudice and knowledge of history as basis for judgment interchangeably with the change being apparently seamless. I will narrate a few instances that have spurred my thought in this direction.

I remember someone once explaining to me that the seeming contradiction between Marx and current Marxists on the state providing for elementary education was to be explained by the change in the nature of the state during Marx’s time and that in the current Marxists’ time. He explained how over a period of time the welfare state emerged which was probably different from what the state was in Marx's time. He built a narrative that was compelling in its logic and rich with detail. I also remember an English lecture which I attended as part of my pre-degree course where by describing the French society of the time, the teacher breathed a life into ‘ The Three Musketeers’ by Alexander Dumas which I had missed during my earlier reading of the story.

More recently, I came across someone suggesting that depicting a corporate organisation as a partner of two Non Government Organisations (NGOs) seemed strange and that having to do so is a source of slight discomfort. The source of the discomfort was the difficulty in seeing entities of competing ideological positions partnering each other. On another occasion I came across someone inventing a story about an East German and thereby socialist links of a corporate organisation which explained its attempt at strengthening the government delivery of certain public services as part of its agenda in Corporate Social Responsibility. The reality is that the corporate organisation had West German links and was likely to be one with a ‘capitalist’ agenda. To be fair, the inventor of the story used it only when people were finding it difficult to reconcile to the fact that a corporate organisation can support the state and not necessarily continually attempt to weaken the state.

Before going further, I must define what I mean by history and prejudice. Put simply, to me, prejudice is based on an unsystematic analysis, whereas history is based on systematic analysis, prejudice is not based on logic and evidence, whereas history is. To me the latter two instances are possibly those where prejudice hinders understanding whereas the former two are instances where knowledge of history aids understanding. In the latter two instances, the perception about corporate organizations formed through exposure to particular strands of theory (or ideology) do not seem to explain the situation to the two individuals and hence the responses. But to me the issue here is not going into the details of the situation and the theory. Simplistic readings of theories tend to provide us with convenient categories and then our mind conjures up hypothesis disguised as conclusions, with the conjurer himself deluded by the disguise. Closer examination of the theory and also the situation would have probably revealed the complexities involved and could have provided the individuals with a more accurate explanation for the situation they found themselves in.

My concern is why they did not go into the details. As an initial hypothesis, I think it was because they unwittingly made a seamless transition from knowledge of history to prejudice as their basis for judgment. The seamless character of this transition is probably because this prejudice is not delinked from the knowledge of history. It is a particular understanding of the historical processes that gave the categories and concepts which they used to understand the events around them. However, in spite of the tremendous amount of work that goes into the establishment of these categories and concepts, they are abstract and have to be contextualized to be a useful basis for analysis. Secondly there is always the risk of them being dated. Given this scenario, one is often perilously close to making erroneous analysis unless one exercises extreme caution. But the ultimate deception that can delude even the trained mind is the possibility of the understanding being able to explain certain phenomenon but actually that understanding may not be anywhere close to the ‘correct’ understanding. The world of natural sciences is also not free of this. We thought that the genes determined many things about human life. But with the new understanding in the light of the work on genetic mapping, that seems to be an inaccurate understanding. As we stretch the boundaries of the known we feel the vastness of the unknown. Caught in this reality of human existence, judgment seems improbable. But we are forced to make judgments and that is the reality of human existence.

Going back to the title, Nathanael was in a situation where he was being told that the man without sin, the messiah prophesied about by Moses and others was a native of Nazareth. Nathanael asked the question "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" in disbelief; a disbelief based on probably his negative image of Nazareth as a place. The future King of Israel cannot be from a city like Nazareth. But this was based on analysis which did not factor in God's design. But to his credit, he was willing to reexamine his position and reexamine he did with wonderful results for him. The story holds a lesson for us all including for non believers. Reexamine, revalidate our theories. See them from diverse point of views and believe that these are but tentative hypothesis.

Information Asymmetry as I saw it

In one of my visits to Dharni in relation to a project there, I witnessed an incident which I thought I should share with you. Before I narrate the incident let me tell you a bit about the place itself. Dharni, along with Chikaldhara block, constitutes the Melghat region of Amravati district in Maharashtra. Melghat came into the public attention in the early part of the 90’s with the reports of acute malnutrition in children and related deaths. Its other, and more positive claim to fame, is that it is also a tiger reserve. The population in the region is largely tribal and most of them live in poverty.

I was staying at an NGO’s guest house whose campus was about 6 to 7 kilometres from block headquarters and consequently is in an isolated area with, what one could call a forest, surrounding the campus. A highway which runs through the forest connects the campus with the block headquarters and there are share auto-rickshaws that ply the highway infrequently. One morning I was taking one of these to the block headquarters. My co-passengers were largely farmers or farm labourers. There was one farmer with a huge sack which contained tuar dal. I had been told earlier that this is one of the major crops in the district. As this was also the day of the weekly mandi in Dharni, obviously the farmer was taking the dal to sell it at the mandi. As we neared the block headquarters (about a kilometre and half away), the driver, a young lad of twenty or thereabouts, stopped by the road side in front of a trader’s shop and asked the trader what the procurement price for tuar dal was. Since the shop was at some distance from the road, the trader asked the driver to come closer. The driver took the auto closer to the shop and stopped under the small shed outside the shop. There was a huge weighing balance hanging from the roof of the shed. The driver repeated his query to the trader and the trader responded that he would need to know the weight and quality of the dal. Accordingly the driver asked the farmer to weigh the sack. It was then that I noticed that the farmer was visibly disturbed by the turn of events and was reluctant to oblige. But by then the co-passengers also began to prod him to do the weighing. Perhaps it was their anxiety with the delay that it was causing them that spurred them to act in that manner. The farmer reluctantly took the sack down and put it on the balance. The trader quickly weighed it and stated a price. The farmer looked puzzled and quite agitated by now. He said something to the auto driver and the driver responded. I could not quite understand what was being said. But I could follow that the farmer was not happy with the goings on and some of his ire was being directed at the driver. But the farmer’s muted protests did not stop the deal from going through. The deal was done and money changed hands. The farmer saw the fruit of his toil taken away from him at a price which he was not sure whether to be contended with or not.

As we continued our journey, I heard the driver tell my co-passengers about the unwarranted suspicion of the farmer about him. Apparently at the trader’s shop the farmer had angrily accused the driver of being in cahoots with the trader to cheat him off his rightful price. The driver defended himself in front of the passengers by saying that he was trying to do the farmer a good turn by enabling him to avoid the hustle and bustle of a mandi. Anyway he would not have gotten a higher price at the mandi. I could hear some of the co-passengers murmuring in agreement with this defence.

The incident set me thinking in many directions. The farmer’s agony at sensing that perhaps he had been cheated out of his rightful earning is heart rending to say the least. The farmer’s sense of powerlessness could arise from his lack of knowledge on what could be the correct price. Knowledge of the correct price would have enabled him to be decisive in staking his claim and not be pushed into a corner by the turn of events. Then again, was it a deliberate act of common cunning on the part of the trader and driver to cheat the farmer out of his rightful price. Or was it the gods conspiring to cheat the farmer with the driver and the trader being mere pawns?

For a moment I went back to the many conversations on markets and economics that I have been part of at IRMA, my alma mater. The issues of market failure, information asymmetry, price discovery and commodity trading were manifesting its unpalatable side in front of my very eyes.