As I anticipated, once my research really got going, I have had little time to keep a blog. I am in the field most days, conducting interviews and observing the practices of the Indian Forest Department. I come home and take notes on what I've seen and heard, and by the time I get to bed I've typically already written 5000 words or more. So I haven't had time to blog about all that I've been seeing. In addition, I am very hesitant to blog about my work for two reasons. First, I am still in the early stages of my observations, and all of my conclusions seem very tentative. Second, I am aware that a blog is a public forum, and thus my research subjects may potentially see my preliminary thoughts - which could cause them to change their responses to me in ways that might upset my research agenda. So for all of these reasons, I haven't been blogging much lately. However, my friends Collin & Kara, who convinced me to keep a blog, convinced me because they said - at least you can post us some pictures even if you are too busy to write! So here are some pictures of what I've been seeing, along with brief explanations.
Eastern Vidarbha, the region of central India where I've been for the last 3 months, is a rice growing region. Vidarbha is more famous as a cotton-growing region, but the eastern edge of the region - basically east of Nagpur - is wetter, and so more suitable for rice. Early varieties have already been harvested, and the entire harvest will come in soon. Here are 2 varieties of rice - the one in the foreground is a late variety, the one in the background is a middle variety almost ready for harvest.
The grain is filling out.
This temporary check dam is meant to try to store water for the long, harsh summer (in April and May average daytime highs are over 45 C - around 115 Fahrenheit). I arrived here just as the villagers completed building it, and someone promptly set a fishing net in the resulting pond. I found out later that this village is occupied by a traditional fishing community, although now they are mostly farmers.
Meeting with a village forest protection committee in the village schoolhouse. The young man to my right is my translator Siddhesh - a recent graduate of an engineering college who is joining a software company in a few months, but was temporarily unemployed. Although he grew up in the city, he always spent holidays in his grandmother's village, so he is able to speak and understand the local dialect of Marathi. The young women to my right is a representative of an NGO which has been helping this committee cultivate lac - (the antecedent of lacquer) which is excreted by an insect which eats palash trees (Butea monosperma).
A traditional house in the village - mud walls, wood frame, tile roofs. These houses are very good at staying cool in the summer - much better than the modern concrete and brick constructions - but people who have money always build the modern concrete houses. This typical house is actually a series of buildings surrounding a courtyard - I am looking through the entryway on the street.
One of my favorite fruits is the sitafal - or custard apple (related to Indiana's pawpaw), which grows wild, and is also cultivated, as this specimen that I found in a dooryard.
Most rural households have extensive homegardens surrounding their compounds. One of the most common sights this time of year is trellises - built above head height - covered with sprawling squash and bean vines, and providing shade to the house. Her is a bottle gourd hanging from one such trellis.
Members of a village protection committee showing off the forest that has regenerated naturally as a result of their efforts to protect the area from grazing cattle and firewood collectors from neighboring villages. Note the villager taking a picture of me with his cell phone.
Village boys wrestling to get in front of the picture I offered to take of them. Actually, first I wanted to take a picture of the cute baby goat resting in the shade, but the boys quickly took over.
A forest official showing confiscated material - illegally harvested wood, bicycles which were taken from people illegally using forests - that are stored in front of his office. A major activity of the forest department here is policing illegal activities.
Timber harvest - this was a windfallen teak tree. While the daily wage laborers cut up the tree, the government officials stand aside, making sure the cuts are mad properly. The trunk will be used for timber, the branches cut up for firewood.
I might be giving off the impression that I spend all my time in villages and forests, but since I study government, I probably spend more time in medium-sized cities, talking to officials who sit behind desks. This city, Chandrapur, is in the middle of a resource rich region of forests and coal mines. The smokestacks in the distance are supposedly from Asia's largest coal-fired thermal power plant. Combine that with several paper plants (processing bamboo into paper pulp) and steel smelters, and you have a recipe for really horrible air pollution. The village square has a monitor which shows local air pollution data (although I don't think anyone understands what the numbers mean - I've studied air pollution, but I don't know what the numbers mean), but the last time I went by, the power was out and there was no display.
On the holiday of Dusshera, hundreds of thousands of people converge on a modern stupa - a buddhist religious building - in Nagpur city. These people are the Ambedkar Buddhists. Ambedkar was one of the founders of modern India - he wrote the constitution. He was also the political leader of the people formerly called untouchables (though they would prefer to be known as dalit - or oppressed). He struggled all of his life to gain political rights for his people - a struggle which often brought him into direct political conflict with the other independence leaders and founders of modern India, including Gandhi, who once fasted to death in opposition to Ambedkar's political demands. Ambedkar came to believe that the Hindu religion was fundamentally flawed, a source of oppression for the dalits. On the spot where the stupa now stands, on Dusshera in 1956, Ambedkar formally converted to Buddhism, in the company of hundreds of thousands of his followers. Now you find that many of the poorer villages and urban colonies in the region have Buddhist statues, and Ambedkar's followers continue to gather in huge numbers each year in Nagpur to celebrate their conversion. Here, monks are delivering a lecture, with pictures of Ambedkar and Buddha in the background.
Diwali, which just passed, is a holiday analogous to Christmas, in that families exchange gifts and sweets. Here, crowds fill Bardi, Nagpur's main shopping district, a few days before Diwali.
A few weeks ago, I went for a walk in a rural area with a friend. We found this bullock cart carrying fodder out of the forest along a narrow cart track.
A beautiful lake at sunset, with forested hills in the background.
A local villager happened by, and told us about the temple on top of the hill, so the next morning, which happened to be my 30th birthday, we climbed the hill.
A little shrine with this horse-god stood on the summit. The shrine is sacred to the Gond people - one of the largest of the Adivasi or tribal groups of central India. I have heard that they worship horses because they were once wandering horsemen. Cities such as Nagpur and Chandrapur were founded by Gond kingdoms during the middle ages, but they were driven out of power gradually by the succession of rulers - Mughal, Maratha, British. Now most Gonds are farmers, and many of them live on the edge of the forests.
A flag waves in the hilltop breezes above the shrine.
In one direction we can see the outskirts of the small city of Gondia, but in the other direction, hills and forest stretch as far as we can see.
Eastern Vidarbha, the region of central India where I've been for the last 3 months, is a rice growing region. Vidarbha is more famous as a cotton-growing region, but the eastern edge of the region - basically east of Nagpur - is wetter, and so more suitable for rice. Early varieties have already been harvested, and the entire harvest will come in soon. Here are 2 varieties of rice - the one in the foreground is a late variety, the one in the background is a middle variety almost ready for harvest.
The grain is filling out.
This temporary check dam is meant to try to store water for the long, harsh summer (in April and May average daytime highs are over 45 C - around 115 Fahrenheit). I arrived here just as the villagers completed building it, and someone promptly set a fishing net in the resulting pond. I found out later that this village is occupied by a traditional fishing community, although now they are mostly farmers.
Meeting with a village forest protection committee in the village schoolhouse. The young man to my right is my translator Siddhesh - a recent graduate of an engineering college who is joining a software company in a few months, but was temporarily unemployed. Although he grew up in the city, he always spent holidays in his grandmother's village, so he is able to speak and understand the local dialect of Marathi. The young women to my right is a representative of an NGO which has been helping this committee cultivate lac - (the antecedent of lacquer) which is excreted by an insect which eats palash trees (Butea monosperma). 
A traditional house in the village - mud walls, wood frame, tile roofs. These houses are very good at staying cool in the summer - much better than the modern concrete and brick constructions - but people who have money always build the modern concrete houses. This typical house is actually a series of buildings surrounding a courtyard - I am looking through the entryway on the street.
One of my favorite fruits is the sitafal - or custard apple (related to Indiana's pawpaw), which grows wild, and is also cultivated, as this specimen that I found in a dooryard.
Most rural households have extensive homegardens surrounding their compounds. One of the most common sights this time of year is trellises - built above head height - covered with sprawling squash and bean vines, and providing shade to the house. Her is a bottle gourd hanging from one such trellis.
Members of a village protection committee showing off the forest that has regenerated naturally as a result of their efforts to protect the area from grazing cattle and firewood collectors from neighboring villages. Note the villager taking a picture of me with his cell phone.
Village boys wrestling to get in front of the picture I offered to take of them. Actually, first I wanted to take a picture of the cute baby goat resting in the shade, but the boys quickly took over. 
A forest official showing confiscated material - illegally harvested wood, bicycles which were taken from people illegally using forests - that are stored in front of his office. A major activity of the forest department here is policing illegal activities.
Timber harvest - this was a windfallen teak tree. While the daily wage laborers cut up the tree, the government officials stand aside, making sure the cuts are mad properly. The trunk will be used for timber, the branches cut up for firewood.
I might be giving off the impression that I spend all my time in villages and forests, but since I study government, I probably spend more time in medium-sized cities, talking to officials who sit behind desks. This city, Chandrapur, is in the middle of a resource rich region of forests and coal mines. The smokestacks in the distance are supposedly from Asia's largest coal-fired thermal power plant. Combine that with several paper plants (processing bamboo into paper pulp) and steel smelters, and you have a recipe for really horrible air pollution. The village square has a monitor which shows local air pollution data (although I don't think anyone understands what the numbers mean - I've studied air pollution, but I don't know what the numbers mean), but the last time I went by, the power was out and there was no display.
On the holiday of Dusshera, hundreds of thousands of people converge on a modern stupa - a buddhist religious building - in Nagpur city. These people are the Ambedkar Buddhists. Ambedkar was one of the founders of modern India - he wrote the constitution. He was also the political leader of the people formerly called untouchables (though they would prefer to be known as dalit - or oppressed). He struggled all of his life to gain political rights for his people - a struggle which often brought him into direct political conflict with the other independence leaders and founders of modern India, including Gandhi, who once fasted to death in opposition to Ambedkar's political demands. Ambedkar came to believe that the Hindu religion was fundamentally flawed, a source of oppression for the dalits. On the spot where the stupa now stands, on Dusshera in 1956, Ambedkar formally converted to Buddhism, in the company of hundreds of thousands of his followers. Now you find that many of the poorer villages and urban colonies in the region have Buddhist statues, and Ambedkar's followers continue to gather in huge numbers each year in Nagpur to celebrate their conversion. Here, monks are delivering a lecture, with pictures of Ambedkar and Buddha in the background.
Diwali, which just passed, is a holiday analogous to Christmas, in that families exchange gifts and sweets. Here, crowds fill Bardi, Nagpur's main shopping district, a few days before Diwali. 
A few weeks ago, I went for a walk in a rural area with a friend. We found this bullock cart carrying fodder out of the forest along a narrow cart track.
A beautiful lake at sunset, with forested hills in the background.
A local villager happened by, and told us about the temple on top of the hill, so the next morning, which happened to be my 30th birthday, we climbed the hill.
A little shrine with this horse-god stood on the summit. The shrine is sacred to the Gond people - one of the largest of the Adivasi or tribal groups of central India. I have heard that they worship horses because they were once wandering horsemen. Cities such as Nagpur and Chandrapur were founded by Gond kingdoms during the middle ages, but they were driven out of power gradually by the succession of rulers - Mughal, Maratha, British. Now most Gonds are farmers, and many of them live on the edge of the forests.
A flag waves in the hilltop breezes above the shrine.
In one direction we can see the outskirts of the small city of Gondia, but in the other direction, hills and forest stretch as far as we can see.
Nice collection! I get inspired by your blog to restart my rusty-old blog again and start writing!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing, Forrest! I love seeing what you are seeing. And I really want to try one of those custard apples...
ReplyDeleteEvan - the custard apple of India is closely related (and similar in taste, etc.) to the cherimoya of South America, which you can occasionally find for sale in really upscale health food stores on the west coast (maybe also in Colorado?). It is also fairly closely related to our Indiana pawpaw, but taste is phenomenally better.
ReplyDelete