Monday 30th October 2006: Maal

Today, by the skin of its teeth, has lived up to its expectations, although it looked distinctly unpromising until the early afternoon. After the customary rooftop jeep-ride and mountain slog, I reached Maal full of vim and enthusiasm for the meeting ahead. I had arranged to meet Tapan at ten in order to discuss our battle plans for the meeting and for the household survey, which I aim to start on Wednesday.
   I had no particular expectation of him being on time - this is rural India after all - so I decided to while away the time with a book. I am currently reading Maharanis by Lucy Moore, an account of the lives of four princesses from the Princely States. These states were officially independent from British India, ruled by their own monarchs who had earned this privilege in return for supporting the British in the 1857 mutiny. These states included Mewar, ruled by the Maharanas of Udaipur, Marwar, ruled by the Maharajas of nearby Jodhpur, and numerous others such as Hyderabad, Kashmir and Gwalior. Despite leading lavish lifestyles, characterised as much by debauched excess as by overblown pomp and circumstance, the real extent of these rulers' power was extremely limited.
  After an hour I began to experience a niggling feeling that I was not quite displaying the resourcefulness that had been drummed into me by the Careers Advisors of Cambridge as a prerequisite for international development work. Surely I should be using this unexpected spare time to interrogate Dolat Ram or some other local worthy on the finer details of buffalo ownership or mustard planting? The prospect, however, of actually extricating myself from 1920's Jaipur and relinquishing my comfortable spot in the shade filled me with little enthusiasm. In the end, apathy proved more potent than guilt and I spent the next three hours lost in my book, only the occasional exchange of pleasantries with passers-by connecting me to Maal. The niggling feeling prevented me from ever feeling entirely at peace, and furthermore, as the appointed meeting time approached, fear was added to the crucible of emotions as it dawned on me that Tapan might not arrive at all, leaving me to chair the meeting single-handed. While I might have been socially equal to this task, my linguistic shortcomings would have rendered the experience frustratingly unproductive.
   Luckily he arrived in the nick of time, puffing and panting and looking every inch the harassed minor official as he launched into protracted apologies and excuses for his delay. The explanation, while rather too tedious to replicate here, exonerated Tapan from blame and while I was a little annoyed at the way things had turned out, I did not let it show. We had a hasty pep talk as Maal's top brass arrived, looking ready to move and shake, at the village school where we had arranged to hold the meeting. Scanning the assembling company revealed a wide disparity between the notional guest list and the reality, with many turning up uninvited and some key players, such as Suraj, nowhere to be seen.

Village meeting

Tapan kicked off with what appeared to be a rambling introduction, outlining our aims in the village and running through the key points of the impending survey. He then put some questions to the Forest Protection Committee (FPC) about the forest land and existing conservation measures. They seem to be doing a good job, fencing off parts of the forest with Vikas Samiti’s assistance as well as instigating a patrol scheme they designed themselves which has apparently reduced encroachments. In fact this scheme has been largely discontinued as the change in general attitude has made it unnecessary. Furthermore, everybody present vehemently denied that any previous forest encroachments could be blamed on the people of Maal. At this point I wished Suraj had come, as I would have been interested to see whether he would have dared to put forward his own unorthodox version of events. While what we got today was probably something of an official line, I must admit to becoming less and less convinced that what Suraj told us about Amratlal’s family’s encroachments and the ineffectiveness of the FPC was anything but his own rather warped perspective, that of a marginalized and very diffident man who has had more education than most of his contemporaries but is unable to use it.
   As we moved onto the next item on the agenda - a group discussion aimed at drawing up a list of key priorities for development in Maal - it became clear that without some kind of stage management the conversation would remain entirely male-dominated and the three very embarrassed women would not get a chance to put their views across.
   "Tapan," I said. "Could you ask the men not to answer the next question, and let the women speak?"
   "Actually, this is a not good question. Maybe you will be offending these fellows."
  "Well I'm sure you could ask them tactfully. But I'd really like to try, because none of the women have said anything yet!"
   "Actually, these ladies are feeling some embarrassment at this time, so they are remaining quiet."
  "Exactly! That's what I mean! So let's try asking the men to remain quiet for a change, and maybe the women will speak."
  "Actually [if I depended on getting a rupee every time Tapan didn't start a sentence with "actually", I would be forced to look for alternative sources of income] these are shy type ladies."
  He spoke with such an air of finality that I hesitated to press the issue. But, breathing deeply and suppressing my rising frustration, I did continue to press and he reluctantly agreed, launching into a lengthy proposition in Hindi, no doubt along the lines of: "Actually, this very strange foreigner type has a highly improper request..."
  His spiel was met with a puzzled silence, broken by a few soft chuckles and murmur of bemused assent. The women’s embarrassment initially deepened and they retreated further into their veils, until one of them slowly started talking. She gradually encouraged the others and eventually two of them became at least as vociferous as the most opinionated of the men. The practice of wearing veils, common in the Rajasthani countryside, is presumably a hangover from the not too distant days of purdah where all Muslim women and high caste Hindus (including the Maharanis I have been reading about) would have been forced to wear veils in public. [10]  Presumably this extended to the Meena tribe at some stage in its history. In any case, all this is entirely alien to what I saw in the south, where mostly only Muslim women covered their heads, and in the few villages I visited, women seemed astonishingly forward and voluptuous.
  In terms of Maal’s needs, the men and women were in broad agreement that everything boils down to a road. A metalled (i.e. tarmac) road running all the way from Suveri to Maal with a regular jeep service would enable faster delivery of supplies, easier access for future development interventions, vastly more efficient transport of the sick to medical help or vice versa and a less time-consuming and exhausting school run for kids studying beyond 5th standard. It seems that a faction from Maal is already lobbying local government officials for a road and also electricity. Progress, however you define it, looms not too distantly, and even in ten years time Maal will be unimaginably different, and I am not too caught up in the “all change is beneficial” mindset to deny that some things, maybe many, will be lost.

Footnotes:

[10] Although purdah is generally thought of as an exclusively Islamic phenomenon, it is now believed that there was a form of female seclusion in Hindu society before the earliest arrival of Muslims in India. With Islamic conquest came Islamic-style veiling of women, which persisted in Indian Muslims and certain strata of Hindu society (notably Rajput clans) well into the 20th Century.


Next Post - Friday 3rd November 2006:Maal (will be posted Thursday 3rd November 2011)