One particular manifestation of this is the profusion of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) springing up at the moment. These are areas that the government sells to corporations at a low price, so that the corporations can conduct their business there while pledging to develop the area’s infrastructure and public services. Supposedly, the system provides employment, development and promotes economic growth. Unfortunately, however, the initial acquisition of land by the government often takes the form of seizure from unwilling landholders (generally poor rural farmers). They are paid a handsome compensation for loss of land, but I don’t believe their livelihoods are considered beyond this point. The Vandana Shiva crowd certainly posit that, overall, jobs and livelihoods are lost through this kind of “liberalisation”, and one writer, Sulabha Brahman, questions the ethics of paying a large all-in-one sum to a Below Poverty Line farmer who is not used to such ready money. Perhaps this is an unnecessarily patronising viewpoint, but it strikes me as likely, or least plausible, that a farmer in this position will squander the money away – drinks included – and then, landless, face a much direr poverty than before. I remember pointing this out to Prakash, who rather pooh-poohed the idea on the grounds that it is not the responsibility of the government or of corporations to regulate how “peasants” spend their money. I feel that takes a sternly one-sided point of view, akin to viewing financial capital as the sole indicator of wealth.
Speculation aside, one recent and ongoing controversy is Tata Motors’ attempt to establish an SEZ in Singur, West Bengal. The full facts are not at my fingertips, but the essence is this: The CPI(M) [29] party of West Bengal, under Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, seized land – or at least threatens to seize land – in Singur, without full consent from land owners, in order that Tata could open a factory to launch their new car, the Tata Nano, bringing huge profit to Bengal. Virulent objections have been raised all over Bengal. Villagers demonstrated outside the site of the proposed motor plant, and Mamata Banerjee, leader of Trinamool Congress (the main opposition party in West Bengal) threatened a “fast until death” which has only recently been aborted (fasts and hunger strikes, often miraculously called off at the last minute, are still a tool of protest in India). As yet the situation has not been resolved, but it looks quite likely that Tata Motors is going to pull out. [30]
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After the previous entry, I left my bags in the storeroom of the Junagadh hotel and spent the next two days flitting around with just an overnight bag. Initially I visited the temple of Somnath, which dates from the dawn of time, although has undergone successive re-incarnations after a series of destructions by Muslim marauders such as Mahmud of Ghazni and Aurangzeb. The current avatar, built in 1950 at Sardar Patel’s instigation, underwhelmed me and I found the nearby town of Vervel distinctly unappealing, so I fled to Porbandar.
My overall impression of the place was unremittingly favourable, despite it being by no stretch of the imagination a beauty spot. It is a port, and the whole town is bounded by a long, dirty beach that is used for excretion rather than recreation. At one end of this is a large harbour set round a long creek. It is more colourful than anything on Diu, with lots of medium-sized boats gay with flags, plenty of maritime bustle and, of course, a pervading smell of fish. The town itself is quite grid-like, with some quiet, tree-lined boulevards, some jam-packed shopping streets and some gently grubby backstreets full of the usual activity – sedentary parents and grandparents, scampering children and the ubiquitous cart-pushing men wailing their wares.
Porbandar is famous above all as Gandhi’s birthplace and this was therefore on top of the agenda of “things to see and do”. I duly saw and did it yesterday morning. There is a clean, uninspiring Kirthi Mandir next door to the house of the Mahatmagenesis, and a museum upstairs with lots of interesting photographs of Gandhi’s life, including some scenes of his 1931 visit to Europe. The house itself is kept clean and spartan, and the actual birthplace is marked with a swastika (the original Hindu way round, of course). The house is quite large, which fits in with my knowledge of the Gandhis being a comfortably-off Bania (merchant) family. To my great surprise, the place was not overrun with tourists, save a handful of NRIs and local families. Doubtless there are sometimes school trips and possibly tailor-made “Gandhi Trail” package tours, but they were not in evidence yesterday.
Unable to find an English copy of the Story of My Experiments with Truth in the bookshop, I bought another of Gandhi’s autobiographies, Satyagraha in South Africa. So far, what I have read has been very interesting, and reveals Gandhi as a keen observer of life around him, which is not something I had expected.
I spent the rest of the day exploring, reasonably confident, as ever, that some god would provide adventures and entertainment. The way people dress is worth a comment – men, as seems to be typical all over Saurashtra, wear a white garment similar to a kurta, with pyjamas that taper down into tight breeches. Turbans are also white, and rather squatter than those of Rajasthan or Punjab. Women wear interesting tops that have embroidered breast-pouches that look like heavy bras worn on the outside. This is accompanied by a skirt and a head shawl. In reality, of course, the majority of the men wear shirts and trousers, and many women wear saris, salwar kameez or jeans and t-shirts, but it is the sizable traditionally-dressed minority who stay in the memory.
Nimbu paani is plentiful in Porbandar, as in the rest of Saurashtra, and chai is deliciously flavoured with cardamom and served in chunky mugs which the drinkers pour out onto saucers to cool it down. In fact, chai in Saurashtra is often poured to overflowing so your first sip is already waiting for you in the saucer.
Adventure of a sort was provided when I walked down a sandy street full of elegant neo-classical buildings with Corinthian columns. I was so struck by this apparent incongruity that I asked a man, running a small stall, how old they were. He called his father, an old man with very good English, who informed me they had been built in 1942 at the behest of Udai Singh (!) the Rana of Porbandar, an architect with evident leanings towards the Hellenic. Apparently, the Rana commissioned a number of buildings around the town in a variety of styles. Later on I saw his former palace, a folorn mansion by the beach, the garden covered in sand. The style was a little classical, although I’m not sure which Rana actually built it.
The Rana's palace
(Credit: www.vii.in)
(Credit: www.vii.in)
The stallholders’ father invited me in for tea, made deliciously by his beautiful daughter-in-law and we discussed various topics. He told me about a scene in the film Gandhi which is set on the beach at Porbandar, where Gandhi conceives the idea of the Salt March. This I remember clearly, although what I don’t remember is that Gandhi talks about a temple in Porbandar where one line of the Bhagavad Gita and one line of the Koran are read daily. My friend told me that the temple referred to was the Pranaami Temple, which is still operational, and visited by both Hindus and Muslims.
Bidding him a slightly hasty farewell and thank you, I set off in hot pursuit of the Pranaami Temple and, with frequent stops to ask people for directions, found it quickly in a backstreet next to a building site. The pujari was just going in himself and so I attached myself to him. Several leading questions later, my excitement ebbed when I realised that, today at least, the temple is a fairly conventional Krishna temple. From his rapid fire Hindi-Gujarati, I understood that there was still a copy of the Koran in the temple, but it wasn’t read any more. I freely confess I was disappointed, as I had grown rather attached to the idea of an ecumenical Pranaami Temple in the half hour or so since I had first heard of it.
There was a different Krishna temple nearby, so I visited this and chatted briefly to an English-speaking man sitting outside. He didn’t know much about the Pranaami Temple except that the “headquarters” are near Jamnagar, and that this is possibly where the Gita/Koran readings take place. He also told me that the Pranaamis, rather than greeting each other formally with “Namaste”, say “Pranaam”. There seem to be an awful lot of Krishna sects in Gujarat, and I am constantly seeing pictures of the Shri Nathji idol from the temple of Nathdwara, 40km from Udaipur on the Jodhpur road (beyond Delwara).
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Porbandar is also famous for its high concentration of Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), and many people I spoke to had a cousin in Leicester, others in Dubai. I met two sets of Leicester NRIs from a nearby village (Ranawa? Rawala?) where, apparently, every family has at least one member abroad, mostly in Leicester. Most pleasing of all was the boy I met who told me his friend worked in a cutlery shop in Luanda! The man sitting next to me on the bus leaving Porbandar turned out to live near Gatwick Airport, and I asked him why this area in particular has produced so many NRIs. “Well, they all want money, innit?” he said, not really throwing much light on the matter. I guess a lot of ithas to do with links being established – one person goes out, strikes gold (as it were) and tells all the family and friends that they must come out for a better life. Exactly the same situation as that of the villagers in Udaipur district heading off to work in Kuwait. Many of the Leicester Porbandarites came to England around 30 years ago via a generation or two in Kenya or Uganda, leaving those countries after they gained their independence. Funny to think of these well-worn routes: Porbandar – Nairobi – Leicester, or Junagadh – Mombasa – Southall…
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Today has been a bit of a washout – I simply haven’t been in the mood for India. It happens, and I have no doubt it will pass by tomorrow, but it does mean my impressions of Rajkot have been uninspiring and fairly limited. I had a bit of a mental crisis yesterday about the “giving money to beggars problem”. It deserves more time and thought than I can give it now. Suffice to say that it is a problem, and something I have brushed under the carpet with stock arguments for a long time, to my shame. It has also involved me being unpleasant to people, which is something I am not proud of, even in the most irritatingly persistent cases. I hate the complacent firmness with which many people tell you that mustn’t give money to beggars. Some people, myself included, qualify this by adding that, as giving money may actually thrust people ever downwards in a cycle of dependence and uselessness, it is better to give money to NGOs who address root causes. But if, like me, one does not get round to giving the money to the NGOs, then this argument stinks of hypocrisy and is probably more heartless that the misguided ministration of the immediate fix of a few coins that all of us like to absolve our consciences with.
What prompted yesterday’s dilemma was a small, relatively healthy-looking boy with a shaved head, a metal bar and a dog. He explained to me that the building I was looking at was the Rana of Porbandar’s former palace and then asked for some money. I said no at first, but he persisted, telling me again and again that he needed to buy vegetables and that he was a crabhu admi, a nothing of man, whose family was all dead. I gave him a measly two rupees, and then, at his insistence, Rs 30 in notes that were torn and worthless. This was not an unusual interchange – scarcely a day goes by without at least one person asking me for money, and whether I give it or not is largely down to whim on my part.
What marked this incident out was the degree to which the boy’s spirit seemed crushed by his circumstances. His face was totally blank. There was no ghost of a smile, let alone a laugh, on his face, which is rare in India, even for the most destitute-looking beggars. He called his dog “Friend”, and claimed not to have any others. I didn’t know what to do with him, what to think about him. He appeared reasonably well-fed and he even indicated that he had a job of sorts, although this apparently didn’t pay him enough. In the end, I decided to give him companionship. We walked together to the bus stop, where I had some difficulty extracting myself from him and, feeling every inch like a miserable, narrow-minded bastard, I had to tell him that enough was enough, God bless and goodbye. He left, waving almost cheerily behind him, perhaps feeling that any distraction from the tedious, gruelling monotony of his life was welcome, even a brief conversation with a mad Englishman.
I suppose it was because he was such a doubtful case that he raised the spectres of the multitude of unequivocal destitutes that I never gave money to, and those to whom I had given some and then promptly forgotten about. Such as the utter shambles of an old man on a road in Junagadh, face spattered with vomit, inching tortuously along the side of the road supporting himself by the wall, going up to get a cup of tea with my Rs 5 that I gave to him for no other reason than that I couldn’t bear the spectacle he presented and panicked at the idea of doing absolutely nothing Of course I daydreamed about doing something magnanimous to help him – but what? – and of course I didn’t have the gumption to do anything at all but stare, in horrified, voyeuristic guilt.
In total contrast were the two charming young men lying on the pavement in Rajkot today who chatted to me while the wife of one of them came across the road from where she had been cooking to join in the fun. All they wanted was maasti – fun, a chat. There are a surprising number of people whose only wish seems to be to greet and be greeted. It is probably a way to maintain a bit of dignity while feeling a bit of warmth.
Having given something of the juice and colour of the “beggar question” and largely avoided the substance, I shall leave it there for tonight. On to Kutch tomorrow, the far western portion of Gujarat.
Footnotes:
[29] Communist Party of India (Marxist)
[30] The debate dragged on for well over a year after this, and high profile figures such as Arundhati Roy (author of The God of Small Things) became involved. Finally, in October 2008, Tata announced that they would formally withdraw from Singur and relocate their plant to a site in Gujarat. Ironically, this announcement was greeted by protests in Singur by those residents who had supported the Tata Motors plant in Singur in the hope that it would lead to job creation.
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