Nameri Birdlist - March 4th to 6th 2015

 Ruddy Shelduck

Ibisbill - a first

Common Merganser - a first

Mallard - male and female

Northern Pintail

River tern

Sand Martin

Crested Grebe - a first

Oriental Pratincole  a first

Black Stork - a first

Peregrine Falcon - 2 - a surprise! Identified by Gulven

River lapwing

White Wagtail - a first

Wreathed hornbill - a flock.  Brilliant!  A first

Imperial Green Pigeon - a flock

Great Indian Thick Knee

Common Kingfisher

March 6th - on a walk with Gulven

White Winged Wood Duck - a first

Vernal Hanging Parrot

Spangled drongo

Scarlet Minivet

Pygmy Woodpecker

Yellow Naped Woodpecker -a first

Gold fronted leafbird - a first

Velvet fronted nuthatch - a first

Osprey

Dollarbird -a first

Woodshrike

The Itinerant

One afternoon, when I was about eight or nine years old, I came home from school to find a tall, thin young foreigner chatting with my dad.  ‘Chatting’ is possibly the wrong word, for he was listening in a polite, typically European way with a broad smile on his face.

Dad looked at me, “Do you remember reading the letter from Robert Smeets?”

I certainly did.  The episode had begun with Saro Aunty – my favourite, lovable Aunt and a gregarious, sociable lady if there ever was one – meeting Robert at some event or the other. He was a young Dutchman, who had worked for a bit, saved a modest sum of money and was now travelling around the World.  His stories apparently were fascinating (she remembers some of them even today, I would imagine).  My Uncle and Aunt lived in Sri Lanka at the time and, if I recall, Robert spent a few days with them.  Coming to know of Robert’s plan to visit India from there, my intrepid Aunt suggested that he come over to Digboi and visit and stay with us.  Most people will politely thank the other person for this invitation, promise to do so and then fade away.  But Robert was decidedly not like most people.  Shortly thereafter, my parents received a letter from him, written in a handwriting that can only be described as a combination of art and geometry – full of angles and stylish twists – that is characteristic of a European coming to terms with English.  With a few carefully spelt words, he invited himself over and, when the good Aunt followed up with a letter introducing him, it was an offer Dad and Mum just could not refuse.

So here he was, on a fine day in the mid 1970s.

He had arrived by train, which caused no small consternation as no one in our family, in our friends circle, or their friends circle had ever travelled by train east of Calcutta, except in a dire emergency such as the 1962 war with China.  But, remember, Robert Smeets was different. He could survive just about anywhere though he didn’t quite look it: a tall, gangly sort of fellow, with a blond mop of hair on his head, a slightly loony smile that was perpetually in ‘On’ mode and a soft, genteel voice that was barely above a whisper.

Yes, Robert Smeets, I will say again, was not like most people we knew. 

For starters, he had hardly any luggage, which was a matter of endless conversation for a family that accumulated trunks, hold-alls, suitcases, briefcases, carry bags and picnic baskets.  He then did not seem to see the need to ever wash clothes and the room he lived in had a most peculiar smell that got me fascinated and intrigued all at once, and my poor mother driven to some despair, as the ‘jamadar’, as our sweeper was called, had let it be known that cleaning this room was way below his dignity of labour.  But all was forgiven when, at meal times, Robert would eat most joyfully, chewing every morsel and enquiring about the details of the recipe from my mom, prefacing every sentence with a softly spoken, “Mrs. Vasudevan, could you please….”; indeed, his formality and insistence on manners was admirable as was his frequent notings in a little diary that he carried around, reminiscent today of a long-forgotten era.

In those days, Dad had a monthly free quota of petrol, since he worked in a company that produced petroleum, and he placed the car at Robert’s command.  But Robert was not interested in the least in using it, choosing to walk everywhere and chatting with children and adults alike.  His handicap of not knowing Hindi did not seem to deter his communication ability,  which was anchored always by a trademark smile that got most people on his side; undeniably, the fact that he was white helped too, as Digboi had until the mid 1960s a number of British managers. He caused quite a stir wherever he went, photographing the vendors around him with his little black-and-white film camera, or near Charali, the main bazaar where he insisted on speaking with (and photographing) the beggars in a tone of respect that they must have found most suspicious.

One can only imagine, forty years later, the sort of questions he must have faced a thousand times in the sub-continent.  “Why are you travelling around the World?”, “What do you do in The Netherlands?”, “Are you married?” (this last question, no doubt, from a suspicious fellow travelling in the same coupe as Robert, his family in tow), “Why are you not married?”, “Do you have a girlfriend?”, “Why are you not studying?” and about a hundred others that he must have, I can surmise, answered in the soft, carefully neutral way that the liberal Dutch are wont to do. 

A few days after Robert’s arrival, Dad came back home to the news that the chap had been missing all day.  Much ado followed, of course, until information flowed in that he had walked almost all the way to the next town, Duliajan, a good twenty five kilometres away.  The walk was on a road that cut through a dense jungle and the threat to anyone from the odd elephant or an opportunistic robber was omnipresent.  Ignorance has never been more blissful.  Dad, if I remember right, then sent the car to pick him up and Robert spent much of the evening apologising which my good natured father never felt necessary. Yet, in the eyes of all in Digboi, Robert was instantly branded a certified nut and I had a field day, regaling my friends in school with tales of Mr. Smeets.

My post-school life in Digboi was lonely and I craved for company that only came by when my brothers returned for their annual vacation.  Robert filled in for the time he was in Digboi, spending some time every day playing with me, after I got back from school.  So, when I was told after about a couple of weeks that Robert Smeets would be leaving in a couple of days, it was dismaying to hear. 

With a brief handshake and his smile, Robert left Digboi by train.  He travelled to the North on his way out of India and kept in regular touch with my Aunt and with Dad and Mom through letters, with a promise of a follow-on trip.  A couple of years later, we heard that he had married a Sri Lankan, that country having a special place in his large heart, and had taken up a job in the Netherlands, only to leave it a while later to go back to his first occupation – travel.

The letters from Robert decreased over the years.  Dad was a legendary letter-writer, particularly after his retirement, and would persevere with those who were laggards so Robert continued, perforce,  keeping in touch, the intensity of writing reduced to his annual Christmas card that I awaited eagerly for its unusual postage stamp.  And, then, as his silouette had faded away from the little town of Digboi, the annual card did too, in the most unobtrusive way possible. 

A few days ago, I thought of him and decided to use Google to track this chap down, but without success.  Who (or What) was Robert Smeets?  A post-1960s neat hippie? An environmentalist? A confused soul rejecting capitalist economics? An opportunistic wanderer? An itinerant nomad who travelled for its own desultory joy?  Or just another gentle human being attempting to live life on his own terms? 

Chakra-vyuh

Yesterday, while on a bus, for no particular reason at all, I thought of Chakra.

He was part of the second batch at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad – the batch of 2003 and I met him while evaluating students’ business plans as part of a panel, something I had started doing the earlier year with enthusiasm (“those who can’t do will evaluate”).  I faintly remember an earnest, spectacled chap presenting his team’s plan with a modest air about him. 

A couple of years later, Chakra was seated alongwith me, on the other side this time.  He had done well at ISB, picked a job up and was invited now to be part of the panel because he was considered by the faculty, quite rightly, to be mature and reasoned in his approach.  We briefly chatted with each other and, thereafter kept in occasional touch over email, meeting regularly at ISB on my now-annual pilgrimage to it.  Chakra was always a quiet, gentle sort and quizzed the students with considerable empathy – a far cry from the otherwise brutal examination that most of them were subjected to.  He had a particularly soft corner, in those sessions, for social entrepreneurs and believed  in the transformation power of responsible business. 

Chakra, simply, was a hugely likeable guy. 

I learnt subsequently that he had become the executive assistant to the chairman of Satyam, Ramalinga Raju,  and, while he did show up for the ISB evaluation when he could, he was clearly very busy and preoccupied with work.  He confided that it was a frenetic life that saw no break, with incessant travel, meetings, calls and huddled confabulation, as filled with excitement as it was with stress and, as we would all learn later, anguish.  He truly believed the founder to be a visionary and was, therefore, himself as charged up about his work as he was with the company’s social sector projects – in rural development and healthcare access.

Satyam, as we now know, was setting a frenzied pace, its exclusive focus being on exhibiting growth for its own sake and the sake of market capitalisation, in a ruthless take-no-losers and use-any-means approach to attempted leadership in the software industry.    Corporate history is replete with such examples and, in every case, the means have been dodgy and boldly unethical, yet justified in the language of the business-literate.

Looking back, I cannot imagine how Chakra coped with all of this – the pressure of unremitting performance targets, constant activity, personal stress, the dubious accounting that he must have suspected perhaps and all else – but there was a sense of larger vision, he erroneously believed, that the company’s founder had.  Interestingly, this vision – of transformation, of creating a better India, of leaving the World a better place – is the vision that godmen sell with alacrity to unsuspecting disciples; perhaps just as religion is business today, business is a religion too.  Both pursue wealth for its own sake and believe it to be the tangible indicator of happiness. 

When the company tumbled in 2009, like a pack of well-worn cards piled delicately on each other to create an illusion of commanding height, he was not just personally broken but devastated. The next few months were worse – facing up to a long-denied reality and to regulators, incessant questions on issues he had little clue about, and the deep fear of reprisal and loss of face.

I met him sometime later at ISB as usual and, after the day’s work, we went on a walk on the road that encircles the huge building.  It was more than a walk really, – it was a journey of experience.  His career at Satyam, Chakra explained, had taken a toll on his health and on his family.  His wife chose to leave, unable to cope with his preoccupation and absence and when he expressed genuine contrition and offered to make amends, it was to no avail.  I instantly liked him even more for what he had done; few people we know have the capacity to say “I am sorry,” from their heart and we must applaud their humility.  After all of this, he wanted a break away from corporate life and the city and had gone back to his parents’ home in a village to rebuild his life, possibly by getting involved in agriculture and social entrepreneurship.  We exchanged some ideas while walking, and I went away thinking of just how Life can punch the best of us in the nose, at times to get us back on the path of our dreams.

Chakra got involved in a couple of initiatives and it was invigorating to talk with him over coffee, when we met in 2012 .  He had slimmed down a fair bit and certainly looked happier and relaxed.  I left for the airport  gratified to know that he was on a comeback path, possibly with the support of his batchmates and friends – a necessary support group for the best of us.

A few months later, in early 2013, Chakra was hit by a vehicle while taking a walk in the morning and was killed instantly, the end of a brilliant, humble, idealistic young man, who was robbed of an opportunity to score – possibly a blemish-less hundred - in the second innings.  One could blame the driver of the vehicle (and quite justifiably so), yet, I have never thought of Chakra without thinking in tandem of his ex-boss, now in jail, whose avarice and insane pursuit of a Chimera drove this gentle, intelligent man down the road to nowhere.   

The Call in the Darkness and a GHOst in waiting

 October 27th 2014

Saturday night on the farm, with no electricity for miles and I am on the terrace - wouldn't miss this for the World. 

After the rains of a lifetime (60 mm in four hours), there is darkness all around - a pitched, sombre, heavy, cloudy darkness, with the mist lending a ghostly air to the evening.  You'd expect silence to add to the eerieness, but far from it, the frogs - a thousand of them, I'd imagine - are in full song, in harmony and out of it, their rasping, harsh, monotonous, unending voices reminding me of a long forgotten classmate, who, I'd once prophesied, would ascend the evolution order to reach their status some day.

And, as I sit there breathing it all in, I hear the bu....boo call from the trees yonder.  A prolonged call, silence, and then the call again.  An owl for sure, and should the spectre make its appearance, I would get quite a start.  For the Great Horned Owl is a stern chap, unsmiling and focused, his (or her) yellow eyes boring into you with an unblinking gaze.  But, he doesn't make a visit, for there is a buffet on call, quite literally!  I hear his hoot - that distinctive bu...boo, as if from a hurriedly made flute, a few times and, then, he is gone - in that silent, leisurely way of his, to pick on the frog menu, or perhaps a mouse that had lost its way.

But what an unforgettable call!  Even the gremlins who chose Latin prefixes for birds were impressed, for his European cousin is called Bubo Bubo in an unspoken tribute. He - the Great Horned Owl - is the Bubo Bengalensis.

So, what does the Great Indian Hornbill Think of Us? - from an evening in Corbett

“It is Sal, Sir,” my guide Pandey answered patiently.  It was the sixth time that I had asked for the name of this familiar tree by the kuchha road, each time getting the same answer; clearly I have a problem identifying trees in general and the sal in particular.  “You are one out of ten tourists, Sir,” Pandey continued, “who come to Corbett National Park to see anything other than the tiger.” It was a way he had of making me feel a bit better, possibly. 

We – my family of four - were in the Bijrani range of the Tiger Reserve at around 3 pm in the afternoon in a Gypsy.  A number of vehicles – all Gypsies painted forest green – had entered the park at the same time, carrying brightly dressed, excited tourists, each talking about exactly where they had seen the tiger last – Kanha, Bandhavgarh, Ranthambore....  Clearly, it was not just seeing the tiger that was important, you must have seen it in different forests, if you wished to be counted.  We drove slowly into the beautiful dry deciduous forest, the majestic stands of Sal and Silk Cotton creating a breath-taking canopy in which we heard macaques and langurs swinging from branch to branch with dexterity and below which we saw small herds of spotted deer and heard the call of a peacock.   

It was at the first stream that Pandeyji asked us to look away to our right: a small flock of Black Cranes, which is absent in the South, were in the water.  As our vehicle stopped to allow me to view it through the binocular, the Gypsy immediately behind began to prod us ahead, its Delhi Punjabi tourist clearly impatient with our sense of priorities; it would seem that he had made a prior appointment with the tiger deep inside and synchronised watches as well.  He, like many Delhi Punjabis, live their lives on the Three-Rules Theory:

Rule 1: I am always right.

Rule 2: Everyone must always make way for me

Rule 3: Never forget Rules 1 and 2

We therefore made way for the Gypsy behind us and, as he passed, he gave the Black Crane a glare and then looked at me in the curious way people do when they wish to say, “What an odd chap you are!”

We drove on, now at the rear end of the convoy by quite a distance.  More sal, more teak (all planted up), Amla, Cassia Fistula (though, of course, not in bloom), the odd Flame of the Forest, Acacia Catechu (or Khair, the bark of which is used in the making of ‘chuna’ for paan), Bahunias....the guide and the Gypsy’s driver knew them all, both by their local name and the scientific name, which was hugely creditable.  We stopped to take a good look at the Chestnut-headed bee eater, which must surely rank as one of India’s most beautiful birds and at a stunning pair of rock thrushes by the stream. 

....and ahead there was a revving of engines and a cloud of dust as a few Gypsies took off all of a sudden.  A tiger, sorry, TIGER, had been spotted entering a thicket.  We followed as well, just in time to see the hind of the animal disappear behind a tree to our far left at about 10 O Clock. 

“Don’t worry, he will appear again,” the guides assured the tourists, as all the Gypsies huddled together. 

Engines were switched off and silence descended. 

While we waited for the big cat, I found the behaviour of others around - the 25 odd tourists in the six Gypsies around us – most interesting.  In the Gypsy out in front, two fellows were there in their best Navy Blue suits (I am not making this up), and one of them was impatient at waiting for the tiger which clearly had no sense of punctuality.  He spent his time surfing on his mobile phone, on Facebook first and then looking up old messages and deleting them.  The lady in the front seat of the same Gypsy fiddled about uneasily with the canvas fabric.  Others whispered inane stuff to each other, waiting for the guides to spot the animal.

About ten minutes later, the lady (the fiddler) ordered the Gypsy driver to move on with a brief ‘Jao’, and the Armani men seated at the back looked relieved.  After another ten minutes, the Gypsy behind us asked us to move on, as we were blocking the road (this time though it wasn’t the Delhi Punjabi). 

Engines on.

We took the lead in the convoy and had moved just about twenty metres down the path, when the tiger appeared to our left, clearly visible and about to cross the road a few metres in front of us.

What followed was mayhem.  Vehicles rushing forward to gain gained pride of place in the Sher-Darshan, cameras and mobile phones out and incessant clicking as the animal, with utter disdain, walked up to the path in front of us and then down the road at the head of the convoy.  Engines off.

“Tiger, four years old,” proclaimed a Know-All in one of the Gypsies.

“Tigress, six years old,” contradicted a guide, who clearly knew this animal. 

The tigress was in no hurry.  She showered her spray on a couple of trees, which act was filmed with great excitement, and took a leisurely walk down the road, while tourists stood on every part of the Gypsy (including standing on the seats with their shoes on, something I intensely detest) to get any picture they could, the vast majority of which would have been of her lean posterior.  No human celebrity can claim this exalted status of having her posterior filmed with such gusto.

No sooner had the tigress turned the corner than the Gypsies revved up again and rushed behind the Lady.  Clearly, she was inured to thronging multitudes of idiots.  We stayed behind; I have strong views on these things and am happy to have these opinions – it is not only a question of values; it makes me feel a superior as well, and a bit closer to the Renunciated Man.

Around the bend, the Gypsies shut their engines off and silence descended again.  About a few minutes later, two of the Gypsies reversed, turned around and headed back.  “They are done with the safari, Sir,” the guide explained, unable to hide the contempt in his voice.  As one of them crossed us slowly, I saw two foreigners examine their cameras, editing their footage, a prelude to the Facebook-Snapchat-Flickr routine.  We were the last Gypsy to leave Corbett that evening and I did not regret it a bit, for the macaques, langurs, birds and deer in the haunting light of the setting Sun were worth observing over and over again.  The question I kept asking myself through the drive though was “Is this really what wildlife tourism is meant to be and what possible good could it do to conservation?”  Like many of the questions we ask ourselves – rhetorical ones – the answer seemed unambiguous.

The next morning, while on a walk, another knowledgeable guide, Dinesh, suddenly pointed at the top of  the canopy to my right.  A Great Indian Hornbill glided majestically over the trees and flew out of sight, as we watched in wonder.  I heard its call – a high-pitched cackle -  in the forest yonder; it seemed to be expressing its unreserved opinion on the homo sapien species and I felt, in all humility, that it was right. 

In Sand, the Grain of Life: Why Sand Matters

The spectacular growth of the construction industry has had unintended consequences for every river in India today.  The mining of sand – which is an essential part of construction – has often been in the news, largely due to the control of local mafias over this minor mineral.  Most people also intuitively recognise that sand mining has damaged, and continues to damage, the delicate ecosystem of India’s rivers, on which millions of people depend for their drinking and household needs, livelihoods  and irrigation.  Yet, what is little understood is this: why is sand necessary for the river and what role does it play?

Sand, very simply, is the soil of the river, providing and sustaining virtually all life that exists in the river itself.  Alongwith another very important mineral, gravel, it forms part of the hyporheic zone, an intermediate zone between the surface water of the river and the groundwater beneath. 

The hyporheic zone has been studied extensively all over the world for the last seventy years and it is now well accepted that this zone performs critical functions, each necessary for the long term survival of a river.  These include

-          Recharging the ground water table far beyond the river basin itself by slowing down the flow of water in the river and allowing for percolation, not just downwards but laterally across large areas on either side of the river as well – exactly how large an area is recharged by the river depends on various factors, including nature of the soil, the topography and so on.  Indeed, a study in the United States showed that where the hyporheic zone was minimal, water recharge was limited and wells often went dry in summer. 

-          Being a refuge for fish and an incubator for eggs and for spawning.  While lakhs of fishermen in India are critically dependant on fishing , fish itself is a vital source of rural protein and, as is now being studied, the humungous  scale of sand and gravel extraction (along with the number of hydel projects coming up) is impacting fish availability across the country. Ironically, many fishermen, in an effort to keep their incomes from falling, are part of the extensive sand mining network, working the river-beds for a fraction of the amount that the sand is sold to the end user for.

-          Buffering agricultural lands and towns from rising water levels during floods.  This function is performed by sand by its very nature of being porous and is a process known as bank storage.  To understand this better, one only needs to fill a glass with sand and pour water into it!  This value of sand – that of being a vast storage tank of clean water – has an additional priceless property: during the dry months of the year, sand releases some of this water to keep the river flowing, ensuring (sand-filtered) water for our needs.

-          Harbouring unique invertebrate fauna and micro-organisms such as fungi and microbes that filter the water, due to its physical, chemical and biological conditions. The sediment particles, for instance, impede the flow of silt and particulate matter as water enters and moves through sand.  A second, biological filtering mechanism works in a manner similar to the trickle filters of sewage treatment plants, where nutrients dissolved in river water are taken up or transformed by microbial bio-films coating the sediments, into food for the many species of invertebrates that live in the hyporheic zone.  The chemical conditions prevalent within the hyporheic zone allow the precipitation of dissolved minerals and metals, which is then trapped by the physical filter, where it may be degraded biologically.  These are complex processes, evolved over thousands of years, and the removal of the sand-and-gravel layer of the river ecosystem is inhibiting the self-cleaning mechanism of the river, even as India’s rivers receive increasing loads of toxic and sewage wastes from urban and agricultural areas.  The removal of sand and the increasing pollution are irreversibly damaging the ecology of every river in India today. 

Dams, while they do not remove sand, have decimated this cleansing property of a river as well.  Indeed, a report by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) attributed the self-purifying ability of Ganga’jal’ to river sediments, notably sand, and data indicated that the blocking of sediments behind the Tehri Dam had diminished this property. 

What is needed therefore is an urgent national effort to develop an ecologically safe, cost-effective, technically comparable substitute for sand and to critically evaluate the impact on the hyporheic zone prior to the clearance of a hydroelectric project.  To ensure water security for India’s future, we need to keep sand where it belongs – in the river.

On a Flight Away from Reason

As the aircraft taxied to its take-off point, I pulled out my reading material.  The Business Standard on June 12th carried on its front page the heading “India's pvt wealth to rise 150% by 2018: Study”.  Apparently, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) says in a recent study that India’s millionaire households increased from 164,000 in 2012 to 175,000 in 2013, and that by 2018, private wealth will be around five trillion dollars in our country, ranking us 7th in this pecking order.

India also made its entry into the club of top fifteen ultra-high-networth households (defined as folks who have more than a hundred million dollars in private financial wealth) – there were 284 such households, who, in a different way, have difficulty in deciding where their next meal would be coming from, such are they spoilt for choice with a thousand fine-dining options. 

As I folded the paper, there were mixed feelings: business newspapers tend to celebrate such news, for their editors and readers believe fervently in the ‘trickle-down’ theory which says, make the rich richer, and money will trickle down to the poor making them richer as well.   

As we took off, an article in Down To Earth, well-researched and tidily written, caught my attention.  The article, titled “Crushed and Torn” was a personal journey along the closed tea gardens of West Bengal that were ‘enclaves of death and destitution’.

The Jalpaiguri region, with 195 tea gardens, accounts for over a quarter of the crush, tear and curl (CTC) tea produced in India. Workers in these plantations are mostly tribals whose forefathers were brought to the region by British planters as indentured labourers – there are an estimated 1.1 million of them.  Over the last twelve years, a number of estates in Jalpaiguri have shut down due to bad management, some re-starting only to shut again.  The owners of these estates – rich men from Kolkata and elsewhere - did not pay the workers’ dues, have enslaved them holding out the hope of a better tomorrow and making false promises while picking off Government aid, and desisted from providing the most basic conditions of living necessary for human existence.

I read of the death of a thousand people from hunger and malnutrition.  There was no drought, famine, flood or natural calamity here in the hills, instead, extreme cruelty and inhuman, insulting, shocking indifference that allowed affluent humans beings to walk away from a wretched, dying community of starving men, women and children who were headed for certain annihilation.  The story had gut-wrenching accounts of men and women surviving on half-a-meal a day of a chappati and tea leaf (yes, you read that right), with a pinch of salt.  I saw a picture of a man’s with a bony, emaciated chest, taken days before his death, that made me look away involuntarily.  And as my flight reached cruising altitude, I read of the large scale trafficking of women and children from the gardens, for such was the depredation and pathetic indigence in the district.

…..and I read of a new breed of estate owners, businessmen who know little about tea but were there to speculate in the large real estate that the gardens possess; they have raised money from the banks stripped the estates and their factories of assets and then run away, perhaps to add another name to the list of India’s millionaires that the Boston Consulting Group spoke of. 

This is not economics or a business venture gone astray.  It is murder, to be treated on par with the holocaust.   And these businessmen are murderers, with blood on their hands.  India does not need – has never needed – such millionaires, who perhaps seek to assuage their conscience with a recourse to their version of false religion, large donations to ‘charitable’ institutions or bill boards proclaiming public messages of altruism (as Vedanta does). 

One of the first things we learn as children, sub-consciously of course, is that life on this planet is not fair.  As we grow to adulthood, we often seek to question, before accepting such unfairness as a part of human existence.  But the story at Jalpaiguri is not just another story to accept as an unfortunate reality and move on. 

While re-reading the article, I thought of the cup of Darjeeling tea at the airport that had cost me Rs. 130.  And I read about Jasoda Tanti, a former tea leaf plucker in Jalpaiguri (which is, incidentally, contiguous with the Darjeeling hills), who now sieved stones on the riverbed for a living, working twelve hours a day to earn thirty rupees – she would have to work five days to buy this cup of tea, made from leaves that she may have herself plucked if she was employed.  This is not a shining example of ‘value-addition’; this is an unjust, unacceptable, indefensible, exploitative model of illusionary economic growth that excludes the poorest and the neediest from the essentials of human dignity.  No argument – no powerpoint presentation, data-powered, Armani-worn, academic argument – can justify this callousness, just as no argument can counter the Mahatma’s only advice to us: Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have  seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own destiny? 

As with most problems, solutions exist at Jalpaiguri.  The Government  can take over the gardens that have no owners anymore – seven at last count, on which twenty five thousand people were dependant - and employ all the workers who now face certain decimation, paying them from the MNREGA program.  Under the guidance of its sparingly-employed scientists and in partnership with committed, compassionate NGOs, the Government must then undertake a reforestation program to turn the tea gardens back to the forests they once were, a process that will take thirty years of nurturing.  The unintended consequences of this will admirable – land restoration, better human health, less chemicals in the soil and its improved health and an important message to the businessmen who seek to profit from their chicanery.

When I landed in Bangalore, there was an Air India aircraft at a bay next to ours, the engines of which were opened up for repair.  One could not but marvel at aircraft technology – a phantasmagorian collection of parts, assembled with precision – and yet contrast this with the human failure to provide the most basic of needs to a million people in the gardens of Jalpaiguri; we do not need technology as much as we need compassion, humanism and a deep-rooted belief in equality.  And, as a nation, we need a re-think of how we spend our money - a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the twenty thousand crores that is being pumped into a black hole to keep the terminally ill Air India alive would save a million people. 

And, as for the trickle-down theory, John Kenneth Galbraith, my idol in economics whom I rank only behind Keynes, had this to say: Trickle-down theory – the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows. 

After note: I have written to the Rural Development Minister at the Centre in some detail about a possible solution on the lines outlined above.  If you feel as strongly as I do, write to him with your ideas as well.  It’s the least we can do.