Notes on India from New Zealand

whew. India was very crazy. tiring, intense, life changing etc. I will give you a little glimpse...



so after sewagram we went to Ajay and Yogini's farm which was wonderful and in rural Maharastra. There we had lectures about farmer suicides and the cotton commodity chain. We studied a lot about BT cotton which is a scary GMO that is replacing organic and locally bred cotton all throughout the cotton growing parts of India (and in the US and elsewhere). It has been modified with genes from Bacillus thuringiensis, a naturally occuring bacteria that produces a toxin that works as a pesticide. so the plants have a pesticude bred into their leaves. this has all kinds of unknown consequences like perhaps genetic contamination of native wild plants or negative affects on pollinators. One of the farmers we visited reported not seeing any bees since he started planting BT and as a result, he hypothesized, the wild fruit trees didn't flower and produce fruit. yikes.



From there we went to Pune and were hosted by Kalpravriksh, an environmental NGO based in Delhi and Pune....learned so much....coolest thing I did there was go on a "nature tour" where we went bird watching at a unofficial bird sanctuary on the nastiest river i've ever seen. really really really full of trash and was flowing hardly at all and smelled like nothing i could describe. the place where we set up to watch birds was on a concrete wall along the river at a crematorium (the ashes go straight into the river along with the deceased's personal belongings and clothes). i took lots of pictures of trash. After birdwatching we walked through a child graveyard/city dump to get to a "nature trail" where we saw some cool plants and a beautiful owl. oh and lots of trash. and people digging through the trash to collect plastic and metal to sell. "bagpickers" they're called. there is a movement in Pune right now to get bagpicking recognized as a legitimate livelihood in order to get them some basic workers rights. interesting. after the nature walk we went to the palace where Gandhi was imprisoned and where his wife died. it's now a museum dedicated to her and a women's organizing center. twas cool.

Oh yeah, we spent Christmas day at Joshi's Museum of Miniature Railways. it was sweet. we had a party with lots of food and music and a secret santa gift exchange. oh yeah and that was after our bus broke down the night before on the way back from a fieldtrip to Amba Valley and we spent 8 hours on the side of the road near a sacred grove and got our palms read by our anthropology professor, sand x-mas carols and had a candle-light ceremony and then played truth or dare. hmmmm.

so THEN we went to Mumbai (Bombay) for 2 days, i think. i was unfortunately hiding in an internet cafe writing papers for most of our time there, so i didn't get to see much of the city.

Dahanu was our next and final stop. a lot happened there. most significant was when we did our summary of learning on the last day in which one group of students invited everyone to participate in an experiment with truth (Gandhi style) by making a fire and each burning a material possesion and talk about materialism. I make it sound trite, but it wasn't. the whole group, including professors and coordinators, was in tears for a good 4-5 hours. then we all went swimming in the river and had a barbeque.

now i'm in New Zealand. it's different and western and clean, and expensive. we are having some really good lectures on climate change and energy consumption and renewable energy and the kyoto treaty etc. good stuff. a lot more environmental policy and ecology and conservation here so far than in Tanzania or India. I approve.

enough for now.

I am well. a little confused, stressed, worried, hopeful about life when I get back. but generally good.

love love love

emma