Man Vs Wild: What should justice to the elephant mean?

An elephant died a tragic death last week. While pregnant. After having been in grave agony for more than a day. A death that you wouldn't wish upon your worst enemies. Social media has been abuzz with anger, resentment, and war cries to inflict the same on the perpetrators. My messenger is flooded by forwards of petitions demanding that the perpetrators be charged to wilful murder and put away. Now if this solved the issue, I would have happily signed the petition and gone on with my life. But sadly, it doesn't and I for one will not be able to forgive myself if I don't pen down these thoughts that have been eating away at my gut.

(Disclaimer: This write up is not me trying to trivialize the incident or defend anyone. Just trying to bring a new perspective to the table.)
Back to the discourse. Who are these perpetrators? They are supposed to be local farmers. Why does that matter? It makes a difference. Now let's go back 2016, to another incident where a group of medical college students who threw a dog from the top of the building just to watch it die. Do you see any difference between the two acts?

One was a group of privileged punks consciously murdering an unsuspecting animal just for the sheer joy of it. To watch it inch towards a slow, painful death. The other was a group of farmers, trying to protect their livelihood, their blood, and sweat of many months, from destruction, by wild boars, which was inadvertently eaten by an elephant. Now, of course, one may argue that it does not matter, whether its a boar or an elephant, that no animal should be harmed as they often do get the short end of the stick in human-wildlife conflict. I believe it is illegal to hunt down wild boars in the state, the farmers should face the charges of having broken the law as well as for the inadvertent murder of the elephant.

But the anger that has been boiling all over social media, who does that help? Not the elephants and other wild animals that will continue to fall prey to such snares. Not the wild boars exercising its right to sustain itself, blissfully unaware of the human laws of the world. Not the farmer, who probably depends on this one crop for him and his family to tide over a few months to come. We owe it to them, as a thinking population with the privilege to not worry about how to make ends meet, to impact any real change.

It was with much awe that I first heard about Beehive fencing during a B-School competition at IRMA, which was implemented by Arun and Arnelit from PRM 39, at the Nilgiris, to keep elephants away from the tribal villages without harming them. The fencing could also double up as a secondary income source to the owners, via apiculture. I was mind blown. So, it is not entirely impossible to be actionable and impactful. But it sure is harder and more painstaking than venting on social media. I am more than happy to be a part of any discussion on how we can sustainably solve this issue. Even an unsuccessful attempt to solve the issue would be more impactful than venting on social media and forgetting about it the very next day. (Side note: I am not judging anyone who vents on social media. I myself do it very often and it works wonderfully in making myself feel instantly better, though often via a false sense of impact creation)

-Ardhra Prakash

June 3rd, 2020

Book Review: Rules of Attraction by Bret East Ellis

The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bret Easton Ellis is one of the most successful and controversial contemporary authors, predominantly known for his most debated work - American Psycho (as misogynistic. An unnecessary debate, if you ask me. What do you think?). With the bone chilling character of Patrick Bateman brilliantly portrayed by Christian Bale on screen, both the book and the movie have achieved cult classic status.

His novels are known for the casual, unaffected narration of the extreme lives of his unique protagonists. Most of who are extremely rich, spoilt, racist, Caucasians embroiled in their first world frustrations, drowning away the existential crises that haunts them, in drugs, sex and alcohol, all readily available at the swipe of their shiny AmEx cards. This common thread enables him to weave a universe with recurring fictional settings and characters.
Rules of attraction is set in Camden College - where "Dressed to get fucked parties" are more the norm than attaining an education. The book opens mid sentence and ends similarly - signifying how there's no beginning or end to the stories of the protagonists. How the frustration, the emptiness, the lack of motivation to slip out of an ecstacy induced black out is a never ending loop. It is narrated by multiple narrators and Ellis remarkably uses the tool to portray how one event is uniquely interpreted by each party involved - each molding it to their own convenience. The narrators are often unreliable, with incidents that go against a desired narrative conveniently wiped out.
The book isn't a classic. It is 283 pages of sex, alcohol, drugs and dissatisfaction. But once you are done, it also makes a lot of sense. It captures the emotions of the lost generation of the USA in the 80s, as someone rightly mentioned, very similar to how Fitzgerald did in Great Gatsby. As one of his characters reflects, the seemingly silly problems of these kids that definitely warranted no importance in the larger realm of things, genuinely mattered to them, for who survival was never an issue.


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Book Review: Norwegian wood by Haruki Murakami

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Norwegian wood was my second Murakami, first being Kafka on the Shore. Where Kafka was everything a Murakami novel is known for...Surrealism, a sort of melancholic grimness, mysterious characters who don't fit in in the world outside, oodles of unaffected but respectful sex to fulfil something that is just a mere physical need, and references to some classic literature and jazz music (about which I have no clue at the least, I won't pretend).... Norwegian wood is different but at the same time carries on with the general undertone of poignancy common to his work. (When I think of Murakami, I can only imagine a short silhouette of darkness that passes you by, head down, glassy eyed, unattached from the world that is mooning over him.) Norwegian wood felt different may be because even though at every turn of page I was prepared for fish rains and talking cats, none appeared. But instead you find men and women struggling in the search for something (identity, love, self esteem et cetera) they never really find. They are all conflicted as to why love always eludes them and that is a Murakami world right there.
It is the story of Midori who loved Watanabe who loved Midori but also Naoko who took her life as she was not over the death of her boyfriend Kizuki who killed himself for reasons unapparent. In between you have Nagasawa who cannot help being indifferent to Hatsumi, who cannot leave him despite the relationship constantly making her feel inadequate and unwanted, leading to her slashing her wrists after she marries another man. You get the gist. It is insanely grim and complex. But at the same time, it is unputdownable for the way Murakami creates magic with words. He drills a hole in your heart and stab you over and over but when you reach that last page, you are already dangerously involved in his painful world that rehabilitation to the real world is a slow process that requires a few days. Murakami, you monster! 😅


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Book Review: Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I first saw the perfect Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's many many years ago and remember being confused how someone could ever appear so flawless. A reviewer on goodreads voiced my thoughts for me and I quote "How could you be so much in love with a person who died long before you were born?". My Audrey Hepburn admiration peaked after I watched her in The Roman Holiday and Funny face. Yesterday I finished Truman Capote's novella based on which her most iconic movie was made and my respect for the actor in her and for the movie continues to grow.
There is no doubt at all that the movie remains my favourite. While the book was set in the 1940s, the movie was carefully adapted for the 1960s - a very sensitive era in the history of US, with the civil rights movement in full momentum. The ending has also been altered to offer the closure that was absent in the book. I am going to wrap up the comparison now with a monologue from the movie, a beautiful, needed addition to the book. "You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself." - Paul Varjak (George Peppard, Breakfast at Tiffany's)


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Book Review: After Dark by Haruki Murakami

After Dark by Haruki Murakami


Why this total lack of respect for my need for closure, Mr. Murakami? 😅

After dark is my third Murakami after Kafka on the shore and Norwegian wood. If after Norwegian wood I could only picture Murakami as a 'short silhouette of darkness that passes by you, head down, glassy eyed, unattached from the world that is mooning over him', I now see him staring impassively over nighttime time Tokyo, unnoticed under a large black umbrella, reimagining lives of passerbys and how they intertwine once the world goes to sleep.

Murakami takes you on a journey in collective first person voice. He's not much of a talker. Instead, he walks a pace ahead of you and constantly reminds you that we are "sheer point of view and cannot influence things in anyway" . He flashes you the worlds of Mari, Eri, Takahashi, Koaru, Korugi, the Chinese prostitute and Shirakawa, but in a way that makes you invested instantly. His brooding encourages you to start conjuring up the crazy ideas as to how the messy knot would unravel at the end of the book. And he stomps on these expectations and walks away giving you an open ending.

But in a way, I am glad it is so. For instance, Mari is unable to sleep since her sister Eri can't seem to wake up. Eri is living nothing less than a fairy tale. She is both Sleeping beauty and Snow White. And you would hope that at the end of the overnight soul searching, as Mari climbs into bed with her sister, holds her tight, kisses her and urges her to wake up, Eri's eyelids would magically flutter open to a happy ending. But she sleeps on, unaffected by the tumultous night her sister had. Anything less would not have stayed in my mind for a week after I finished the book.

It is a constant reminder, just like Nell Zink's Nicotine, that may be this is what good books are supposed to do – 'give the comfortable reader a slap across the face and ask him to stop being a bore, help you evolve as a reader.'


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The Great Indian Agrarian Distress - What is the way forward?

“How agonised we are when people die, and how untroubled we are by how they live.” -        P. Sainath

By the time India won freedom in 1947 after about 600 years of colonial rule, she and her majorly agrarian populace was badly battered and bruised. It has been 72 years hence, but the Indian farmers continue to writhe in the shackles of inequity, fettered by maladministered policies.

According to the Economic Survey released in 2018, roughly half of India resort to agriculture for livelihood. We have some of the most fertile land in the world such as the Gangetic plains. Though our food export basket may not be very diverse, India is only second after China in terms of the global food export volume. The government also regularly rolls out a number of policies and schemes to handhold the sector. Why then is the total agricultural contribution to the country’s GDP less than 17%? Why is it that the farmers still suffer from extreme climatic vulnerability, high price volatility, indebtedness and exploitation?

Although half the country is directly involved in agriculture, most of it is considered to be seasonal or disguised employment with very low per capita productivity and remuneration.  But it also true that any shortfall in the yearly urban to rural migration of labour destroys the entire supply chain activity, starting with the inability to harvest crops on time. This points to the abysmal state of farm mechanization in the country, mostly a result of extremely fragmented land holdings. Even if one manages to harvest, storage becomes the next perplexing conundrum. This is being demonstrated live across the country in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic that reinstates the age old saying, that the poor always get the short end of the stick.  Besides this, the practiced form of agriculture is highly unproductive with huge information asymmetry when it comes to suitable cropping, soil health and irrigation, while facilities for the same are sanctioned and implemented only on paper. The governments' urban driven policies signal that the rural farmer will always receive second class treatment, be it in terms of access to infrastructure or price fixing. Many propose policy reforms or technological advancements as a solution to this conundrum. This calls for retrospection.

Shortly after independence, government undertook land reforms to address the dismal state of agriculture in the country, albeit without success. This included abolishing intermediary interests such as the Zamindari system, introducing tenancy reforms to weed out the issue of insecure tenancy, imposing land ceiling to curb concentration of vast amounts of land among a few, and consolidating fragmented land holdings to check its uneconomic nature.

But the focus of the policy makers soon shifted to industrialization as a means to eradicate rural poverty and boost economic growth, and agriculture was left to fend for itself. Reaffirming what Thomas Malthus observed way back in the 1700s, the population grew exponentially while agriculture continued to snail in a linear fashion. The resultant food insecurity paved the path for Green revolution in the country.

While Green Revolution is considered to have achieved resounding success in creating a surplus in the country’s food reserves by focusing on the productivity, it was not accompanied by systemic measures or policy changes to improve the condition of the small and marginal farmers who make up almost 80% of the farming community. While there was a rise in the net per capita income by 190% soon after, this was limited to the bigger farmers of a few geographic areas like Punjab, UP and Haryana. But a 150% rise in input cost followed, plaguing all farmers irrespective of size of land holdings. Along with a short-lived respite from hunger, there emerged widened income inequality, inequitable distribution of assets and unnecessary mechanization that pushed down rural wages.

This reiterates the fact that technicalization of agriculture or sweeping policy changes are not panaceas to agrarian distress. They must be accompanied by the availability of markets, quality roads, avenues of value addition and access to fair prices in a steady market.

45% of the consumption in the FMCG sector is accounted for by rural households. Thus, a boost in the agrarian economy could just be the answer to most of India’s economic and developmental concerns. If the government is serious about its promise of doubling farmer incomes by 2022, the way forward is not by band-aid policies of loan waivers or transfer payments. It needs a multi-pronged approach of cooperative federalism from the Centre and the State governments, to integrate and implement the various disjointed schemes that currently function independently of one another. When data says 40% of the produce is almost always lost to post production losses, the policy makers should understand that increasing productivity is not synonymous with improving incomes or living standards. It involves revisiting the fundamentals to provide for what the system is lacking in – be it facilitating adequate forward linkage points, ensuring a market for the produce, ensuring availability of basic infrastructure, connectivity, and also diversification of secondary income sources like dairy, poultry and fisheries.

We shall try and explore further the widely proposed solutions in the coming weeks. 

Jekyll and Hyde: The Good, The Bad, The Human

The good and bad that coexists within a single human shell is something that philosophy and literature have long been exploring. While it is mostly undisputed that both these elements do exist simultaneously in each being, some schools of thought argue that circumstances sprout evil in people; others claim humans have an innate tendency to be aggressive but are bound by the laws of civilization and society to keep the beast within leashed.

Of the latter, the most influential and interesting in my knowledge has been Freud who claimed that the drive to aggress is deeply rooted in the psyche and thus independent of circumstances. As a result people have an innate desire or need to inflict harm or damage and this desire needs to be fulfilled periodically, in one form or the other. He went as far as to regard self control as a form of aggression, as one deprives oneself of other satisfactions via restraints. Thus, self control was an effective but costly way of inflicting self damage to quench a need which might otherwise translate to harm on another.

Be it films or literature, there are a lot of works existent and upcoming that endeavour to explore this topic. RL Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde (of course of which Hulk was not a total ripoff of ), William Golding's Lord of the flies that tries to understand the conflict between the instinct for savagery and the construct of civilization that aims to the contain the former, Padmarajan's Jayakrishnan of Thoovanathumbikal who leads a dual life reserving carnal pleasures for the city away from his daily societal acquaintances and family in the village, David Fincher's Tyler Durden of the Fight Club, or the very recent and spectacular Jallikkettu from Lijo Jose Pellissery are a few I can recollect from the top of my head.

         

Originally published in 1886, Jekyll and Hyde was a book of such controversial nature that book shop owners outrightedly rejected stocking it. An initial narration by the author to his wife ends with the manuscript burning in the fireplace. This was though Stevenson omits any gory details on the kind of misdeeds committed by Mr. Edward Hyde, the  evil alter ego of the respected Dr. Henry Jekyll, described as someone who could be approached by none "without a visible misgiving of the flesh". This he conjectures is because all human beings are usually made of good and bad, "but Hyde alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil". But to Jekyll, the creator, Hyde was a part of himself and as he looked upon the ugly idol in the glass on which "evil had left an imprint of decay and deformity", he could feel no repugnance, only a leap of welcome.

The novella of hardly a hundred pages, explores the predicament of the doctor at length, torn between being himself in Mr. Hyde and the fear of exposing and endangering himself from the society that tries to cage  the Hydes that exist within and around themselves. 

It must be apparent from all the direct quotes above that I am already a fan of the writing.  While descriptive, it is succint. While verbose, it isn't forced. If you have a day or two to spare and is in search of a good read to get those grey cells exercised, this may just be it.

Ardhra Prakash

(16th October 2019)

Unlearning

Picture Courtesy: Vaibhavi Garge

Air quotes naturally accompany our every utterance of the name Eengapuzha village. 24 square kilometres in area, with a mostly non agrarian populace of over 18,000 people and thus already way outside the scope of the census definition of rural, this not so quaint town was our allotted "village" for Village Field Segment of our curriculum. It stood out starkly from all the other villages we had visited as part of the PGDRM program at IRMA and not without reason. The village had wide, tarred roads, around 4200 households that mostly had multi-storeyed homes, owned at least one car, had access to specialized medical facilities including a dialysis centre, an array of commercial eateries, and even housed a mostly lively, mall.

But the most traumatized by this were my companions, two very enterprising intellectuals who had just hard earned their undergraduation degrees from TISS, after three years of serving the poorest of the poor in West and Central Indian villages, occasionally risking their lives and jumping fences to access the only toilet in the region in order to avoid open defecation.

The first two days of our stay in a mansion like accommodation on-field, only involved us trying to make sense of how we were to design a village development report given the place seemed nothing like a village. Another concern was how no picture clicked in the vicinity would convey rurality, along the lines of what we were taught in college. So, imagine how ecstatic all three of us found ourselves to be when we chanced upon a muddy inroad, with no traces of tarring intact and interspersed with as many potholes as to our heart’s content. Add to this, there were no signs of any wealthy inhabitation or economic development marring the frame. We snapped away to glory until one of us pointed out our behaviour was bizarre to say the least.

This is precisely why this photograph is important to us as a team of prospective rural managers. That when faced with something unlike our typical understanding of the concept, rather than appreciating the welcome deviation from the rule that Indian villages had to be the hubs of poverty and underdevelopment, and analysing the fundamental ways the transformation was achieved, we were in frantic search of any element, however small, how much ever an exception, that would cement our pre existing notion of how things had to be. So, as the sky darkened around us, we revelled at how the potholes in the pictures reflected the pretty dusk clouds and agreed how our sadistic selves should be acknowledging the accomplishments of underdogs more often.

Ardhra Prakash

(9th October,2019)

Take a left where the map says right

Where are we even headed to?

Moving at the speed of light

So numbed down, 

we hardly feel the flight.

Driving around in a maze

Pretending we could trust the map

Handed to us, so we're stuck in this loop, 

wearied out, lobotomized.

Tinted windows never rolled down

Too afraid to let the wind ramble

For it might tell you truths that hurt

Truths you block out, for comfort. 

Never letting the naked eye see

Zombies behind a camera lens

Painting dull frames with pretty hues

Thank God for filters that mask the blues. 

Building walls around you thick and high

Of caste, of colour and injected hate. 

Pointing a gun at the figure ahead

Not knowing it's you on a shadow screen. 

Never the sail fully opened out

Too scared the wind might slow you down

Or take you to waters not marked out

To islands that don't house your tepid towns.

Scared to stop for even just a while

Lest you fall behind on track

What a shame it would be to slack

To not be part of the winning pack. 

But it is a race you can never win

You're always short by a foot, by an inch. 

And if you reach the mountain top

There are higher ones to climb, to scour.

This is a game you can never win

Designed to make you think you can. 

So sit back, relax, 

Roll down that glass

Feel the wind as it knots your hair

Listen to it sing, open your ears. 

Take a left where the map says right

Learn to let go of things you were told to hold tight. 

One day may be you'll reach somewhere

From where you needn't run in despair.

- Ardhra Prakash
 (July, 2019)

Belonging

I don't really understand it when people talk of wanting to belong. 

I like being a tourist

Fleeting past people and places

Backpack on, water bottle on the side, a sling bag with the essentials

All that I need for a few days to come.

I like being a tourist

I like meeting the strangest of people and 

pretending not to understand a word they say to avoid a conversation

I smile and nod and look away

I couldn't do that to my own

I wouldn't have homes to come back to then. 

I like being a tourist

To not be part of anybody's world

But be a visitor

To see you put on your best behavior for me 

Or sometimes even be ignored

With no burden of a meeting ever again

No burden of the need to collect favors for a rainy day.

I like being a tourist

Thinking passively about a home I collect souvenirs for

A home I can't wait to get away from

And a home I can't wait to get back to

Only to want out again.

Am I even a tourist, but? 

What is my destination? 

Does it matter where I am heading?

As long as I have the open road ahead of me 

And quick change to get me by

And a home to head back to

Do I even need to introspect?

It doesn't matter where I go, what I do, 

It's this few hours of detachment that counts.

This freedom and the high it brings. 

The freedom of not having to belong
The freedom of not having to perform

The freedom of not being a guest at your own home

The freedom of being just someone you meet in a bus

Only to forget.

- Ardhra Prakash

  (February, 2019)