Learning by Doing and "Broken World" follow-up

Dear all,

For the next few weeks I will be on the move. I will be going to rural Karnataka, a state in southern India, to view another NGO that works in health and is particularly renowned for its HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs. After that I will head to the Pushkar Camel Festival in central Rajasthan to view the chaos and festivities of 200,000 people and, yup, a whole lot of camels. From there I will head to Delhi and then Kathmandu, Nepal to renew my visa to stay in India (foreigners must leave the country before 6 months to renew their visa). Hopefully I can catch World AIDS Day activities in Delhi on December 1.

I have completed that brief survey analysis of men's health needs in ARTH's field area. When I return, we will do follow-up with key informant questions on certain ambiguities in the local perspective of disease. Hopefully that leads to a solid aim to provide an additional health service.

This email contains some lessons I think I am learning and a follow-up on the domestic violence email I sent, and comments on governance and civil society.

Learning by Doing in India

Some of the next paragraphs mention the phrase "the future of the 21st century." I think I'm warranted in using such heavy phrases because India does seem to be at the crossroads of the 21st century - with one foot in modern and ancient times. I also realize the following are more statements than arguments. But all have been informed in one way or another by my experiences here.

• Idealism is not enough, but it is a beginning - a launch pad. Skills, which require practical, real-world training, time, repetition, and probably to some extent boredom during the acquisition phase, are a must to create change. Skills for me, in this sense, probably require bridging both the academic and practitioner worlds. I need to fulfill my intellectual longings and yet ideas and insights, particularly into ethics, come from doing, experiencing, and practicing.
• The 21st century will require navigating both the worlds of the rich and the poor; developing vs. developed- there is no avoiding globalization; this hits me in the face everyday.
• One must guard against complacency- It is easy to become content or complacent in the rich world, often stuck in routine and comfort. But this is dangerous because:
  
  1. A person may lose sense he is fully dependent on God
  2. A person may lose sense of his intentions/ideals, especially if he aims for a life of public service
  This also requires a constant process of learning. The world is changing rapidly and will change exponentially, for better or worse, in the coming century. To avoid routine or complacency, one must be disciplined enough to change focus. This could be as little as trying a new food to as large as moving to a new city or job.
• In the 21st century, one must understand and live within a pluralistic, diverse, multicultural, and multilingual world- This requires openness, experience, diplomacy, and language skills. The xenophobe or unworldly person may fruitlessly try to walk upstream in our increasingly amalgamated world, but the wise man will build a boat, navigate the rocks ahead, and avoid the tributaries of untruth.

Follow-up on "Broken World, Broken Computer" email and comments on governance and civil society

The following shares three people's perspectives and some of my insights about the public display of domestic violence I experienced and wrote about eight weeks ago in the email entitled "Broken World, Broken Computer." I recorded all these thoughts earlier, but simply have not compiled them and sent an email (I have not been mulling over all this for eight weeks).

Through these conversations I realized that the incident I witnessed is not unique to India and that religion did not play a role in its enfolding or to people's reactions. Human nature, the fallen state of man, or whatever one calls it, played the primary role. The comments shared with me can be divided into themes on my own personal safety, pragmatism, cultural barriers, "system" problems, and lack of knowledge of rights and responsibilities. Some comments on governance and civil society then follow.

Both Dr. Sharad and my friend Mohit said it was probably better not to physically intervene unless the woman's life was in jeopardy. As a foreigner I carry greater risk of being implemented as the real culprit or accused of being the woman's lover and cause of dispute. I could have possibly been beaten by the man or even the crowd, because the perception of all is that the incident is none of my business.

Both Dr. Sharad and my American NGO program director, Siddhartha, thought my family's fear and inaction of merely calling the police when I requested it was unwarranted. They could have easily called the police and anonymously said an incident was occurring at the location described; there is no mechanism to trace phone calls.

A sense of cultural apathy exists in that people view domestic violence as a domestic issue. Being intoxicated is often used as a justification and acceptance of a husband beating his wife is widespread. If the police came, the woman would probably deny the beating and could be thrown out of the house if she told the truth. In lower castes and villages, women are fully dependent on men for everything – food, kids' education; shelter, etc. The perception is that if the man is gone, or say taken away by the police, the woman is nothing. Even if the woman is beaten, she will deny it to prevent her status and place in life to be withdrawn. In the traditional cultural and religious view, the husband is still viewed as a god and the wife should submit accordingly. So people want to deal with these types of issues themselves without police involvement.

The statement, "The system is corrupt" undergirds this situation in several important ways. However, this is not the first time I heard this type of comment. Walking through the lower-caste part of a village one day, I passed a girl no more than five or six years old. The ARTH employee with me noted the girl was likely already married. When I asked how that could be, he replied, "the system is wrong." The "system" in this context deals with those empowered to serve and protect - the police. Those entrusted with the law do not often abide by it. Siddhartha commented that Indians are conditioned from childhood to avoid the police; this is exacerbated by the media. It's not that bribery and corruption are blemishes within the system - bribery and corruption are the system. People realize this and the media attempts to expose it, often at the expense of when the police actually do their jobs well. If the police were to arrive on the scene, they will ask witnesses interrogative questions, solicit a court appearance, ask others to sign documents. People do not want to be involved in this mess - especially rich people when it involves lower classes. Plus the Indian court system takes an excruciating long time. There is a 25 million back-log of cases in the country. The verdicts and sentencing of the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts occurred only this year. The newspaper reported a man who filed a law suit in 1947 finally got his reparations in 2007, a full sixty years later. For all these reasons Mohit advised, "avoid getting into the system."

Mohit told of the time he was ticketed for talking on his cell phone while on his motorcycle. The fine is normally 300 rupees, but the police officer said he would not have to pay it if he gave the officer 100 rupees. Mohit refused and said he will just pay the 300 ruppees. Another officer approached. The first officer told the second what he wanted from Mohit. The senior officer let Mohit go without paying anything. They didn't want to make the effort for the ticket or deal with those who refuse bribery. Vinod, ARTH's car driver, narrowly missed a boy in a village while driving back to Udaipur one day. Vinod got out of the car to check on the boy and was assaulted by nearby villagers, even though the boy was fine. A bus stopped nearby. Villagers got off, beat Vinod, and then got back on the bus as it left. The investigating police tried to bribe the boy's family by saying they will make the charges against Vinod worse if they pay them. The family refused.

Dr. Sharad told of an experience of an ARTH village employee who reported a case of domestic violence to the police. The man heard the beatings occurring at night; the next day it was independently reported on three supervisor levels of the police. The superintendent said he would investigate. Yet the local police was in cahoots with the village council who did not want an investigation. The victim fled the village. The man who reported the violence also fled after his life was threatened.

And finally, Mohit, Dr. Sharad, and Siddhartha all pointed to the lack of awareness of rights as a general problem that relates to this experience. If that woman I saw knew her rights to sue and the availability of counseling services by the government, the man would think twice about hitting her. Siddhartha noted this while sitting next to his wife. Both are literate and educated. But many people in India are not. The government puts up signs about rights and the latest government schemes, but these are useless for who they intend to empower. Dr. Sharad mentioned that recently a domestic violence bill passed that has articles outlining passersby who invest themselves in the situation. India has it all on paper, but the implementation is very poor.

Comments on governance

To a certain real extent, the feelings about the police system directly relate to distaste for politics among many Indians. Politics is viewed by the general public as a cheap way to gain power. Often hailed as "the world's largest democracy," India has hundreds of political parties, from left wing Communists to ring wing Hindu nationalists. Like everything else in India, politics is an amalgam. Unfortunately, it is a messy, corrupt amalgam. A brief on Indian politics cannot go without mention of the two major parties - The Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The former champions itself as the party of Gandhi and the poor while the later constitutes the political arm of a vitriolic form of Hindu nationalism. Both are monoliths of bureaucratic entanglement and overall equally corrupt. The Congress Party has dominated Indian politics for 60 years while championing a mixed-economy (heavily socialist) approach to governance until economic reforms sprouted India's roaring economy in 1991. The BJP interrupted this dominance from 1998-2004 (I happened to be in India during the 2004 elections when the Congress Party regained its power).

Most politicians are uneducated in India and many have criminal backgrounds. Two months ago Parliament erupted into a fight that aired on national television. The biggest voters are the poor; the rich do not want much involvement. Siddhartha declared, "We are stupid" for voting the same people back into office who end up furthering themselves and not their constituents. Yet when people vote, they do not scrutinize candidate qualifications. It's rather a vote by region/caste/religion/community. As Edward Luce notes in his book In Spite of the Gods, the saying goes, "Cast for Caste" (Cast your vote for your caste). Siddhartha believes the government, or people in the government, do not want people to know the national/regional development schemes because this will empower voters and the politicians will lose power.

Siddhartha told me he wanted to be a politician after college, but his mother went on a hunger strike to prevent him from doing so. He wanted to be one like his father, and still says he will enter politics someday – to change it for the better. He believes youth and new leadership could do so. Near August 15, India's Independence Day, the newspaper The Times of India ran a series called "Lead India" with Shah Ru Khan, a top Bollywood movie star, as its spokesperson. With headlines and articles like "From India Poised to India Realized," "India in Search of Leadership," "Picking A Few Good Men & Women," the newspaper was holding a contest to get young Indians to reshape politics with incentives of a cash reward, mentorship program, an article on the winner as the "face of a new political leadership in India," and a leadership development program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

The application reads:
"Rewrite Indian Politics: Use a Pen... Lead India is an initiative by the Times of India to seek out the next generation of leaders for the nation. Today, the political system is dominated by people who are either career politicians or born in political 'dynasties.' The best and the brightest tend to stay away from politics because they are deterred by the tortuous path up the political ladder. The Lead India program will endeavor to bring a new breed of political leaders into the lime light. It will create a highly visible platform where candidates who have the vision, ideas, and implementation skills to lead the country into the future can showcase their skills. And it will exhort millions of ordinary Indians to offer their opinions, to help choose our next generation of leaders."

Perhaps Siddhartha's generation will bring political change along with India's economic development.

On a final note, Dr. Sharad and I were out driving once when we had to pull over for a government VIP's entourage. VIPs in India often ride in white Ambassador cars, products of the old socialist monolith, with red lights atop and led by screaming police cars loaded with officers clad in olive uniforms. As they passed Dr. Sharad said, "Look at these jokers. Can you imagine what it would be like if we did not have a democracy?"

Thoughts on (India's) Civil Society

To put in bluntly, civil society lacks in India. I intuited this from the filthy streets, communal interactions, and the domestic violence act I witnessed before having it corroborated by an Indian author and Siddhartha. In his book, "India Unbound," which weaves narrative and analysis on India's economic transformation, Gucharan Das contrasts civil life he experienced in the U.S., where he grew up for a few years during his adolescence ,to his life experience in India. He writes, "In contrast [to America], the social life of Indians revolves around the family or caste. It does not encompass the whole community. Perhaps that is why our streets are dirty when our homes are spotlessly clean." I find this very true. The family is the center of Indian social life. It is a great strength of India and a model for the West. My host family constantly reminds me that Indians never divorce. My host father wryly asks with a slight smirk, "So, how many wives will you have?" clearly referencing America's divorce rate. And most social functions due occur within familial connections. The house I live in is constantly up-kept and cleaned. The "maid-servant" sweeps and cleans the floors every day and dumps the trash across the street. Siddhartha notes that a garbage disposal plan with hotels would be a great plan for Udaipur, a tourism driven city. Most of the hotels throw their trash into the lake – the same lake that tourists from all over the world come to see. He commented if he went door-to-door in his apartment complex to push for a garbage collection unit instead of mere dumping out the windows, he would be laughed at by his neighbors. Despite all this, Udaipur is known for its "civil societies" or what we call nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) like the one I work in. But the deeper permeation of a civic mind does not yet exist in communities. In the same way America can learn from India about the center of the family, India can learn from America about the role a civil society plays in a democracy.

-Will