After a few weeks of nagging my hosts
to help me visit a very "sensitive" bauxite mining area
called Lahodaga I'd been hearing about, I was sort of haphazardly put
in contact with some people at a missionary school near Dumri. This
school was chartered by a local Adivasi priest to educate a couple of
local tribes, one of which had never had its language put into
written form. I'll say a quick word about the nature of
Christian/missionary work, schools, etc in this part of India...To my
understanding, German, British, and Belgian missionaries came to the
interior tribal areas starting in the mid 1800s and over the next
several decades set up quite a few schools and ended up intervening
on tribal peoples' behalf when the British government was trying to
impose laws that would have stripped them of their ancestral land.
This was probably the most Christian area I visited in India, and it
wasn't uncommon for a single family to have both Christian and tribal
religion members. I didn't see any white clergy on several visits to
churches, nunneries, and other religious institutions; it seems to be
perpetuated solely by the local Adivasis themselves.
Back to Lahodaga...After a chaotic
series of minibus transfers in the absolute middle of nowhere in
rural India, me and my "guide" (who turned out to not know
any more about the place or the situation than me) were let off at a
dirt road junction where the driver pointed in the direction we'd
have to walk another few miles to get to the school. We arrived just
after sundown to a fresh chicken dinner, and it turned out to be a
very nicely designed school though it could use a bit of financial
help to finish the last bit of construction. The next day was a bit
of a miss but interesting nonetheless. I tried to explain that I
really wanted to see some areas with large scale hill-top bauxite
mining and speak to people who had been affected by it, but we ended
up having a bunch of sisters (as in nuns) jump in the jeep and direct
us to a convent for our first stop. It was a very lengthy tour of a
big pretty Catholic campus, then they wanted to go stop at one of
their parents' homes for lunch, and while it was very tasty and I
really appreciated the hospitality (and they strangely insisted that
I let the matriarch of the house wash my feet) it also knocked out
any real chance to see strip mining affected communities that day.
Before going to bed for the evening
(and after dropping the sisters off), we made a detour to the jeep
driver's home village which was just down the road. Here I got to see
mahua liquor being made for the first time, and it was pretty
awesome. I also got to see some really drunk villagers, how people
steal electricity from government power lines, and one dude
demonstrated how they make their clay roof tiles which is something
I'd been pretty interested in. The next day proved to be much more
fortuitous almost right off the bat.
No one had told me there was a model
solar energy village right down the road, so needless to say it was a
massive surprise when we suddenly rolled into a remote hamlet that
had a very impressive photovoltaic array, not to mention a
community-owned rice mill and a state-of-the-art water purification
system. Apparently someone from the village ended up being a
well-known priest out in the greater world and was able to secure
some government funding for this model village project. Obviously I
was stoked to just randomly happen upon this seemingly very
well-functioning example of how rural India could sustainably become
a bit more modern, though it seems pretty doubtful that this will
become a widespread phenomenon anytime very soon.
After dropping off a sick kid to his
family somewhere outside Lahodaga, we finally made it to the
super-devastated site I'd been looking for. Several miles before
actually coming to the Hindalco bauxite mines at Bagru Hills, I
started noticing these elevated cable cars carrying something or
other above the arid farmlands of western Jharkhand. A hair-rising
ride ensued up and around the side of a mountain on a road that was
not unlike the road up to a strip mine in Eastern Kentucky. At the
top was a guard gate, and for some reason they were willing to let us
come onto mine property and wander around. It was very, very much
like a big mountaintop removal site from Appalachia on the top,
complete with random pieces of rusting heavy machinery, apathetic
security guards, and of course huge gourges of destruction where the
earth had been laid bare to get at whatever of value was inside it.
But one main difference with back home was that quite a few people
seemed to be living here. Not just any people, but the people who had
been here before the mining ever started, and who were now the ones
operating the machinery at best or doing grunt labor at worst. The
story here was that this community didn't know it was even possible
to organize against a mining project when Hindalco first came around
back in the 1960s with orders that they had the right to mine the
land and that the people who had traditionally lived on the land
would either have to find somewhere else to live or could work for
the company and live in company-built housing. According to the very
friendly, hospitable fellow who befriended us and became our
unofficial guide, they would have definitely resisted back then (when
he was just a boy) if they'd known they could. They used to have
diverse forests and rich farmlands that they could easily support
themselves with; now they only had the meager earnings from the
company, which was barely enough to pay for basic schooling for his
kids. He was one of the main guys running the miles of cable cars
that I had seen on the ride up here.
Well, that had all been a pretty
intensive series of experiences, so I reckoned I was due for
something a little more recreational. I had met a young woman at the
Netarhat firing range rally a week or so ago who was from a town in
this area where I now found myself, and we'd made plans to hang out
if I ever ended up over her way. I spent a few days with Nisha and
her family in Gumla, which is really not a very interesting place in
and of itself but I did enjoy riding a moterscooter with her and one
of her friends waaayy out into the hinterlands to visit her mother's
village. I don't think they had electricity there whatsoever, all of
the buildings were traditional earthen structures (very durable,
weatherproof, and naturally air conditioned), and we had a very nice
hike along with her beautiful and tough single mother cousin up to
the top of a hill overlooking the area. Once we got there she told me
that this was one of the main forest hideout areas for the Naxalites
(remember the anti-government guerrilla force?), but we shouldn't
worry because they knew her and wouldn't want to mess with her dad.
OK.
Nisha and I had some other random
adventures in the following weeks, such as happening upon a place of
worship on this remote rock outcropping where we witnessed a nearly
naked Sadhu rescuing a calf from drowning in a pool, inviting me back
to Gumla where I was some kind of special guest along with her father
(apparently the guy was some sort of mafiesque Don Corleone political figure but I could never ascertain his exact position) at the massive
Sarhul festival, and a special trip to the neighboring state of
Chhattisgarh where we were hosted by her aunt's monastery/school and
went to go check out the nearby mega-industrial town of Korba.
Needless to say, I could nearly write a book on these exploits alone,
but that probably wouldn't be the best use of blog space.
I finished off my "really screwed
up places in Jharkhand" tour in the infamous coalfields of
Dhanbad and Jharia. The underground mine fires have been blazing in
the Jharia district for nearly 100 years, and they're showing no
signs of stopping. Dhanbad was a fairly decent-looking modern Indian
town, but just behind the facade were apocalyptic mountains of
destruction, smoke and gases spewing out of the ground just feet away
from houses, abandoned old megalithic industrial structures, little
kids carrying big baskets of coal on their heads, and coal dust
absolutely everywhere. Just googling "jharia coal fires"
should give you enough to go on for awhile, and although I had read
about the place and even seen a documentary about it, it's really
something else to physically feel the immense heat of the ground and
then to see kids and women scavenging coal from huge open pit strip
mines in either bare feet or tattered flip flops so they can have
something to try to sell to be able to eat that day. I honestly don't
know how they do it; I couldn't keep my hand on the ground for more
than a few seconds. Maybe I'm naive, but I think you'd be hard
pressed to find more abject forms of poverty and tougher overall
living conditions anywhere else in the world, excluding actively
war-torn areas. Obviously the government should be doing something to
not allow this situation to perpetuate especially when India is
making so much money from haphazard industrial expansion, but once
again we see what really matters in mining areas when people are
pitted against minerals in terms of value...
My last official stop in Jharkhand was a bit more of an uplifting example than the most recent visits. I had connected months ago with a fellow coordinating the Jharkhand Alternative Development Forum, and from our emails it sounded like we had very similar interests and goals in terms of promoting local sustainable development. He and some others would be traveling to a remote hilly area in the south to visit a community bioenergy and organic farming project and I was invited to come along. It was definitely remote, and I surely enjoyed the windy, bumpy, hilly roads on the way out to the village site. I was told at a certain point that state vehicles wouldn't travel any further than here for fear of Naxalite ambushes, but the Naxals were aware of and very supportive of the project we were going to visit. It was basically a big firebox that would have huge chunks of wood shoved into it to convert water into steam in a compartment within it, and this steam would be used either to turn a small generator that powered lights throughout the village or it would power an oilseed press. They were using the oilseed press when we arrived, and it was honestly pretty awesome to see these folks take organic mustard they had grown, use fallen timber they had gathered as firewood, and process mustard oil that they could sell at local markets or use for their own cooking. In the background a building was being constructed that would later house a seed saving bank and an organic farming training center, not unlike some of the other projects I'd visited in Orissa and earlier at Navdanya.
Thus concludes my month and a half in
Jharkhand. While this is a very long entry, I feel like I just barely
skimmed the surface of what was probably the most intense and
impactful of any place that I visited during this entire year abroad.
Part of me still wishes I could go back there right now, part of me
is very glad that I'm not there, and part of me might still be there.
I feel like I should have some kind of wise conclusion to all of
this, but for some reason I still don't feel terribly
wise...Jharkhand to me represented most concisely what India as a
nation is going through right now, which in a way is what the world
has been going through since the Industrial Revolution. India is
racing headfirst toward being a "developed" country with
malls, cars, cell phones, and semi-regular electricity, and the fuel
for that is coming most directly from places like Jharkhand. The
Adivasi people are the ones most intimately affected by the ugly side
of industrial capitalism, though many of them openly embrace the
coming industrialization as the best way forward, including current
chief minister Arjun Munda who hails from the same village as the
afore-mentioned bioenergy project.
Of course I have my own opinions as
someone who deeply respects and reveres traditional, "tribal"
ways of living that don't rely on external inputs and are very
resilient; in fact I think the "developed" world could
learn a lot from the few people who still practice this lifestyle. I
definitely had some interesting exchanges trying to explain that to
tribal youth who just want to go to college, get a good paying job,
have nice clothes and a nice motorbike, and who accept the
industrialization that will displace their families as "the
price of progress." This place is the battleground at which the
raw things that modern society needs to survive clash directly with
the sustainable societies who had lived on top of those resources for
thousands of years in relative contentedness, and it literally is a
battleground as evidenced by the Naxalite insurgency. I would like to
be a resource as much as possible to connect people abroad with folks
on the ground there who are doing good work, so please contact me if
you would like to somehow support any of these people or spread the
word about what's happening there. CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FULL PHOTO ALBUM ON FACEBOOK
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