A Little More on Latur
Seeing and listening to the rosy picture painted for us in the villages around Latur, I was reminded of statements I’ve often heard in the U.S. For example, a celebrity spends a day with some disadvantaged children and then says something like, “their strength and determination is an inspiration to me,” and this celebrity gets a pat on the back for caring. Paris Hilton gets out of jail and is inspired to party less and live a life devoted to helping prison women. How selfless of Paris.
You can throw some money at the disadvantaged and leave. You can build them a house and then roll out of town. But these things don’t really get to the roots of why these people are disadvantaged in the first place. The house is likely to be taken care of poorly and the money spent imprudently. People tend to appreciate things a lot more if they have earned it themselves through their own work. I think this is why CRY goes about this development work the right way, empowering people through education and self-determination, not just by glossing their lives by showering them in donations.
Also interesting is that the most responsible partners have been women’s and children’s village collective groups. The women are saving money every month and creating village banks, providing loans. The men are saying that since the women have become responsible partners in the village, men have begun to see women as equals, and there is less fighting at home. I’ve heard different theories of why women are more responsible in villages than men. One argument, when men earn extra money, they spend it on themselves. Women who earn extra money are more inclined to save it.
I’m not sure that CRY’s work will completely fix India. But why not make these little efforts. I enjoyed going to the countryside, and the people enjoyed having me, and these children are in school and receiving healthcare where they wouldn’t have 20 years ago. Few of these people will probably go to a university, but some might someday, so why not?
And…
My original reason for wanting to go to the Indian countryside was to visit the regions afflicted by the farmer suicides, where cotton farmers are getting such a low price for their cotton they can’t repay their loans and are killing themselves. Over 1000 have committed suicide in just the last year. This was supposed to be the basis for a legal article I’m going to write. I didn’t see any cotton farming in Latur. I saw just sugar cane, soybeans, and pulses, and this region hasn’t been stricken by the farmer suicides.
So I didn’t get exactly what I wanted out of this trip, but I’ll tell my CRY Pittsburgh team about what I saw and experienced, and this will be interesting for them. And being honored in the countryside of India is a pretty unique experience. And anyway, even though CRY works with farmers, CRY knows more about human rights than it knows about farming, so to learn about the plight of farmers, I wasn’t really going with the right people. I’ll get in touch with Oxfam and get some harder facts for my article.
You can throw some money at the disadvantaged and leave. You can build them a house and then roll out of town. But these things don’t really get to the roots of why these people are disadvantaged in the first place. The house is likely to be taken care of poorly and the money spent imprudently. People tend to appreciate things a lot more if they have earned it themselves through their own work. I think this is why CRY goes about this development work the right way, empowering people through education and self-determination, not just by glossing their lives by showering them in donations.
Also interesting is that the most responsible partners have been women’s and children’s village collective groups. The women are saving money every month and creating village banks, providing loans. The men are saying that since the women have become responsible partners in the village, men have begun to see women as equals, and there is less fighting at home. I’ve heard different theories of why women are more responsible in villages than men. One argument, when men earn extra money, they spend it on themselves. Women who earn extra money are more inclined to save it.
I’m not sure that CRY’s work will completely fix India. But why not make these little efforts. I enjoyed going to the countryside, and the people enjoyed having me, and these children are in school and receiving healthcare where they wouldn’t have 20 years ago. Few of these people will probably go to a university, but some might someday, so why not?
And…
My original reason for wanting to go to the Indian countryside was to visit the regions afflicted by the farmer suicides, where cotton farmers are getting such a low price for their cotton they can’t repay their loans and are killing themselves. Over 1000 have committed suicide in just the last year. This was supposed to be the basis for a legal article I’m going to write. I didn’t see any cotton farming in Latur. I saw just sugar cane, soybeans, and pulses, and this region hasn’t been stricken by the farmer suicides.
So I didn’t get exactly what I wanted out of this trip, but I’ll tell my CRY Pittsburgh team about what I saw and experienced, and this will be interesting for them. And being honored in the countryside of India is a pretty unique experience. And anyway, even though CRY works with farmers, CRY knows more about human rights than it knows about farming, so to learn about the plight of farmers, I wasn’t really going with the right people. I’ll get in touch with Oxfam and get some harder facts for my article.
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