FB Discussions - Gilt edged urban dreams

A friend wrote that villagers are displaced by projects and lose livlihoods. I wish reality were that simple. An external enemy is at least visible.

In my village people lured by dreams of development and money, and empowered by borewell technology, destroyed their own groundwater reserves completely in 30 years. And after growing and selling sugarcane for three decades, and having built cement houses with that money, are today in a waterless hell - with no agriculture, no livlihoods. Technically they destroyed themselves.

When modernity, and corporates, and industrilization, and consumerism co-opts ordinary people who make those dreams their own. then where is the enemy, and whom does one fight against ... The enemy, the consumerist dreams, is now deep within each one of us.

Comments

Aparna Krishnan  The gram swaraj has lost its place in the minds of people in the gram ... who have bought other dreams. So we need to start by selling dreams first ...

 Shyamala Sanyal Aparna Krishnan, ours is a forested area with wildlife. Our farmers haven't yet over exploited the land or water. But with this SEZ buying 5500 acres of land all farming activity has stopped and farm labour has lost livelihoods. 

Water is still available at 30 feet underground.  The MP plateau is beyond, the Satpuda ranges have good forest cover which release water into perennial rivers which finally join the Godavari. Of course, now Adani is building a dam on the Pench river This will affect Pench national park and every thing downstream.

 Aparna Krishnan I know. I am saying that there are so many versions of the conquest. One is physical grabbing. One is co-opting.

 Shyamala Sanyal Aditi Jayakar Kane, Medha Patkar knows.  Yes, what happens in VIDARBHA or central India rarely makes it to people in Mumbai. My lawyer aunt and uncle didn't know that there was a separate VIDARBHA movement. I will have to ask someone for the actual details about the Adanis project. Farmers are being displaced from very rich agricultural land beyond Chindwara for Adanis power project  Aradhana Bhargava can tell us more. Maybe Pratap Goswami too  I attended a maha-panchayat with Medha Patkar two years ago at Bhula Mohgaon. 

 
The trauma on the faces of the farmers facing displacement was palpable. Trauma, despair, helplessness. I can never forget the pain on the farmers face.  I may have photographs somewhere.  Rich farmlands, well irrigated are going under water. The Marathi word is SAMRUDDHA SHETI. 

  Shyamala Sanyal All so that we can build energy guzzling steel and glass buildings, live in AC and imagine that India is '' developed ''.

 Chandran Gopalakrishnan Beautifully put. And that is what globalistion does around the world. 'Subsistence agriculture' is a dirty word and non-cash economy is a byword for 'primitive'. Everywhere, we see self-sufficient but 'underdeveloped' societies embracing the myth of progress. Within a couple of generations at most (often in much less). They see their dreams of fortune wither (except, perhaps for a handful who in most cases were already better off). And they can't go back to the earlier way of living because the skills, the sociocultural wealth and natural resources are gone.

 Chandran Gopalakrishnan But those who depleted that wealth can simply move to greener pastures.

 Shyamala Sanyal Chandran Gopalakrishnan I am happy that Bangalore is facing electricity shortages. Maybe this will make all those super intelligent people think priorities.  Where are the greener pastures. Even silicon valley is facing drought. 
Think. Think even now and act wisely

Suraj Kumar Silicon Valley and Bangalore are prime examples of Cognitive Dissonance. They reinforce the belief that the problems created by magical thinking can be solved by more magical thinking. Thus, Mr.Bill Gates is found appreciating an invention that extracts water from poop and everybody chants "Bill Gates! what a man!". And if you try to point out the fallacy of "recycling water from poop", they say you are not expert / qualified / creative / open enough to considering "possibilities".http://www.gatesnotes.com/.../Omniprocessor-From-Poop-to...

This Ingenious Machine Turns Feces Into Drinking Water

GATESNOTES.COM|BY BILL GATES

 Shyamala Sanyal The man has shares in Monsanto and wants to teach Indian farmers better farming techniques.

Chandran Gopalakrishnan there's a much more common machine that instantly turns drinking water into sewage. It's called a flush toilet.

Mohammad Chappalwala and also show the nightmare of the cities.

Aparna Krishnan That my village people see clearly. They rush back asking why people stay here, without a 'community'. They comment that people have dogs because they do not have people. They laugh heartily at people taking dogs for walks, saying that is cows were grazed at leaved cowdung and milk and calves would ensue. They refuse to drink the milk in cities saying it is nauseating. And there are the 'poorest' of villagers ! SCs and landless. And they see through the city neon lights. Were they to see the horror of schooling in cities ...!!

Aparna Krishnan The urban elite are too drugged to see their own pathetic existances. Having seen both worlds and belonged to both I can see the plastic hollowness of the urban world

Prakash Thangavel Just that greener pastures are not there anymore. Cities are dying under their own weight. Hills are destroyed for granite or to grow tea, coffee and spices in huge quantity and it does not rain any more. Rivers are running empty like city ditches and people are digging like mad every where for drinking water since clean drinking water has become a luxury. Even Ambanis, Adanis can't have access for clean water or air with all their wealth and clout.