Journal 9-24-2010

Journal 9-24-10

Today was a day largely devoted to visiting government offices to talk to directors of various government programs. This morning we drove off in the tour bus at about 9:00. Amalan was worried that the people at the Tamilnadu Agricultural University would not be at work until around 10:00. So Amalan decided to kill some time by taking us to a former government pottery vocational school. The demand for pottery has gone down in the recent past so this pottery warehouse is no longer active. However the small number of people who work here are producing several other products like soap and detergent. These products are sold in government ration shops at prices around 10 rupees.

We left the pottery place and headed to our original destination close to 10:00. When we got to the Tamilnadu Agricultural University we stood in the hot sun and met 4 or 5 of the different professors. The heat quickly became uncomfortable as soon as we started asking questions. It is incredibly difficult to get scientific questions answered in India even when you are asking experts with PhDs in the field. We spent probably 20 minutes in the hot sun having our questions misunderstood and listening to the same response over and over. Amalan and the PhDs repeatedly explained basic facts about rice cultivation that we already know a lot about. Whenever we try to get beyond the basics to learn about the mechanism or a specific process that is used. The basics are just repeated. This is incredibly frustrating when you are sweating profusely in the hot sun. Eventually we got to walk around the various fields. This was much more fun and we were able to learn a lot about rice cultivation.

 We were also shown the vegetable plot then taken through the medicinal plant garden. After a significant amount of time we got back into the bus and headed off to visit some government offices at the district central office for Thiruvalur district.

At the district central office we spent a ton of time visiting with the heads of various government schemes. We spent a lot of time struggling to get answers to questions about alcoholism and domestic violence. Again, most responses involved repeating things we already knew or denying that the problem exists. On a positive note however, it is obvious that these government schemes are working and have greatly improved the lives of millions of poor Indian citizens. We visited three offices, and had coffee and one sided conversations in each one. The common problems related to asking complex questions continued to arise. By the end of these interviews we were all pretty tired of smiling and trying to be enthusiastic.

(the EXTREMELY loud and piercing Indian music on the bus made the situation worse…)

We finally made it back to CCOORR and had a late lunch around 3:00. At 4:00 we headed out again. We had two more stops to make, one was a government office that dealt with very poor people like schedule tribe. This stop took quite some time and at one point the power went. By the end I was sweating so profusely that I had droplets falling from my beard. The girls didn’t look much better, Leah was blowing out air in the style of a pregnant woman, and Katie had stopped trying to smile. Matt was doing a great job asking questions.

After an eternity, we made it out of the government scheme office it was around 6:30 and getting dark so we didn’t have time to make our last stop. Talking to another government project director may have been the end of us anyway. We thankfully headed back to CCOORR, had dinner and then worked on our journals and went to bed.