The market and the monsoon - India

New Internationalist, Jan-Feb, 2003 by Katharine Ainger

Their verdict roundly rejects much that Vision 2020 proposes. Rather, they say: 'We desire food and farming for self-reliance, and community control over resources; to maintain healthy soils, diverse crops, trees and livestock, and to build on our indigenous knowledge, practical skills and local institutions.'

I tell Savitsiri: 'If I write about the problems with this project, you know they'll say I'm trying to prevent you from developing.' Her eyes are fierce: 'If they say that to you, you ask them this. We have had so many development projects, and we are still poor. What guarantee do they have that Vision 2020 isn't going to make us poorer?'

Subramianiam, an animal-health worker from Chitoor district has the final word: 'Vision 2020 is a big illusion, maya, like in Hindu mythology. Can they really assure us that in 20 years all the people in the villages will be sitting in nice houses, with air conditioning and cars and enjoying the comforts? You notice they haven't dared call it "Reality 2020".'

Class of 2020

'RIGHT now the poor and adivasis and dalits are already in the process of migrating. By the time we reach 2020 an entire class of people will no longer exist. Vision 2020 is just one way of getting rid of the people who are most in the clutches of poverty. Today we opt for migration, we may survive for a couple of months. But after those couple of months are over? What will happen to us? We'll die from suicide or from ill health or hunger. You can push us out of agriculture, but we have nowhere else to go. We will only be dying in the year 2020.

'We are already dying. People are already being pushed out of agriculture. In mechanized agriculture, there are no people left. The poorest people will vanish from the face of the earth.'

Exodus

THE tents, if you can call them that, are two bits of thin board leant precariously against one another. A bright-blue piece of plastic for a door, newspaper-and-cardboard walls, patchworked plastic bags for waterproofing -- and two ends open to the elements. Naked children play in their doorways, drawing in the dust. Tiny girls carry even tinier babies on cocked hips, already woman-like from their habitual burden. The tents line the roadsides as you drive into the city.

Shivaji and Nagaraj Nayack live in a tent city outside Bangalore. 'The tent city, this year it's like a mountain,' says Shivaji. 'Because of the drought there are so many more people looking for jobs.' They're brothers from the adivasi ('tribal') village of Thulisilaysanaickthanda in southern Andhra Pradesh, where at least half of the population has left for Bangalore or neighbouring towns to look for coolie work -- making bricks or tiles, loading and unloading sand and bricks, laying telephone cables, stonecutting. Many won't get jobs.

Shivaji says: 'You have to pay 50 rupees a month just for the tent space. There's a man who says he owns the land, though everyone knows it's not a legal occupation. And he forces us to pay rent.'

Life is hard here -- and it's getting harder.