Calvin Klein and the tea pickers: what exactly is poverty? Mari Marcel Thekaekara travels from south India to … Germany in pursuit of an answer

New Internationalist, March, 1999 by Mari Marcel Thekaekara

Like Stan and me in Easterhouse, the adivasis were shocked at the spectre of unemployment which haunted some of our young German friends. They were particularly upset when Karl, whose commune home they lived in, came back stressed by the news that he might soon become redundant. Bomman worried all night about his friend. In the morning he announced: `I have an idea. I can make bamboo flutes in Gudalur and Karl can sell them here till he finds a job.'

He did too. And though Karl did not lose his job after all, Bomman's concern was profoundly moving to everyone who saw it. That Bomman didn't feel at all poverty-stricken was evident to all of us, though by the standards of Karl's family, he definitely was.

German friends gave the group warm clothes and gifts for their families. They were happy to bring back presents for their children. But paradoxically, (because of our concern about the possible effect of a consumerist onslaught) the gift that Bomman and the adivasis valued most from Germany was that everyone treated them with respect and dignity. As equals. It was a terrible indictment of Indian society. And I was filled with shame at the realization that they'd experienced more respect and egalitarianism in a month in Germany than in their whole lives in India.

For us the whole visit was an exercise in humility which made us stop and think. It struck me forcibly that the only way to change stereotypes is to come face to face with people. In London, friends said `Easterhouse! God, you've been going places! Wouldn't like my car to break down there.'

The Easterhouse people were lovely. We really enjoyed meeting them. This is not an attempt to romanticize the problem, but merely to state that stereotypes are equally ridiculous. I'm aware that meeting a neo-Nazi or a Chicago gangster on a dark, lonely night could have the effect of liberating you from all your earthly problems altogether; more instantaneously than you'd care to go.

The different visits also had unexpected spin-offs. Gudalur, in the Nilgiri mountains of south India, is tea country. In Gloucester, people drink tons of tea, paying three times the necessary price. The Gudalur adivasis produce tons of tea getting a third of the consumer price. Why not send our tea directly to Matson? And to friends in Germany and other parts of India...

In addition, the adivasis' visit to Germany gave them new confidence when it came to challenging the transnational companies who had evicted them from land they had owned for generations. Bomman, fresh from his overseas visit, stood in the village square and delivered an impassioned speech.

`This is a company controlling thousands of hectares. Yet they are not ashamed to evict poor adivasis who have under a quarter of a hectare of tea. Unilever is very powerful. But the days when adivasis were totally powerless are over. We now have friends in Germany and UK. We've met people working for Fair Trade. If we tell them what Unilever is doing here they will start a campaign to inform all the people of Europe to stop buying Unilever tea. They will fight on our side. We are no longer alone.'