The underbelly

 That India is doing well and is registering good economic growth is well-known. The new-age technology sectors and urban middle classes have done well but agriculture, rural economy and women have not. Labour force participation rate of women has actually declined.

The country has self-sufficiency in food but otherwise agriculture has declined in a significant way. Climate change has made matters worse. Subsidized inputs and credit, loan waivers, administered minimum prices for many crops, diversification into horticulture, dairy industry - everything has been tried out but there is widespread distress resulting into farmers' suicides.

Sadanand Deshmukh, a young Marathi writer has captured the ruined rural economy in his Sahitya Academy winner novel 'Baromas'. Call it the Indian 'Grapes of wrath'.

All this ran in my mind while I was reading Jaideep Hardikar's lead article in the Times of India on 23 May 2024. He has described in it the totally hopeless future that young men in Beed and Yavatmal districts of Maharashtra and in Vidarbha, Marathwada regions of Maharashtra have staring at them. Most of these young men are post graduates (in social sciences and commerce, subsidized degrees available in small towns) and have been to big cities in search of employment. Many have wasted a number of years preparing for civil services examinations. They have worked as contract and casual labourers but could not sustain themselves because of the low earnings. They have been forced to come back home to till the family land and have found that farming is just not viable.

They cannot get married because they do not earn enough. Last year, these forced bachelors had taken out a march in Solapur to highlight their plight.

This is the situation in the prosperous state of Maharashtra. Matters are worse in Bihar, UP, Bengal and Orissa.

Migrate to cities, somehow make do with abysmal living, working conditions and take to self employment - is that the only way out? 

Letting go!

 

Subtracting

·       Unending flow of people in our cities, roads full, more roads, asphalting and widening of roads, footpaths, traffic signals and policemen, flyovers – two/three storey high! – train and metro service, hyperloop, public and private transport jostling together,

·       Traffic signals on main roads driving traffic in by lanes,

·       Serene hill stations and picnic spots ruined by overcrowding,

·       New luxury homes resembling museums because they are so full of beautiful objects.

There is ever more of everything. 

Add! Add! Add! Make things more complicated! Addition is rampant, mindless. This is the modern life style.

Dr. Laurence Peter of Peter principle fame gave an example of this trend taken to its extreme. He wrote of a hydraulic butter box inside a huge refrigerator for keeping butter warm, hailed as a major improvement when all that is required is to take out the butter first thing in the morning. At room temperature, it easily spreads on toast and bread.

We all of us have a basic instinct to add and to hoard. It is easy to visualize additions. Plus, there is our tendency for loss aversion. Losing what we have affects us much more than gaining something new. So, we keep merrily increasing our pile of worldly goods.

How about moving in the reverse direction? Deduct. Delete. Edit. Parse. Simplify. Minimize. Declutter. Forget. Withdraw. Disengage.

Difficult to visualize and takes the same effort as addition. May be more. But it is a way of thinking which yields beautiful results: space, emptiness, freedom and spiritual awakening. Less is indeed more.

Kurt Lewin (1890 – 1947) has talked of driving and restraining forces leading to an equilibrium or ‘freeze’ in his field theory of human behaviour. Loss of equilibrium leads to tension till refreezing takes place. The obvious way is to add to the driving forces for this purpose but reducing restraining forces works even better.

A lady was visiting her parental house. She saw that both her brother and his wife were continuously exhorting their teenage son who was due to appear for the 12 standard and competitive examinations to work harder. The lady remembered her own Physics textbook when she had appeared for the examination decades ago. It was her favourite book because it had very good examples, explanation, a witty style and a logical flow of ideas. She searched for it, found it and offered it to the boy. He did not want to look at it at first as he did not have time. Soon however, he was hooked. She could feel an almost visual lessening of the tension he was labouring under. He applied himself to his studies with renewed zeal and went on to crack, not the board but JEE Main examination.

Everyone has heard the adage: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It is attributed to Kurt Koffka (1886 – 1941), a psychologist who also, like Lewin, belonged to the Gestalt school of psychology. What Koffka had actually said was that the whole was something else than the sum of its parts. He clarified repeatedly that he was not talking of a principle of addition as the whole could be less than the sum of its parts. But our common fondness for addition has resulted into the misinterpretation passing into received wisdom today.

Thus, subtraction does not come naturally to us. Whenever it has been done consciously, it yields great results. Urban planners and architects, political scientists  (NOTA option in voting) and self-help gurus like Marie Kondo will all agree.

(Musings based on the reading of Subtract, the untapped science of less by Leidy Klotz, Flatiron Books, N.Y. 2021)

Moving house

After nearly 29 years, shifting to a new house was a major job.

Actually the old house was ideal: compact with a spectacular view of surroundings from the terrace and the kitchen window. These made up for the isolation of the house. Its terrace was facing West. I have found that the wind always blows from the West. So just sitting on the terrace every evening, taking in the breeze and drinking the vistas were an important part of everyday routine. Every tile, every bit of the walls in the house had become a part of me. And leave it all behind?

Well, reasons both within and without made the move necessary. Older residents had left one by one and the society had been hollowed out. Others were talking of redevelopment which would have necessitated a move anyway. So why not move on my own, at my convenience?

Outer factors included the 24 by 7 traffic. 11/13/17/26 storey tall towers are in demand and small, cozy societies are a matter of the past. Distant interpersonal relations have become the norm. And there is no going back. So I must make mental adjustments to be with the times and that is better done now rather than sometime later.

Thus I decided to look for a new house. In the same locality. Going somewhere else with everything different would have been too much to take. I spent unquiet, anxious moments to reach this decision. I also realized that I required help in both reaching a decision and then executing it. I asked family members just once and good advice and all the practical help just poured in.

House hunting began in real earnest and then in order not to lose the momentum, we decided to act and a flat for resale was booked. For the same reason, shifting also began soon.

For me, it meant bringing down all the stuff in the lofts of the old house, sort it out and then discard it or pack it in cardboard boxes. Believe me, for one month, I was doing the job. A reverse and easier process had to be carried out at the new house.

So much of our old stuff was useless or redundant. It was out of sight and so was forgotten year after year. I hesitated before discarding things. Soon however, it became a familiar matter and I gaily gave up books, greeting cards, buckets, shoes, files and diaries, mattresses, clothes, woolens, glass and plastic bottles, utensils, earthen lamps et al.

The new house became familiar and started feeling like home after paintings and framed art works were put up on the walls. It took a few days to remember the places of things in the kitchen - my own arrangement but still!

At last, now a routine has developed and memories of the old house are receding.

I lost 2 kgs. of body weight in the process!