Experience vs. Intellect

I have always believed that experience is very important. That a good experience is worth many books. And even if you read 100 books, if you haven't experienced something, you will not be able to appreciate it.

Relating it to circuit design - my area of professional expertise - unless one has worked with MOS transistors, one will not get the "feel" of their working. One will know Ids-Vds characteristics, one will know Ids-Vgs characteristics, but it would be difficult to see the "reality" behind these.

I went to a convention organized by supporters of Narmada Bachao Andolan over the weekend. This idea only got further reinforced there.

There were speakers from Delhi and Mumbai. There were also some speakers from the valley. The first session was on "Failure of Governance in Narmada Valley". Speakers came, they spoke and they went away. All the speakers rattled endlessly about the huge financial discrepancies. They talked about the fraud of not rehabilitating and still claiming complete rehabilitation. They talked about the blatant lies that the government of Gujrat is telling its own people. They talked about the strong media influence that Gujarat government is weilding on national media. They said that these are all attempts to cover up the failure - and that this is a failure of governance in itself (if government needs to do any such thing).

When this brainstorming of sorts had continued for about an hour, Shanti behan, a farmer from Madhya Pradesh - whose land is in the submergence zone now - came to speak. While earlier speakers spoke in hindi, she spoke in a native dialact - which is not very different from hindi it seems, since I could understand it.

Her language was simple. She spoke for just 5 minutes. When she left the dias, I was agape. Not just me, the applause from the audience proved beyond doubt that everyone else too saw the difference between intellect and experience. She even tracked what she said poorly. But even then, appreciation abounds. Here is what she counted as failures of governance.

1. I am a farmer. If the government creates conditions in which I am sitting in Delhi - in this room - in the month of June - when I should be tilling the land in my fields, then this is a failure of governance.
2. When we started the Andolan, the government (esp. of Gujarat) alleged that the foriegn agents are opposing the dam. My skin was tanned working on the fields. We have brown skin. I was born and brought up here and so are the other people from my village who are fighting against the dam. I don't even know english. And the government alleges that I am a foriegn agent. This is the second failure of the government. (If the government doesn't even recognize its citizens, how can it take the responsibility of protecting their rights? How can it successfully accomplish anything else?)
3. The government's failure is in not recognizing the value of its people. It only counted land. It promised to give us "land for land". That it did not even take into account our human identity, our culture and our closely knit social fabric at the time of working out a rehabilitation plan, is in itself a failure. (If the government doesn't appreciate the civil and cultural structures in the society and the sustainable livelihood generation practices, are we not going in the wrong direction)
4. The fact that government has not even been able to provide the bare minimum land for land rehabilitation (even after promising only that), is a still larger failure of governance.
5. Government proudly proclaims "Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan" in its different publications. If it can not think about the "kisan", then it should remove this slogan. That the government has done neither (nor work for the kisan, nor removed the slogan), it is a failure of the government.
6. Government asks us to follow the principle of "chota parivar, sukhi parivar". It asks us that small is good. Then why does it not understand it itself. Why is it going for large dams, when small dams can actually accomplish the purpose?

This was followed by many other talks - again by Delhiites and Mumbaikars. The convention was closed by a talk by Prakash bhai - whose land will also get submerged at the increased hieght. His point hit hard again.

• We understand that power is needed. But power can also be generated by having small dams.
• We understand that irrigation is needed, but we have been irrigating our lands since times immemorial - by watershed management and by tanks and ponds and wells.
• Then why do we need to go for such a scheme that submerges so much of land and displaces lakhs of people.
• If we go this way, then even though we will have electricity, what will we eat.
• I am told that this year we had to import food (wheat from Australia). Isn't this a wrong trend.
• The newly irrigated land will be used to grow cash-crops. We can't eat cotton. Sugarcane is not food. Moreover, these are sold for money.
• We follow subsistence agriculture. We grow food. We eat what we grow. So, why is the government not even understanding this very basic fact? Why is the government intent on submergence? They might have some hidden agenda. But why have a hidden agenda with its own citizens?

The points are simple. Yet they are hard-hitting. I really thank Shanti Behan and Prakash Bhai for enlightening me. I am thankful for the opportunity to attend the convention. I pray to God that government recognizes its failure in this article. I hope that this article helps us improve the way we work. I hope that the urban middle class appreciates the concerns of this simple rural lady. I sincerely hope that sense prevails and something is done URGENTLY to save thousands of lives in the Narmada valley.