Post 3: Dahod and Growing Globalization

If India were to have a "Wild West," it would be Dahod.  A mishmash of concrete and ornately carved stone buildings loom over the dusty streets, where vendors rub shoulders with farmers, wives, and businessmen.  Buffalo, cattle, and goats wander through intersections and three-wheeled taxis swerve casually around them.  Instead of horses, there are motor cycles--dozens of them on every street--and instead of saloons, bodegas.  On the outskirts of town, stone gives way to sheet metal and tarpaulin huts.

Motorists maneuver the streets outside a Dahod bicycle shop (photo courtesy of Paula Breslin).

What Ohioans such as myself will notice immediately is the disorder and chaos in comparison to America's towns.  Street lights and signs (what little there are) seem to have been abandoned long ago in favor of throwing caution to the wind.  That is not to say automobile accidents are common; they are actually quite a bit rarer than someone used to well-ordered roadways would expect.  Instead, my experience was that riding in a car was remarkably similar to shuffling through a crowd on foot.  Everyone does their best to move in their own direction as efficiently as possible without hitting anyone else and most of the time this method works very well.

Above the roads, plastered buildings and rising on uncertain poles are countless signs.  They advertise everything from pharmaceuticals to menswear in a dizzying cacophony of color.  To me, this was instantly recognizable as analogous in look and feel to American advertisements.  Much of the writing was even in English, due to Great Britain's colonial rule over India that ended in 1947.  Regardless of its origin, the presence of very Westernized consumer advertising was somewhat of a mixed bag in my opinion.  On the one hand, economic growth of a region to the point where disposable income is available signals stability and prosperity.  It also gives way to more opportunities for employment and raises the standard living.  However, it certainly can be argued that these economic inroads might homogenize the culture Gujarat, just like they have for many other locales they have entered.

Plastic wrappers intermingle with biodegradable refuse in the courtyard of a villa.

A satellite television set owned by the Rathods in the hamlet, Lilya Amba (photo courtesy of Courtney Stanley).

My thoughts switch to the mindset of the farming families we met in the countryside around Dahod.  They have benefited immensely from what one might call "Western" pharmaceuticals, as well as donations to the Sadguru Foundation from the John Deere Corporation.  Items like European-style clothing and television are slowly replacing their traditional counterparts.  However, "replacing" may not be the correct word.  Dahod has its own television station and the clothing is hardly made in Europe.  Furthermore, Sadguru is a Gujarat-based organization and its technology is designed to work in synergy with the lives tribal farmers already lead.  Instead of "Westernizing," it might be more apt to say that rural Gujarat is "Globalizing."  The region is being exposed to new ideas that may subvert old ways, while others are adapted by its people for a better future.

Sadguru staff and Rathod family members pose for a picture outside of a villa in the hamlet of Sindri (photo courtesy of Courtney Stanley).

This leads me to the final point I wish to weigh in on, that of frugality versus poverty.  The rural families we visited rank among the least wealthy in the state, having little access until recently even to safe drinking water.  Certainly by American measures, they would be considered impoverished.  However, the acquisition of material wealth seemed meaningless to those we talked to unless it made their lives better.  On our second and third days interviewing farmers and their families, we asked them what they would like everyone to know and what they hoped we learned by talking with them.  Their answers were never related to possessions or wealth, but were instead focused on how their lives were improved by adopting Sadguru's technologies and that they hoped we would share it with others.  It would be wrong of me to say "everyone in Gujarat" or "all rural farmers" are one way or another.  That would be a gross oversimplification that flies in the face of the individuality that makes us human.  But, the cultural norms for the farmers we encountered were focused around pragmatism, rather than wealth because in a land as dry and unforgiving as the edges of the Thar Desert, wealth has little tangible value.

Sunset in the fields outside Sadguru's Chosala campus.

I hope this blog has helped to illustrate the cultural gestalt of rural Gujarat, as perceived through a native Ohioan such as myself.  I confess to have very little formal knowledge of the region from a sociological perspective, so these writings will only scratch the surface of the rich cultural heritage of this beautiful state and its amazing peoples.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the gracious Sadguru Foundation staff and the Rathod family for welcoming us into their lives during our stay.  It was truly a life-changing experience and if there is thing I am more certain of than how much I learned, it is how much I have not even begun to learn.