Autumn Showers [1 ed.] 9789386530561, 9788179935323

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Lata holds a BE degree in electronics and telecommunication from Jabalpur University, India, and an MPhil in materials science from the University of Malaya, Malaysia. She moved to Singapore with her family in 1998. Prior to making her foray into writing, she worked with the Institute of Materials Science and Research, a premier research institute under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore.

The Energy and Resources Institute

`295/-

Lata Vishwanath

In an evocative narrative that spans over a century, the author takes the readers on a journey to her ancestral land and depicts her grandfather’s life through the various anecdotes she has collected over time. A dedicated farmer, he passionately fought for farmers’ rights till the end of his life. Part memoir, part history and part reportage bordering on fiction, Autumn Showers narrates the dynamic tale of the quintessential Indian society woven closely around agriculture and also details the challenges agriculture today faces in India and the world.

Autumn Showers

While growing up in northern India, away from her native place, the author was often intrigued by her agriculturist grandfather’s constant letters to the Indian government. More than a decade after his death, she delves deep into the letters he left behind and unravels a fascinating saga of her agriculturist family in her ancestral village in the southern state of Karnataka.

Autumn Showers Lata Vishwanath

The Energy and Resources Institute

Autumn Showers

Lata Vishwanath

The E nergy and R es our ce s In stitu te

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. All export rights for this book vest exclusively with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). Unauthorized export is a violation of terms of sale and is subject to legal action. ISBN 978 81 7993 532 3

© Lata Vishwanath First Published by TERI, 2018

Published by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) TERI Press Tel. 24682100 or 41504900 Darbari Seth Block Fax 24682144 or 24682145 IHC Complex, Lodhi Road India +91 • Delhi (0)11 New Delhi – 110003 E-mail [email protected] India Web www.teriin.org

Printed in India

In the memory of my late grandparents

KARNATAKA STATE BIDAR

KALBURGI

BIJAPUR

BAGALKOT

RAICHUR

BELAGAVI

HASSAN DISTRICT

KOPPAL DHARWAD

Arasikere

GADAG

BALLARI Belur Hassan

UTTAR KANNAD

HAVERI

Sakaleshapura

Channarayapatna

Alur Holenarasipura

DAVANGERE

CHITRADURGA

SHIVAMOGGA

UDUPI

Arkalgud

TUMKOORU

CHIKKAMAGALOORU TUMKOORU KOLAR HASSAN DAKSHIN KHAND

BENGALOORU MANDYA KODAGU MYSOORU CHAMRAJNAGAR

Prepared at NRDMS Centre/ZP/Hassan.

SH 91

SH 85 SH 112

Coorg District

Sh 8

SH 8

SH 27 Yeslur

K_hosakote

Hethur

8

8

Kunduru Gorur

Hirisave NH 48

Nuggehalli

SH 47

Tumkur District

Hallimysore Konanuru SH 57 Ramanathapura SH 108 SH 85 SH 85 SH 86 Mysore District SH 21

8

(

way National St at ig ay Ra wa ine District headquarters Taluk headquarters Hobli headquarters River Reservoir

Shravanabelagola SH 47

Holenarasipura Mandy a District

Sh 7

Channaray apatna

Bagur Shanthigrama Dandiganahalli

Halekote

Doddamagge

Arkalgud Mallipatna

8

Pal y a

Hassan

Dudda

Gandasi

SH 71

NH 206

Kanakatte

Arsikere

Banavara

Salagame

Katt ay a

Madihalli

Halebeedu

Belagodu Alur

Biccodu

Sakaleshapura

Arehalli

Belur

Prepared at NRDMS Centre/ZP/Hassan.

Dakshina Kannada District SH 85

NH 48

Hanbal

SH 107

SH 58

NH 206

Chikmagalore District Javagal SH 58 SH 57 SH 58

HASSAN DISTRICT

HASSAN DISTRICT REGIONS

Kanakatte Banavara Javagal Halebeedu

Belur

Gandasi

Madihalli Salagame Arehalli Biccodu Palya Hanbalu

Belagodu K.Hosakote

Bagur

Shanthigrama Dandiganahalli Kattaya

Kundur Yeslur

Dudda

Hassan Alur

Sakaleshapura

Hetthur

Arsikere

Halekote

Nuggehalli Hiresave

Channarayapatna Shravanabelagola

Holenarasipura Arakalagud Mallipatana Doddamagge Hallymysore Konanur Ramanathapura

Prepared at NRDMS Centre/ZP/Hassan.

Regions Maidan Malnad Semi Malnad

Contents

Acknowledgements xi Prologue xiii Author’s Note Seedlings, Sprouts and Plants

xv 1

Spring–chill 40 Heat of Summer

72

Autumn Showers

107

Harvest 149

Epilogue 173 Selected Bibliography 175

Acknowledgements

It was a blessing that two of my great-aunts and two of my aunts were alive while I wrote a major part of this book. The information they shared helped me build the narrative. I have by my side my other aunts and uncles in the order of their appearance in the book, as are my parents, my brother and other near and dear ones. Thanks to all for their insights, sharpness and some gaps in their memories that left me with little space for creativity. Meeting the village patriarch Subbu was indeed a big fortune. Many thanks to him for the legendary stories and interesting facts he shared that brought an extra spark in the narrative. My mother Vijaya, as my first critic and cheerleader, gave me the strength to believe in my writing and in this project. A lover of the English language and writing, my father GL Ramachandra is the founder of this book. While delightfully describing the former days on paper was a tribute to his near and dear ones, it also brought me closer to my ancestors, reducing time and space. Thanks to Professor Manjunath of the Malnad College of Engineering, Hassan, for the maps and the enlightening discussions. I am indebted to all the scholars and researchers whose works are available on the net and the world-class libraries of Singapore for educating a novice like me in agriculture-related topics. My sincere gratitude to TERI for their enthusiastic acceptance of a highly personalized account like this. My heartfelt thanks to Kanishka Gupta of the Writer’s Side literary agency and also to Nandita

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Bhardwaj, Anupama Jauhary, Hemambika Varma, Shikha Dimri, Jessica Mosahari and everyone else in TERI who were instrumental in bringing the book to an entirely new level. In Singapore’s vibrant writing scene Angeline, Aurelia, Cecelia, Capt. Manzur and Mohan were the first people I met and with whom I shared a camaraderie any newbie writer dreams of. My thanks also to each and every other friend and well-wisher with whom I crossed paths for encouraging me and shaping me as a better writer. Last but not the least, my husband Vishwanath’s eagerness and the charming presence of my daughters Manini and Padmini always encourage me to try new ventures.

❄

Prologue

Once upon a time, while trying to find a home, a flock of birds flew across a sprawling garden. They were so enchanted by its lushness, blooming flowers and fruit-laden trees that they decided to make it their home. In a couple of months, the birds had built their nests in the garden. Soon young ones were born. A year later, the garden was alive with birds, and their chirping filled the air. It was then that the eldest of the birds felt the need to talk to a few birds that he thought were the wisest of all. One day, he took them aside and began, “You are the chosen ones. I am giving you a great responsibility.” The bewildered birds asked, “What do we have to do, O wise one?” “Your task is to know everything about the garden and about how we all landed here and set up our homes. You must learn, remember and spread the knowledge to every other bird. After you, your young ones should be able to carry on this responsibility.” The wise birds took their responsibility seriously. While the other birds actively spent their lives hunting for food and shelter, the wise ones pursued knowledge of their universe and lives. Their basic necessities were provided for by the other birds and they were exalted for their wisdom and virtues. Over the years, many new migratory birds came and gradually changed the garden landscape. New nests of various sizes and shapes sprouted around the garden, attracting even some of the older resident birds to their way of life. While the birds who learnt new skills of

hunting and nest building led happy and prosperous lives, those who continued their old way of life slowly receded into the dark recesses of the garden. Over time, their lives got very difficult. It became more and more of a struggle to gather their everyday meal. Even the wise ones had to try procuring food on their own. One day, one of the birds from the primitive nests happened to wander into another side of the garden—the side occupied by the new migratory birds. She was astonished to see the inhabitants in that part of the garden flourishing, with better access to sunlight, water and food. The bird flew back to her nest and calling all other birds from her coterie, said to them, “We have been languishing here in the darkness, but far away, in another corner of the garden, birds are enjoying and leading prosperous lives. We should also try to leave this part of the garden and go to the other side, to live like those other birds do. We must also learn new skills and try other ways of making a living. It is time we changed.”

Author’s Note

Bangalore, 1995 In the late morning hours of a bright day at Yelahanka, a satellite town near Bangalore, an elderly man in a white dhoti and an off-white fullsleeved shirt made his way through the traffic. He carried a bulging folder in his hand and a bunch of leaflets were tucked under his arm. He walked briskly, not flinching even the slightest when vehicles with blaring horns zipped past. He wasn’t perturbed by the crowd around him as he hurried to reach the corner of the street where, like every day, his friend and fellow supporter waited for him. On reaching the corner, the elderly man greeted his friend with a smile and pulled out the leaflets. Without losing any time, together the duo tried to attract the attention of the passers-by. They waved the leaflets and called out, “Listen, everyone. We have an important issue to share with you.” Those who stopped out of curiosity had the leaflets thrust into their hands. But before they could open the leaflets and read them, the elderly man interjected, “Do you know why I want you all to listen to me? Our country will be going to the polls next year. Have you given a thought about what kind of government you should choose?” In the next half hour, the crowd had swelled. Content with the knowledge that some were indeed listening to him, the elderly man continued, “Are you happy with the present government? Do you think it is fit to rule even for the next term? Should we—the voters—not come together and form a Matadarara Sangha (Voters'

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Association) and lay down rules to vote only for those candidates who, once elected, abide by their promises and work towards people’s welfare in true spirit?” When he asked them to sign in his register, many onlookers walked away, shrugging off his requests as the ravings of a mad man. Unruffled by their reaction, the elderly man continued to talk with zest and vigour. To those who signed, he asked to return to the same spot the next day after reading in the leaflets his propositions for the constitution of the voters' association. When the day was done, the elderly man wrapped up the folder, tucked the remaining leaflets back under his arm and bid goodbye to his friend. As he strode back to his son’s house under the blazing sun, his dark, bald head glistened and droplets of sweat trickled down his cheeks. But his lips wore a broad smile of satisfaction. On hearing the main gate open, the elderly man’s daughter-inlaw came out of the door with a worried look, “Bhaviah, you are late. You have been out all this time under the hot sun? It is time for lunch.” The father-in-law exultantly replied, “Don’t worry about my food. Today has been a good day for me.” He removed his slippers in the verandah and walked inside, past the living room, the dining room, and the bedroom to the bath to wash his hands and feet. As he passed the bedroom, he paused and looked in to see the grim reality that faced him and his family, belying his smile and sense of achievement. In the room lay an elderly woman, his wife, on a life-support system. Tubes ran in and out of her as she lay in bed almost breathing her last. A little while later, two sons of the elderly couple also returned home, looking weary. While others in the house glanced questioningly at the brothers who were back from a visit to a doctor, Bhaviah greeted them with stoic nonchalance, “You are back.”

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As the family was already late for lunch, everyone hurried towards the dining table. Bhaviah too sat with them to eat. The lunch routine began with the eldest daughter-in-law serving rice to her father-inlaw. Bhaviah picked up a small amount of rice with his fingers and placed five equal portions in a neat column along the plate’s side. He then took a little water in his palm and encircled his plate including the column of rice with his hand, while muttering a few Sanskrit verses. When he finished chanting, he sprinkled some droplets of water on the rice column and drank the rest. “I am ready for lunch. Can you give me the curry now?” he asked his daughter-in-law. The strong smell of medicine drifting from the adjoining room made eating only a necessity to fill up hungry stomachs. Bhaviah finished his meal and after washing his hands, came back and took a small lump of rice. He then walked to the backyard and, like every day, placed the lump on a small stone so that stray insects and birds around the house could come and eat. Noiselessly, he sauntered to his bedroom, put on his glasses and pulled out the papers stuffed below the bed. Unfazed by the sight of his debilitated wife lying in bed, he sat on the floor next to her, his eyes still exuding joy over the day’s achievement towards a voters’ constitution. Carefully placing his fountain pen’s nib on the paper, he started to write. While Bhaviah wrote, it did not matter to him that in the adjacent room his sons and their wives discussed the deteriorating condition of their mother’s health. Among other things, they talked about how they were going to pay their mother’s mounting health bills.

❄ During the next few days, visitors streamed into the house. They were mostly Bhaviah’s daughters, who had come to see their ailing mother. Lakshmi came with her husband and a granddaughter. Parvati and

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Bhavani came with their husbands. Saraswati, a widow, came with her daughter Jayashree. The sisters asked their brothers, Ramachandra and Suryanarayana, about their mother Mahalakshmi’s condition. There were also friends and other close relatives among the visitors. First sister and third sister came to see their eldest sister Akka and make enquiries of their brother-in-law Bhaviah. Among those missing were Mahalakshmi’s only brother Acchanna, the second sister who had passed away a few years ago, and the nieces and nephews who were settled in other countries. There were also phone calls. People talked and talked. Amidst sighs and tears at the sight of the sick grand old lady in the throes of death, there were animated talks and staccato shrills. There were talks about India opening doors to foreign investments and a surge in the number of MNCs, making the city of Bangalore a fast-rising IT hub in India. Along with the excitement over a new son-in-law, a software engineer who relocated to the United States, there were speculation and dilemma. The family felt ambivalent about letting go of a marriage proposal for Jayashree with a very rare, almost 95 per cent, horoscope match, and accepting another where the prospective groom worked for an MNC. First sister talked about her daughter settling well in Canada and making a name for herself in Bharatanatyam, but third sister wore a sombre look as her daughter was on the brink of a second divorce. The visitors could also not help admiring the gleam and design of the newly constructed house of Ramachandra, who had moved to his native state and settled down in the fast-upcoming suburb of Bangalore after completing his lifelong government service in northern India. Away from the glitter and glamour of the modern world and the clatter and clamour among the people to go global, tucked in solitude

A u t h o r ’ s N o t e   :   xix  

in a corner of the room where the wife lay battling for her life, a steady hand wrote away. With the stroke of a nib that moved with the swiftness of a master painter’s brush, Bhaviah continued to write. His pen had two distinctive voices. If one told the saga of his life, the other said how a new story could be written. If one called the government of India treacherous, the other illustrated how Ramarajya (a utopian state) could be brought in by voting for the right candidate to form the government. If one vented his grievances and demanded answers from the government, the other gave solutions. The papers suddenly fluttered and started to fly as a gush of air blew from the fan whirring overhead. Bhaviah bent and reached for them. The bright afternoon sunlight from the window glinted on his glasses, blinding his vision. As he reorganized the papers, his eyes fell on the sheen of the floor tiles luminously reflecting the sun’s rays. His hands stretched out to feel their smoothness. A smile spread on his lips; a smile of pride over his son’s house, which was now his dream nest in his twilight years. Only a year ago, he had had the honour of becoming the greatgrandfather of Ramachandra’s grandson Anand, the first progeny to continue their family name which had been conferred on him with a befitting family function kanakabhisheka (a ritual paying tribute). Life as such looked fine for him; he had no complaints. Oh no! Bhaviah shook his head vigorously. How could he let himself drift into a reverie? How could he ever sway from his life’s main objectives? With renewed energy to write, he picked up his pen. But his pen was drained of ink, and the ink bottle near him was also empty. When he called out to his daughter-in-law, little Anantha brought a new ink bottle from the adjacent room. Bhaviah didn’t turn when Anantha placed the ink bottle in his hand. He was oblivious to the fact that the child, much drawn to his papers, was standing behind him and reading his freshly written letter aloud in a musical voice.

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SUBJECT: Treachery of the Indian Government and the Supreme Court towards Indian farmers. I was born on December 4, 1904. Now, at ninety-one years, my body and senses are weak. I am unable to labour on the land. I have lived as an agriculturist and earned my bread by cultivating land till 1956. After that, I leased my land to tenants and lived on the crop rent given to me by them. The Land Reforms Act came into force in 1965, and with it, the government of Karnataka gave away my land permanently to the tenants without acquiring it according to the law … I filed a suit for maintenance against the government of Karnataka in the civil court. The civil court … My appeals in the courts of the Civil Judge, Holenarsipur, and the High Court, Bangalore, were also dismissed without a basis of justice, law and … I am an old agriculturist. How do I feed myself in my old age? My younger brother GN Narayana and his wife, who both worked for the government, receive pensions. They are living happily in Mysore. But I live in poverty and do not have the protection of the government—all because I lived my life as an agriculturist and did not have a “government job”. Prayer, 28-8-1995 Yelahanka Satellite Town

Appellant, GN Lakshminarsimhiah (GNL)

A chortling sound came from the next room in response to the young child’s reading. A hand came from behind and pulled at the child, “Aiyoh Anantha, what are you doing here, reading your grandpa’s application instead of going to school?” His mother yelled at him.

A u t h o r ’ s N o t e   :   xxi  

Bhaviah, now much amused with his grandchild’s ability to read so well, couldn’t help but laugh. Turning to his daughter-in-law, he quipped, “See, how well your child can read English.” “If you can write so immaculately, who would not be able to read, Bhaviah?” replied his daughter-in-law. Then she remembered something she thought was good news to tell her father-in-law, “You know, Bhaviah, there is a marriage proposal for Jayashree. The groom works for a multinational company. You know how much salary MNCs offer their employees?” Bhaviah’s face quickly lit up. He smiled with his typical nod. To think of such a proposal for the granddaughter who had grown up in his lap was indeed happy news. But his smile petered out quickly and he asked, “How does his high MNC salary help me or other agriculturists of India?” Later he was heard muttering, “They will do all they can to raise their own standard of living. Capitalist ideologies! Ugh! To hell with them! Never thinking of what they can do for the village folk.” By evening, he had finished writing his application and got up to get it photocopied. As he started to leave, his family members tried to stop him, “You have already tried your best, and you know it hasn’t yielded any results. It is a bygone issue now. At least don’t go now when Akka is in this condition.” All requests and persuasion however fell on deaf ears. “I will come back fast. Just one more time; let me post just one more appeal. Maybe it will be heard this time,” Bhaviah replied, his eyes gleaming with optimism. Obviously no one understood how important it was for him to appeal to the Supreme Court about the loss of his land as a result of the government’s Land Reforms Act. He was lucky, as he had a family to provide for him. But there were other farmers who had been dispossessed of all means of livelihood. He therefore had to remind the government that they needed to treat agriculturists on par with other citizens in service and provide maintenance allowance in their

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old age. It was all the more urgent and imperative to raise the issue with the current government now that the state elections were just around the corner. An hour later Bhaviah returned with multiple photocopies of his appeal. The next day, the copies were dispatched by registered post to the chief justice of India and the chief minister of Karnataka. Over the next few weeks, even as his wife’s condition deteriorated fast, he made fervent efforts to get justice for the farmers in the country through his appeal to the people and the government. For the family trying to grapple with the ailing mother’s condition, a phone call from Mysore brought more disturbing news. Unknown to Bhaviah, his younger brother GN Narayana, whom he had quoted in his letters as being in a happy state of pension-provided living, had been diagnosed with cancer. He was confined to his bed and counting his days. Saddened by the news, Bhaviah, accompanied by a young member of the family, went to Mysore to take a last look at his younger sibling. Narayana lay on his bed surrounded by his wife, sons and daughter and a couple of grandchildren. He was being attended by his grandson, a medical student at Mysore University. With his face turned to his second son, Narayana said weakly, “You know that my two dearest sisters, your aunts Shakuntala and Savitri, who are very close to me will be orphaned after I am gone. Promise me that you will take care of your aunts.” As tears trickled down his face, his son put a hand on his shoulder, as if to say, “Worry not, Father. Come what may, I will take care of my aunts.” On seeing his annayya (elder brother), Narayana smiled and stretched out his hand. Bhaviah could only nod and mutter a few words of grief. With their eyes, the two siblings said thousands of words, unspoken and unexpressed. Bhaviah felt extremely pained at his younger brother’s broken state but also proud at his benevolence. Narayana was kind, always more caring of their sisters than he. Even on his death bed, he couldn’t help thinking of them and their welfare.

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But then, were the sisters not as dear to him as they were to Narayana? All their lives they had, in their own distinct ways, cared for their sisters equally. Yes, perhaps Narayana had always been a bit closer to them. Bhaviah gave a meek smile. Perhaps nobody ever understood him, his real spirit of helpfulness, of care. But what was he thinking of? Why did he have this longing to be understood at this juncture in life when, in fact, it had never mattered to him earlier. For someone who had been a son of the soil all his life, these matters did not have much significance. What bothered and really pained him was something very different. Only men with the same love for the land, for the piece of ground they stood on, for the bit of the earth that yielded food for all humanity would know and understand. It was the one and only thing that would always unfailingly touch the core of his heart. And that was the one thing for which Bhaviah now wanted to return home immediately. Maybe, he hoped, the chief minister had replied to him assuring him that his proposal would surely be given top priority in their manifesto. Bhaviah returned home to Bangalore, to his wife’s worsened condition. A few days later the ailing old lady breathed her last. As per Hindu rites, her family members observed strict fasting followed by elaborate rituals on the fourteenth day after she passed away, which included keeping three balls of cooked rice soaked in yoghurt. The ritual was completed on the fifteenth day when they served a sumptuous meal to the guests; this was done to send her departed soul to merge with the Supreme Almighty in vaikuntha (heaven). Through all the rites, Bhaviah did not budge from his seat or stop writing. As always, what occupied his mind and heart was neither the loss of his wife nor the proper conduct of rituals for her departed soul, but the souls that inhabited the hinterland of the country and sweated their lives away to produce staple crops like rice and wheat. In the midst of the rituals came the news of Narayana’s demise. With the two people’s passing, two lights of a dying generation had

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extinguished—the lights of a family whose lives were like flickering flames symbolizing the passage of India from a rural populace to an urban one; its transformation from Bharat to India over a century. Two individuals—one, a son to a family with roots in rural India and the other, a bride to the family—were gone. Their story of aspiration and struggle which culminated in the successful lives of their children and grandchildren was over. But was it the end of the struggle for the eldest brother Bhaviah? His struggle and fights against the government continued with zest and rigour for another two years, till he too breathed his last. His letters, however, lived on after him. A couple of years earlier his relentless appeals to the Supreme Court had elicited a reply asking him to reappeal to the court through an advocate, arguably an impractical thing at his age and tantamount to accepting that his tryst with the government of India was at an end. Nonetheless, his perseverance and spirit to fight for the cause was remarkable. The pain of losing his land was too intense for him to let the matter go. The letters were sent with the same passion even after the personal losses he suffered. His letters sent nearly a year after his wife’s death (he was ninetytwo at the time) narrated a story: an agriculturist, a public prosecutor and a magistrate were the characters of the story. The agriculturist enfeebled by old age and not being provided for by the government resorts to stealing in order to keep himself alive. He is arrested following legal proceedings by the public prosecutor. However, during the court proceedings the magistrate rules that the government is at fault. He frees him of the charge and orders the government to pay a monthly pension to the old man. What was just a story soon became a reality in the old man’s mind. His letters were then sent to the sub-inspector of police, Yelahanka branch, Bangalore, cautioning them of a theft of `100 that the undersigned (an agriculturist) was going to commit, the reason

A u t h o r ’ s N o t e   :   xxv  

being that the government had failed to provide him a pension with which he could support himself in his old age.

❄ Nearly a decade after his death, on my yearly visit to Bangalore, I had a sudden urge to understand and unravel my grandfather’s life story and I found myself wading through a towering pile of his letters. As I delved deep into them, little did I expect that from those sheaves of papers would emerge a saga that not only spanned the colonial rule of early last century and the post-liberalization of the nineties, but also threw a floodlight on the vicissitudes of the nation over this period. Living away in another country, it wasn’t possible for me to be part of many significant occasions of my extended family, including that of my grandparents’ passing. I, however, remember my emotional outburst when I heard of my grandfather’s death which had, in a way, left me with many unanswered questions about his life. The thing I recollect the most from my last meeting with him a year earlier was what anyone would remember him by—his pet grievances about the government’s unfair dealing with the farmers of the country. What was the final outcome of his fight? “Did he receive his pension before he breathed his last?” was my question to my parents. Their reply came with a smile, “Yes, of course, he received a pension.” I was glad. He had achieved, after a long struggle, what had become the sole purpose of his life. I was sure that an undertaking of such mammoth proportions had not been easily achieved. Many other questions begged answers. I wasn’t a stranger though to my grandfather’s laments—I had heard his grouses against the government’s policies towards agriculturists as far back in time as I could remember. Why was he unhappy with the government? What was the cause of his continued fights with the government authorities? This had always been a mystery to me. Those who heard him brushed aside his gripes with

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a smile or with a short statement, “Don’t worry now for that which cannot be changed.” People didn’t take him seriously. I doubt if anyone really tried hard enough to understand the reasons behind his anguish. My grandfather Lakshminarsimhiah was known as the first graduate of his village JodiGubbi—an intelligent and maverick son of an agriculturist family. Was it a blunder on his part to have had, despite acquiring a degree education, a keen passion and love for the agriculture profession and sincere dedication towards his beloved land? Or, was it his weakness that he did not have much success despite using his acuity and wisdom to carry out farming activities on his remote land that had no facilities or resources? It was ironic, and his misfortune perhaps, that as an agriculturist with a deep love for his ancestral land, he was indiscriminately dispossessed of his land in his old age due to an act of the Indian government which was meant to benefit tillers. It was no less intriguing that two brothers born in the same family had different wishes in the twilight years of their lives. If, for one, the Indian government’s indifference towards the welfare of agriculturists was the cause of agony, how was it that another, while on his death bed, was more worried about his sisters’ welfare? Their youngest brother Shiva’s conspicuous absence from the scene was also a point of heightened interest. The sisters Shakuntala and Savitri, at the ripe ages of eighty-eight and eighty, had completely uprooted themselves from their native village and settled down in cities. When I started on my exploratory journey, Shakuntala had long since made her nephew’s home in Shimoga her abode, and Savitri dwelled in Bangalore city. Eventually, a large number of their stories unfolded and I had enough fodder to write this book.

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All the stories originate from JodiGubbi (Gubbi in short), the village of my paternal ancestors in Hassan district of the then princely state of Mysore. JodiGubbi is part of my official name—traditionally, a person’s name is attached to their town or village. Besides this fact, it did not carry much significance in my life since I was born and brought up thousands of kilometres away from the place, in the northern part of India. But there was always an aura of mystery surrounding the name, the mere mention of which would bring to my mind images of a rustic dwelling in the hinterland of Karnataka where my paternal ancestors had dug their roots deep. Now that I had set out to find answers to my grandfather’s constant cries of injustice, my first step was naturally a visit to the place. In my younger days, my short stays in my home state of Karnataka would be limited to the cities of Mysore and Bangalore at my maternal grandparents’ home, followed by even shorter stays at my paternal grandparents’ home, in the small towns where they settled after leaving the village and land. These visits were too short for me to understand their life in the village. Now I was happy that this visit to my ancestral village would finally reveal to me my grandfather's life as a farmer. Narrating the story of a family, beginning with my great grandfather, who apart from inheriting land and the agricultural occupation, also witnessed the changing aspirations, in the new age, of the entire village community in a collective sense, is like telling the story of any rural Indian family living in that time. With the changing time, his son Bhaviah stood out in his struggle as a farmer—a role model to the millions of Indian farmers who even today fight many odds to dedicate their lives to farming and agriculture. Remaining obscure yet vulnerable to the ruthless exploiters of the rapacious world, they are often the last to receive the fruits of their labour. Nevertheless, their lives speak of hope and action, offering invaluable lessons about the heights of human patience and perseverance, industriousness and austerity.

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It is said that discovering our forefathers’ life is a journey of selfdiscovery. It proved that and much more to me. Added to the astounding fact that my grandfather’s life over a century closely followed the trajectory of the nation’s agricultural scene, what unravelled was the sheer complexity of family values, social beliefs and customs intricately woven into the fabric of Indian society for centuries. I also got a chance to read reams of literature, basically to understand agriculture—from its history and its role in forming the basis of Indian culture, to the present-day scenario and its contribution to the nation’s economy as well as globalization and its effects on agriculture. The caste system in India is age-old and many of its evils are common knowledge. Thanks to the tireless efforts of social reformers, today many of these evils have been eradicated from the country, and the law guarantees equal rights and privileges to everyone. In highlighting some of the village’s social hierarchy under the caste system in the context of cultivation, my intention is certainly not to show the supremacy or meritocracy of one caste over another. To begin, I would like to borrow the words of the Chinese author Han Suyin from her inspiring book, The Crippled Tree, “Strange are the ways of history, where no one thing abides but all things flow into each other fragment to fragment clinging, growing new wholeness. To understand any event, in any country, one must go back three generations. A century ago sprouted the seed root of today’s tree whose branches cast their spreading shade over our heads, whose leaves may fall in a storm only to be replaced by a myriad other leaves.”

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Seedlings, Sprouts and Plants

“Ah! The garden is so beautiful Why don’t we settle here?” The birds set up their nests, The garden sprouted and bloomed.

M

y native village is at a distance of about 200 km from Bangalore. It is well connected by roads to Bangalore but the roadmap or directory is not easily accessible. I also find it hard to locate it on Google Earth—it appears only as a green patch; on Google Maps, its size in microns is too small to be seen even at the highest resolution. There are regular bus services, but our group decides to hire a private vehicle to make a day’s trip to JodiGubbi. For an hour, our MPV goes past the suburbs of Bangalore, inching its way through roads with heavy traffic and smoggy air before zipping its way to much cleaner and greener surroundings. My mind wanders to the past, picturing the time a hundred years ago when my grandfather was born—a time when Bangalore was so different from what it is now. It was the beginning of industrialization under the British Raj and with the very few vehicles present on roads, the air was not very polluted. Driving further, the scenic landscapes dotted with extinct volcanoes, hills and forests, reveal my home state’s rich history. Was

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it the same green landscape that had inspired the Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsiang, nearly one-and-a-half millennia ago, to make glorious mention of the place Dhanakataka in his writings? Indeed, travelling from the “macro” and globalized world of Bangalore to the “micro” world of my native village is like travelling backwards in time. I am tempted to take a slight detour to visit the historical sites of Belur Halebidu, the twelfth-century architectural wonder, but drop the idea thinking I will go there during my next visit. We proceed according to our earlier plan. With a brief halt at my aunt’s place in Channarayapatna, we continue for another 50 km. The entire road to Holenarsipur town is lined on both sides with coconut trees. The vast sugar cane fields and a big sugar factory seemingly under construction are testimony to the region’s ambitious plans for agriculture. In Holenarsipur, we pass the central circle, the government high school, the post office and the temple. The sun is already sweltering hot, and we stop to buy tender coconut drinks from a roadside vendor. As we pass some residential streets, I picture my grandparents’ home, years ago; Bhaviah in his usual off-white shirt and dhoti, and Akka in a simple cotton sari with minimum jewellery. We stop at the temple to pay our obeisance to our family deity Lord Lakshminarsimha enshrined in its sanctum sanctorum. A chariot in the temple premises adds an old-world charm. Evidently, the yearly chariot procession, even today, is very much a crowdpuller. We proceed on our journey, pass the Hemavati River and follow the signboards to JodiGubbi. It is heartening to see the excellent tar roads leading to my village. My heart further swells at the sight of endless greenery all around. It is harvest time and the agricultural land is laden with its produce. Sugar cane, paddy and betel nuts seem to be the main produce of the region. All along the road we traverse, my eyes are fastened on the fields. I see many workers toiling at a distance, their bodies bent over the crops. I picture my grandfather

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amidst them. The greenery was not the same in this part of the land during his time—I come to know later. Some of the workers rise up, smile and greet us as our vehicle slows and passes them by. At one point, we stop to ask for directions. A big conspicuous building shows the very first sign of residential life amid the otherwise dense expanse of vegetation. However, the road has become narrower. The luxury of tar ends on the main road and there is no way our vehicle can move further. Small thatched roof houses line the dusty, deserted lane. I start to walk towards a house which has some people. But then I am told that we must walk further up the road to our relatives’ house. A dish antenna peeps out of every house and telephone lines run along the periphery of the road. We proceed carefully. As I walk along, I wonder when my village came into existence and why it never grew like cities. What was it that made life amidst the fields and vegetation so exciting for my grandfather? It could not be just for the fact that it was his family inheritance. Could the socioeconomic milieu of society give him such traits and propensities? Yes, maybe the answer lies in a deeper examination of the roots of Indian society. ❄ Our ancient scriptures like the Vedas and the accounts of travellers and scholars tell much about the early Indian society. The Vedic society dating back to approximately 1500 bce comprised in part indigenous population of mainly cultivators and pastoralists and in part Aryan tribes who came to India through the northwestern borders. Vedic ethos was founded on beliefs about the beneficent powers of God—a primordial divine—the trinity that followed the laws of the cosmos, created this universe and showered His bounty on earth. Man and nature were in harmony and the food that belonged to the highest

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heaven was brought to the earth by drops of soma in the form of a fertilizing flood of rain for all the creatures on earth. The fertilizing food energy or sap entered the plants and once again made them fit to be offered to the gods. The cycle of solar heat, rain and vegetation was the cosmic sacrifice which was imitated in rituals as an expression of human gratitude and celebration of the divine bounty. Agriculture was a process of sacrifice where ploughing, sowing, reaping and threshing were divine actions raised to cosmic dignity. Each agricultural operation was associated with an appropriate ritual and religious verses were recited before ploughing began. Land, plough, furrows were represented by gods and goddesses and several deities personified agricultural operations. The pantheon of Vedic gods, including that of a feminine cosmic energy, later evolved into the anthropomorphic deities and images of the contemporary Hindu religion. In the medieval ages, Hinduism, with its cosmological ideals, travelled far and wide beyond Indian territories and led to the foundation, growth and development of wet-rice cultivation under some of the greatest empires of Southeast Asian countries spanning from Ceylon and Cambodia to Vietnam and Indonesia. Although farming was dependent on the fertility of soil and natural rains, artificial irrigation and the use of manure were also known in the Vedic age. Arthashastra—an auxiliary to the Vedas and a specialized treatise—detailed on various aspects of agriculture, cattle-rearing and commerce, to which trading and business were added when agriculture had become a well-developed science and a significant economic activity. The cosmic law which had created a three-tiered universe of heaven, mid-space and earth, also governed the division of society into three tiers, where Brahmins were holy seers, Kshatriyas were the protectors of law and Vaisyas held property and participated in food production—the functions being representative of the collective human society.

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My ancestors in the village were Brahmin agriculturists and perhaps descendants of the early scholarly settlers. But when exactly did the first settler come to this village? Village Brahmins in the Vedic age were construed poor—they often had to make a living by performing magic and fortune-telling. In the post-Vedic age, as population increased and more land came under cultivation, political changes and economic necessity forced the Brahmins to move to cities and take up professions like agriculture and trade as means of livelihood. Some of them lived under the patronage of kings as their advisers, received grants and tax-free land and collected taxes from the peasants. There were also land-owning Brahmins who cultivated with the help of serfs or hired labour. Some followed other professions such as cooking or healing. With the continuous influx of immigrants, people from the north were forced to move to the other regions of India, resulting in a heterogeneous Indian society with people localized in different regions, each region evolving its own distinct cultural and linguistic characteristics. The people who settled in Karnataka province belonged to the most ancient-known Dravidian groups and spoke one of the oldest known languages—Kannada. An antiquated Ghargeshwarswamy temple and an army of lingas (deity symbolizing Shiva) unearthed during recent excavations indicate that the region was largely inhabited by Shaivites and Jains in the ancient past. A temple of Lord Channakeshava and a stone inscription dating back to the thirteenth century indicate that its agrarian activities began under the reign of the Chola Empire. The first Brahmin—the forbearer of a present Dasappa family—is believed to have arrived in the village nearly 800 years ago from the North Indian city of Kashi during the rule of the Cholas. The village slowly got populated when more young Brahmins arrived in the village. They belonged to the same community, but were divided into exogamic (gotra) and endogamic sects based on the recension of Vedic texts accorded to one maharishi. It also implied

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that a marriage communion couldn’t take place between two families of the same gotra. My ancestors were said to be from the lineage of Jamdagni Maharishi of the Yajurveda sect.

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Our hosts, a joint family of brothers, receive us with much warmth, despite our arriving there without prior information. We enter their home with our heads bent to fit the small door at the entrance. Inside, the verandah leads to a bigger room. A few cane chairs, a 24-inch television and a telephone are all that make the room’s possessions. It is partly lit with an electric bulb and partly with sunlight streaming in through the tiled roof. Looking at the red-oxide floor, I am flooded with memories of my childhood visits to my home state. I can’t help imagining my ancestors looking and talking like the people in this house—as if they were making up for my great-grandparents whom I never met. When we inform our hosts about the purpose of our visit, they lead us to the fields. We walk along the long beaten path (bund) towards the village tank. At a much greater distance beyond the tank appear tiny dots of trees which, I am told, belong to a thousand-yearold dense forest. A road separates it from a relatively small and new forest made on grazing land for the village cattle. We reach the dead end of the bank. Here, I am drawn towards a tiny temple built in reverence to Gubbalkkamma, a young woman who gave the village its name Gubbi. As I focus my attention on the placid waters of the tank with a swath of greenery as a backdrop, I remember my great aunt Savitri telling me how much they were dependent on the tank water, which was in turn dependent on the rains. They could eat healthy, wholesome meals of vegetables and rice only during the years of good rainfall; there were many seasons when they subsisted on just lentil-flour pudding or tubers likes sweet potatoes.

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Walking back, the young man accompanying us explains the valve mechanisms of the feeding channel from River Hemavati to the tank. Built in 1984 by the Karnataka government, the upper channel originating from the river’s dam in the town of Gorur and spanning several villages along its track ensures, unlike in the past, a perennial supply of water to the tank. The man now points to the distant group of dense gardens next to the tank. The dense gardens of coconut, betel nut and betel leaf trees also include the one planted by my grandfather. As I run my eyes through the gardens to the adjacent low-lying, wetland paddy fields with their channels of water, I vaguely discern the difference in the fertility and cultivability of their soils. Further away from the tank, nearer to the village on raised grounds, I see brown patches of land. I am told that this land is arid and suitable only for small and seasonal spice crops. The Department of Agriculture, Karnataka, has undertaken a lot of research into the region’s land and groundwater. In this part of the eastern taluk, the soils—derived from granite, gneiss and schists—are the red sandy type. The weathered zone of these rocks under phreatic conditions is favourable for groundwater formation and retention. The taluk’s soils are shallow, loamy to sandy loamy in texture and are intermixed with coarse gravel and pebble. They are well-drained but have poor moisture-retaining capacity, and are hence suitable for crops like paddy, sugar cane, coconut, potato and vegetables under irrigated conditions and ragi, millets, groundnuts and cotton under rain-fed conditions. ❄ Throughout the post-medieval times, spanning various dynasties of the Karnataka province, even as art and architecture flourished under royal patronage, agriculture remained the mainstay of economy and land revenue the main source of royal income. Temples and

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institutions like the agrahara—a meeting place for learning and exchange of knowledge for village intellectuals—were built; due to the increase in trade with China, Persia and other countries, urban-based industries also grew. Following their plan the kings built the village’s key water resource centre—the village tank with sluices and distributary channels—even before allotting land to the new settler of the village. According to the tradition, along with each new Brahmin settler, two families—one each from the cultivator class and the tribal class—would be attached to work in the land. The tribal men were brought to help the cultivators with odd labour and menial jobs—mostly for crop harvesting and logistics. The agricultural labour class is believed to have had its origin in post-Vedic times. Arising out of deep indebtedness, peasant proprietorship changed to landownership; subsequently, the details of the differentiation of landlords, cultivators, tenants and labourers and the division of produce between them were also documented in Arthashastra. The records and inscriptions historically depict resplendent rivers and rich cereal crops of paddy, jowar, ragi, pulses; oilseeds of gingili and castor; cash crops of betel leaves, betel nuts, cotton and sugar cane as the main produce of the region. The prevalence of ragi as the main crop of the region points to its prehistoric connections with the African region. As the village grew in size, the families too multiplied. A village Patel and a Shanbhog took care of all the village’s administrative functions including the collection of tax. Though farmers were taxed since ancient times, the burden of tolls and imposts on cultivators and traders increased when foreign invaders created a new class of kinsmen claiming the right to assign revenues to officials in lieu of services rendered. For a fairer deal to farmers, the Muslim rulers in Mysore State, pioneered by Mahmud Gavan in the fifteenth century, made revenue taxation dependent on the fertility of the land, irrigational facilities and proximity to the market. This system was

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further modified by Shivappa Nayaka of the Keladi dynasty, who added the value of a fixed measure of the land’s yield to the overall revenue. In time, my village came to be known as Gubbi. It was named so after a young woman, Gubblakka, who lived in a nearby village. According to folklore, Gubblakka was constantly harassed and ill-treated by her in-laws. Unable to bear the torture and suffering, the young mother ran out of her home with her infant in her arms and came to our village. Moved by her hapless state, the village Patel took her and her child under his shelter. The big man’s generosity touched the young Gubblakka deeply and out of gratitude she blessed the Patel wishing him a prosperous life and flourishing trade for generations to come. The same night she took her own life by drowning in the village tank. Early next morning, villagers woke up to find a stone statue of a young woman standing deep inside the tank. In honour of the departed soul, the villagers prayed at the bank every year and in time, a small temple was built in her name. After Gubbi became a well-functioning village, a gramdevta temple was also built—a standard practice to establish a village landmark. The temple enshrined the three female deities of Lakshmi, Kali and Mahakali, which, over time, became very popular with the villagers—they were believed to have had immense power to grant devotees’ wishes. Another legend has it that in the late sixteenth century, eight Brahmins from the village travelled on foot to the palace of the then Mysore maharaja, Krishnadevaraj Wodeyar, to ask for a grant of land for cultivation. When the tired villagers were offered a mat to rest on, each one sat on its edges and corners in a way as to prevent the mat from rolling on its sides. The next day as a test they were asked to bring a needle. All the eight men carried a huge banana stem, pierced with the needle, on their shoulders. Their unique way of demonstrating solidarity and conscientiousness deeply impressed the maharaja and he instantly ordered a grant of six villages to Gubbi. The vast fertile land of these villages would not only go on, in the

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forthcoming centuries, to provide the Brahmins with food grains but also help towards paying the revenue tax. Subsequently, Gubbi came to be known as JodiGubbi agrahara— the prefix ‘jodi’ means a grant. My ancestor was one of the many Brahmins brought to the village along with Vokkaliga cultivators from the town of Rudrapatna after the grant of extra land. Over the years, the village grew in size with the Brahmin families finally totalling forty in number. Each community set up their separate locality and built houses along the periphery of the fields, where Brahmins concentrated in the northern side and the farming class and the tribal group in the southern. Their farming got further encouragement under Tipu Sultan’s administration by way of free loans and help from Chinese technicians for sugar production and sericulture, and marts for trade of agriculture commodities. As improvements towards land revenue, provinces were restructured and reorganized and officials collecting taxes in excess were fined. The rural life followed a rhythm of rituals, like in ancient times, woven around the diverse aspects of agriculture. Year-round festivals, ceremonies and events like marriages united different professional and hereditary groups into an orderly, plentiful and harmonious whole and engendered a sense of simplicity and happiness. Interestingly, till this day a predominantly Balinese Hindu people in Indonesia follows a similarly ordered pattern of elaborate rituals and social hierarchy, in particular the wet-rice cultivating regions.

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In the fresh fields, under the sun, people are watering the crops and sprinkling fertilizer on the soil. What an amazing ecosystem the village has! Every element of nature, namely water, air, the earth, the sun and ether (space) can be seen and appreciated for doing its job in its own stupendous way! My great aunt Savitri now recalls the names of a few men who worked on the ancestral land—Maria, Lakka, Yelliah, Ginja,

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Malla, Kujara and Venkata. Some of them helped with tilling and ploughing and some with harvesting and logistics. Thinking of your life that was spent in gardens and fields, I can’t help feeling a bit envious of you, Grandfather! Neither I nor my daughters got to experience such an idyllic life. The future generations might never even get to know it. While we continue on the beaten path, a cacophony of modernity suddenly assails us from behind. A motorbike passes by, followed by another. Though a few bullocks can be seen at a distance, I realize that today machines have taken over most of the tasks in the fields. Our guide tells me that the changes started after the village got electricity. Electricity-run machines like mills do the grinding and a machine for threshing and winnowing paddy is available in the next village. Many farmers also own tractors which do most of the ploughing work. LPG gas stoves are being used in almost 40 per cent of the village kitchens. What a contrast! Today technological convergence has shrunk the world into a global village and with the click of a key, information is available at our fingertips even in the village. In comparison, a century ago, it would have taken at least a few hours on slowwaddling bullock carts to reach a nearby town. ❄ Through the efforts of the visionary leaders of Mysore State in the nineteenth century, the British administration undertook major development projects like electrification, roads and railways, irrigational canals and dams and new educational institutions. They brought large areas of land under coffee plantation and encouraged the trade of cash crops and commodities with other countries. Following an agrarian uprising in Canara district of North Karnataka against the payment of taxes in cash, they introduced the contract system to safeguard peasants from harassment.

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Till the early twentieth century, JodiGubbi continued to enjoy the status of being a jodigram (a village with land endowment) among the pockets of rural habitation in Holenarsipur Taluk. A bustling village where yet untouched by the state’s fast industrialization, its citizens were actively involved in agriculture and living a palpable Vedic equation of nature and food for sustenance. Brahmins owned nearly 2,000 acres of land which they zealously guarded in unison and cultivated with full zest and fervour. Any piece of land was a collective possession and equally divided into forty parts regardless of whether it was arid land or wetland or even fertile land suitable for cultivating a garden. The tank water for cultivation was also shared equally amongst them by deploying ingenious methods of diverting water, so that no landowner felt deprived or discriminated against. Since the tank was common property, its maintenance under the leadership of the Patel and the Shanbhog was also shared. Besides, the drinking water from the two wells dug in the home precinct was being shared by these Brahmins of the same gotra. Vokkaliga farmers also had their own drinking-water well dug near the gramdevata temple. Usually, the cultivators and the tribal class also had access to safe water from the small wells (moats) dug in the gardens. Apart from using the myriad natural resources around them, villagers also exploited energy from the most invaluable resource— livestock and humans. Every family owned cows, buffaloes and bullocks. Other than providing milk and milk products for the villagers, cows and buffaloes were also a source of dung which could be used for multiple purposes. Bullocks were used for ploughing and bullock carts were the only mode of transport to distant towns and villages. A large tract of land, about 40 to 60 acres in size, was kept as a common pastoral land where all the village cattle could graze with total abandon. Cow dung, besides being used as an organic floor material in the village houses, would be mixed with fodder and compost and placed in big pits to dry under the sun and become manure, or burnt as fuel cakes for use in the kitchen’s rustic mud stoves. When powdered, the

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fuel cake would also serve as a dental cleansing agent leaving the user with sparkling white teeth. In the fields, which were much hallowed and integral to their lives, the villagers would unhesitatingly satisfy their nature’s call. Over time, with rain and sun, their excreta would mingle with the soil to become a primitive form of manure. Besides cow dung, naturally obtained organic husks of paddy and coconuts or raw wood would be used as fuel. Grass from green pastures would be weaved into garaga (coats) for protection against the rain or used as floor mats or mattresses. Plantation products of areca (betel) nuts and coconuts would be ingeniously used for roofing or as pillars and beams for constructing village houses. Yeta were indigenous machines installed in homes for husking or winnowing paddy. They worked like a seesaw board (12–15 ft long wooden shaft fitted with a steel frame at the thick conical-shaped front end). Varlu were hand grinders for grinding rice/ragi grains. Besides these, activities like extracting sugar cane juice and churning butter used human energy. A room-sized tin shed built in the fields would house a crude machine consisting of two large wheels to extract sugar cane juice which would be boiled along with calcium carbonate in a cauldron on a big fire and poured in moulds to solidify into jaggery cakes. What was already an archetypal agrahara further developed and became a source of pride in the region when it received its share of the princely state’s renaissance pie. In the late nineteenth century, at the height of Mysore’s renaissance, Gubbi set up a school, the first-of-its-kind in the region—a school only for girls! Another school was opened for boys. Much later however, due to the absence of an enthusiastic response from the citizens, the girls school was shut down, though the boys school continued. Meanwhile, a police outpost and a once-a-week postal delivery outlet were also added to the village infrastructure.

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Being with our host family is a pleasure to the senses. Everything about the family, their house and its ambience, speaks of their simplistic lifestyle and simple aspirations. As I traipse around the house, I reach the inner chamber and immediately discover what lies at the core of their happiness. A shiver of thrill runs down my spine at the sight of paddy filled to the edge of a half-raised wall inside a partition. This was surely the mainstay of my grandfather’s happiness too. The hosts lay out cane mats on the floor for us to sit. A petite young girl in Punjabi attire walks in and serves us steaming coffee in steel cups. She is the eighteen-year-old daughter of the family’s eldest son. The new coffee joints that have opened in Indian cities after liberalization are popular today among the young folk, but the coffee served here has its own exotic flavour. My father fondly recalls how coffee used to be a symbol of elitism during my greatgrandfather Narsihebbariah’s time, and how he and the village Patel relished the beverage in each other’s company, holding the coffee cups with the edges of their dhotis and slurping it loudly. Coffee is followed by tasty kodbales (deep-fried salty snacks made of powdered rice, red chillies and coconut). Walking inside the kitchen, I see women working on big LPG stoves. While turning out obbatus (sweet pancakes made of glutinous wheat powder stuffed with a mixture of jaggery and coconut) with their deft hands they inform us that that the food is part of the preparation for their daughter’s upcoming engagement ceremony. Later they serve us a simple meal of rice and sambar topped with raw-mango pickle. The tastes and flavours surrounding us leave me wondering whether the vegetarian cuisine prepared with much fanfare in our homes as part of any ceremony or festival, each dish with its own specialty and significance, has also developed depending on the crops that were grown on the land—new varieties being added with new people arriving on the Indian soil.

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Despite my elation at the sylvan charm of the house, I feel relieved to see that it has a regular toilet. We step out of the house and spot our ancestral home further down the lane. With quick steps, we walk to the house. I have obtained its keys and can’t wait to open it. A small open verandah in the front is supported by pillars on four sides. A rustic aura greets us as we open the door and enter the house. The room is spacious with a slanting tiled roof but sunlight barely penetrates it. We grope around in the semi-darkness and glance at the kitchen, bath and a small-sized room. I can imagine those days with no electric bulbs when the rooms would have been always dark except perhaps for the flickering flame of an oil lamp. The flooring that used to be made of cow dung now seems replaced with red oxide. There is a backyard and adjoining it, a drinking-water well. I picture my grandma rearing livestock in that backyard. Each space, every part of the house speaks of the lives of the generations gone by, long periods of hardships interspersed with a few moments of happiness. I picture my grandfather’s birth in this house. Indeed, for people living so close to vegetation and nature, any such occasion or event would have meant running to their fields, farms, orchards or gardens and plucking fresh fruits, herbs, leaves, vegetables or even spice crops and bringing them home to indulge their newborn and the mother. ❄ A century ago if my native Gubbi qualified as a model Vedic village, its people literally epitomized the spirit of the age which held values, work, wealth and welfare in close connection. I feel fortunate to have seen those values in the family we visited. Happiness and contentment seem part of their inherent nature. It was undoubtedly no different at the time of my grandfather’s birth.

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Born to a happy family, content in its small world, Bhaviah had a loving and happy childhood. “Dhanam Danyam Vipulam Phalam”— this old Sanskrit adage could aptly describe my great-grandparents’ household, where milk overflowed the cans and paddy grains spilled over the bins. Since agriculture ran in the family, my grandfather’s inclination towards the vocation was natural. Patriarchal families like mine preferred to have sons so that the land could be passed on to safe hands and the family tradition of agriculture kept alive. Even my great-grandfather Narsihebbariah, born in 1882, was adopted by the village’s Sanskrit teacher Narsimha, from his own cousin, as he had no sons. Narsimha died young, leaving his only son Narsihebbariah comparatively wealthy with nearly 40 acres of land, four healthy buffaloes and two cows. In his lifetime though, he could probably neither foresee the change time would bring nor expect that his grandchild Bhaviah would struggle all his life to keep the flame of the agricultural vocation burning in the family. When my great-grandmother first became pregnant, there was immense joy in the family with the expectation of a son. Bhaviah was born in the ancestral house where his grandfather and even earlier generations of men were born. Decades later, his son would also be born in the same rustic house. When Narsihebbariah heard that a son was born to him, he jubilantly ran to his neighbour’s coconut orchard near the village tank and plucked fresh coconuts. He then used the husk from the coconuts to add extra fuel to the fire that was kindled to heat water for bathing the newborn and his mother. The young mother drank the ripe coconut water, and the scraped coconut flesh was used for food and savouries. Over the next few days, the baby was given castor oil massages and heat therapy with herbal sambrani kindled in a hot cinder-filled mud stove till he could fully open his eyes to the world. My grandfather was named Lakshminarsimhiah after the family deity, but being the firstborn, he was affectionately called Magu, meaning “child” in Kannada. As a toddler, Magu crawled on the cow-

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dung flooring and clucked and laughed with the cows and buffaloes, all the while being coddled by the three women in the house—his great-grandmother Subbamma, his grandmother Narsamma and his mother Chelvamma. He always remained Magu to his parents, even after becoming a father and a grandfather himself. Chelvamma gave birth to ten children in all, three of whom were either stillborn or died of cholera and malaria in their infancy. In those days, just as children were gifts from God and childbirth a natural process over which there wasn’t much control, death was also considered part of the same natural act. It was common for people to die of unknown diseases, snakebites or lightning in the open fields and their loss was not a reason to grieve for life. With four female and two male children who were born after my grandfather and survived, the ancestral home was always full, never becoming an empty nest. A hundred years ago, when the two main residential lanes for Brahmins were fully occupied and teemed with life, my grandfather enjoyed the companionship of his cousins living in the neighbourhood. All the forty resident Brahmin families lived like one large family— they shared food and water, and their small courtyards were open to all the children to play to their heart’s content. The surplus crops from one household would be equally distributed among all households. Festivals and joyous occasions were meant to be celebrated together. The sad event of deaths would not go without members of all the families staying hungry and thirsty till the body was taken away for cremation. They would also be united in the face of the distressing times of food shortage or the compulsion to pay tax during seasons of no rainfall or excessive rainfall when they could hardly expect any produce from the grant villages. This unity and harmony extended beyond blood relations, irrespective of professional or hereditary descent and wealth or material possessions. Generally, people led a subsistence lifestyle where the small landholdings gave just enough income for the families to lead a simple village life. A few Brahmin families who had

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gardens could reap pricey returns from crops such as betel nuts, betel leaves and coconuts and plantains on a yearly basis from their dealers in the towns. The village head Patel and my great-grandfather were great friends and addressed each other as Patela and Hebbaru, respectively. Patela was wealthy but approachable to his friend Hebbaru. Their friendship would spawn regular sessions of pagade (dice game) which was a popular draw among the villagers, more to hear and enjoy their witty and hilarious comments as the game progressed than to actually watch the game. After a day’s hard work, the womenfolk would also share lighter moments in each other’s company with halgunimane (a game of shifting tamarind seeds in the shallow recesses of a wooden box). The landowning Brahmins shared an equally strong rapport with the workers and labourers who toiled on their land. Besides paying the workers their wages, invariably on their return from the backbreaking work in the fields, the landlords would lovingly serve them with their favourite meal of steamed ragi mudde (millet balls) in their courtyards. To cite another interesting example of the harmony among the villagers, the litigants implicated in land-related disputes would travel together on the same bullock cart to appear in the courts in town, and amid jokes and laughter they would resolve their differences so amicably that before boarding the bullock cart again for the return trip, they would already be the best of friends.

❄

The village is truly a microcosm of Indian society, and the village temple a miniature version of a common Hindu temple. We walk along a narrow lane and inadvertently bump into the village priest who ambles along our path. He tells us how attitudes and religious beliefs have changed over the last century. He confides, with a smile, that people from all communities and castes are now allowed to worship at the temples.

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So far in the village we haven't come across even a single young Brahmin boy with long braids; not even an older one who may have been ordained with Upanayana—an important rite of passage for Brahmins. As we continue our stroll, I imagine my grandfather’s Upanayana in the village where bullocks and cows sauntered freely, their mowing resonating synchronously with temple bells and chants. When the news of his forthcoming Upanayana spread, half the villagers were ready to do their all to make the function memorable. The exotic fragrance of flowers and incense sticks when blended with the husky smell of cow dung must have lent a mystical streak to the occasion. Grandfather, for you who always related to people working in the farms, balancing Vedic work ethos with Brahminical ethos must have been a challenge! No wonder you fought all along as an agriculturist. ❄ My grandfather was given a ceremonial haircut at the age of three and left with a braid which he sported all his life. At almost the same time, he was made to wear a dhoti—the signature dress of Indian men those days. As a young boy, he was not so playful as to spend hours playing gilli-danda, then a popular game with boys, or to gleefully take part in the annual chariot processions in Holenarsipur. Instead, he preferred to spend time in the fields with his father and learn the nitty-gritties of agriculture. As he alternated his time between the laps of his mother and that of mother earth, a strong bond grew equally with both—a bond that didn’t weaken till the end. He was also close to the tillers in the fields with whom he identified since a young age, the animal stock that helped till the soil and gave essential milk, and the birds that chirped happily in his uncle’s orchard. Growing up in heavenly orchards and fields, occasionally tasting the sweet flesh of mangoes and jackfruits, the tanginess of tamarinds,

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and relishing the sweetness of sugar-cane juice and coconut drinks must have surely strengthened the deep love he had for mother earth. A subsistence living as theirs was, where the land’s produce like ragi grains, coconuts, coriander and chillies were used as daily food ingredients, would have helped his agriculturist mind to gain further insights into farming and crops. No wonder, the importance of food for survival got deeply etched in his psyche. As he grew older, Narsihebbariah, who, like any informed villager, had a great regard for modern education, couldn’t wait to put his son in school. At the same time, being a steadfast orthodox Brahmin, he very earnestly looked forward to teaching his young son the Vedic rituals and mantras. The chanting of mantras along with a specific food ritual was a practice among Brahmins since ancient times—possibly to take control of the mind, body and spirit and keep the passions sattva (moderate). Their belief in the profound relationship food has had with the natural vibrations of the universe since time immemorial was demonstrated in their strict adherence to vegetarianism. The Vedas expounded that the relationship between food and human life was eternal and immortal—it continues even after death and, depending on a person’s karma, brings him back to earth as vegetation and food for organic life forms. Vegetarianism gained further popularity after Buddha advocated non-violence. The Greek philosopher Plotinus said of people who followed vegetarianism that they were the “ancient of all philosophers; with exemplary judgment and temperance and by eating just rice and herbs, they carried into the modern civilization the original laws of nature”.

❄ The Brahmin sacramental tradition of the early Vedic religion that encapsulates their deep reverence to Mother Nature and its elements for its bounty is ordained upon young boys with the

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Upanayana ceremony. Upanayana ("Upa" and "Nayana") in Sanskrit means "vision through knowledge". In ancient times, it was like a second birth for the boy, as it was then that he would begin learning the sacred Vedas. A century ago, this rite had not lost its import for my grandfather and was performed with much fervour in his eighth year. For his parents, this ceremony for their firstborn was especially significant and exciting. As preparation, Chelvamma tied mango leaves at the doorways, rubbed the floor with several coatings of cow-dung paste and decorated the floor with rangoli designs using rice flour. The older women busied themselves with milking of cows, churning out butter and preparing delicacies. Together the women sang and cooked the varieties needed for the occasion. On the day of the ceremony, the village priest was called to perform the ritual. A bonfire pit was arranged along with all the necessary ingredients like peepal tree bark, ghee, holy ash and sandalwood paste. The priest then taught Bhaviah a few mantras to invoke the panchabhutas (five elements of nature)—fire, air, water, earth and ether. He then rubbed the holy ash in sets of three lines across the young boy’s arms, forehead and back symbolizing the basic truth of human life that the body is nothing but a sum total of the five elements of nature and, like all worldly objects, it is impermanent and is reduced to imperishable ash upon burning. The priest then placed a veil in front of my young grandfather and asked his father to whisper the eternal and powerful Gayatri mantras across to his son, thus signifying the passing of the tradition to his descendant. A threestranded thread, symbolic of the three states of the cosmos, was then placed on Bhaviah’s shoulder to be worn diagonally across the midriff. The ceremony ended with the last but most important ritual in which five small morsels of rice and a pint of water were offered to the gods before every meal. The priest also taught him the ritual of Sandhyavandane, the daily obeisance to the sun god three times a day: sunrise, midmorning and sunset.

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Being brought up in the Brahminical traditions, my grandfather also developed a penchant for Vedanta and philosophy, which he had learnt from his parents who often held discourses in Kannada and to some extent in the Sanskrit language in their small open courtyard for the benefit of the villagers. Chelvamma came from a family specializing in the knowledge of Vedanta. She had no formal education, but being gifted with an excellent memory, she was an expert in the poetic verses of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. She also had a sound knowledge of herbs and the Ayurveda Shastra and would often act as a healer to the village’s sick. Both parents helmed all festival celebrations; they adapted the epics into dramas for street performances enacted by the villagers.

❄

As we walk along the village street, my aunt points to a nondescript dilapidated building. It is the village school where my grandfather did his elementary schooling. The nearly two-hundred-year-old building which testifies how deeply the English educational system had permeated into villages then is still functioning. In addition, a new building has come up to accommodate more students. Many years ago, a high school and a junior college too were opened. I conjure up the image of a young Bhaviah spending long nights reading under the menedbatti (oil lamp). For someone so deeply attached to the soil and agriculture, the times he was born in always worked to his disadvantage, pulling him away from his interests and demanding change. His life thus became a unique battle between opposing desires: that of his parents who, despite their meagre resources, gave him an education so that he could earn a living away from his village, and his own desire that made him continuously search for a path leading back to the village and his ancestral land. Nevertheless, education did give him wisdom which only strengthened his early resolve to stay on in his village and work on his ancestral land.

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To follow my grandfather’s life journey further, we drive through Hassan, the city which was closely associated with him all his life as a farmer. ❄ It was the dawn of a new age when the equation of simplicity, selfsufficiency and old traditions was being fast overtaken by that of modernity and ambition. Narsihebbariah didn’t own a garden and depended largely on returns from their rice paddies, sugar cane and seasonal crops. Occasionally, he would travel on bullock cart accompanied by his young son to sell big home-made jaggery blocks in the weekly mart of Holenarsipur. But the technology, markets and prices being very different in his times, he could not make profits either with the crop yield or the money earned. With regular visits to the town, the young Bhaviah saw the flip side of village life and dismayed over the striking difference in the living standards of people in villages and towns. Meanwhile, his father and mother aspired for him to move to a town or city for a highpaying job as soon as he completed his education. After he completed his primary and middle schooling in the village, his parents sent him to the bustling city of Hassan, the nearest centre for high-school education, about 40 km from Gubbi. They made arrangements with a generous Setty family to house him and with other families to feed him in rotation. With his simple habits and virtuous qualities, the young Bhaviah endeared himself to the families. At times they helped him to the extent of paying his fees when money was not sent on time from home. One day the owner of the house where he was staying found him sitting gloomily. Affectionately, he enquired, “Young boy, why are you sitting here? Something seems to be troubling you. Can I help?” After repeated questioning, my young grandfather replied, “Sir, I have to pay the SSLC final examination fees of `5. Today is the last day and I haven’t

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received money from my father.” Taking pity on the boy, the gentleman consoled him, went with him to the school and paid the fees. Two days later, Bhaviah’s father came and returned the money expressing his gratitude. While studying in Hassan, Bhaviah would often visit his native village to see his parents and siblings, arduously covering the distance by foot. His sisters adored him and his brother Narayana considered him the best role model in the world. Each visit brought him closer to his people, and those years left an indelible impression on his mind. It was during this time that his second sister Devyani, who always felt hungry and ate constantly, died of small pox. After her death, she was cremated in accordance with the customary rituals in the fields near their house. But an astounding thing happened after the cremation. Bhaviah went to the backyard of the ancestral house to wash his hands when suddenly a female figure sprang up in the air. It was his dead sister Devyani’s apparition! The female apparition put her hand on her stomach and pleaded, “Brother, I’m hungry. Give me food.” The apparition kept appearing every day. Finally, Chelvamma told him, “Today you give her lots of rice, son. Let’s see if she comes back tomorrow." Obeying his mother, Bhaviah placed a large container full of cooked rice in the room where his sister had breathed her last. He then locked its door. Devyani didn’t appear again. The family saw a dog walking away looking content. Devyani was gone forever. As the brother who remembered her all his life as the one who kept asking for food even after she was dead, his affinity for the community that produced food only got stronger. But the time was not yet ripe for him to join the community, as for his parents his studies had taken precedence over everything else. They had now set the stage for his higher education.

❄

My curiosity to learn more about my grandfather’s student life in Mysore takes us on a visit to the historical city. Travelling through

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the inner regions of the state by road and railway exposes me further to the different crops and land patterns of the state. The geographical area of the state is 190.50 lakh hectares, of which 30.6 hectares make up the legal forest cover. The state has a net sown area of about 107 lakh hectares and gross cropped area of about 120 lakh hectares. Apart from these, about 17.57 lakh hectares remain uncultivated. The irrigated lands constitute about 24 per cent of the cultivated area, the rest being rain-fed. In Mysore, I feel nostalgic with memories of my maternal grandparents’ home where my mother and her siblings grew up and obtained their education up to graduation. My father also studied at Mysore University while staying at his maternal grandparents’ home. Among other things in Mysore, I marvel at the opulence and majestic architecture of its iconic monuments like the Mysore Palace, St Philomena's Cathedral and the glittering Kannambadi waterworks at night. Everything reminds us of the major development works that took place at the peak of the princely state’s Renaissance period under the British regime. Even now Mysore is known for its high education standards, tertiary institutes and learning centres. After the IT boom, Mysore also became a major hub for higher-level IT training. ❄ It was the most glorious era of Mysore’s history, a period of high renaissance when art and culture were at their pinnacle. Many worldrenowned personalities were born at this time in Mysore. With the concerted efforts of some of the great minds of the princely state, voices of ordinary citizens from the rural areas were included in the state assembly. As education and employment opportunities increased, people started moving out of villages and towns to work at the new construction sites of railways, dams and factories, or as clerks in courts and other government offices.

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Gubbi was not left untouched; the opportunity for a better life was an exciting prospect and Bhaviah’s parents couldn’t wait to send him to Mysore. Burdened now as they were with the responsibility of marrying off their eldest daughter Ahalya, funding their son’s college education had become increasingly difficult but they were determined to push him. They took help from Patela and this time along with Bhaviah, they also sent his grandmother Narasamma and two of his cousins to Mysore. For the young village boys, it was obviously like coming to a dream city. Mysore glowed with the resplendence of silk, sandalwood and ivory, and reverberated the melody of Carnatic music. Proud of the regality of their beloved maharaja, people walked miles to congregate in the palace grounds during the Dussehra festival to witness him head the procession on the heavily bedecked back of an elephant. Along with its multifarious enticements, the city also exposed my grandfather to hunger. Life under his grandmother’s care was hard—she was just able to make ends meet by cooking in people’s houses and preparing snacks or spicy powders for weddings or other functions. Money being scarce, he had to curb even his small desires, like eating his favourite snack bonda (fried vegetable with batter) sold by street vendors. He satisfied himself simply by inhaling its flavour. This perhaps was the beginning, rather inadvertently, of the feeling of neglect and discrimination against the village folk in society. The difference in village and city economics was glaring and the laissez-faire approach of policymakers appalling. The seed of angst that was sown during his previous stays in towns got firmly rooted now. The young man had the fervour and zest, and to discuss his views he had a bosom friend, Ramiah. Ramiah belonged to an affluent family that had large landholdings in Srirangapatna. His family was traditionally practicing Ayurvedic medicine and used to be its leading supplier in the region. Ramiah’s affluence never came in the way of their friendship as the two discussed the situation in the country and in the princely state of

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Mysore. They were all praises for the developmental works in the state like the railway lines, steel factories and power-generating plants, and the bold steps taken to represent different rural bodies. However, my grandfather must have explained to his friend that it was not enough to have a representation; steps should be taken to improve the economic conditions of the villages. His sentiments were also echoed by the people at the grass-roots level, in general, who were increasingly disenchanted with the insatiable greed of the British for imperial gains which had displaced them from traditional industries. A proposal to improve the irrigation tank system had been superseded by an instruction to lay railway lines. The famous Irvin dam project in Mandya that brought prosperity to the state had bitterly angered the peasants for it imposed a heavy betterment levy on them. In the wake of all this turmoil, getting involved with and supporting the emerging new political party, the Congress Party, was an appealing option and appeared as the only hope for improving the peasants’ conditions. Very soon, however, Bhaviah's life was to change for the better. According to the customary traditions of that time, the twenty-year old was asked to tie the knot with a twelve-year-old Mahalakshmi whose father worked as a clerk in the same college where he was pursuing his intermediate studies.

❄ Unlike Bhaviah’s parents, Akka’s father Anniah and mother Ammiah were city people and considered well-educated and progressive for their time. Anniah studied under the British education system and had an excellent command over English. He and his wife desired to give their progeny the best in education and fine arts. After their only son Acchanna, my grandmother was the eldest among four daughters, lovingly addressed by her sisters as Akka (elder sister). She was one of the fairest young women of her time with brown eyes and jet-black hair falling down to her knees.

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Besides being of the same sub-sect, my grandfather’s intelligence and straightforwardness along with his simple countryside traits must have greatly impressed Anniah to consider him a suitable boy for his daughter. But Ammiah, I was told, was highly sceptical of this match. The mother’s heart couldn’t easily agree to send her city-bred daughter to an agriculturist family in a village. To allay her fears, Anniah travelled to Gubbi, making the journey partly by train to Holenarsipur and the rest by a bullock cart. What he saw left him surer about the match. On his return, he told his eager wife and children, “They live so close to nature. They are like God’s own people. We should feel fortunate if their horoscopes match and we can give our daughter’s hand to that family.” The mother, still doubtful, now prodded her son Acchanna to visit the village at least once before they made a decision. A couple of days later, the fifteen-year old too returned feeling highly excited, like his father, about his sister’s alliance. Thus relieved, the elders went ahead with their plans and an auspicious date for the marriage was fixed irrespective of the fact that neither the girl nor the boy had seen each other; even their mothers hadn't met. But an unfortunate event in the family brought the marriage preparations to a grinding halt. Narsihebbariah’s grandmother, the ninety-year-old Subbamma, suddenly fell ill and passed away. Everyone in the family including the groom’s parents cited the death as a bad omen, saying that the stars of the girl did not augur well for the family and reckoned calling off the marriage. But Bhaviah considered it an absurdity to link natural events like death with the stars of the girl and stayed firm on marrying her. The wedding was solemnized in 1924 according to the traditional Kannada Hindu Brahmin rites. The relatives in Gubbi arrived in Mysore bundled in bullock carts. They were escorted to a sumptuous treat of uppittu and sajjage (salty and sweet preparations of suji [broken wheat]) with drinks of steaming coffee.

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Akka’s mother had a funny tale to tell her grandchildren in later years about her daughter’s behaviour during the gowripuje (veneration of gowri deity) on the day of her wedding. Like any other young bride, she wished to see her groom at least once before the marriage and in the midst of worshipping the deity, she cast many a sly glance to get a glimpse of her soon-to-be husband. At last her wish was fulfilled and she saw a dark boy sporting a bald head with a long braid at the back. An hour later he had tied the mangalsutra (sacred thread) around her neck amid loud beats of the mridanga, melodious tunes of the nadaswara and showers of rice grains from the guests. The eldest sister Akka was now married and brought a bhaviah (brother-in-law) for her sisters. From then on, my grandfather came to be called Bhaviah by each and every one in the family.

❄ I am all for tractors and big machinery, and I am convinced that the rapid industrialization of India is essential to relieve the pressure on land, to combat poverty and raise standards of living, for defence and variety of purposes. But I am equally convinced that the most careful planning and adjustment are necessary if we are to reap full benefit of industrialization and avoid many of its dangers. —Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru

In 1909, the Tatas founded the Indian Institute of Science, India's leading research institute, in Bangalore as a primary means to further the country's industrialization plans. The foundation of the country’s first public sector enterprise, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), was also laid in Bangalore by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1948. Even before it attained the status of being the Silicon Valley of India, Bangalore was still the place to be—to live and work in for a professional, considering the plethora of factories and public sector

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companies like the HAL, the BEL, the ITI as well as defence research and Indian space research laboratories that were established in the 1950s and 1960s. I got to know Bangalore city better only in the 1970s when my maternal grandparents shifted from Mysore to Bangalore. True to its name as India’s air-con city, Bangalore’s weather used to be very cool and pleasant with hardly any dust in the air. There were resplendent shops and marketplaces selling everything from silks to steel ware. Vegetable markets with fresh vegetables and luscious fruits and exotic fragrances of flowers and incense sticks, especially during the festival time, left a lasting impression on the visitor. Regular showers during rainy seasons would greatly enhance the smells and sights of the surroundings. Today Bangalore’s weather pattern has changed drastically and the numerous shopping malls that have sprung up have become the main attraction for people, though they still throng the traditional marketplaces during festivals. Among the multinational companies that set up their offices in Bangalore after the economic liberalization of the 1990s were also companies that dealt with the research of high-quality seeds. .

❄ His parents’ towering ambitions took Bhaviah to the state’s capital city Bangalore for the next leg of his education. Bangalore was then a fast-growing hub of education and commercial activities. Besides being one of the first cities in Asia to be electrified, it was also a venue for the Indian Congress Committee meetings where major decisions were made. Bhaviah got enrolled in the Central Science College of the newly established Bangalore University and rented a small room. Wading through the BSc degree course wasn’t any less demanding than the previous years of studies. Although exams were not easy sailing, he made it through with high grades. It must have been hard for him to

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live away from his land and village, but he had to fulfill his parents’ dream. Obtaining his degree and securing a job meant rescuing his parents from debt, supplementing their farming income, providing for their second son Narayana’s education and raising their other children. Although they were in different places, my grandfather and Ramiah never lost touch. They constantly wrote letters—their friendship would last through thick and thin. Bhaviah would also correspond with his wife and parents-in-law in Mysore. For three years after their marriage, the bride stayed on at her parents’ house, learnt basic household chores and completed her primary schooling. I heard many amusing tales of the two years Bhaviah studied in Bangalore. He was young, married and away from his wife. So once when he was told that his wife and brother-in-law were passing by Bangalore and visiting him, en-route Tumkur, he was overjoyed. After all, for the newly married Bhaviah, it was the first time since the wedding that he would be meeting his wife. The momentous occasion demanded a lot of preparation. Chikpet Street, once established by the famous founder of Bangalore, Kempe Gowda, was and still is a favourite shopping hub for its people. From the flower market of Chikpet, Bhaviah chose the best jasmine flower garland he could find to gift his wife. From the vegetable vendor, he bought two kilograms of potatoes and onions. Employing his best culinary skills, he whipped out a scrumptious dish of sambar and rice and spent the rest of the day cleaning and sprucing up the room. Morning grew to afternoon and the afternoon to evening, but the special guests didn’t arrive. A thoroughly disappointed Bhaviah then went to the railway station and kept a lookout. A train arrived from Tumkur, and there alighted his brother-in-law Acchanna. Seeing his anxious and agitated face, Acchanna enquired, “Why do you look so downcast?” In turn, a perplexed Bhaviah asked, “Are you coming from Mysore? Where is your sister?” “I left her at Tumkur, and I am returning from there,” his brotherin-law replied to the woebegone Bhaviah. He went back to his room, his food stale and the flowers wilted—just the kind of affair for his

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poetic brother Narayana to compose romantic poems and sing about during wedding ceremonies in later years. The feisty Acchanna enrolled in the Engineering College, Bangalore, and came to stay with Bhaviah in his final year at college. While alone in Bangalore, Bhaviah once contracted a rare kind of fever. Despite the sickness, he somehow managed to return to his village home. Chelvamma, the herbal-medicine expert, tried out all possible concoctions for her son. In her desperation, she prayed to Lord Shiva and made an ardent vow that she would visit the Manjunatheshwara temple to take the Lord’s blessings for her son. The temple being nearly 200 km away from the village, she visited the Lord only in her dream, and the next morning, with her confidence restored, she continued her ministrations. When his in-laws heard of his illness, they prayed for his speedy recovery, but in their heart of hearts, they wished that if the worst had to happen, their daughter died instead of their son-in-law. They dreaded the idea of their young daughter being stigmatized as a child widow. Clad in a scanty red sari and the head shaven, child widows led a miserable life eating only one meal a day. Such was the social custom of those times that would shun widows for the rest of their lives! Thankfully, with the Lord’s blessings and his mother’s constant care, Bhaviah regained his health. He returned to his studies and successfully finished his degree course.

❄

When I place myself in your position, Grandfather, indeed I can understand your dilemma. You and all your peers were at the crossroads of the pre- and post-industrialization era. Maybe that is why there was so much turmoil when you listened to your calling after completing your studies. I admire your tenacity—how despite the disadvantages of farming, and much against the desire of your parents, you stuck to your conviction and continued your family tradition.

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I love my native village with some of my love for my country; I love my country with part of my love for earth, all of which is my country; and I love the earth with all of myself because it is the haven of humanity, the manifest spirit of god. —Kahlil Gibran

❄ A new chapter began in Bhaviah’s life when his intense passion for cultivation, repressed so far, came to the fore. After completing his degree in 1927, he returned to his village Gubbi for a brief period. It was a joyous occasion for his parents Narsihebbariah and Chelvamma who, along with the whole village, welcomed their city-returned graduate son. Their Magu being the village’s first graduate, the jubilation and sense of pride they felt was palpable. His father's coffee gurgles grew louder and mother’s hyperbolic banters in the neighbourhood merrier. At last, after a long struggle, their ambition for their son had come true. Step by step, their dreams were turning into reality. The day wasn’t far when he would take up a good job opportunity in the town, they thought. It was time for their daughter-in-law, who was now fifteen, to join the family. When the bullock cart stopped in front of the ancestral house, and Akka alighted along with Anniah and her sister, Narsihebbariah, who was deeply engrossed in a game of dice with his friend and seriously contemplating the next move, looked up and exclaimed, ‘‘Mahalakshmi has come! Our daughter-in-law has come! Everyone come out. Son, Mother, see who has come?’’ As all the family members came out to receive the new member, Chelvamma welcomed her daughter-in-law in a traditional manner. Akka was asked to upturn a brass pot filled with rice grains rubbed with ghee and turmeric powder, placed at the entrance of the house. She was then given an aarti with a symbolic fire and a pair of betel leaves and nuts on a plate.

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The family now had their graduate son with his bride back home—it was a time to relish and cherish. During the following weeks, the young couple was flooded with invitations for lunch by their neighbours, who while serving them with a generous scoop of butter, praised the bride’s youthful beauty and secretly felt envious of her parents-in-law. Ironically though, Akka’s sister who had accompanied her would often recall how she had cried throughout the journey. She was worried about her Akka’s future life in the village which would be spent doing hard village chores. Her crying later proved prescient. When the euphoria of their son returning to them after graduation slowly wore off, the reality that he was bound to his native land and couldn’t wait to join his father in farming sunk in. Although Bhaviah’s keen interest in science and mathematics was satiated to some extent with his BSc degree, his deep-rooted passion for his family’s traditional vocation of farming left him with an irrevocable desire to pursue further knowledge in this field. After much discussion with his parents and relatives, he felt that continuing his education in agricultural science was the best way forward. He went back to Bangalore to enrol himself for a degree in agricultural science in the newly set up College of Agricultural Science in Hebbal. He was fortunate to study under the guidance of Professor Metcalfe, an Englishman who could discern his student’s love for his land and his family’s traditional occupation. After a few months of studies, the professor encouraged him to quit the course and instead proceed to his native place to pursue his passion. His words were the turning point in my grandfather’s life, “Young man, you say you have a vast agricultural land in your native village. You are very hard working and passionate about cultivation. I am sure that with your hard work and determination you’ll be very successful.” “Thank you, sir, I'll do as you advise,” Bhaviah replied, almost with a jump of joy. The professor had heard the true calling of his heart! It was time he threw himself into the service of his revered mother earth. How could he delay any longer?

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The professor further blessed him by giving him money to buy a pair of strong bullocks. Bhaviah used the money to buy two bullocks and a plough in Holenarsipur before returning to his village. The year was 1928. The village’s first graduate with the gifted bullocks was back on the road to his native village, to walk the same path that his ancestors had trodden. Bhaviah returned to Gubbi where his heart lay—in his land, in the fields of paddy and sugar cane, coconut and mango groves. They were his only dream and his life. But while making his decision to return to the village, he never imagined what a disappointment he would be to his ambitious parents. His return to the village half way through the course utterly dismayed and shocked them. It was a big blow to their dreams—of a world away from their dismal village that they had hoped their educated, trailblazer of a son would show them. And so, for the parents who had put a substantial part of their earning into the education of their son, his return to the village was no reason for celebration. Bhaviah had also shocked my grandmother and dashed her hopes. She had stayed back in the village and lent him all possible support in the hope that he would gain a higher degree and finally move to the town. She had got accustomed to life with her in-laws in the very small village house and within no time had become an adorable attigemma (sister-in-law) to her young sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law. Feeding the buffaloes and cows, milking and polishing the entire floor with cow dung—all chores unknown to her before had slowly become part of her everyday routine. Lighting up the kitchen’s rustic stove with soft-wood fuel was an everyday ordeal; her parents’ city home had the luxury of a kerosene or charcoal stove. She also became a great help to her father-in-law in his farming work of threshing and winnowing paddy and other crops. For Chelvamma, her daughter-in-law’s joining the household was a welcome relief from the daily chores, and gave her enough time and

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space to pursue her artistic interests outside the home. On her fatherin-law’s death anniversary she entrusted Akka with the responsibility of cooking lunch for the entire village. Of all the dishes Akka cooked that day, she would reminisce with great pride about the lady-finger curry prepared with buttermilk that had impressed everyone. As Akka went about blissfully doing her duties, garnering the compassion and affection of her father-in-law and the comradeship of her sisters-in-law Ahalya and Shakuntala, little did she expect that her husband would return to farming and that she would have to do the same chores for the rest of her life.

❄ It was a paradox that whereas Narsihebbariah, a “son of the soil”, was lured by industrialization and wanted his educated son to break off from the family tradition and embrace city life, the son dreamt of making use of his scientific temper and education to cultivate land and grow crops. Like a true “man of the soil”, he envisioned his land producing gold with his hard work. To see his land yielding rich paddy was his dream. A dense coconut and mango grove with tall trees heavily laden with fruits and creepers was what he wanted to see in his ancestral land. Continuing his family’s traditional occupation was a challenge for him, and he wanted to face it with full confidence and hard work. My great aunt Savitri remembers the distinctly different mindsets of father and son that would often be reflected in the type of work they liked to do. Unlike his father who relied more on labourers, Bhaviah always wanted to dig his own hands into everything. With his dreams shattered, for a few months the father maintained an icy-cold relationship with his son. His sadness would often be exacerbated by the neighbours’ disgruntled remarks that the supposedly intelligent Magu, the village’s first graduate, had come back only to bask idly (bandu kootbutta). The son in turn would try to

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assuage the father’s anger by saying that he had only returned because he really loved vyavasaya (agriculture in Kannada), but to no avail. Nothing would deter my grandfather from his mission. He wanted to immediately start working and make his dream a reality.

❄

I am now inside the thota (garden) which has changed hands several times since its firm foundation was laid by my grandfather nearly eighty years ago. The moats are filled with water up to the brim. Here and there, birds’ nests hang from the branches of the trees. A dense forest-like garden such as this would have really needed the diligence that my grandfather possessed. As I inhale the fresh air and soak in its ambience, I can perceive his ambition to grow highly sustainable yields of cash crops. The sprouting garden against the backdrop of the state’s high renaissance, I imagine, would have certainly elicited looks of awe and wonder from the village folk. My aunt Parvati recalls the profound affinity and dedication Bhaviah had for his trees and plants which would sometimes supersede that for even his mother. Once his mother was taken ill and she almost seemed at death’s door. Bhaviah, who was tending the plants in the garden, delayed coming to see her. His plants and trees needed his care, especially in the event of his mother's death, since then they would be denied water for several days. ❄ Narsihebbariah had a big piece of salubrious land next to the village tank that was untilled and untested. The possibility of expanding the vacant land, about 2 acres in size, into a bigger thota for cash crops was something that had set in Bhaviah’s heart long back. Narsihebbariah hadn’t ventured into developing this land for the simple reason that it required labour, seeds and irrigation—a big investment with potentially high risk. He was not prepared for the risk as the debts

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from other family responsibilities were already insurmountable. The surge in the demand for cash crops around the country under the imperial rule must have spurred Bhaviah to take it on. In due course, this new enterprise by the son pleased the father and his anger towards his Magu subsided. Among the many tasks that the development of this land entailed, the most important were to till the land and make it fertile, to devise tools and ways to provide water for irrigation and to provide the right manure and seeds in order to get high-yielding crops with long sustainability. It made sense to grow the most popular commercial crops like betel nut, betel leaves, mangoes, coconuts and jackfruits which were viable and brought good returns. Bhaviah needed ingenuity to manage this project without having to invest too heavily on labour. Different crops needed to be planted with careful planning of space and gaps so that the seedlings grew with enough sunlight, soil fertility and irrigation. Bhaviah plunged into developing his most ambitious project, the thota, eventually hiring labour whenever needed. Using implements like spades, jumpers, steel pans, pickaxes and ploughs driven by bullocks, the soil was tilled till it was loose enough to take the seedlings. Moats— small wells that are usually dug to provide a perennial source of water for garden plantations—were dug at various places around the garden. They were about 10 feet deep and 8–10 feet wide and dug in such a way that a person could go down the sloppy path on one side right up to the water level to comfortably fetch water. The water would be carried in pots tied to the two ends of a 6–7-ft-long bamboo stick balanced on the shoulders. About 3 to 4 moats were dug at suitable locations to ensure that all the trees and plants could be watered by the moat nearest to them. At the end of the task that took nearly four years, the entire field was cordoned off with a fence of bamboo thickets and shrubs. Wooden logs secured with thorns were fixed like pillars at about 8–10ft distances and a gate was built to keep trespassers and stray cattle at bay. During those four years of intensive labour the seedlings sprouted,

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were relocated and transplanted. Workers walked along the sloppy path to fetch water from the moats to water the saplings. Temporary huts built around the garden sheltered the tired workers after a day’s hard labour. A potentially high-returns project was thus completed with optimum investment. Becoming the owners of a pricey thota that held the promise of raising their status in the long term and making them richer, a notch up in their clan, was indeed a matter of pride for the parents. However, the garden couldn't give its first produce immediately. To reap the benefits or see the first yield of crops, they had to wait for another four years. But it was a long wait for the couple who were now parents of their firstborn, Lakshmi. Money was an immediate need.

❄

Spring-chill

The saplings had grown into plants, awaiting the oncoming seasons; some conducive and pleasant, some adverse and chilly.

W

e talk as we walk in the fields. My father, while recalling various unfortunate incidents in his father’s life that were in a way responsible for destining his life as a farmer, also remembers his uncle Narayana who was distinctly different from his brother. Once as a young boy, when my father wanted to take a bite off a juicy sugar cane in the field, his uncle, always mindful of its market value, refused to let him do so. Years later, he advised his nephew to demand some cash from his in-laws as dowry, and while looking for matches for his own sons, he made sure that the girls not only came from well-to-do families but also brought a certain amount of cash. The youngest brother Shiva, on the other hand, was an impetuous man, never serious about any issue. The sisters Ahalya, Savitri and Shakuntala also had very different characters. Later in the darkness of the ancestral house, I try to picture the family’s circumstances, as I was told, along with their differing personalities which would often lead to anger and frustration. ❄

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The garden had now been cultivated and was waiting to bear fruits. Thanks to Bhaviah’s hard work and meticulous planning, water, nutrients and sunshine were in adequate supply. But were the same in adequate stock for his household that comprised his parents and siblings? His family had grown bigger with his younger brothers and sisters and now there were more people using the basic resources such as water, food and space, thus restraining their availability. Like each variety of garden sapling had a different need, his siblings were growing up, each with their own distinctive character and nature. With an additional member, his immediate family also expanded. As his brothers, twelve and nineteen years younger to him, reached adolescence, Bhaviah expected them to join him and their father in farming, but they turned out to be of very different temperaments and propensities. If he wanted to walk on the same path as his ancestors, Narayana wanted to carve out a different course for himself. Bhaviah was sanguine and nonchalant; Narayana, emotional and caring. Unlike Bhaviah who was idealistic and puritanical, Narayana was pragmatic and calculative—at times, he wouldn’t hesitate to lie to get his way. His talent lay not in agriculture; his heart had a different calling. My grandfather had harnessed his talent and interest to cultivate the garden but it was the commercial aspect of the harvested crops that attracted Narayana to farming. To me, the differences between the two brothers seemed as profound as the shift in ideals from the Vedic to the post-Vedic age when commerce and trade started to flourish and became the backbone of the Indian economy. Unlike his brothers, Shiva was a man of fewer convictions and had no strong passion or devotion to any particular vocation or field of study. It was a turbulent period for India and the world; subsequent to World War I, the Great Depression of 1929 had shaken the global economy. It is indeed intriguing that the travails of the nation and

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the world at large, like war and the freedom struggle, could have such direct bearing on a family in a remote village in South India. The struggle for the basic needs of life due to the continually reducing income from their land, coupled with their ignorance, led to this part of my grandfather’s and his family’s story also turning out to be that of cheat and deceit—one that bore heavily on their and their sisters’ lives.

❄ Narayana wanted to pursue higher studies. But he wasn’t as fortunate as his elder brother in getting his parents’ encouragement. At thirteen, he had finished his lower secondary and was bent on continuing his education in humanities but was denied the same because of the family’s increasing financial constraints. Moreover, the parents’ enthusiasm for providing the younger sons with a high level of education had waned. They were disillusioned after their eldest son returned to the village to continue the old profession of farming—to them, education seemed a high investment with low returns. Not having a drinking-water well in their own backyard, there was already a shortage of water, for which they were heavily dependent on their good friend Patela’s well. With the children coming of age, food too had begun to get scarce. The adverse circumstances would inevitably result in the parents making deprecating remarks targeting the eldest son. Their bone of contention was that after spending so much on his education, their graduate son did not try to get a fixedincome job and help in supporting the family. One day, this simmering anger burst out. Narsihebbariah had laboured hard to weave a sturdy jute rope to draw drinking water from the well. The effort had left him with sore hands. After returning home from the fields, Bhaviah saw the rope and without a second thought, neatly cut it into four smaller lengths, which, according to him, were urgently needed to tie the cattle. The next day, not finding

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the rope his father asked him about the same. Bhaviah coolly replied, “Father, I have cut the rope into smaller pieces and kept them in the cattle shed. They are useful to tie the buffaloes firmly, aren’t they?” His father fretted and fumed and struck him with heavy blows with his hand. Bhaviah calmly took the blows and told his father, “Beat me with a stick, Father. Your hands are already sore.” His words calmed Narsihebbariah’s anger a bit; nevertheless, his emotions continued to be on the boil. Bhaviah’s meal of rice was replaced with cooked ragi balls—served only when there was a poor yield of paddy crops or, as was the case now, to show anger. Though my grandmother was deeply hurt by this ill-treatment, Bhaviah was completely oblivious to it. Poor Grandpa! For him this wasn't a punishment. He thought that his mother was serving him his favourite steamed ragi out of love! To show his anger to Bhaviah for taking up farming in the village, his father-in-law too stopped talking to him. After nearly five years of his graduation, the increased tension at home made my grandfather feel the need for a permanent job; he was beginning to realize the importance of a fixed income for a family with small children. His parents had many mouths to feed, and it did not seem fair to him to continue living with his parents when he had no tangible income of his own. The constant bickering from his inlaws and parents also clouded Bhaviah’s thinking and attitude. Unfortunately, by the time his garden started yielding cash crops, the ripple effects of the Great Depression had brought about a major crisis in the entire export-oriented colonial economy. Indian farmers all over the nation bore the brunt of the crisis due to a sharp fall in the prices of agricultural commodities. The cotton growers in the northern regions of the country took the biggest hit. In JodiGubbi, the family’s income had dwindled due to Narsihebbariah’s ineptitude at selling his occasional surplus crops like paddy or even seasonal varieties like ragi, coriander or tamarind, unlike a few of his canny Vokkaliga counterparts from the grant villages, for whom cultivating and selling the produce in the

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weekly market was like family business involving even their women and children. With the sons growing up to be young boys, there were unavoidable essential expenditures like the Upanayana ceremonies. Increasingly, ragi was used as the staple and rice, sugar, oil, and so on were rationed. When dire financial constraints made buying even a single set of decent clothing for the growing children impossible, Narsihebbariah resorted to selling parts of his wetland to other cultivators. It was now imperative for my grandfather to find a job with a steady income sooner than later. In the fast-developing Mysore, ironically, it was not easy to find a job for every graduate. Jobs were few and for the rural educated, chances were dimmer compared to their urban counterparts. Jobs were easily available to the few with professional degrees and those who had, by hook or crook, some access to government offices. Yet for some daring people, despite their lower qualifications, job opportunities had opened up overseas in Burma, Malaya and Africa. Sadly, my grandfather had no contacts or resources that could have made it easy to find a job; finding a job without any connections was like searching for a hidden treasure with no inkling about its whereabouts. He wrote applications for a teacher’s job in government high schools. After many attempts, he received an appointment letter to teach in the nearby town of Holenarsipur. It was only a temporary posting; nevertheless, considering the dire financial straits at home, the job couldn’t be refused. In early 1932, Bhaviah and his family moved to Holenarsipur with bag and baggage, hoping for a better future. For Bhaviah’s parents too, it was a relief to see their graduate son leave the village, even if temporarily, to work in the town. In December 1932, the couple was blessed with their first son Ramachandra. To leave his village and the newly blooming garden and work in the town was much against Bhaviah’s inner desire. Much harder it was to leave home when there was an immediate need to dig a drinking-

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water well—his sister Shakuntala had to carry heavy pots of water filled from Patela’s well. As the eldest son and in the larger interests of his parents and siblings, he had to take the step. Nonetheless, in his absence, he was confident that his father and brother Narayana would be able to take care of the garden.

❄

The dense garden that my grandfather created is priced today at a minimum of `15 lakh. As the farmers happily pose for a photograph with us in the middle of the plantations, I snatch a chance to talk to the youngest and smartest of the lot. He muses that things have changed a lot since my grandpa’s time. Thanks to the latest seed and manure technology that has resulted in the generous yield of their crops, they have enough money in their banks. Out of curiosity I ask what amount of profit they made. He happily answers, “About a lakh or one-and-a-half lakhs.” When I ask him what they generally liked to invest in and whether they wouldn't want to upgrade their homes now that they have the money, he replies that the profit they make is used for farming works or education—they are quite content in their tiny mud houses. Moreover, under the Indira Awas Yojana Scheme, the government has built at least 400 houses for peasants and labourers—they expect to benefit from this scheme. In Gubbi today the annual returns from a one-acre garden of areca nut plantation during a good season is about `80,000 to `1,000,000. Of course, during recession, farmers undergo irreparable losses, like in the crisis of 2007–08. There is a grameen bank in the village which gives loans to farmers. Recently, the central government sanctioned loans worth as much as `60–70 crore to the farmers from the surrounding villages.

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A very nominal land tax is levied on the farmers; sometimes there is no tax. In fact, the tax charged is based on the availability of water in the land. Usually, a yearly tax of `600–650 is charged for one acre of land. Every household in the village owns a special breed of cow— the Sindhi cow that is capable of giving 14 litres of milk per day. The milk sold through the cooperatives at the rate of `22 per litre is significantly improving the livelihood of villagers and contributing to the village economy, though about 60 per cent of it is spent on fodder and other maintenance expenditures of the cows. There are about 200 cows in the village and very few buffaloes. The village gentleman proudly states that these days the income from cow rearing is high enough for the farmers to be able to afford sending their children to the convent school in a nearby village. Of the agricultural workers in the state who constitute about 60 per cent of the total workers, a fraction are involved in allied agriculture industries like livestock rearing. Animal husbandry in Karnataka is an important livelihood for landless labourers and marginal farmers. It also provides them with the essential nutritional security. Karnataka ranks among the top milk producers in the country and a large part of the milk produced is exported. ❄ In my grandfather’s absence from Gubbi, things took an altogether different turn. With no passion for agriculture, Narayana could not do the required physical labour. Nevertheless, he did not hesitate to help his father with the less strenuous tasks of cattle rearing. Every day, very sincerely and devotedly, he would take the cows and buffaloes out, bathe them and feed them and cleanse the cattle shed. His parents had refused to provide him with higher education, but deep in his heart, he longed to pursue his studies and make a

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living far away from the village—to break free from the shackles of indigence. In his free time, he was keen on learning and participating in the community devotional singing. He composed poems—a trait he had inherited from his mother. The cultural renaissance had perhaps made a deep impact on him and secretly, he nurtured a desire to learn Carnatic music from the learned musicians of the time. The turning point came during the Ramanavmi festival celebrations in the village, when after bathing the cattle, Narayana forgot to tie them in the cattle shed and instead left them in the backyard. He then draped himself in his father’s silk dhoti and joined a gathering of religious singers. Just then, it started raining heavily. Completely oblivious to the animals’ suffering, Narayana went on singing. When Narsihebbariah returned home, he found the cattle shivering helplessly in the torrential rains. At once, he helped them to the shed, fed them and waited for his son. When Narayana returned home, he had to take the brunt of his father’s wrath. Blaming his son for leaving the animals carelessly out in the open, the enraged Narsihebbariah took a branch of the pulse plant and showered his son with blows. Bleeding profusely, Narayana left his home and the village without a word in retaliation. While leaving, he remembered to carry a silver bowl, an Upanayana gift presented to his brother Shiva by his eldest sister Ahalya who was now settled and raising her family in Bangalore. Narayana walked to his annayya's home in Holenarsipur and met his attigemma. Akka took pity on her brother-in-law. She helped him sell the silver bowl to get some money. She also stretched her tight resources to help Narayana with some extra cash and advised him to tread the next path of his journey carefully. Narayana proved to be like Bhaviah in his determination and single-minded zeal towards achieving his goals. His heart, which was already set on music, carried him to the great gurus in Tanjore, Tamil Nadu. He took a train from Holenarsipur and alighted at the Tanjore station. Not knowing the language, he lay under a tree humming a tune. A man who was passing by in a cart heard him and offered

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to take him to the guru's place. Using hand gestures, he lied to the guru and his wife that he was an orphan and that his keen passion for music had brought him to Tanjore. The old childless couple believed the young Brahmin boy’s tale and kept him as a helper. Over time, their affection for him turned into parental love. They removed his rustic pony tail and gave him a neat haircut and new clothes to wear. While the sixteen-year old Narayana took music lessons with his new-found parents in Tanjore, his disappearance caused much distress and agony to his own parents and siblings in Gubbi. All efforts to find him had proved futile—his father vowed never to get angry and violent with him again. His young sisters missed him badly. For several days, the eight-year-old Shiva went around each tree in the fields and gardens, frantically looking for his elder brother under the canopies; not finding him, he wept and wailed. Living in the town, teaching and saving money to provide for them all, their eldest son Bhaviah felt sad for not being there with his family in such distressing times. It all turned out well, as one-and-a-half years later, Narayana started feeling terribly homesick and badly missed his parents and siblings. He requested a friend in Hassan to send a letter to the Tamil couple informing them about a tragedy (false, of course!) in his village which urgently needed Narayana's presence. Thus convinced, the Tamil couple made Narayana promise to return to Tanjore as soon as possible and gave him money. Narayana used the money to buy new clothes for his family and took the train back home. Filled with mixed emotions, when Narayana returned home and stood at the door, his sisters Savitri and Shakuntala did not recognize him. As they took a closer look at him, it dawned on the girls that the young man with the neat dress and cropped hair was none other than their lost brother Narayana. They ran and embraced him with tears streaming down their cheeks. Hearing the commotion Narsihebbariah and his wife also rushed home. There was jubilation in the family and the entire village. The lost son was thus reunited with his family.

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Things returned to normal and the garden gave its first yield. Without his sons by his side for nearly two years, Narsihebbariah increasingly depended on labour. The Great Depression had continued to affect the Indian economy and prices of agricultural commodities could never return to normal. The returns from the garden’s yield, therefore, couldn’t match the investment as the prices had fallen to their lowest. It was just enough to pay back the earlier debt and it didn’t bring any substantial change in their economic condition. This was despite the fact that Bhaviah regularly channelled most of his income to them. Narayana went back to farming—to make deals on the crops and take care of cattle—but since he always wanted to do something better, he tried other occupations. He took up sewing and opened a small grocery shop in their courtyard for additional income. And in all his ventures Shiva was by his side.

❄

Though it is claimed that the current Indian financial policies insulate India from global financial crises, the financial meltdown of 2007–08, which was said to be the worst recession after the Great Depression of the 1930s, had an impact on the Indian IT sector and the prices of commodities like oil and crops had plummeted. Whereas huge inflows of speculative finance into the commodity futures markets led to a sharp increase in commodity prices the previous year, after the meltdown the international prices of cash crops like cotton, rubber, tea, coffee, coconut, copra and groundnut fell sharply by a minimum of 21 per cent to a maximum of 43.4 per cent. Indeed, eighty-five years ago, the Great Depression must have similarly hit the farmers; in fact, they were so badly affected that they began to look up to the newly formed Congress Party, that propagated Russian socialist policies as their saviour. My

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father distinctly remembers that Bhaviah not only talked very optimistically about the Congress leaders but had started to correspond with them, hoping that they would bring about the promised changes as soon as India got independence. Although no one in my family remembers whether he took active part in the early peasant movements or not, going by his traits, I safely assume that he had been part of the activities and a voice of the farmers. Today the changes that have happened in the village are largely attributed to the policies of the Janata Party government in the state. Farmers talk highly of Revanna Gowda and Ramakrishna Hegde’s government, particularly the minister Nazeer Sab, for increasing the number of bore wells and facilitating the use of fertilizers, which has helped increase the crop yield manifold. Apart from investing in agricultural infrastructure, the Indian government supports agriculture through measures such as fixing the minimum support prices (MSP) for the major agricultural crops and providing farm input subsidies and preferential credit schemes. Under the price support policy, MSPs are set annually for basic staples to protect producers from sharp price falls, to stabilize prices and to ensure adequate food stocks for public distribution. However, according to a study in 2007 by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in the past the guaranteed prices have been set below the prevailing market prices. Though trade liberalization opened up markets for goods from developing countries, global trade and financial regimes give the advanced industrial countries a marked advantage over developing countries. After India assumed the status of being the world's leading producer of several agricultural products through its liberalized trade policies, post-reforms it has made a modest presence in the world market. India has been a net exporter of commodities. ❄

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Bhaviah worked intermittently in government schools in and around Holenarsipur town, always hoping to secure a permanent position. To supplement his income, he gave private tuitions to children mainly of the Setties—a community of merchants and shopkeepers selling commodities in the town. This earned him the title of “meshtru” (teacher) by which he was known for the rest of his life. Finally, he got selected for a permanent job. However, little did he realize that his adversities were far from over. The appointment letter was sent to the village home but, strangely, it got misplaced. Apparently, it was a juvenile prank. The identity of the person responsible could never be established, but it showed how envious of him people were because he got a permanent job. He continued to work in the town, clueless about this appointment. He came to know about it a few months later, but it was too late by then. He, however, was determined to meet the officials and brief them about the incident, hoping to be heard and understood. In the early hours of a sunny day, he rode his bullock cart from Gubbi to the town and reached the office of the Department of Education in Holenarsipur to meet the official-in-charge of recruitments. With a harried look, he began, "Nodi Swami (look here, sir), I received an appointment letter from your office a few months back, but since it was sent to my village home in JodiGubbi, it didn’t come to my notice. Can something be done about it?" The official-in-charge first gave a wry look and then laughed out loud, ‘‘You came here to tell me that you received the appointment letter a few months ago? What do you think we are doing in the offices—entertaining every little whim of villagers like you? Sorry.” Bhaviah waited a few more minutes to see if the officer would change his mind. But the curt man didn’t even bother to look up and meet his eyes again. The disparaging remark of the pompous official was a defining moment when he made the decision to never seek a government job and be subservient to anybody. It was now inevitable—the only option left for him was to turn his heart and mind back to his first love—agriculture. He was confident

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that his family could depend on his industrious nature. Moreover, this misfortune seemed to reinforce his conviction that his destiny lay in what resonated with the core of his heart, his passion, his beloved profession of agriculture. By the mid 1930s, the Indian freedom movement had become more widespread, following Mahatma Gandhi’s famous Salt Satyagraha in the southern Indian states, including the princely Mysore. It was followed by the Forest Satyagraha in some parts of Karnataka. There were also several upsurges in response to the economic changes triggered by the Great Depression. An increasing number of young men in small towns like Holenarsipur had joined the Congress as workers, prominent among them being a young man popularly known as Congress Guru. The enterprising young men went overseas as far away as Malaya and Burma to find their fortune. Very few young men, like my grandfather, wanted to return to their villages to build their fortune by working on the land, in spite of the fact that life in the town was far better than in the village; accessing the basic needs of water and lighting wasn’t a daily struggle in towns. Working in Holenarsipur had brought him closer to the Congress Party and the ideologies it promulgated. The Congress was lending a sympathetic ear to the peasants’ cause. The philosophy that appealed most to him was the Karl Marx ideology for proletariats “from everyone according to his ability to each according to his needs”. The socialist model thus propagated by the Congress that favoured farmers, making them less dependent on the vagaries of nature, and that gave all the citizens equal stake in the prosperity of the state reignited Bhaviah’s passion to rediscover the wealth of his land. Bhaviah decided to return to agriculture much against the wishes of his parents-in-law and his young sisters-in-law who frequently travelled to Holenarsipur from Hassan to see their adorable nephew Ramu. Even his brother-in-law Acchanna, now married and employed as an assistant engineer at the Maharashtra Electricity Board in Bombay, tried his best to convince Bhaviah to look for another job.

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The resistance to Bhaviah’s return to farming was strongest when Ammiah and Anniah visited them during Deepavali in Holenarsipur. The parents-in-law—who had found prospective grooms for their daughters, one working with the railways in Mysore and another with a high court in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya—fervently tried to convince him to try for jobs elsewhere or even in Malaya. More than anything else, they were concerned about the education of their grandchildren who would soon be going to school. In response, a beaming Bhaviah said, “The thota in Gubbi is yielding quite well, and Father has more land in Barekoplu and Beekanhalli. Father needs my help. I’ll do that. There is no need to worry.” Nothing could sway him from his devotion to his land and Mother Earth. On Deepavali, there was also a distress call from his family in Gubbi—they were facing an unprecedented shortage of water when they needed it the most. An oil-suffused soporific head bath, the very first hallmark of the festival, had been marred when they had all smeared oil on their heads and Patela’s family had very unexpectedly denied them water from their well. Obviously, there was a limit to their generosity when their well, which had been providing water for centuries to families of the same gotra, could no longer sustain their own family. Narayana rubbed off the oil from his scalp with a piece of cloth, vowing to have a ground well dug in their precincts by the next Deepavali. A month later, Bhaviah returned to Gubbi with his wife and children with renewed interest and vigour to plunge himself into the service of Mother Earth. This time his dreams and plans were of even bigger proportions. His brothers had come of age: Narayana was twenty and Shiva, thirteen. A large and united family could turn any land into gold. It was the most wishful thought of an idealist.

❄

While sitting on the floor savouring the lunch served to us by our hosts, I quietly ask the family why they were discontinuing their

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daughter’s studies and marrying her off so young. Her mother replies in a confident tone, “The match is good and the boy well educated. Moreover, marriage will give her security. She can stay in a city like Bangalore where she can continue with her college studies.” Alas, my great-grandparents were not as fortunate with their younger daughters. Later, in front of the ancestral house, I see another house on a raised ground with broken walls and a crumbling roof. This house, now in ruins, belonged to my great-grandfather’s sister Mariakka, and in its grand old days was the centre stage of action; most of the family saga involving the marriage of Shakuntala unfolded here. Arranged marriages, when carried out without the concurrence of either the boy or girl, could sometimes ruin their lives. Both the younger sisters of my grandfather had unhappy marriages, but the way they responded was not surprising given their contrasting personalities. Though I had met Savitri a few times in the past, it was only in the 1980s that I met Shakuntala for the first time. She was already reaching her seventieth year then. A humble and diminutive figure, she had immense strength to bear all that life had forced on her mercilessly. She didn’t even complain once to her parents for marrying her off to the wrong person. On the other hand, Savitri was bold—she defied age-old customs and broke traditional boundaries. When my cousin married a Bengali in 2004, Shakuntala was shocked and scandalized. But Savitri was cool and welcomed her decision. ❄ Returning to his garden, for which he had toiled hard for four years, was certainly an indescribable joy for Bhaviah. In the years of his

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absence, Gubbi had been blessed with abundant rainfall; the saplings in the garden had grown and bloomed into trees. Mango and betel-nut trees had matured. The coconut trees, laden with tender coconuts, provided cool and refreshing drinks while their foliage provided soothing shade to visitors. Birds of all kinds had made the garden their home. Nests of various sizes and shapes hung from trees. In my father’s own words, “It was music to the ears and a feast for the eyes to see the birds enjoying and playing among themselves, moving from one tree to another in pairs; beautiful peacocks dancing with their plumage spread open and mynas, nightingales and doves sweetly singing with aplomb. Altogether, the garden had a sublime ambience.” This was a new land with crops as varied as mangoes, plantains, jackfruits, betel leaves, areca nuts and coconuts. Bhaviah’s return to the village also marked a joyous time for the family, with Shakuntala’s wedding on the cards. Having happily settled their eldest daughter Ahalya in the city of Bangalore, the parents’ soaring aspirations seemed to materialize bountifully this time when a proposal for Shakuntala came from none other than the well-known Guru—the young Congress worker from the Holenarsipur region! There was only one hitch in finalizing it: a demand for a bicycle from the groom’s side. The Indian economy was still doing badly and the demand for garden crops had dipped to the lowest. The money it fetched wasn’t enough to afford this demand. The family, however, didn’t realize that very soon their dire financial condition would give way to their exploitation—that too by their own kin. For my grandfather, it was a double whammy. Not only did he suffer huge losses from where he expected profits, but he had also returned to find his ancestral land fraught with legal problems. He had no inkling that the issue of land taxation—one that he resented and against which the peasants had campaigned in recent years with the support of the Congress—would hit him in his own backyard. At the helm of the factious peasant movement was a newcomer to the village, Sharma. Over the last few years, he had succeeded in

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goading at least half of the villagers to not comply with the princely state’s rules of tax payment. As a result, JodiGubbi lost the privilege of the produce from the land of the surrounding six villages and finally the land itself when Mysore’s maharaja ordered that the grant land be auctioned. It came as a big jolt to the family when repercussions of this dissidence went on to spawn a battle, like the great Indian battles of the epics, headed by an equally malevolent woman as in the epics— his own paternal aunt Mariakka who lived across the street. Mariakka’s husband and his brothers owned land. He also taught in the village school. Not having paid taxes on nearly twenty acres of land for a number of years, Mariakka had been cleverly manipulating the transfer and use of land between her brother Narsihebbariah and her own family. Her three sons had been encouraged to go for higher studies, with the youngest son Nanjundiah pursuing an ambitious diploma in mechanical engineering in Mysore. At a time when the increased awareness of and investment in education had already drained the villagers’ resources, the recent loss of the grant land added to their woes. Mariakka’s land had been put to auction by the government to recover unpaid dues. Heeding the cry of his sister and the advice of his mother to keep the land within the family, Narsihebbariah had consented to bid in the auction. He won the land back, though the money for the purchase was arranged by Mariakka. Mariakka, being innately cunning and mendacious, was now unhappy that her brother was the legal owner of her land. Many years ago, with a desire to become the sole owner of the family’s ancestral land, she had caused a serious misunderstanding between her husband and his brothers, leading one brother to commit suicide and another to run away to the industrial town of Bhadravati. Her plan took yet another dimension in the form of a marriage alliance between her second son Appanna and her niece Shakuntala.

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Unable to meet the demand of a bicycle by the unrelenting Congress worker and backed by his aged mother, Narsihebbariah welcomed the proposal. While Shakuntala silently accepted their decision and began nurturing a desire to marry her good-looking and educated cousin, Appanna was totally against marrying his sister-like childhood companion. He tried his best to stop the marriage, leaving home for a few days. On the day of the marriage, he even refused to sit on the stage set for the rituals. However, the marriage was solemnized when Mariakka forced the mangalsutra into her son’s hands and tied it around the girl’s neck with the help of the priest. Frustrated with the unwanted marital bond, Appanna left his home and the village. Shakuntala was then forced to return to her parental home unceremoniously. Mariakka now demanded transfer of the land titles as a precondition to take her daughterin-law back. The family refused to transfer the titles. Bhaviah, much pained by all the injustice, vehemently opposed the transfer. Nonetheless, on the insistence of Shakuntala, who felt it her duty to be with her in-laws, the land was transferred. Everyone hoped that it would give her a new lease of life. But on the contrary, matters turned worse. Shakuntala was not only ill-treated by her mother-in-law but was also denied proper food and driven to the backyard to sleep and live with the cattle. On many nights, Akka would quietly feed her without anyone’s knowledge. The ancestral land was Bhaviah’s kingdom and for his young brothers livestock were their only asset that could be pawned and bargained for. Angered at the turn of events that had sabotaged their sister’s life, they stole a cow and her calf from Mariakka’s house. Mariakka filed a case, but when the police found out that it was a family matter, they did not take any action. A little later the animals were returned at the behest of Shakuntala. In the final act of her evil plan, Mariakka accused Shakuntala of stealing a silver plate when her son Nanjundiah was visiting them

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from Mysore. The kernels of truth were at last found among the ragi grains when he rummaged through each and every object at home and the silver plate tumbled down along with the grains kept in large bins in the attic. Shakuntala had no choice but to return to her parental home to lead a sad and desolate life. While she resumed her share of household work like drawing water from the well and tending to cattle, she never stopped hoping that someday her husband would return to her. To earn a living, in her spare time she would make round eating plates using broad muttuga leaves and prepare tamarind fruit for consumption and sell them in the weekly market.

❄ Bhaviah had come back to work on his land under these unhappy family circumstances. Already devastated by Shakuntala’s defunct marriage, the family echoed the same sentiments as in the past—“a well-educated, intelligent man should not opt for a life of subsistence and hard physical labour with no tangible returns”. Although my grandfather bucked the trend of the time and chose to struggle every day for basic needs like water, it was precisely the needs of his family as much as his own passion that drove him to these tasks. He was always available to the people closest to the land—writing their petitions and voicing their grievances to the authorities in Hassan during the peasant conferences. In turn, for every task he performed, he had the support of his fellow farmers and labourers. The first and foremost task was to provide a drinking-water well for his family. Only two Brahmin families in the village had wells at the time—digging up the well needed dynamite and expertise of labour to handle the explosive. He, who always sought to do everything from scratch with minimum cost and investment, had to learn how to put together a dynamite-like product. He made a trip to Holenarsipur to buy the chemical ingredients for a dynamite and experimented with

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them in his backyard. A risky job indeed, but nothing would daunt him. He had the encouragement of the fellow Brahmins of the same gotra for whom this well was a potential source of safe drinking water. One fine day, in the presence of all people, Bhaviah struck the ground. As he hit the ground with an axe and dug deeper, a big cobra sprang up from the depths of the earth. The frightened onlookers shrieked and ran helter-skelter, but my grandfather stoically stood with his axe and pickaxe till the cobra slithered away and disappeared. When the hard ground didn’t give way, he used dynamite. The ground exploded, and at one point, he almost lost his grip and slid down the pit that had formed due to the explosion. Although afraid, Shiva, with great presence of mind, yanked him out of the pit and carried him on his shoulder. After two-three days of continuous excavation, they sighted water! With his morale up, Bhaviah now made a small circular wall around the deep pit and fixed a pulley and rope to draw water from the well. Thus the urgent problem of water shortage was resolved. While everyone remembered the previous year’s severe shortage of water during Deepavali, Bhaviah was only too happy that Shakuntala didn’t have to beg for water from Patela.

❄

Indeed, when one has to struggle every day for basic necessities like water and three meals, the educated person is expected to become the rescuer—my grandfather had become that to his family. Presently in JodiGubbi, people suffer from the lack of drinking water due to frequent power cuts. To alleviate this problem, ten bore wells that are about 350–400 ft deep have been dug at different locations. The farmers have even dug their own bore wells in their fallow land of 2–3 acres. According to the UNICEF report of 2013–14, even though its millennium development goal of reducing the number of people in the world not having access to safe drinking water and sanitation as

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a basic human right has been met, 1 billion people are still deprived of safe drinking water with about 635 million in Asia. Of these, 100 million are in India alone and a large number of them live in rural areas. Food security is another issue confronting the world. According to a 2009 FAO study, more than 1 billion people in the world are poor and suffer from hunger; 800 million are chronically malnourished with India having one of the highest levels of malnutrition. Every year, 6 million children under the age of five die due to malnutrition and related preventable diseases. Millions more go blind, become retarded or suffer from other disabilities that impair normal functioning because of lack of minerals and vitamins. According to a 2016 report, one out of three children in India under the age of five has stunted growth and 15 per cent of its population is undernourished. ❄ The next immediate thing on my grandfather’s mind was to make the family’s land more productive—at least to meet their own food needs. The loss of the grant land had marked the beginning of a new epoch for JodiGubbi Brahmins. Their entitlement on land was declining and being transferred to the cultivator class, thus adding to their problem of tax payment and also of food security. Fortunately, the nearly 60 acres of pastoral land used for grazing their cattle were left intact, so they could still fall back on livestock for their dairy needs. Things were not looking up for the world at large either. World War ΙΙ had begun and the nation’s already flagging economy was plunging further leading to food scarcity. Since in the past decades farmers had been encouraged to grow mainly cash crops, less edible crops were being cultivated in the country. The widespread impoverishment and hunger had led the Indian

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leaders to intensify their struggle to free India from the imperial rule. Bhaviah took a leap of faith to free his family from the shortage of basic staple food like rice and lentils. Narsihebbariah possessed about 12 acres of virgin arid land in the village of Beekanhalli, about 5 km from Gubbi, alongside a patch of low-lying wetland fed through a channel from the Gubbi tank. Although the arid land contributed to the family’s expenses by way of land tax, it was neglected due to its distance and thus hardly gave any returns to the family. For a man ever passionate about exploring the usefulness of land, it was an excellent opportunity to undertake the task of turning the fallow land arable, of making it good enough to grow edible crops. The shortage of food grains in the family had, as a matter of fact, ignited in him yet another strong and burning desire— of growing paddy crops in the fallow land! Only agriculturists as passionate as he Bhaviah would have continued to toil with zeal and diligence against so many adversities to accomplish his ultimate goal. What made matters worse was that this time the family did not have any money to assist him in his venture unlike a decade ago when he had created the garden. The road from Gubbi to Beekanhalli was a long stretch of beaten path back in those days. For six months, Bhaviah walked to Beekanhalli and back every day under the blistering sun with his tools and lunch. After months of arduous work, he realized that if he lived near the land, it would be easier to work, supervise and inspect. My grandmother too welcomed Bhaviah’s decision. Living in the ancestral house with nine other family members and doing chores that required hard labour, she was already on the verge of a breakdown. They moved to the village of Barekoplu, a habitation of cultivators and the farming class of Vokkaligas. It was a tough decision for the family to set up their new nest where neighbours, though friendly, belonged to another class—a far cry from living in Gubbi with the traditional puritans and vegetarian Brahmins. The land in Beekanhalli being more easily accessible from Barekoplu and the added advantage

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of having an independent life were perhaps great catalysts. But they needed to have a house before the family could move there. In six months’ time, Bhaviah built a small house for his family in Barekoplu.

❄

While my grandparents’ life story proceeds, we drive to the tiny hamlet of Barekoplu. With nearly 72 per cent of groundwater resource stage development, the region’s rich underground water has also been overexploited. Slow felling of old trees, that used to be part of the land’s ecosystem helping the biodiversity and soil and groundwater conservation, has led to a decrease in the yield of bore wells and depletion of groundwater. When our vehicle stops, I am a little dazed with the hamlet’s size which looks smaller than I had imagined. A few mud houses, facing each other along a lane, are all that constitute the village. Antennas and telephone wires prominently protrude from the walls and ceilings of all the houses. Standing in the lane, I feel as though time never moved since my grandparents lived here. We walk down the lane and stand in front of their house. It is still hard to believe that a dwelling of this size could accommodate a family. I can imagine what an enormous challenge it must have been for my grandfather to build this basic shelter with his own hands. It looks a bit odd as it is a little off the row, its face at an angle different from the rest of the houses. It is evident that my grandfather did this not only to prevent interference from neighbours but also to avoid the smell and sight of non-vegetarian food cooked in the other houses. My father vaguely recalls living in this house from where he would walk down to the school in Gubbi and subsequently moving to his maternal grandparents’ home for his education. Since there was hardly any healthcare available in the village at that time, he lost a small brother and a sister.

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As we look around, the houses seem to have a life of their own. There are smells of cooking and children play happily outside. Despite their happy faces, the children look more like street urchins from the city slums. We are greeted by their father who earnestly requests us to visit his home. He seems a happy soul, quite contented with his farming as well as the government job he holds that gives him additional cash to help meet his family’s expenses. He is also satisfied with the education facilities for his children. He tells us that there is an elementary school in the village where his children study. We bid him goodbye and turn our vehicle back. ❄ It was the beginning of a new life in Barekoplu. The family had independence but there were new-found challenges. Bhaviah was determined to see the brown parched land of Beekanhalli become a green pasture in a few years, but being the family’s eldest son, he also had to contribute to the family’s expenses and reduce the expenses incurred in employing labour. It was unfortunate that despite being so dutiful, his parents always considered him the son who had returned to the village against their wishes. Their first house proved to be a debacle. The mud house was so small that one person had to stand outside the house to make space for another. After a few months, Bhaviah built another house farther down the lane, which had a hall, a kitchen, a shed and a well. He was a man of dexterous hands who was never held hostage by his Brahmin pedigree of not undertaking physical labour, nor was he fettered by his limited financial resources. In his lifetime he went on to build at least four houses all by himself. While he toiled in the barren land, Akka tried to cope with the pressures of bringing up her three children in the shanty house. She would often be depressed thinking that the thota created painstakingly by Bhaviah did not have much use for his own children. Lakshmi was an able helpmate to her mother but not very academically inclined.

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It was her son Ramu’s future that bothered her. Akka cheerfully carried out her duties as the eldest daughter-in-law and contributed frequently in taking care of the household in Gubbi. Taking her young brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law along with her children to the chariot processions in Holenarsipur were occasions Akka savoured in her otherwise banal life in Barekoplu. Visiting Holenarsipur also gave her an opportunity to meet her old friends. Though her husband had adjusted to life near his land and the farming community, with each passing day, the neighbours’ slang and daily sights and smells of slaughtered chickens were becoming unbearable for her. In the late 1930s, Gubbi and some other neighbouring villages were badly hit by plague. Narayana was struck, and later Chelvamma while treating her sick son. They were followed by Narasamma who had arrived from Mysore to take care of the sick—she breathed her last in Bhaviah’s home in Barekoplu. Ramu was sent to his maternal grandparents’ home at Attibele near Bangalore for his education, where he was joined by Venkatramu (Acchanna’s son) after his mother’s untimely demise due to typhoid. In a year’s time, life returned to normal in Gubbi. Narayana fully recovered from his bout of plague. Within a year, he was married to a girl who had completed her lower secondary from the neighbouring village of Belavadi.

❄ After a couple of years of hard work, Bhaviah was able to make the fallow land in Beekanhalli fertile enough to grow seasonal crops of ragi, coriander, chillies and groundnuts. Growing paddy-like thirsty crops still seemed a far-fetched dream. The soil in the fallow land neither had the moistness of a thota nor did it have any water supply through channels like in a wetland. Depending only on the rains for water, the uncertainty stymied him from getting closer to his dream of growing paddy crops. The seasonal crops could meet their daily needs, but anything grown extra hardly fetched any price. Moreover, most surplus crops were sent to his parents’ home in Gubbi.

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Over time, the thota no doubt helped the family in Gubbi, but due to the fluctuating prices it could never help meet all their needs. Moreover, it was indirectly dependent on rains for its yield. The continuous growth and maintenance of the garden’s trees and creepers demanded an equal amount of hard work. Labour was needed to grow paddy or sugar cane even in the family’s wetland. Narsihebbariah had begun to age. Being unable to take care of all the land, and more out of the need for ready-cash, one by one, he was selling off pieces of the wetland. The needs were increasing every day while the resources were getting scarce. The youngest son Shivappa (Shiva) had stopped studying after finishing his lower secondary. After her failed marriage, Shakuntala had made her parents’ home her abode, and Savitri hadn’t been given any education. It is hard to believe that my great-aunt Savitri who, till the age of eighty-three, lived alone with little help from anybody and who provided the most material for this book did not have a single day of formal schooling. Her formative years being the ones when her parents’ aspirations had slowly ebbed away, Savitri was the only one in the family to have been deprived of basic education. When she reached a marriageable age, her marriage became a matter of increasing concern for her parents. As the eldest son, Bhaviah had to share this responsibility with his father and Narayana. A charming girl of fourteen who dreamt of having a whirlwind marriage with a prince, Savitri had flatly refused a proposal from a cousin from Holenarsipur who had a bulging stomach. His name was Vadekitta. Besides preparing and selling vadas in the town, he also ate them in copious amounts. Everyone including Bhaviah had approved another proposal during a banana-leaf lunch in the ancestral home. As Savitri, who was sitting in the attic, slid down and jauntily made her way to where the people sat chewing on betel leaves between their reddened teeth, to give her approval to what seemed to her like a fairy-tale wedding,

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promising sonnets and serenades and a trousseau of silks, silver and gold, Chelvamma suddenly bellowed that the bridegrooms’ relatives came from Malnad district and expected to be served with drinks of coffee during the wedding. On further deliberations from the father and brothers on the reasons for rejecting the proposal, Chelvamma asserted, “We never asked Magu to return to the village and work on dry land to have no income. Now how are we to afford such expenses?” Hearing his mother lament their poor condition, Bhaviah set his mind on increasing the returns from his land—maybe if he moved closer to the fields, he could care for his land better which could perhaps result in better crop yields. It appeared that the day when his dry land would start yielding rich crops of paddy was not too far. It was his optimism that always prevented him from turning away from agriculture. Resolving instead to remain rooted to his land, he would often, very enthusiastically, share his thoughts with his wife, “Once our land is full of paddy crops and it is difficult for us to walk around the fields, we will raise a few Alsatian dogs in a big bungalow house in the middle of the fields. They will guard our crops.”

❄

As we travel next to Beekanhalli where, I am told, my grandparents moved from Barekoplu and lived on the arid land for fourteen years, I try to imagine the life of a migrant worker in India. Every year, during the non-cropping seasons, rural workers from poor regions of Bihar and Odisha migrate to Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat to work in sugar cane plantations and sugar cane factories. They also move to Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to work in cottonseed plantations, and in paddy and wheat fields during the peak harvest season. They migrate in large numbers to the tea plantations of Assam and West Bengal during the peak plucking season adding to the 1-million-strong labour force already employed there.

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Internal labour migration has emerged as an important livelihood option for millions of people in rural India today, particularly from underdeveloped and remote areas. It is a complex phenomenon shaped by many factors such as history, culture and policy regimes, with different outcomes depending on different locations. Migrations which are mostly seasonal or circular among the lower caste or tribal population are distress induced—drought or low agricultural productivity in dry/arid land being the main reasons. The poor migrants take up low-paid jobs and live in poor conditions; they also engage their children in such odd jobs. Their children are at a major disadvantage in terms of growth, development and education. All the three sectors of the Indian economy, namely agriculture and its allied sectors such as fish processing and forestry, industry and services employ a large number of migrant workers. They find work in the construction industry, textile industry, brick kilns, mines, quarries and other small-scale industries of the informal sector, with a high percentage of children employed in cottonseed farms and the leather and silk industry. According to estimates, there are about 100 million circular migrants in India today, contributing to about 10 per cent of the country’s GDP; of these, 10 million are migrant farm workers working as cane cutters, 0.5 million are cottonseed workers and 2 million work in cashew-nut processing. The Indian construction industry employs millions of people—almost 84 per cent of them are unskilled workers. According to a trade union estimate, in 2008 the number of migrant construction workers in India was nearly 40 million—a large number of them were from the tribal regions and forests of Madhya Pradesh and the drought-prone Mahbubnagar in Andhra Pradesh. This sector, which has no official labour regulation standards, is generally regarded as an unrecognized sector which absorbs rural

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labour and unskilled workers; provides opportunities for seasonal employment, thereby supplementing the worker’s income; and permits large-scale employment of women workers though it does not provide them with any social safety net. According to a study, such a process of urbanization whereby the surplus population of workers from rural areas settles in urban centres for non-agriculture opportunities is merely transferring rural poverty to an urban environment. Bangalore has seen the flip side of urbanization and industrialization—the price it has to pay for being a hub of the software industry. While its rapid urbanization has subsumed many villages with their waterbodies and livestock slipping into a foundering state, unfortunately, far from being the garden city that Bangalore once was, it is now one of the most polluted cities of South Asia, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change—a long-term threat to humanity, endangering food security and living conditions. Additionally, the crime rate in the city is rising. ❄ Bhaviah moved with his family and settled amidst the barren land in the village of Beekanhalli. My grandmother would wittily remember this fourteen-year period as the vanavaasa (exile) of Lord Rama when he was banished to live in the forest by his own father Dashratha. They moved this time to a place where they had no neighbours. One lone family in the vast fields; surely, it was a difficult decision, but under the circumstances, this was the best step. For Bhaviah, the move was of course a step closer towards achieving his ultimate dream of cultivating paddy in his dry land. As Bhaviah’s tryst with land and nature continued, Narayana looked for opportunities away from the land. Cultivation was not his forte, but he could surely find ways to work in the newly set up industries in the town of Bhadravati.

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Narayana and his wife moved to Bhadravati where, with the help of a relative, he secured a temporary job with a contractor engaged in building houses for the paper mill factory. The job involved carrying bricks, steel and other materials to the construction site under a supervisor. Narayana neither had the physical strength nor the inclination for hard labour, but the situation aroused the poet in him. One day a tired Narayana sat under a tree, ruing his difficult life in a musical voice—his shoulders aching due to carrying bricks and steel bars to the work site. His co-worker Murthy, who heard the sweet humming, informed the supervisor about the new man’s talent. When the supervisor heard Narayana’s song, he felt extremely amused but at the same time sorry for his plight. Immediately, Narayana was promoted to a supervisory level. Spared of hard labour and happy with the promotion, the delighted Narayana and his wife now wanted to make everyone in the family happy. They wanted to unite Shakuntala with the runaway Appanna, who had since taken shelter with his uncle in Bhadravati. With this in mind, they brought Shakuntala from Gubbi and invited Appanna and his uncle for lunch. However, their last attempt to brighten Shakuntala’s life also failed. Shakuntala came to serve ghee and Appanna sprang up from his seat, as if stung by a scorpion, and cursing his uncle, left the place in a huff. Later he was found trying to commit suicide by consuming green copper sulphate crystals. Though the attempt was foiled, Appanna, too mortified now to face anybody, moved to Tumkur and settled there. Back in Gubbi, distorted news reached that Appanna had been poisoned. Mariakka lost no time in accusing Shakuntala of poisoning her son.

❄ If only my great-grandparents had waited! I believe when Congress Guru came to know that the family could not buy a bicycle, he withdrew his demand. When his family came to know how Shakuntala was being harassed by her in-laws, they wanted to register a case and get her justice.

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But their trials and tribulations didn’t end here. Their insecurity and lack of judgement soon entangled them in yet another shady alliance for their youngest daughter Savitri. Once again it was a woman behind the fiasco. Narayana was entrusted with the task of finding a groom for Savitri. He felt that his co-worker Murthy would be a suitable match for his sister. But Murthy’s aunt in Bangalore intervened and instead proposed her son for Savitri. She made inflated claims of owning residential property in Bangalore and actually took Narayana to Bangalore and showed him an entire row of houses, which, she claimed, belonged to her. The gentle Narayana believed her and agreed to the alliance. The marriage ceremony took place a month later in Gubbi, and exposed the false claims made by the groom’s side—they didn’t bring even the minimum customary gift for the bride. In the first few months of her marriage, Savitri went through hell with her mother-in-law. The woman bargained with an unscrupulous agent engaged in trading girls to the Middle Eastern countries to sell her daughter-in-law for `3000. She even took `300 in advance. The agent stalked Savitri for a few days and then came to take her away. Savitri ran and took shelter at her neighbour’s house. Distressed by the situation, Savitri and her husband left the house. They wandered aimlessly and spent the night on a pavement. Next morning a Good Samaritan from the Brahmin Welfare Association moved them into a small house in a decent locality. Life for the couple went on at an even pace for a few years with the husband’s income as a postman. But years later, the husband’s dubious character led to another heart break for Savitri. Narayana never forgave himself for arranging such a bad marriage for his sister. His own fortune took a dip—the contractual job in Bhadravati didn’t extend for long—possibly the effect of World War ΙΙ which proved disastrous for the imperial economy draining it of its resources and resulting in mass unemployment of even the Britons.

❄

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Narayana returned to his father’s house. He looked after the sale of the produce from the garden and the remaining wetland. Being more astute than his father, he was able to make profits. Over the years, he became the provider of the family—the one who cared for them and stayed with them as their guardian. In return, he was the one who received all their favours—whether it was extra crops of rice or sugar cane, Narayana was always the beneficiary. Soon after his return to Gubbi, the question of Shakuntala’s livelihood dwelled uppermost in his mind. Considering the lonely and bleak future she faced, she had to be provided at least primarylevel education. Encouraged by Narayana, Shakuntala started studying privately. Bhaviah too contributed his part by teaching her initially in his house at Beekanhalli. When she showed signs of being ready for advanced learning, she was put under the guidance of the retired village headmaster. Shakuntala as well as her friend— the headmaster’s daughter Ganga who had also met a similar fate as hers—continued their studies. Spurred by a healthy competition, both the girls successfully completed their lower secondary examination.

❄ When both Bhaviah and Narayana left Gubbi, the thota became the responsibility of Shiva, the youngest son. Shiva was an ideal son— he helped his father in the garden and the wetland fields and even maintained his brother’s grocery shop. He did not hesitate to carry large quantities of fodder on his shoulders. For his family, Shiva was everywhere and nowhere; one moment he would be in the neighbourhood and the next moment he would be in the neighbouring village helping someone carry out a chore. He was afraid of nothing— when no one came forward, he would be the first to enter the village water tank to open the tap and let its water flow through the channels.

❄

Heat of Summer  

The spring season ends and summer approaches fast, Living beings suffer from the harsh rays of the sun. Some plants wither; chasms and fissures develop in the ground and birds start to fly away.

I

t takes us just a few minutes to reach Beekanhalli by our vehicle. The entire stretch of road is surrounded by green vegetation. The beaming verdant green land full of paddy, sugar cane and many other varieties of crops looks enthralling. We walk to the site where once the family house stood for sixteen years. While reminiscing, my father’s face lights up with pride at his father’s ability to build the house in the back of beyond with no external labour to help. He recalls visiting Beekanhalli on a bullock cart, seeing at a distance the pile of stones, iron rods, mud and logs of wood stored in a large pit outside the construction site. He saw his father holding a hacksaw and precariously sitting on the edge of a half-constructed wall to avoid falling into the adjacent well. After helping his father cut wood, his mother handed him mud balls from the pit to plaster the walls. With Lakshmi to assist in plastering, the work would pass from one hand to another as if in sync with the rhythm of the surrounding nature. My father vividly remembers that during a visit to this home, he had climbed on a bull’s back for fun expecting the bull to placidly

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remain standing. To his great horror, it started with a jump, made several lightning-quick turns before giving him a frightening throw. The family well dug next to the site has been covered up since. Of the many memorable occasions during their stay in this house, the most significant was Lakshmi’s marriage—my father, then twelve, had felt like a VIP. The joy he felt at being gifted a one-rupee coin by his brother-in-law was beyond words. Equally exciting was the marriage of his uncle Shiva a couple of years later. ❄ As industrialization spread around the world, World War II that began in 1939 gave the much-needed boost to the still nascent Indian industry. Ironically, the developments took place in the backdrop of increasing food shortage and spiralling inflation that finally culminated in the Bengal famine of 1943. Increasingly, the new industry-driven jobs were luring the educated people to cities and even to the West, while my grandparents’ every move was taking them closer to the life of the Vedic era. From a full-fledged basic village unit at Gubbi with thousands of inhabitants to Barekoplu with nearly a hundred inhabitants, and then to Beekanhalli with no one around, it was like moving back in time with increasing dependence on nature and natural resources. Settling at another new place entailed a replication of all that they had gone through before, but time had tested Bhaviah’s strength and perseverance and he handled every new task with greater dexterity and patience. Of course, the first task was to build a house. Over several months of hard work the family was able to build a rather spartan, spacious and sturdy shelter going by the prevalent standards, with pillars, horizontal beams, windows and solid doors. The house had a kitchen, a hall, a well and space for livestock with the floors coated with cow dung and a tiled rooftop.

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For Ramu who stayed with his maternal grandparents in the town, the visits to his parents’ home in Beekanhalli during vacations showed him the harsh realities of village life. He could not help comparing the lives of his own people—his uncles, aunts and grandparents—on the maternal and paternal side. At the end of each vacation, his father would try to make him stay and help in farming. Lakshmi would then shield her brother and find an escape route for him to quickly leave the scene and the village.

❄ Bhaviah, now closer to his land than ever before, couldn’t wait to start the tasks needed to achieve his goal of growing paddy on the dry land. The few years he had spent ploughing and cultivating the fallow land with erratic rain conditions in Beekanhalli had got him success only with seasonal crops. His interest in farming didn’t find favour with his parents and parents-in-law. His dream of a large and united family of brothers working in the ancestral land and turning it into gold had also ebbed and faded into oblivion. He was coming to realize that his desire for his son Ramu to stay in the village and work with him was also going to end up as wishful thinking. No human being is infallible. When the circumstances of life change much against one’s expectations, man tends to err, more so with the loved ones whom he attributes his failure to. The increased distances drastically reduced their occasional share of coconuts, rice and sugar cane produce from the Gubbi land and the milk products from livestock. Narsihebbariah had lightened the burden of investment on seeds and labour by giving a considerable part of the family’s wetland to the Vokkaliga cultivators and tillers on a 50–50 guttige (sharing) basis. But it had also reduced the share of crops, which meant less food to eat for the already big family at Gubbi. Bhaviah and his family too, for all their years in Beekanhalli, faced an ever-increasing shortage of food. At one point of time, their

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meal consisted only of ragi. Oil and sugar became luxuries. Vegetables almost disappeared. Festivals lost their lustre as they were unable to offer a single rice savoury to the gods. To grow paddy in his fallow land, to be able to provide rice to his increasing family was thus, besides being a challenge, becoming an immediate and urgent necessity for my grandfather.

❄

We trudge along plantations of paddy, sugar cane and coconuts in Beekanhalli. What a transformation there has been since Bhaviah’s time, irrigated as they are with water from the Gorur dam! I can imagine, Grandfather, what this greenery could have meant for you back then—to accomplish what you had laboured for nearly fifteen years. We meet the farmers who are happy to greet us. Ayanore—the name they used to fondly address my grandfather—is still on their lips. One of them is an old man, Subba, who had worked on the land during Bhaviah’s time. When we express our desire to have a closer look at the fields, they happily agree and consider it a privilege to take us around. Recalling the totally contrasting days, seventy-five years ago, when in the absence of a water source they subsisted only on the ragi grains grown on the land, my father says, “Every morning, invariably, my sisters and I would wait with freshly plucked muttuga leaves for mother to make ragi rotis. After relishing the rotis we would tuck the leaves in the crevices of doors for later use. The simple joy derived from eating the same rotis day after day, with red chutney powder mixed with a dash of salt and a sprinkling of oil, cannot be compared to any present-day short-lived pleasure of eating in a five-star hotel.” Indeed, the extensive study of Southeast Asian rice economies by the anthropologist Francesca Bray has rightly been summed up by M. Gladwell, “Rice agriculture is skill oriented. If you are

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willing to weed a bit more diligently and become more adept at fertilizing, and spend a bit more time monitoring water levels, and do a better job keeping the claypan absolutely level, and make use of every square inch of your rice paddy, you’ll harvest a bigger crop. Throughout history, not surprisingly, the people who grow rice have always worked harder than almost any other kind of farmer.” Water being the most important resource for cultivation of a thirsty crop like paddy, especially on dry land, erratic rainfall and drought give immeasurable agony to the farmers. Many regions of India face a chronic problem of drought, Karnataka being the second after Rajasthan. Apart from the crop loss amounting to crores of rupees, the drought-hit regions undergo a huge loss of property and lives as well as the mass movement of labour. ❄ Living alone amid the fields was becoming a tortuous struggle, but it never demoralized or disillusioned Bhaviah. Against all odds, he was living for his ambitious dream. To realize his ambition, he needed a constant source of water—an irrigation well that could ensure a perennial supply of water to his land regardless of the weather conditions. To dig up an irrigation well, he needed to make a huge investment in terms of material and labour. Bhaviah started the work but had to stop soon—obviously, money wasn’t enough. He could not approach his already cash-strapped parents nor could he approach the government. Though there was a policy under the colonial rule to help peasants with irrigation, it was more friendly to the elite and rich farmers. Besides the need for rice, the need for other edible crops was equally urgent and important. On top of being deprived of their thota’s edible crops and wetland produce, coconut shells and husk— the main source of fuel—also became scarce. Akka had to depend more and more on raw wood fuel, which could only be ignited by

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continuous blowing and burnt with fumes, weakening her chest and eyes. Unlike Lakshmi, their second daughter Saraswati was academically inclined and wanted to attend school. But for her parents, expenditure for anything beyond food was out of reach. Moreover, there were other immediate responsibilities to be fulfilled.

❄ Lakshmi had reached the marriageable age of fifteen. Already cashstrapped, shouldering the big responsibility of a daughter’s marriage was a soul-writhing thought. But pressured by relatives, a boy was found for Lakshmi—he worked in the postal department in the nearby town of Hirisave. There wasn’t enough money to buy even the customary taali (mangalsutra). Nonetheless, they had the confidence of their parents’ support in Gubbi at least for arranging the wedding feast. A day prior to the wedding, the bridegroom party of about eighteen to twenty people arrived in Gubbi on bullock carts. “Banni, Banni” (welcome, you are all most welcome), Bhaviah greeted them in front of the ancestral house with folded hands along with his brothers and father. But the guests were disappointed by the austere welcome when they saw logs of fuel wood stacked at the entrance instead of decorations. What really sparked their temper was the fact that as per tradition, the groom was not presented with a ring or a silk dhoti. The fomenting anger was reignited when during dinner the guests waited to be served ghee, and Akka couldn’t find the ghee jar she had stored a few days earlier. That resulted in a barrage of angry comments from them. Akka tried to pacify them by bringing them glasses of milk but to no avail. What was most disturbing was the disappearance of the bridegroom from the scene. The auspicious muhurtam time was fast approaching, but the bridegroom was nowhere to be seen and the wedding party

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maintained a stony silence despite Bhaviah’s pleadings. Finally, he had had enough and declared, “If the boy’s people do not wish to go through with the marriage, so be it. I’ll find another boy for my girl. The boy’s party is free to return the way it has come.” His statement was vociferously supported and echoed by Narayana, though poor Akka sat with Lakshmi in a corner silently shedding tears. The firm declaration by the brothers put the boy’s father, who had promised his dying wife a year before to bring home Lakshmi as their daughter-in-law, in a fix. Thereafter, things took a sharp turn. Suddenly, the boy made his appearance from nowhere and the marriage was conducted fairly satisfactorily. Akka, who had her own grand dreams of her eldest daughter’s marriage, reconciled herself to its minimalistic grandeur that needed her to part with her own taali so that it could be tied around Lakshmi’s neck. They also promised to gift the bridegroom a silk dhoti and a ring when the couple visited them on the first Deepavali after marriage. Akka later found that her mother-in-law Chelvamma had hidden the ghee—the main cause of the raised tempers—at a neighbour’s house. Akka was shocked beyond words! It was also a turning point in Bhaviah’s life—his immense faith in and regard for his mother was shattered. After all, in this big bad world where Mother Nature and her vagaries were wrecking havoc with his life and ambitions, even his own janani (the one who gave him birth) appeared no different.

❄

The rain-fed regions that experience extremely erratic weather patterns like drought, floods and storms—the main reason for slowing of the state’s agricultural growth rates to 2–3 per cent per annum—presently have been attributed to the phenomenon of global warming. Many human activities related to energy generation, like extensive coal burning for industrial purposes,

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directly contribute to greenhouse gas emissions in the earth’s atmosphere leading to global warming. It is estimated that since the start of industrialization nearly 150 years ago, the earth’s temperature has increased by nearly 0.8 °C. In India, the fifth biggest energy consumer of the world, coal accounts for more than half the energy consumed. The poor quality of coal coupled with the lack of infrastructure to clean it poses a serious environmental threat. Greenhouse gas emission is a threat to human health causing respiratory and lung-related diseases. It is estimated by the WHO that the climate change resulting due to global warming accounts for 150,000 deaths and five million illnesses every year. While agriculture is also partly contributing to the long-term threat of climate change by emitting greenhouse gases, it remains highly vulnerable to the effects of global warming like changes in temperature and precipitation patterns. Global warming is affecting the health of livestock by causing heat-related diseases and stress; scientists believe it is also causing the spread of vector-borne diseases. The quality and amount of forage from grassland is affected and heat stress also leads to reduced milk yield. Despite India being the world leader in milk production, our yield per cow is one of the lowest in the world. Heat affects reproduction and an estimated loss of 1.5 million tonnes of milk is expected by 2020. The animal husbandry sector in Karnataka faces major problems of shortage of fodder and of technical labour force for veterinary services. With climate change, livestock will need increased water, shelter and energy. Indiscriminate deforestation has worsened global warming. ❄ New parents-in-law that they were now, Bhaviah and Akka had to live up to the demands of their new roles; adjustments to the existing

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resources were also required. First and foremost, they made changes to the overall design of the house by shutting the well and digging it elsewhere. As promised, they had to collect enough cash to buy a silk dhoti and a gold ring. Akka scrimped and stocked ingredients over several months to make sure that when their son-in-law made his first visit on Deepavali, their hospitality did not fall short of his expectations. Even a few crackers were burst to mark the gaiety of the festival. The promised silk dhoti and ring were also presented to the new member of the family. Money for the gifts was borrowed from their steadfast friend Ramiah in Mysore. The borrowed money had to be returned and the family of five had to be fed. Rice was already a luxury for the family that was now heavily dependent on ragi as a staple food. So the next time Lakshmi and her husband came unannounced, Akka was totally unprepared. There was neither rice nor any other precious grain in the house to pamper the guests. For tradition to be honoured, a feast of rice and an oil bath for the bridegroom was essential. Without losing time, Akka scampered to the fields, briskly cut down a few standing paddy crops in the wetland patch and collected a handful of castor seeds. She quietly sat throughout the night pounding and winnowing the paddy, and boiling, crushing and filtering the castor seeds to extract oil. In the morning, she was all smiles as her guests took an oil bath, ate a hearty rice meal and slept peacefully. It was now urgent that they found other means of earning cash. In her spare time Akka would make plates of Muttuga leaves growing around in plenty, helped by Shakuntala when she visited Beekanhalli to learn her lessons from her brother. Though not commensurate with the labour involved, such leaf plates would fetch some money at the village weekly mart, adding a little to the family’s kitty. Another source of income was selling butter. Help in the form of cash would also come from Acchanna, and clothes for the children and saris would come from the first sister. Having realized by now that his teaching experience in towns could be made use of to enlighten the village’s young from the

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underprivileged classes while earning `2 per child by way of fees, Bhaviah started giving lessons at home along with his daughters Saraswati and Parvati. While the amount helped only a little, there were benefits that couldn’t be measured with any yardstick— respect and regard of the entire farming class for the lone educated Brahmin family. The rapport Bhaviah shared with the farming class now grew warmer. The young children were the bridges that brought the communities closer. Their parents discussed with Akka the nutritional qualities of ragi that made their daughters physically stronger. As the years passed, villagers from the nearby villages of Bendiganahalli, Barekoplu, Niduni, Goregundi and Belavadi would invariably walk past this centrally located shelter and receive the warm and affectionate ministrations of the motherly Akka. The labourers, after the day’s hard work in the sweltering heat, would look forward to a short rest and a glass of buttermilk from Akka. Occasionally, she would cull grains or flour from her meagre resources to serve them food. Thus fortified, the travellers would bless the family wholeheartedly. According to my father, their blessings didn’t go in vain. In an increasing deference to the Brahmin family, the Vokkaliga farmers, who were great devotees of Lord Shani, would extend invitations to the street plays and dramas staged by them during the lean periods of work between sowing and harvest and prod the family to occupy the front-row seats.

❄

“Everything in the village,” my father says, “was so starkly different from the atmosphere in the town where I was growing up—where I made memorable educational trips from school to the soap factory and steel factory in the nearby industrial towns of Bhadravati and Shimoga. It was even more exciting when Anniah gave me 14 annas as pocket money for one of the trips. However, I realized the value

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of that money when on a visit to Beekanhalli my mother asked me to sell butter in the weekly bazaar. Two tholas (big balls) of butter fetched only 14 annas; but with that I could buy a measure of groundnut oil and salt which was urgently needed at home. My mother was immensely delighted by the deal I made which had left me with a 4-anna coin.” Even today there are very few government purchasing centres in the Holenarsipur taluk. Farmers are mainly dependent on middlemen who buy at their own discretionary rates, which amount to only about 60 per cent of the MSP fixed by the government. There are cases of farmers in Hassan burning chillies or abandoning onions in lorries and fleeing as the prices they could get couldn’t even cover the hiring cost of the lorry. Farmers are forced to burn their sugar cane because harvesting costs are more than the price they could realize in the market. Inadequate investment in the logistics of retail chain and storage infrastructure (only 5,300 cold storages nationwide) is at the root of the highly inefficient agricultural marketing, with no avenues for Indian farm produce to reach out to the domestic or world markets. Farmers are also hurt when domestic prices fall as they compete with international products sold at low prices due partly to skewed trade agreements between developing countries and developed countries which give huge subsidies to their farmers. Developed countries also protect their own producers from imports by imposing huge tariffs or non-tariff barriers, which again discourages farmers from developing countries like India. The developing countries are unable to weather the swings in export earnings during turbulent times. The agro-processing industry in developing countries is further weakened by the imposition of escalating tariff, and as an implication not every producer is able to compete. ❄

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The summer of their lives was as afflicted by adversity as the land was afflicted by the ceaseless sun. Having no proper fodder, the cattle would feed on half-ripe corncobs and develop terrible boils on their necks and get feverish with their mouths turning blue. With no help from a qualified veterinary doctor—there was one available only intermittently 13 km away in Holenarsipur—Bhaviah would tend to them with native medicines. While working in the thorny and muddy fields his bare feet would get ravaged with boils, fungus and cracks. Though thick tyre-rubber sheets brought from Holenarsipur could be used as footwear for protection, going to the town regularly on foot either to bring manure and medicines or to visit the revenue office would itself be an ordeal. Visiting the town especially on rainy days with a heavily soaked grass raincoat as cover and returning in the darkness with only flashes of lightning for visibility was a bigger problem. Under such adverse weather conditions a glass of coffee would be a good antidote, but that too had become a rarity and increasingly been replaced by coriander powder. Barely 13 km apart—there was a world of a difference between the upbringing of Bhaviah’s son and his daughters! Saraswati and Parvati were growing up in the rural hinterland among cattle and fields, helping their mother do the chores, depending on their father for education and tethered to his ambitions of resurrecting their princely state’s agricultural glory on his land. Brought up by his maternal grandparents in Holenarsipur, Ramu was exposed to their princely state’s new and enlightened era. Along with his cousin Venkatramu, he went to the State Board School with nothing to worry about except his studies. He socialized with relatives and other people, went on school trips and enjoyed his third aunt’s music. He played football, hockey and cricket; in contrast, for his sisters who were cut off from rest of the world, the surrounding fields of groundnuts, chillies, ragi, jowar and coriander were their only playmates with capricious Nature as the captain of their game.

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As much as the summer was harsh in the fields, it was equally bad for those living in the shanty house which had weathered winds and storms for many years. The mud tiles started to leak at places—it would not be an exaggeration to say that strong winds could even pull the people out of their homes. Groping in the darkness where the damp matchsticks would fail to burn, the family had to live in constant fear of lurking and unseen scorpions. Nature’s kindness in preventing calamities was, however, evident one day when Akka and her daughters woke in the morning to find pieces of a deadly scorpion scattered all over the place and a cat sitting calmly in the corner. In their gratitude to this godsend pet, they offered her a sumptuous meal of milk. It was yet another irony that while townspeople flaunted wrist watches and Ramu’s best friend’s father repaired watches as a pastime, his own father in Beekanhalli solely depended on his knowledge of the stars, planets and their movements to know the time of the day. For Ramu, though, when he would be holidaying in his village, his father’s lessons in astronomy would be a fascinating study. He and Venkatramu would lie under the starry sky after a hearty dinner of ragimudde (ragi balls) and halsinhuli (jackfruit sambar). But unknown to anybody Bhaviah’s frequent visits to the town had sparked a desire for the only material possession he ever had—a watch.

❄ The family’s depressing state of financial affairs now forced my grandfather to try his luck a second time in the city. He decided to go to Mysore and work for his close friend Ramiah, who was much in need of help in maintaining the accounts of his land and Ayurvedic dispensary. However, after working there for a few months, Bhaviah returned to Beekanhalli. Accountancy was not his forte and about `30 a month was not enough to feed the family and a pregnant wife.

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Nevertheless, this time he returned a more pragmatic man. He had fully realized that his dream of all the three brothers working together in harmony on the ancestral land in its totality—the thota, the wetlands and the dry land—was never going to come true. Sharing had put his family at a great disadvantage. Living far away from his parents had deprived him of the benefits of the thota and the wetland crops. A solution had to be found for this conundrum. He didn’t want to be the loser every time. Even Narsihebbariah was worrying over this situation—to him, the solution to all the disparate ways of his sons was property division. Property division would lead to everyone getting a fair deal, he thought. While settling the property, Bhaviah was advised by his father to claim part of the thota he created. Even his parents-in-law residing in Holenarsipur asked him, through Ramu, to claim the garden for himself. Bhaviah heard all their pleas and went back to his village. You may be wondering what happened finally. The thota went to Shiva who had been working on it all along with their father. Bhaviah did not have the heart to claim something on which he was not working and when Shiva said that he wished to have it as his share, the righteous Bhaviah agreed. The dry land in Beekanhalli became his share of the property. Narsihebbariah retained the wetlands while Narayana received a few acres of wetland and a part of the dry land in Beekanhalli as his share. As a gesture of goodwill to their Magu, his parents gave him a vacant residential plot of the family’s property at the back of their house. Narayana, whose mind had long been set on leaving his ancestral place for good, couldn’t care less about the property division. Having to manage his share of the land single-handedly was an additional burden—neither was he interested in continuing to plod nor was the return from the produce very exciting. With his shop business foundering and tailoring not giving much income, he couldn’t wait to move out permanently to the cities.

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For Ammiah and Anniah, the news of the property division came as an utter shock. Their only hope for bettering their daughter’s lot was obliterated forever. Property division would only worsen matters in the days to come. The joint family had fragmented and given birth to nuclear families. Even cows, buffaloes and bullocks needed to be divided—Bhaviah got a bull, but it was Shiva’s love and benevolence for his brother that brought a cow and her calf at his door.

❄ The fair and handsome Shiva, now the sole owner of the garden, had reached the marriageable age of twenty-three. To his parents and Narayana’s great dismay, Shiva fixed up his own marriage with the daughter of a gentleman he met in the garden from the neighbouring village of Hanemaranhalli without informing or taking his parents’ permission. Saddened by his parents’ disapproval, Shiva approached his eldest brother and sister-in-law who were, for the moment, staying in Holenarsipur for Akka’s delivery. People dressed up and took pails of water from river Hemavati and arrived on bullock carts at Hanemaranhalli which wore a cold look with no mango leaves, flowers or coconuts. Bhaviah and Akka arranged for the same and performed Shiva’s marriage like he was their own son. Very soon however, the parents reconciled with their son and accepted their new daughter-in-law into their family. Now the happy and harmonious family in Gubbi consisted of the parents, their two sons and their families. But sadly, the first seeds of antagonism had been planted in the household of Narsihebbariah which would assume gargantuan proportions in the coming decades and disintegrate the family into three different worlds. The families living under one roof but managing their own share of land and crops slowly created divisions in their minds and relationships.

❄

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As demands for food will increase in the coming decades, in India it is expected to reach 276 million tonnes by 2021 as against the production of 230 tonnes now, leading to increase in competition for resources—land, water, capital and labour. Due to the pressures for varying reasons—one being industrialization—the average size of the holding in Karnataka state is shrinking very fast, making farming for a large number of families economically unviable. Land being put to non-agricultural use is now not available for farming. There is a decline in the gross cropped and net sown area. The average size of a holding as of 2010 is 1.63 hectares and 42 per cent of the holdings in the state measure less than 1 hectare. Small farms require low investments, but since their productivity is also low, they give marginal returns to the farmers. The nationwide figures are even more glaring. Out of India’s 116 million farmers, around 60 per cent have less than 1 hectare, which accounts for 17 per cent of the total farmland, and 7 per cent have medium and large farms (above 4 hectares), which account for 40 per cent of the farmland holding. ❄ In 1942 Gandhi gave the call for the “Quit India” mass civil disobedience which brought the freedom struggle to its peak. People all over the country, including Bangalore, took to the streets for mass protests. Coupled with it was the long war that had badly weakened the British regime on all fronts and left them with no option but to sign off sooner than later. In Gubbi, with rationing at the onset of the war, the nowdivided family was facing a shortage of food and living space. But it was integrated with the rest of the villagers and the nation with one common simmering sentiment—to fight to the best of their abilities for their nation’s freedom from the British rule.

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Narayana, who had by now successfully found a teacher’s job in the nearby town of Bidraka, proved to be one of the leading freedom activists of the village. The anti-British speeches made by the often visiting local leader Congress Guru, dressed in Nehru style, would inspire Narayana and his associates Soorappa, Subbarao and Subbaramu to swing into action. Collecting school children from the villages, they would undertake mass breaking of liquor bottles in the village marts. As an implication, they were suspended from their service which they could resume only a year later, after India achieved independence.

❄ Away from the agitating crowds, at Beekanhalli the soldier of soil waged his battle alone. He was now a step closer to realizing his dream of building an irrigation well in the fields. Now that the land was fully his, he could unhesitatingly approach the Mysore authorities to avail the grant of `400 meant for farmers willing to construct such irrigation wells. Other than being a water source during poor rainfall years, this well could provide water during scorching summer months too. What more could a devoted farmer ask for if crops could be cultivated twice a year, both in the rabi and kharif seasons? For Bhaviah, the prospect of planting crops even during the summer months was enough motivation to plunge into the pending enterprise. Breaking the rocky grounds of Beekanhalli involved materials, labour and skills. The government grant of `400 could only buy the materials, so there was no scope to employ any labour. Nevertheless, in his most ambitious venture he had the utmost cooperation from his family members; the irrigation well became the entire family’s dream project. For Sarasu, the older and stronger of Bhaviah’s two daughters, it posed an additional responsibility on top of taking care of the cattle and doing household chores.

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Single-handedly Bhaviah collected the materials to explode the rocky ground. It took him several months to blast the ground deep enough to reach the aquifer. Finally, after digging a pit 10 feet wide and 20 feet deep, water was seen. But the irrigation well also needed proper infrastructure support like mortar and masonry work. The lack of labour, which was always a problem, was now a major setback. To cut costs, except for labour-intensive tasks like transplantation and harvesting of crops, he had taken up other agricultural operations himself. The work on the irrigation well thus continued at a slow pace for two years. Its completion seemed a distant dream. Despite the worsening circumstances, they hoped to see light at the end of the tunnel. And so, everyone put up a brave front to see the well through to its completion.

❄

My father recalls the anxiety in his maternal grandparents’ home in Holenarsipur when they didn’t hear from the second aunt in Malaya for twelve years after the outbreak of World War ΙΙ. He adds about the local freedom movement, “Very frequently there would be agitations, closure of schools, rallies and processions, public meetings inviting police action like lathi charge and firing to disperse the agitating crowd. Out of curiosity, Venkatramu and I would join the rallies and witness police action from a distance. On such occasions, the atmosphere would be charged with tension. Anxiety and fear for one’s own safety with that of one’s kith and kin would war with patriotic feelings. Elders at home would worry and remain apprehensive till the children returned home. The expectation of achieving independence from British rule was gaining momentum with every passing day. “Immediately after independence the problem was of a different kind. We had started our junior college in Hassan and

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lived in a hostel where uppittu made of a coarse variety of imported suji (broken wheat) was served, which would terribly upset our stomachs.” Today India copes with drought years by putting restrictions on the export of crops like rice, wheat and sugar cane and increasing the import of lentils and edible oils. It thus faces high food inflation making food inaccessible to the poorest. Large stocks of grains that are not released in the open market reduce the availability of affordable food grains to low-income groups. Though India ranks second worldwide in farm output, its contribution to the nation’s GDP dropped after the reforms. In 2008–09, the share of this primary sector in the overall growth of Karnataka had gone down to a disturbing figure of 16 per cent, reducing the share and net income of the workforce in this sector. Inadequate growth in private and public investment, inadequate vocational employment, inadequate safety nets and institutional support, regional disparities in investment, poor performance of seeds, soil health and environmental issues and inefficiency in water management are the major constraints for agriculture in Karnataka. Productivity of major crops has suffered due to inadequate supply of inputs and imperfections in input and product markets. Animal husbandry suffers due to the lack of infrastructure such as buildings, equipment, veterinary institutions, inadequate and inaccessible credit, abattoirs and milk collection centres. ❄ At last, after a long struggle that lasted for more than a century, India gained freedom on August 15, 1947. The occasion was celebrated in every nook and corner of the country with the hoisting of the Indian flag and singing of the national anthem. The immediate aftermath of freedom was marked with food shortage aggravated by the Partition, which had made a disproportionate division of the cultivable land and population

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between India, West Pakistan and East Pakistan. Even though by the early 1940s the British had imposed restrictions on imports by way of duties and tariffs, the severe shortage of food prompted the new Indian government to relax the duties in order to be able to import food to feed its masses. The new government that took up office at the centre, in New Delhi, now quickly set out to formulate the new constitution. Now was the time to deliver on the rhetoric about how the country could be uplifted after years of submission to the imperial rule. As promised earlier, there were talks of collaboration with the model state of Soviet Russia. The rhetoric had for long strongly reverberated as far down south of New Delhi as Beekanhalli and been heard by the farmer who now helplessly stood next to his incomplete water project, watching his land experience an agricultural drought, with no freedom in sight for his family that was near starvation. In princely Mysore, there were rallies and mass protests to establish a responsible state government. While Bhaviah felt patriotically proud of his son for taking part in the students’ protests, he eagerly waited to hear the policies framed by the new government that favoured the farmers. Shunned by his parents as a “poor man” and other relatives as a “doomed farmer”, he could only turn all his hopes to the new government and the new prime minister of the country, Jawahar Lal Nehru. In a desperate plea and with sincere hope, he sent out letters asking the new prime minister to quickly start implementing the policies that they had been promising for so long. But he was probably expecting a change too soon—his frustrations had driven him to expect things sooner than realistically possible. Neither did the rhetoric that was so eloquent before and after Independence appear to come through nor did the capricious Nature show any kindness. For Bhaviah and his family, their world, away from the rest, remained the same.

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The historic news of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination too trickled down to this remote hinterland. When a worker in the fields had come running to break the news, the girls—Saraswati, then ten; and Parvati, eight—who were sitting on a treetop enquired with perplexed faces, “Who was Gandhi?” Living in the fields among the cattle and the trees had made them blissfully ignorant. All they could think and care about at that time was whether they could have at least a handful of rice grains for their next meal.

❄ The pending work on the irrigation well couldn’t be kept on hold for long. Hiring external labour was not possible, but my grandfather did have the support of the faithful bullocks that silently did their job without a pay. It only needed a little of his ingenuity to make them do the task. Bhaviah dug a big circular pit to mix lime and sand. He used all the crude things available around him to build a mixer with a rolling mechanism. The home grinding stone was attached to a shaft which rested on a fulcrum, which in turn was pulled by a pair of bullocks. Using the fresh lime mortar made with the mixture, rolled over uniformly by the mixer, stones were dressed and used to build the circular wall around the well. Eventually, the irrigation well had a sturdy wall, about 1 ft above the ground, but to be put to use for providing water to the fields, a device for drawing water out of the well was also needed. The Persian wheel system was costly and cumbersome. So the only way out was to use the traditional pulley and rope with the forward and backward movement of the bullocks to draw water out of the well in buckets and to lower the buckets respectively. At last, Bhaviah’s long and gruelling struggle for an irrigationwell came into fruition. In the initial days of its installation, it drew praise from the people around. For the entire farming community

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around Beekanhalli and the surrounding villages, it was a one-of-itskind accomplishment, and for the parents and parents-in-law, it was a matter of renewed pride for their son. But alas, the same kind of appreciation did not come from the right government authorities.

❄

We walk further up the fields to see the irrigation well—a legacy left by my grandfather. The water is swelling up to the well’s brim. This sturdy and rock hard well remains a testimony to the grit and determination of an agriculturist who could overcome all kinds of adversities to reach his goal. Today the irrigation sector in Karnataka is beset with constraints of untimely filling of reservoirs, vast unused potential, delays in letting of water into canals, breaching of canals, increasing saline alkaline land, and so on. Even after seventy years of independence, not all villages in India have the basic facility of electricity or power. In Karnataka alone, thousands of villages and ten-thousand hamlets did not have electricity till as recently as 2004–05. On the other hand, the farmers are exploiting the subsidy they are given on electricity by using tube wells and pumps for rice cultivation. As a consequence, groundwater has been reduced indiscriminately. The basic problem of dry land areas is best described as a vicious cycle that starts with low water availability and the degradation of the natural resource base because of poor management which results in low productivity. This in turn leads to over-exploitation of the existing natural resources and causes further degradation. The gentleman also tells me that today the subsidized rates for input machinery and fertilizers don’t really help farmers as they are actually sold at much higher rates. Besides, due to rampant corruption in the government machinery, the actual user doesn’t get the benefit. Moreover, labour is even now a major constraint

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in cultivation. A Brahmin farmer in the village finds it hard to get a labourer since he charges `150 for half a day and `250 for a full day’s work on a 1-acre land. If hired on a monthly basis, the charges would be about `3,000 to `3,500. Hence, inevitably, a Brahmin farmer would incur input expenses of about `10,000 for a 1-acre land; the same for a Vokkaliga farmer would be `4,000. ❄ After the well was completed and the entire grant money utilized, Bhaviah was required to furnish a certificate of completion at the collector’s office in Hassan. The collector of Hassan delegated an overseer from Holenarsipur to physically verify the well and file an official report. The overseer arrived at Beekanhalli and was warmly welcomed by Akka and Bhaviah. They served him like an honoured guest and took him to the fields to show the well. The official commented in admiration, “Swami, you have indeed put in a lot of hard work, and good work should be given due respect and recognition.” They returned home to a sumptuous lunch prepared by Akka. While bidding goodbye to his guest, as a gesture of gratitude, Bhaviah gave a bag of Bengal gram grown in Beekanhalli’s wetland patch. To his horror, the official responded by asking, “Can you not give me a small gift in cash instead of this trivial thing?” Jolted by the audacious demand, Bhaviah ruefully replied, “Sir, I am extremely sorry. I am financially too constrained to offer you anything in cash. We will be pleased if you could accept whatever we are able to offer you by way of hospitality.” The official grudgingly returned to Holenarsipur and the incident was soon forgotten. However, its repercussions were felt a month later, when three men including a police officer came storming into Beekanhalli and called out to Akka in a stern voice, “Where is your husband? He has taken a government subsidy meant for digging an irrigation well and falsely used it for other purposes. We have been

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deputed by the collector of Hassan to confiscate your bullocks, cart and anything we can get hold of.” Unfazed by the threatening men, Akka calmly took them to the fields where Bhaviah showed them the irrigation well and explained what had transpired a month earlier. The officials, having seen the well with their own eyes, couldn’t repudiate Bhaviah’s claims any further. Instead, they advised, “You must go to Hassan and explain the case to the collector at the earliest.” The very next day, a baffled Bhaviah walked 40 km to Hassan and went straight to the collector’s office. The collector, convinced of the veracity of Bhaviah’s statement, politely assured him of re-verification by another official. The new official came and gave a satisfactory feedback. It was a vindication of the honesty and innocence of the family. The dishonest officer was later believed to have been transferred from Holenarsipur to another town.

❄ The irrigation well was now ready with no more hounding officials. But the continuing spate of misfortune had left scars in the heart of this otherwise sanguine man. Why was it that his sincerity, honesty and hard work had only brought him more suffering? Life had demanded hard labour of him without actually giving any rewards. Was he destined only for misfortunes? With whom could he discuss his anguish except the one he had dedicated his life to and who was to visit him in his dreams? As though in answer, one sunny afternoon as Bhaviah dozed in the middle of the fields, he had a dream. He found himself in the lap of a woman in a green sari, bedecked with jewellery, tenderly stroking his forehead, looking smilingly at him. To share his woe with this woman, he cried out,“Why is there so much disparity in this world? Why should a villager, a devoted farmer like me, take the brunt of the wrongdoings of the townpeople? Where did I go wrong?”

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The motherly woman in green said with a smile, “Don’t worry, child! Wake up, you are truly my son! Continue to do your duty towards me and worry about nothing else.” And blessing him, she disappeared. Bhaviah woke up with a start. The son of the soil had been blessed by Mother Earth, even if only in a dream! That was enough to boost his motivation to continue with his mission for the Mother Earth of his dreams! Nothing could deter him from following his duty towards his land. Apart from the dream, the recent opening of a new Ayurvedic hospital in Gubbi reawakened in him the desire for his son to stay with him in the village. He urged Ramu to take a degree in Ayurvedic medicine. But his grandparents thought differently and sent him to pursue a science degree in Mysore. It was now time for Ramu to part with his close buddy Venkatramu too, who left his grandparents’ home for an engineering degree in the North Indian city of Jabalpur.

❄

One vital aspect of governance is endemic corruption, like bribery. And when multinational corporations of advanced countries exploit this drawback of developing countries for a competitive edge, it undermines democracy. Globalization has many downsides where trade agreements tilt the rules against developing countries making them poorer with lower wages, growing unemployment and loss of sovereignty. Global environmental problems affect developed and developing countries alike but the impacts are divergent. Over 60 developing countries which are home to tropical forests are not being compensated for their valuable environmental services. Global warming, which is leading to climate change, is expected to have a major impact on agriculture in this century.

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By 2050, a rise of annual mean temperature between 4 °C and 5 °C in most parts of the world across all continents is predicted— this figure has been arrived at considering a climate model with GHG (greenhouse gas) concentration equal to 1 per cent increase per year in CO2. Under the same climate conditions, the change in annual precipitation by the year 2050 will be both negative and positive in different parts of Africa and Asia, South America and parts of Europe; it will be positive in the United States and negative in Australia. A similar change has been observed in percentage terms in the average annual runoff (a measure of water supply) over thirty years. By 2050, in India the north- and south-western parts will see a reduction in the annual number of rainy days but overall, there will be an increase in rainfall on a single rainy day. Even the need for water as a resource and its supply will see a change, with peaks and troughs every ten years. There will be a change in seasonality too and its maximum impact will be seen in the summer months of April to August. The damage due to pests is also seen to increasingly follow a pattern with climate change and spread over a wider area. Sea levels will rise by 0.1 m to 0.8 m. There will be more tropical cyclones and very hot days will be more frequent. Increasing river water and sea temperatures will affect migration and harvests. Droughts and floods will increase production variability and affect microbes, pathogens and insects. ❄ The irrigation well provided water to the fallow land, but could not assure a constant supply of water to the seedlings planted on the upslope. The traditional method of drawing water could yield only one bucket with one cycle of forward and backward movement of the bullocks and hence there was no continuous flow of water. Watering of all the seedlings could thus be assured only with extra

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labour. Water had to be drawn from the well and transported along the plantation lines. It was, therefore, crucial to devise a method by which the seedlings could be assured of a constant flow of water. The efficiency of the old system had to be improved—the full power of the bullocks had to be unleashed in one complete cycle. The venture was again in need of an ingenious idea. After some contemplation, Bhaviah was ready with a solution. He decided to use the bullocks to pull two buckets in a cycle instead of one which could augment the flow of water. The idea focused on the circular movement of the bullocks. The bullocks would be pulling one end of a shaft in a circle with the centre of the shaft revolving around a fulcrum. The other end would be a rotating steel flat of about two feet with its two ends connected thereof to two buckets. Bhaviah experimented with miniature-sized buckets that he specially got made in Holenarsipur. Finally, he arrived at a size and shape that was most suited for the job. After all his experimentation, he was able to achieve a constant flow of water. In due course, with further rectifications the system became nearly foolproof. It still had a few drawbacks. The coir ropes couldn’t bear the weight of the buckets for long. They started lengthening and Bhaviah had to think of some other alternative. An alternative was possible with a steel rope. In the meantime, Acchanna, now working as a superintending engineer in a power station at Nagpur, undertook a visit to Beekanhalli to see the water-drawing mechanism developed by his agriculturist brother-in-law. An engineer dealing every day with complex machinery for power generation, he was utterly amazed by what he saw—a viable and efficient mechanism to provide a constant supply of water to the fields without any known source of energy like electricity! No wonder, he eagerly offered help to enhance the overall working of the device.

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The required length of steel rope was immediately ordered from a manufacturing company in Madras and sent by train. Bhaviah replaced the coir rope with the steel one. Out of deep appreciation, Acchanna also gifted Bhaviah the one material object he longed for—a watch. The water thus lifted up from the well could be channelled to cover large parts of the land through smaller channels. The system had an aesthetic appeal too. The water thus discharged continually by the buckets one after the other provided a lovely panoramic view while flowing down the vast area of land. The system was expected to improve crop yield substantially at times of inadequate rains. Bhaviah’s water-pulling device attracted the attention of other people engaged in similar professions. One of them was Dr Ramashastri of Mysore, who owned a dispensary of English medicines and had large areas of land in Mandya district. He visited Beekanhalli and, after examining the details of the water-drawing mechanism, was so impressed that he took a sketch of the overall pulley system and design of the buckets and left after profusely thanking Bhaviah. A few months later, the news of this unique innovation had spread to Holenarsipur and the surrounding towns. The visiting kin had used D E

F I

C

A

G J

B

H IRRIGATION WELL WATER

       

A. B. C. D.

The circular path taken by the bullocks A long shaft moving around the fulcrum The fulcrum allowing easy movement of the shaft A strong iron flat with three holes—the centre one placed over the fulcrum fixed to the shaft E&F. Pulleys for running of wire ropes attached to buckets at the top G&H. Buckets with a slanted bottom attached to thin pipes at the bottom via hose pipes (I&J) of leather to make them tilt automatically above the ground

The water-lifting machine devised in 1950 using bullocks Source: GL Ramachandra

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his influence to bring Bhaviah’s innovative water-drawing mechanism to public awareness. He probably advised Bhaviah to get his device patented but my grandfather’s nonchalance came in the way. I believe that Dr Ramashastri won the patent later on. In any case, the man of the soil was least bothered about such matters.

❄ Now that the water problem was taken care of, Bhaviah needed to regain his faltering confidence. There were still more trying tests ahead. He had to grow paddy in the fallow land and first test the well during the summer months for growing smaller and seasonal crops. The previous year saw no crop output in the fields; so now was another chance to try growing crops of chillies, coriander or groundnuts. He couldn’t wait to use his irrigation well with its newly implanted water-drawing mechanism for watering the new crop. It was the sowing season and the right time to use the water-drawing device. The birth of another daughter Bhavani, coupled with the responsibilities of being grandparents to Lakshmi’s children, increased their expenses and made them buckle under their own burden. Despite the often cold attitude of her in-laws in Gubbi, a pregnant Akka took the pregnant Lakshmi there for the latter’s delivery. They had confidence in Shiva’s abiding love and affection for them. With all his enthusiasm, Bhaviah experimented by sowing chillies of a biannual flowering variety very near the irrigation well. Parvati and Saraswati took turns to guard the crop against the entry of stray cows, rodents and other pests. New manure of an excellent variety was used and regular watering from the new water-drawing device assured constant wetness. Akka’s delivery was also getting closer adding to the anticipation of the new yield of chillies. As the reaping season arrived, they couldn’t wait to see the new yield. But the results were not what they expected. The biannual flowering variety was too weak to flower again. The plants failed to

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even sprout fully. The whole venture nosedived even before it took off—the first failed venture after the undertaking of constructing the irrigation well! The amount of water which could be drawn out of the irrigation well was not enough even to wet the dry land which scorched under the summer heat, leave alone quench the thirst of the young chilli saplings. A deeper irrigation well was required which meant further breaking of rock-hard ground to reach greater depths of the earth. That required more money and more mental and physical strength, which was almost a preposterous idea for the family that had resorted to selling small parts of their land by the end of this venture. The well did not bring about any change either in crop output or their household conditions. They were again solely dependent on rainfall that could have at least brought some crop output from the land. Bhaviah, who had till now faced all the hardships sent by Mother Nature cheerfully, felt for the first time that he was losing his spirit and strength. The last of his efforts, too, had not been successful.

❄

Stagnation in agricultural productivity in Karnataka is attributed to technological fatigue or fast-reaching technological optima. The main thrust in developing yield-improving technology is confined to irrigation-based and commercial crops. As a result, the major stake-holders, namely marginal farmers inhabiting rain-fed areas, have been neglected. Research undertaken worldwide in collaboration with the IPCC to study the impact of unmitigated emission and two stabilized CO2 concentration conditions—550 ppm and 700 ppm (since CO2 has direct beneficial effects on crop growth and water use)—in high-, mid- and low-latitude regions show that climate change is going to have a major impact on the yield of crops like rice, maize, wheat and cereals.

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Temperature change and reduction in crop yields follow a pattern where developing countries are most affected. The crops of wheat, maize and rice will see continuous reduction in yields from 2020 to 2080 in South Asian countries, Africa, South America and south of the US, while it will be more pronounced in India, the Middle East and Africa. Minor reduction in yield will also be seen in Australia; almost the whole of Europe, the USSR and South East Asia will see improvement in yields. Under the climate change scenario, there will be a gradual reduction in global production of cereals from 2050 to 2080. Under unmitigated conditions of CO2 concentration, by 2080, the yield of cereals will drop in South Asia, Africa, north of South America, south of North America, parts of Europe and Australia, whereas the rest of the world will see an increase. Increase in yield will be under 700 ppm CO2 in some parts of the world and worsen at 550 ppm. By the end of this century, productivity of crops in India may decrease by 10–40 per cent. A rise of 1 °C decreases the yields of wheat, soybean, mustard, groundnut and potato by 3–7 per cent. Much higher losses occur at higher temperatures. Chickpeas, rabi, maize, sorghum, millets and coconuts may see improvement in yields, and potato, mustard and vegetables in north-western India may experience less loss due to reduced frost damage. Increasing temperatures will affect the quality of Basmati rice grain. ❄ My grandparents’ ill-fate continued. Before the new member arrived, a grave mishap almost took Akka’s life. She was drawing water from the domestic well when suddenly the loose earth caved in and Akka fell into the well. The distressed daughters then alerted the labourers working around, who in no time transmitted the message to Bhaviah working in a faraway corner of the field. He ran across the fields and reached the house just in time to save his pregnant

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wife from drowning. When the news reached Gubbi, Bhaviah’s parents came rushing to Beekanhalli with their daughter Shakuntala. Shakuntala comforted her sister-in-law with a cup of steaming coffee and helped with the daily chores for a couple of days before returning to Gubbi. For the next couple of months, Akka suffered intense pain in her legs and a burning fever. Shiva, always caring and devoted to his eldest sister-in-law, would comfort her by massaging her legs and burning fuel to warm her. An ardent devotee of Lord Surya (the sun god), Bhaviah, who did the Suryanamaskara and Sandhyavandane everyday without fail, would give Akka the offering of holy water. Maybe drinking the holy water daily helped Akka regain her health. She gave birth to a boy and they named him Suryanarayana. This incident had, however, left an indelible mark on the minds of everyone in the family in the hinterland of Gubbi and Mysore. Life in Beekanhalli seemed increasingly unbearable. Narsihebbariah decided to construct a house for his son on the vacant plot next to their house —he felt that it behoved him to do so when his son was facing the most difficult time of his life. Though Bhaviah didn’t leave a stone unturned or a skill or method untried in all his years in Beekanhalli, his dream didn’t come true. But his affinity to the land and the people in service of the land never waned. In fact, vestiges of his long-nurtured ambition that remained and continued were the cause of yet another big jolt in the family’s lives. Their daughter Sarasu, at twenty, bore the brunt of the tragedy.

❄ Mandya district is glorified for its greenery. It is an icon of Karnataka’s prosperity duly attributed to the major irrigational projects on the Cauvery River undertaken during the early twentieth century.

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After assessing many prospective grooms for Sarasu, Bhaviah set his eyes on a boy from Mandya. His forefathers were rich zamindars of the region and possessed many acres of land which, in their words, had yielded gold. Bhaviah’s visceral joy came to the surface and lit up his visage when he was shown the expanses of green land. His passion for land and farming was reignited after remaining dormant for a couple of years. He saw a chance of living his dream through his daughter. Sarasu was, however, dead against the alliance. She protested and cried but all was in vain. The father had no idea that the land he had seen had actually been lost in gambling and the groom’s family was, in fact, reduced to penury. It was his gullibility that duped him. Karnataka’s icon of greenery and prosperity proved false for this family. The cost of financing the wedding was high. Akka gave up her long-standing desire of providing veena tuitions to Saraswati. The money she was saving to buy a veena had to be used for marriage expenses. A major contribution came from Ramu, who held back from attending his sister’s wedding to avoid the cost of travel. To everyone’s dismay, soon after her marriage Sarasu realized that her husband was a drunkard and a womanizer. He had no income from land and hardly any education that could get him a job. Her marriage was deemed a failure and Bhaviah blamed himself for ruining his daughter’s life. It was as if history was repeating itself in the family. Saraswati needed to find a way to make a living. With her level of education, she could hope for a job which would at least feed her husband and herself.

❄

As we start driving out of Beekanhalli, I try to picture the train journeys across the country. When zooming past dense forests, arable lands with crops and deserted lands with no signs of habitation, one can often spot a few lone mud houses with a motley

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group of men working in the surrounding fields. I wonder why would they choose to live in a lonely place. Who knows how many of them have a similar story as my grandparents’! Are they there by choice or forced by circumstances? My aunt Saraswati carries the heaviest burden of their struggle in Beekanhalli. Like her aunts she was yet another victim of a marriage being arranged with land as the primary motive—for which she could never forgive her father. Her ambition was to study—with determination and hard work she obtained an education even in the remote village of Beekanhalli that could pull her through her life despite her misfortune. As we approach Gubbi, we see many houses—apparently they are built by the government for farmers, but they appear too diminutive. The gentleman tells me that even though nearly 400 houses were built in the village for the benefit of peasants, none of them are of good quality. “Truthfully speaking, these houses are not fit enough for living,” he adds. In Gubbi, we disembark to visit one more house before we complete our trip. From the back of the ancestral house which is dense with tamarind trees and green bushes we traverse along a bumpy path to another house on the back lane, where my great aunts Savitri and Shakuntala lived for almost five decades. This house that had been sold and belongs to someone else now was my grandfather’s last venture of building houses. Built half-a-century ago, it remains as strong and intact as ever. As we admire it, many more stories unfold. ❄ During the fourteen years when my grandfather tried to harvest himself a fortune from his dryland, his brother Narayana and his wife diligently clawed their way out of their village, far from their land. Having long put his interests on the back

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burner, Narayana now took the reins of his life and saw to it that his children didn’t follow the same torturous path that he had. He wanted to leave the village before his eldest son reached high school. He had already resumed his duties as a teacher after his suspension for anti-government activities. With the help of his friend in Hassan, he managed to get his wife a teaching job in Basavapatna where he shifted his family. Narayana served at various places like Karalapura, Arkalgud and Madikeri. With four sons and a daughter, even two salaries were not enough and so they continued with tailoring in their free time. Not only did Narayana ensure his best for his children’s education, he himself studied and passed high school while in service. With LS (lower secondary) qualifications, Shiva and Shakuntala were also successful in getting teaching jobs in a primary school. But Shiva declined owing to his parents’ desire to have at least one of their sons close to them and their land. The changed family circumstances had changed the parents’ aspirations too. In addition to taking care of his own property—the thota—Shiva would help out in the wetland paddy fields owned by his father and Narayana. Shakuntala joined service as a primary school teacher. Though she had a dysfunctional marriage, she always kept a photo of her husband and worshipped him from afar. After a long gap of twelve years, she wanted to meet him just once. Appanna had married again and had children. When they met, Shakuntala did not receive any warm greetings or affection. Instead, he gave her the cold shoulder and didn’t acknowledge her even as an acquaintance. In fact, his callousness aroused pity in his present wife who saw the injustice of it all. After spending a decade of married life in Bangalore city Savitri was forced to leave her home. Her husband’s capricious and violent behaviour was unleashed one day when, utterly famished, he returned home from work and ate a curry in which Savitri had accidently put salt twice. Immediately after leaving him she joined the community of cotton weavers in the city. When weaving cotton proved strenuous and not profitable enough she returned to Gubbi, never to go back again.

❄

Autumn Showers  

The summer lasted very long, The birds flew out to the nearby and distant new lands. But seasons do change; After the heat, showers do arrive.

O

n our return journey through Holenarsipur, we stop again at the ancient Lakshminarsimha temple to take part in its early morning puja. My father recollects with a laugh the time when he lived with his cousin under his grandparents’ care in this town. In this temple, the two would eagerly wait in a queue for prasadam (food offering); after devouring the hot and tasty rice dish once, they would line up again for a second helping. They would walk along with the crowd holding the rope in the yearly car festivals and take naughty dives in the river Hemavathi. Holenarsipur is the taluk headquarters with an agro-centric industry supporting the surrounding villages under the taluk. The office of the president for rural water supply and the taluk panchayat office advise farmers on the subsidies available to buy plough seeds, fertilizers, tractors, motors and so on. They also provide them loans through a land development bank. A government-regulated market and a Monday market provide an outlet for the farmers’ produce. Farmers also come to this town to learn how to grow new crops and

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new farming techniques. Over the years, the judiciary system has also improved with three courts—lower, civil and district courts. With a population of around 30,000, Holenarsipur is also a centre for higher education with the establishment of a degree college. The Hemavathi River is a tributary of the Cauvery River and through the south canal provides an irrigation base for wetland cultivation in the surrounding land of Holenarsipur. Ragi, paddy, sugar cane, groundnut, jowar and maize form the major produce of this taluk. Recently, farmers from some areas have profitably diversified into mulberry cultivation contributing towards the silk production of the state. Other than areca nut production, this region has also made strides in other horticultural crop production contributing to the export of flowers and mangoes. As steps towards improvement in animal husbandry, loans are provided to buy cows and training is given on new breeds and their rearing. Veterinary clinics are available in almost every village easing the problems of cattle care for the farmers. Ample loan facilities are also provided for building houses. Recently, among other steps towards the betterment of agriculture through soil and water conservation, farmers in Gubbi and other villages were given saplings of teak and rosewood by the Karnataka government. Apart from promoting biodiversity and ecological balance, these high-valued trees are expected to fetch good returns to the farmers in due course. Under the Joint Forest Management policy and forest conservation for environmental, rural employment and land issues, forests in Gubbi and other villages in the Holenarsipur taluk have recently been planted with fresh eucalyptus trees. Driving back to Bangalore, my father’s thoughts rest on the time he left his parents’ home and his homeland at the age of twenty, the excitement he felt at receiving the much-needed central government job appointment and the travel to North India where he would live for another five decades. My mother came as a bride

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from Mysore to Holenarsipur to her in-laws’ house when they were happily receiving the bounty of many crops from their land. ❄ India’s new political order of liberal democracy was established when the new constitution laid out by the new government came into effect on 26th January 1950. As a first step towards broad socialist reforms in the country, the government announced the Five Year Plans and the First Plan spanning 1951–1956 placed agriculture as the top priority. The reforms included strengthening of Panchayati Raj institutions in the states. Finally, the farmers and cultivators around the country, including my grandfather, got what they had been waiting for since long. The reforms on the agricultural front had impelled even young overseas Indians to contribute to their motherland’s ambitious growth plans. The year 1952 heralded good news for the family in Beekanhalli too. For the first time in many years, there were ample rains that, astoundingly, made it possible to cultivate paddy in Bhaviah’s fallow land! From then onwards, things improved a great deal. Not only were they getting a better crop yield, but Ramu had also secured a job in Gorur as a high-school teacher. The monthly allowance of about `30–`40 he sent to his parents helped a lot in meeting household- and agriculturerelated expenses. One year later, he landed a job as an auditor with a better remuneration package in the accountant general’s office in the North Indian city of Nagpur, near the place where his maternal uncle Acchanna was posted. Happier times meant that it was time to complete the traditional rites of passage that were long overdue. Bhaviah and Akka performed their son Ramu’s Upanayana ceremony in Beekanhalli in the presence of his grandparents, aunts and other near relatives. A couple of years later, the second son’s haircutting ceremony was also held in Beekanhalli. Ramu brought special Nagpur laddoos for the occasion.

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The nation’s newly attained independence was already a tremendous motivation, and Bhaviah’s ambitions for his land were also on the road to realization, when he decided to relinquish his vocation as a farmer and move to the town of Holenarsipur. In making this decision, he was disappointing Narsihebbariah who, in his old age, wanted his son to come and stay with him in Gubbi. The father was already getting him a house ready on the vacant plot behind the ancestral house. But Bhaviah had made his decision. It was time to say goodbye to his long-cherished passion. The pull of responsibility towards his family with grown-up daughters and a small son was this time stronger than the pull of his land or farming. There was still a possibility of remaining attached to his land through its produce by delegating the work to the tillers, farmers and labourers who toiled on the land. The family moved to town, but Bhaviah stayed back till the end of the year to finish the year’s agricultural operations, after which he entrusted the land to a few farmers for cultivation and sharing the crops on a fifty-fifty basis. Along with his numerous agricultural implements, he also handed over the entire system of lifting water from the irrigation well, including buckets, shafts, ropes and so on, to some of his trusted farmers. At 51, physical labour was arduous but being mentally and physically sound, he had to find a way of earning extra money. Teaching suited him best and there were opportunities with the wealthy Setty families of the merchant class, who after two decades were only too happy to patronize their old and respected meshtru to tutor their children in mathematics and science. Since their own children’s education was of primary concern to them, Bhavani and Suryanarayana were immediately admitted to schools. Saraswati had finished her primary schooling in Gubbi, and to continue her studies, she privately studied for the SSLC 10th grade examination and passed with flying colours. Parvati, now fifteen and dependent more on her father’s teachings, took up Hindi as a language.

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They settled down in the town in Anniah’s house, who had by then moved to Mysore. Life in a neighbourhood teeming with shops, temples and a cinema house was a big reprieve from their lonely village life. The charcoal stove as a cooking medium and mills for grinding grains and pulses lifted an enormous burden off Akka. After my grandparents left Beekanhalli, their dry land of about 10 acres in size saw an unprecedented yield of all kinds of crops including paddy. They shared the crop produce with the cultivators— the Vokkaliga farmers—on an equal basis. The farmers brought them the yearly produce which, among other crops, included paddy, coriander, chillies, ragi, and whole Bengal gram dal. This was a drastic improvement from Bhaviah’s days of farming in Beekanhalli. It was indeed what he had dreamed of when he had started tilling the land. Finally, his dream was coming true. It was hard to establish, though, whether the boost to agriculture in the first Five Year Plan that resulted in favourable policies at the Karnataka state’s three-tiered levels of districts, taluks and villages had made the difference. That those letters to the prime minister written by a small farmer down south in the village of Beekanhalli, at the zenith of his frustration, were heeded to seemed more like a fantasy. Whatever the cause, the change in crop yield was astonishingly significant and large. One apparent reason was that the community of Vokkaliga cultivators worked together as a group helping each other in all the farming processes from sowing and transplanting to harvesting, thus leading to greater production. It was the collective effort that resulted in increased productivity. My grandfather had no community or family support. And it was impossible to hire labour in such large numbers. Probably, there were also other factors like better fertilizers and seeds. What veritably brought the change was the natural irrigation by good rains that made water from the tank in Gubbi overflow to far-away places including Beekanhalli. The increase in yearly crop produce was large enough to feed the family for at least six months.

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Apparently, the irrigation well that my grandfather built with so much zeal was put to use by the farmers only decades later, after electricity was made available in the village. The automated waterdrawing mechanism was left untouched and unused. The farmers could not use the bullocks or the pulley system with efficacy. Nevertheless, Bhaviah’s soft corner for the farming community had translated into a win-win situation where the overall cultivation work resulted in higher yields. Having full freedom to invest in the cultivation process, the farmers had freed him of this burden. It, however, didn’t worry him when sometimes the amount of produce brought by the cultivators was less than his fixed share. In 1958, my mother was acclimatizing to her in-laws’ place in Holenarsipur, when a cultivator from Bhaviah’s land entered the house with a big sack of paddy on his back. He delivered, in all, an equivalent of about 350 kg of paddy. He also brought other produce like ragi, coriander and cereals. When Akka saw the total amount, she was a little unhappy with what was brought as the yearly produce. While she served the tired worker with a meal of ragimudde and sambar, she remarked, “Why did you bring so less, Appa? It should have been more.” Bhaviah immediately snorted back in the worker’s defense, “Why? Does he not have a family? Does he not need the grains? Does his wife not need to wear saris the way you do? He could only provide this much. Be content and feel happy with what he has brought.” These were clearly the words of a man who identified with his co-workers, who had, for years, toiled along with him in his barren land in Beekanhalli. They were the people he empathized with and was concerned about. They were partners in turning the fallow land arable and, in his eyes, the rightful shareholders of the better part of the produce. After years of toiling, at last his dream had come true and he could not deprive the farmers of their right to enjoy its bounty. With Bhaviah’s tuitions and his son’s allowances, along with their share of the crop produce, the family could afford the

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children’s schooling apart from the stream of guests visiting the house that included Lakshmi and Saraswati as well as Akka’s parents, sisters, brother and their families. Watching her nieces grow up in the culturally rich Mysore, Akka also desired to send her daughters for music lessons which could only be fulfilled for her last daughter Bhavani.

❄

As one travels upwards to northern India from the south, one can see a clear difference in some of the crops grown in the lands. The coconut and coffee plantations and ragi fields disappear and what you see instead are fields of crops like wheat, bajra and soyabean. That is how tea as a beverage and wheat rotis became a significant component of my father’s and later our whole family’s meal. My mother learnt and infused Kannada cuisine with North Indian varieties cooked without coconuts. While initially adjusting to the new region, my father recalls eating out with colleagues and friends who spoke Hindi and Marathi rather than English. Over time, watching Hindi movies with them, he became an ardent fan of actress Meena Kumari and songstress Lata Mangeshkar. Being in closer proximity to his maternal uncle Acchanna, he would often travel to the town of Khaparkheda to spend time with the uncle’s family. My father inherited his father’s virtue of commitment and dedication to his work but never believed in confining himself to a city or a town. He made use of whatever opportunity came his way and moved to whichever city or town his career took him while all along staying in touch with his parents in Holenarsipur through letters and yearly visits. ❄

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The new era had brought about a dramatic change in the attitude and thinking of my grandfather who, after having been deceived in his second daughter’s marriage, didn’t lose much time brooding or grieving. He helped Saraswati send job applications to all possible government services. They sent one for the post of a hostel warden with Adi Karnataka Adishesha, a hostel for scheduled tribes. This post had attracted a lot of applications from qualified people with science and arts degrees, as the job was believed to be a good opportunity to make extra money through unscrupulous means, such as by accepting bribes from food suppliers to the hostel. Bhaviah went along with his daughter for the interview, but before the interviews could begin, he expressed his ardent desire to meet the official-in-charge of the recruitment, the deputy commissioner. Bhaviah pleaded with the official, a Muslim gentleman, about how badly Saraswati needed the job, blaming himself for throwing her into a deep, dark pit. Giving up every bit of his self-esteem, he fell at the official’s feet and implored till the latter was moved. In the evening, the officer called him inside and showed the appointment order drawn in favour of Saraswati. New and tragic circumstances had changed Bhaviah who, in his heydays, had vowed not to be subservient to anybody. Sarasu joined the government service in 1961 and after serving for nearly four decades, retired in 1997. With her honesty and integrity, she earned the reputation of being a good and reliable worker. Bhaviah remained resolutely connected with his land and the farming community, although his daughter’s service with the state government and his son’s service with the central government had brought a radical change in his views about work and service. His pen having completely taken over the plough, his letters to the government also streamed out unabated. He always had an issue to write about, whether it was about providing ground wells or quality manure and seeds for better yield or concessions on land tax

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or drought-relief measures for the farmers. His lesser cognizance in matters of pricing food commodities was illustrated in all his letters. He was a farmer attached to the soil and its produce but had the least concern about its commercial value. While he wrote letters to the government both at the state and central levels, he also wrote to his son Ramu working in the AG’s office in Madhya Pradesh. Away from his kannadanadu (Kannada soil), Ramu had assimilated well into the national Indian culture and made his own identity in the workplace where regardless of caste or creed, work hierarchies were based solely on education and abilities. Ramu’s replies, in turn, connected his family to the bigger realm of the nation. Besides the differences in language and cuisine, his letters told them about the famous adjective “Madrasi” given to all South Indians in northern India. Ramu paid yearly visits to his parents in Holenarsipur and to Gubbi till his grandparents’ death. Narsihebbariah was proud and extremely happy to have a grandson working in a secure government job. At last, what he had aspired for his own son was coming true for his grandson. On one visit, Ramu gifted his grandfather with a shawl that made him exult and cut down a big jackfruit for the grandson. A man close to nature, the first thing he asked his grandson was, “Do you get rains in Nagpur?” Bhaviah’s simplicity and deep concern for farmers had apparently made a deep impact on Dr Ramashastri who had years ago visited Beekanhalli to look at his water-drawing device. When Acchanna coaxed Ramu to get married after his own son Venkatramu’s engagement, it was Dr Ramashastri’s wife who was instrumental in arranging the match. Later, in the first meeting at my maternal grandparents’ home in Mysore, Bhaviah surprised everyone with his candour when he said, “Our household runs partly on my son’s salary and partly on the tuitions I give.” Since Narsihebbariah and Chelvamma earnestly wished to attend their grandson’s wedding, they were brought to Mysore along with

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other relatives. They were in complete awe of the college-educated bride that their grandson was bringing home. With Bhaviah’s tuitions going well and his son’s allowance also increasing subsequent to his promotion and transfer to the city of Gwalior, they were able to afford a decent wedding for Parvati, with a silver plate and a bowl and a silk sari for the bride and a gold ring for the groom. Wary as they were after Sarasu’s alliance, for Parvati they found a match from a known family from the village of Belavadi— Narayana’s brother-in law who had started out as an entrepreneur. Living in Holenarsipur also enabled Bhaviah to repay the Brahmin community for what he had received as a young student coming from a rural area. Young boys coming to Holenarsipur from rural Brahmin families for higher education could find shelter and food in Bhaviah’s home. As the web of life would have it, the trajectories of the two entities, namely the nation and the individual, had increasingly got intertwined. By his sixtieth year, when Bhaviah’s profound desire of getting his lands’ full worth in the form of produce was satisfied to the brim, when years of his tireless work came to realization, many of the pro-agriculture measures taken by the government of free India were bearing fruits for the country too. The country’s food production grew constantly over a decade until 1960. The second Five Year Plan focused on industry and enhanced the nation’s growth rate considerably—it climbed up to 2–3 per cent.

❄

Today Karnataka ranks third among the states in the production of fruits and is the largest producer of spices and aromatic and medicinal crops in India. It is a pioneer state in the production of raw silk, generating almost 50 per cent of the total raw silk in the country. Milk, milk products and eggs also make up a part of the exports from Karnataka. It is the leading areca nut and second-largest coconut

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producer in the country. The average production of coconut in the state is 5,255 nuts per hectare, although productivity is affected by factors such as drought, diseases and small landholdings. With 290,000 hectares of cultivable land covered with areca nuts, India dominates the world production of 0.64 million tonnes of areca nuts by producing almost half the nuts, followed by China and Myanmar. The areca nut industry provides livelihood to about 10 million people in the country. Most of the country’s areca nuts are used for domestic consumption though, so there’s not much potential for exports. With an annual production of 13 billion coconuts, India takes up a premier position in the world’s coconut production of 54 billion coconuts per annum. With an average productivity of 6,808 nuts per hectare, India is the world’s fourth-largest producer of coconuts. The crop contributes `70 billion annually to the gross domestic product. India earns around `3,000 million from the export of coconut products, mainly coir and coir products. It faces tough competition in the global market, however, from Ivory Coast, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. India is now the largest milk producer in the world and the second-largest producer of paddy, tea, silk, sugar cane, wheat, cow milk, groundnuts and certain fresh vegetables. It is also the world leader in specialist products such as buffalo milk, cashewnuts, spices, bananas, mangoes, chickpeas, and so on and the fifth-largest cultivator of genetically modified (GM) biotech crops like Bt cotton. As per recent reports, nearly 3.8 million hectares of land was being cultivated with GM crops by 23 million farmers. In 2005, with the net trade exports from India totalling $9.3 billion and net trade imports $5.5 billion, India was a net exporter with a surplus which climbed up to nearly record levels of ten times by 2015. One-third of the exports is made up of commodities, onequarter is made of intermediate products and the final products constitute 40 per cent of the total agricultural export with milled Basmati rice being the biggest export item.

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Cotton and wheat form the top commodities. Soya bean meal, an intermediate product, makes up 9 per cent of the exports. Final products like cashew nuts, beef, coffee and tea make up 14 per cent of the exports. India’s agricultural imports are focused on intermediate products that account for 56 per cent of the total imports. Final products make up 31 per cent and commodities account for 13 per cent of the total imports. Vegetable oils such as soya bean oil and palm oil form the largest portion of the imports, the others being silk, cotton, cashew nuts, Scotch whisky, dried peas, raw wool and hides. The Indian tariff structure is based on and varies in accordance with the value of the product and its domestic supply. India is the largest trading partner of the European Union which accounts for nearly 21 per cent of the total Indian trade, closely followed by the US, China and some of the countries in the Gulf and Africa. It also has free trade agreements with South Asian countries and ASEAN. ❄ After continuously enjoying the bounty of the land for some years, things swerved sharply for Bhaviah when one day a panicked cultivator came running to Holenarsipur and in a breathless tone shrieked, “Aynore, aynore” (Sir! Sir!). The peasant went on to inform him that a large piece of his land adjacent to the neighbouring village of Goregundi had submerged under water. The news perturbed Bhaviah but without wasting a minute, he set out on foot to examine the situation himself. The Karnataka government had, as a measure to improve irrigation, raised the water level of Goregundi’s tank. The capacity of the tank thus improved, but the resultant increase caused the backwaters of the tank to overflow on to an area of about 3–4 acres of the adjacent fields which belonged to Bhaviah.

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The submerged land was thus rendered useless for the cultivators. Leave aside sowing of seeds, the land was not fit for even ploughing. This innately sanguine man who always maintained a calm front in the face of adversities did not waste time. His land was precious to him, and the pain he felt at its damage was no less intense than what has been beautifully depicted in the movies Do Bigha Zamin and Mother India. Immediately Bhaviah filed a petition with the executive engineer of the irrigation department, asking him to look into the matter. In a strongly worded letter, he upbraided them for their negligence that had caused the backwaters of the raised tank to flow over the adjacent fields. He exhorted them to pay him a suitable compensation for the loss of his land. The submergence of the land had yet another ramification, which became evident only when the dust of the loss had settled down— useful crops could no longer be cultivated. The family was deprived of food grains and the loss kept mounting every passing year. Henceforth, apart from demanding a new piece of land, he also voiced the issue of compensation for the crops. The petition for compensation for his submerged land lay with the irrigation department for a long time. Bhaviah also directed reminders about the mounting loss of crops and the interest thereof. The value of lost crops, when calculated from the year of submergence, could surpass even the value of the land at that time. None of these reminders, however, got a response. Finally, Bhaviah knocked on the doors of the court in Holenarsipur. There were hearings and discussions for nearly five years after the submergence of his nearly four acres of land. In 1967, the court gave a verdict. It exhorted Karnataka’s irrigation department to compensate Bhaviah with a land equivalent in size to the land lost due to submergence, and decreed a fixed sum to be paid against the loss of crops and the interest accrued over the years. The money to be paid was in several thousand rupees, an amount that was never before seen or imagined in their household.

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Like the dictum “every cloud has a silver lining”, the submerged land in a way brought a bounty to my grandparents in the autumn of their lives. The court might have looked favourably at Bhaviah’s case as his losses had fortuitously occurred at a time when, after long consideration, the Indian government had embarked on a Crop Insurance Scheme in 1965.

❄

An effective crop insurance system is critical as a major public policy objective to minimize the impact of crop losses due to natural disasters—to cushion income losses for farmers, to finance inputs for agricultural production in the next planting season and to deepen the penetration of agricultural credit for investment to boost agricultural productivity. In 2000, the scope and coverage of the comprehensive crop insurance scheme was expanded and a new scheme called the National Agricultural Insurance Scheme was launched with equal participation of the state and central governments, to cover small and marginal loanee farmers and, on an optional basis, non-loanee farmers, sharecroppers and tenants. The scheme provided coverage for all types of crops such as cereals, millets and pulses besides wheat and paddy, all kinds of oilseeds and a slew of commercial and horticultural crops. It offered farmers protection against crop failure due to non-preventable natural calamities such as natural fire and lightning; storm, hailstorm, cyclone, typhoon, tempest, hurricane, tornado, flood, inundation and landslide; drought and dry spells; and pests, diseases and so on. Three levels of indemnity rates—90 per cent, 80 per cent and 60 per cent—are fixed corresponding to low-, medium- and highrisk areas for all crops; the sum insured depending on the loan amount extended by option to the threshold yield or guaranteed yield for the crop multiplied by the level of indemnity. Crop-yield assessment for production estimation and crop insurance is made

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by crop-cutting experiments per unit area undertaken by the state administrations. The scheme which is administered by the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) was first implemented by the General Insurance Corporation of India and later by the Agricultural Insurance Company of India Limited on behalf of the MoA. As of 2008, the scheme covered more than 110 million farmers and 11.42 million hectares of cropped area and subsidies comprised a significant part of the premium collected. The Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme (WBCIS) is another popular scheme launched in 2007 which overcomes the flaws of earlier schemes such as delayed claims settlement and basis risk wherein despite having severe crop losses, farmers receive no claim payment. The WBCIS is a unique weather-based insurance product designed to provide insurance protection against losses in crop yield resulting from adverse weather incidences. It provides payout against adverse rainfall incidences (both deficit and excess) during the kharif season and adverse conditions of weather parameters like frost, heat, relative humidity, unseasonal rains, and so on during the rabi season. The product design and its shape are based on strong agronomic principles and enjoy a government subsidy. For the purpose of compensation, a reference unit area is considered which is linked to a reference weather station (RWS). Adverse weather incidences as recorded on the RWS during the season entitle all the insured cultivators of the area for a particular insured crop to an “on par payout” subject to the weather triggers as defined in the “payout structure” and the terms and conditions of the scheme. The amount of insurance protection is broadly the cost of the inputs incurred by the insurer in raising the crop. This insurance scheme gives the advantage of fast claim settlement with no forms to be submitted as the trigger weather events are independently verified and measured. Under this

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scheme, private insurance companies are allowed to compete with public insurers to offer subsidized products. ❄ While Bhaviah ran from pillar to post for justice in order to reinforce his relationship with his beloved ancestral land, Narayana severed off the last link with his part of the ancestral land. He sold off all the land he had in the village and bid a final goodbye. While he and his wife worked in small towns, their children were sent to Mysore and put up in a rented room. Roti packets would be sent to them through a bus driver going to the city. Narayana continued to study till he acquired the qualification of a “Kannada Pandit”, which is equivalent to a degree. At last, with sheer determination and will, he had fulfilled his long-cherished dream of acquiring a higher education and moving to the city. Winds of a new India, of a new political order had brought changes to my ancestral village too. Narsihebbariah and Chelvamma were now living under the loving care of their daughters Savitri and Shakuntala. They had moved to the new house built on their eldest son’s vacant plot and given the ancestral house to their youngest son Shiva. The construction of this new shelter was partly funded by Bhaviah and partly by Narayana. Bhaviah also contributed items like the grinding stone and wooden doors dismantled from his Beekanhalli house. Shiva and his family continued to live in the ancestral house for the next several decades. Since Shakuntala worked as a primary school teacher, she would often be out of Gubbi on transfer. Savitri too had made Gubbi her home and lived for the next five decades in her new parental home. Unlike Shakuntala whose education had empowered her, Savitri had to find other means of making a living. But living in Bangalore had also given her a precious gift. An adult education programme near her house had lifted her from the legion

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of illiterates to someone who had basic literacy. Moreover, not so naïve to return empty-handed after living for long in the big city of Bangalore, she surreptitiously made official documents of the house she and her husband were renting. The property which earlier had no record now had Savitri as its owner on papers, and was sold for a reasonable price to an eager buyer. Savitri deposited the money with a money dealer in the village so that it could be utilized in times of need. Chelvamma, completely dejected at her youngest daughter’s bleak future, used intrepid ways to help her. Out of the sacks of their land’s produce delivered at their courtyard, she would secretly collect a small bag of grains for Savitri that could fetch a reasonable price in the weekly market. Apart from taking care of the house and her old parents, Savitri engaged in planting flowering and fruit-yielding plants in the backyard which developed into a garden bigger than a normal kitchen garden. She would also keep herself busy with preparing tamarind fruits, which would eventually be sold in the weekly market.

❄ Although the economy improved, one of the many problems the country faced was the massive influx of Hindu refugees, mainly peasants from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), who needed resettlement. There were also refugees from Tibet. Vast areas of land were taken over by the government in central India to develop villages so that the refugees could be resettled. Central India or Madhya Bharat, with rock paintings dating back to the Paleolithic and Stone ages, is known as the oldest region to have been inhabited by human beings. With its vast terrain of mountains and rivers, it was also one of the earliest settlement regions for Aryans. In the Ramayana Lord Rama lived in the forest Dandakaranya along with his wife and brother. The massive project of refugee resettlement in 1959 was named Dandakaranya by the government of India.

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When Bhaviah received a letter from his son informing him that the latter had got an opportunity to work for the Dandakaranya project in Jagdalpur town in the Bastar district of Madhya Pradesh, he was overjoyed. Though deeply embroiled in his court case, he sent out an immediate reply, “Did our Ramachandra get a mission in Dandakaranya?” This happy news was, however, soon overshadowed by an extremely sad one. In November 1963, when Gubbi’s infrastructure had seen improvements with the introduction of a bus service and a high school, Ramachandra received a letter from Bhaviah informing him of his father’s sad demise. At the old age of eighty-one, an ailing and bedridden Narsihebbariah breathed his last at his home in Gubbi, leaving his wife and daughters completely shattered and heartbroken. But what Bhaviah wrote further was indeed very shocking! A messenger from Gubbi had come to deliver the news to Bhaviah in Holenarsipur. He rushed at once, covering the distance partly by foot and partly by bus. Reaching his village, he went straight to the cremation ghat where his father’s body was kept. Being the eldest son, he performed his duty of lighting the funeral pyre. The shraadh (wake) ceremonies for the departed soul were held daily from the seventh day onwards. His extreme grief over his father’s death very unexpectedly turned into intense distress when the screams of his mother—“Beda, Beda” (don’t do it, please)—rent the air. Chelvamma was forced to shave her hair, remove her earrings and bangles and made to wear a red sari symbolizing her widowhood. The vermillion bindi on her forehead was also rubbed off. Shiva had imposed this cruelty on his own mother! The unruly acts were attributed to his pent-up antagonism and marked the beginning of his acts of vengeance against his siblings that only grew worse with time. While it saddened Bhaviah to watch his adorable youngest brother becoming vicious, it was too late to set matters right. Due

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to his nonchalance, he had failed to notice the growing sense of injustice that had been brewing in his youngest sibling’s mind since the construction of the new house. Shiva had put in much labour and roof material from his garden’s areca plantation and expected something in return. On his part, Narayana too had failed to realize that the sale of his Gubbi land years earlier could prove as insidious as to stoke a smouldering anger in his younger brother, who had, in his absence, taken care of his land’s paddy and sugar cane cultivation. Shiva had expected some returns from the sale of the land. When the long and arduous stride of his elder brothers for upward economic mobility was beginning to yield results, Shiva’s life had slumped into an abyss. Shiva and his wife had many children. The income from their garden wasn’t enough to meet even the most basic needs of their family, like food. Albeit belatedly, Bhaviah realized that Shiva himself was partly responsible for his disillusionment. The precious thota that he had fondly bequeathed to him was neglected and ill-nurtured. The negligence was the root cause of his sibling’s floundering state. Apparently, he didn’t bother to work on the new areca leaves and creepers. He did not tie and disentangle areca vines, a process which is supposed to support their growth. Nor did he supply them with the right fertilizers at the right time. Shiva lacked the needed focus and mostly whiled away his time interfering in other people’s business and playing cards. His negligence towards the garden had encouraged miscreant cultivators, who had started stealing a big number of trees from the garden to build their houses. The garden was slowly loosing valuable trees and there was no further growth. Moreover, under Karnataka’s forestry laws, the vast pastoral land of Gubbi was fast being converted to a forest. Not having enough forage for the livestock, people were slowly losing their cattle possessions. This resulted in significant reductions in the amount of milk and butter available to them.

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Matters got worse—Bhaviah had to deal with his antagonistic brother’s demand for the new house where his now-widowed mother and sisters were living. Bhaviah was the rightful owner of the house, but the selfless man had desired, as advised by Narayana too, to transfer its ownership to his hapless sister Savitri. Bhaviah’s legal transfer of the ownership of the house—first to his brother Narayana and then to Savitri—enraged Shiva so much that he filed a case in the munsiff court, Holenarsipur, protesting the transfer and claiming his share therein. Hence, alongside the hearings of his submerged land, Bhaviah now started visiting the court for a case filed by his own brother Shiva. Besides grieving for his father, my grandfather was now pained that his association with his ancestral land and the village house had been reduced to court hearings.

❄

From an economic perspective, land is linked to critical issues of agricultural productivity, agrarian relations, industrial uses, infrastructure development, employment opportunities, housing, and so on. A skewed land distribution pattern leads to social discontentment, widespread unrest, violent venting of anger and frustration with the situation often becoming very volatile in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society like India. The concept of land as a commodity is in conflict with traditional concepts of common property, specifically in societies like those of many tribal people living in resource-rich regions throughout India, who generally do not have a documented system of land rights. A case in point is the recently reported violence, disputes and high rates of death among the tea plantation workers of Assam and West Bengal where the Plantation Act meant for the welfare of labour is violated: workers are paid poorly and they

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are denied even the basic amenities. Additionally, the century-old migrant tribal labour community is excluded from government welfare schemes and services. To strike a balance between economic development and social equity is imperative. Viable land-use patterns should be envisaged that ensure high agricultural productivity along with social justice and environmental sustainability. A development strategy for land which is inclusive and equitable within an institutional framework brings long-term peace and harmony in society. The frequent land acquisition exercise by the government—a grave cause of farmers’ grievance, especially of marginal farmers— has been rightly addressed with the Land Ceiling Act and the Land Acquisition Act which not only prevent large pockets of land from getting concentrated into a few hands but also provide much higher compensation than the market rates to the affected farmers and the rural poor. ❄ The nation bore an immeasurable loss when, after losing a war with China, Jawaharlal Nehru passed away in 1964. The void was soon filled by Lal Bahadur Shastri who, after the victory in the Indo– Pak War of 1965, graciously struck a chord with the soldier and peasant communities alike with his chant “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan” (hail the soldier, hail the peasant). Already strained by the wars with China and Pakistan, the nation’s economy suffered another setback due to a drought. Under Shastri, a new agenda for massive reforms in agricultural production was charted out with the help of external agencies, but sadly, he did not live to see its actual implementation due to his sudden demise after a UN peace declaration with Pakistan. Around this time, in the mid-1960s the crop returns from Bhaviah’s remaining cultivable land in Beekanhalli had markedly

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reduced, either because of drought or because the cultivators had grown too dishonest. But instead of penalizing them for not bringing in his share of crops, he would think of ways to help them. For the agriculturist who knew in detail the problems of cultivation, the announcement of new crop improvement programmes in the country appeared more delusional than exciting, especially for marginal farmers. An opportunity to contribute to the welfare of peasants through political participation came to Bhaviah during the general elections of 1965. He had lived in Holenarsipur for almost a decade and in that time cultivated the acquaintance of a local politician, Mayi Gowda, who was a representative of the peasant community. In all earnestness, he set out to help the politician campaign for the elections. Despite objections from his wife and children, he busied himself with painting banners with election slogans, incurring all the related expenses himself. He had studied the constitution thoroughly, and before promising to help Gowda with campaigning, Bhaviah ensured that the politician signed on a set of rules and demands laid out by him. He made sure that his demands during the election campaign didn’t digress from the constitutional framework. All his demands, including the one for building irrigation wells in rural areas, were for the benefit of the peasant community. A conscientious and diligent worker, Bhaviah’s tuitions also had many takers—at its peak, he had enough students to earn as much as `300 per month. Buoyed by the increased earning, Akka would make crisp Mysorepaks—her father Anniah’s favourite sweet made with pure ghee—and carry them to Mysore.

❄ After my father took up the project in Dandakaranya, my parents settled down in Jagdalpur, a tribal region in the Bastar district of

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Madhya Pradesh. Away from their homeland, they had made a home for themselves in the Hindi land. They would occasionally visit cousin Venkatramu in Pilani, where he worked as a lecturer in the engineering college, and my maternal aunts in Delhi. Availing the central government’s LTC (leave travel concession), they also made yearly visits to their home state Karnataka. Our relatives including Anniah and Ammiah and my maternal grandparents also made visits to North India. My grandmother Akka got a chance to visit North India when she accompanied my mother home after my birth. Later in 1965, after the birth of my brother, my parents went to Holenarsipur for his naming ceremony. Bhaviah’s happiness had increased manifold with the birth of his grandson. “This is our little Sun god Ravi,” a pleased Bhaviah said, holding my infant brother as the priest muttered his name. But his happy face hid a deep pain in his heart—the pain of seeing what had become of his ancestral home and his mother. Chelvamma, constantly wallowing in grief over the loss of her husband, had slowly lost her mental balance. Her speech became jumbled, and she would unconsciously defecate irrespective of time and place. Bhaviah took his mother from Gubbi to Holenarsipur and, duly assisted by Akka, looked after her for six to eight months. As a dutiful son, he would formally attend to cleaning his mother’s soiled clothes and soiled flooring most ungrudgingly and affectionately. Whenever the ailing elderly woman would come to her senses, she would demand to be taken back to her home in Gubbi. She was finally taken back and left in the care of her daughters Savitri and Shakuntala till she breathed her last in March 1966. With both the parents dead, a generation had passed away. The lives that were led both with hope and despair, with success and failure, were thus extinguished. I was told that Narsihebbariah would often lament while conducting public discourses on the Ramayana that his fate was similar to King Dasharatha’s because none of his sons was living with him.

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While Bhaviah agonized and tried to come to terms with the loss of his mother, Shiva caused more trouble over the house. In his defense, Shiva was emphatic only on one point—that he had ten children to feed and that he was reduced to penury at the time with no income from cultivation. After five years of arguments and counter arguments, the case was decided in favour of Savitri. With the house becoming her own, Savitri extricated the money from the money tout to renovate the house and rent it out. She divided the house into four small portions with partitions. Each portion was provided with a front and a back door, a small kitchen and a bathroom. Savitri and her sister used one of the bigger portions. Eventually as electricity came to the village, Savitri got electricity supplied to the house. In due course, she also got a toilet built in her backyard. The other three portions were given out on rent to teachers or those working in the public works department while posted in Gubbi. Both the sisters lived together for several years and had the most frugal lifestyle. They shared the expenses: Savitri contributed to the household from the income from tamarind fruits and tenants; Shakuntala, from her salary. Occasionally, Savitri’s husband would pay visits to Gubbi and spend a couple of days with his wife. Except for such short visits, he continued with his irresponsible ways.

❄

Visiting our home state during annual school vacations or for weddings and other functions would expose us to a whole array of authentic Kannada food varieties. I remember when we travelled to Karnataka from Jagdalpur, there were no direct trains or superfast express trains. So we would take a bus to Raipur and change a few trains before we reached Mysore. The long and weary journeys would have their fair share of excitement. We especially looked forward to the food sold by the itinerant vendors at the railway stations.

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Ravi and I would sit, our eyes darting as the train would pull into the platform, hoping to catch a glimpse of the steaming idlis or vadas. The tastiest would be curd rice with lime pickle available at the Madras station. My father would get down the train to bring some of that lip-smacking food and would run back as fast as he could, balancing the food in one hand and keeping the folds of his dhoti intact with the other. Our faces would finally light up when our horse cart from the Mysore railway station would enter a small lane in the Chamundipuram locality and pull up in front of my Ajji and Thatha’s (maternal grandparents) home. Their simple home spoke of their own life’s struggle. Being a clerk, Thatha was a man of meagre resources. For several years, Ajji had to make do with just one sari and my mother and her siblings learnt to rotate the tiled roof with long sticks to stay safe from water leaking through it during rains. Growing up in a North Indian state and visiting my maternal aunts in Delhi and my other kin in Karnataka instilled in me a strong nationalistic feeling along with a distinct regional identity. The meaning of something foreign probably first occurred to me when Venkatramu, who had moved to the US, sent me an American doll on my seventh birthday. Our visits to our home state became less frequent as my brother and I moved on to higher classes, and railway stations became places to pick up Amar Chitra Katha, Rajagopalachari’s Ramayana and Mahabharata and Enid Blyton’s mystery series from Higginbothams news stands. In later years we used to visit Bangalore where my maternal grandparents had moved. Their move to a new home in the upscale Jayanagar in Bangalore symbolized their upwardly mobile journey, where now with Thatha’s pension and her sons settled in engineering careers, Ajji owned gold jewellery and a trousseau of rustling Kanjeevaram silk saris which she meticulously maintained till her last breath.

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During our stays in Bangalore my father would make it a point to familiarize us with all the relatives. The most splendid house would be of his second aunt who returned to and settled down in Bangalore after completing service in Malaya. Our last destination would invariably be Akka and Bhaviah’s home in Holenarsipur. Loss had turned into gain and had propelled another venture. ❄ Despite the court’s orders, the Karnataka government failed to pay Bhaviah the compensation in lieu of the submerged land and the lost crops. Bhaviah had no option other than to file a petition in court. Part of the effort yielded results in 1967. As a compensation for the initial crop loss, he was awarded an amount of `4,000. Sooner than later, the efforts of petitions and counter petitions led to one more compensation. In 1968, in lieu of the land rendered useless by water overflow, the Karnataka government allotted four acres of barren land in Pillenhalli, a village near Dodkunche town. This was a welcome move for Bhaviah, an agriculturist who was ever passionate about land and cultivation. Even at the advanced age of sixty-four, he couldn’t resist the idea of farming again and went to Pillenhalli. He bought two bullocks for the purpose. With an axe and a plough in hand, he would set out early in the morning from Holenarsipur to reach the Pillenhalli land by bus. When travelling every day became too arduous, he rented a room in Dodkunche. But this time, he was not supported by his wife. Akka did not want to go back to the life in the fields, so she steered clear of this new venture. The formidable task of turning a fallow land arable was not unknown to my grandfather, but this time he had no support. He continued tilling the Pillenhalli land for a year with the help of only his bullocks till the soil became loose, arable and fit to cultivate. While

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doing this, his second son Suryanarayana, now a college student, was uppermost in his mind. Even after a decade-and-a-half of leaving Beekanhalli, Bhaviah hoped against hope that his second son would develop a liking for the land. Suryanarayana went to Pillenhalli with his father and tilled the land for a few days. They both ploughed and sowed some seeds. Those few days left scars and injuries on his hands, and Suryanarayana returned to Holenarsipur. Meanwhile, very soon another fruit of Bhaviah’s labour was also ripening. The last but not the least of the compensations was coming to fruition. “School building on auction … school building on auction.” One fine day, the citizens of the quiet town of Holenarsipur awoke to the announcement accompanied by the sound of drums on streets. The court had viewed the non-compliance of its order by the State Irrigation Department seriously. As a penalty, the court had issued orders for attachment and auction of the Government Boys Middle School building if the payment in lieu of the accumulating crop losses till the date of land compensation together with compensation for the submerged land was not made within a period of two weeks. Other than the beating of drums in Holenarsipur, the matter was brought to public knowledge through radio announcements and newspapers circulated in every corner of Hassan district. For my grandfather, it was a well-deserved triumph over a longstanding grievance. His joy was boundless. The state government responded by paying the first instalment of the total payable amount of `11,000. For the father, who by now had fully realized the importance of education for a girl, the money helped not only to support Bhavani’s BSc and BEd degrees, but also to get her married with traditional grandeur and to everyone’s satisfaction. The series of lump sum payment Bhaviah received from the state government at one point prompted Narayana to jokingly remark to his elder brother, “Wow, Annayya is milking away his cow.”

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While on the one hand my grandfather was receiving the compensation money, on the other hand India’s agriculture sector showed a marked improvement. Indira Gandhi had assumed office at the Centre and had carried forward the programmes started by her predecessor. High-yielding varieties of seeds from the American Foundation and other new farming techniques made the Green Revolution possible in India. The Green Revolution saw unprecedented growth in agriculture and by 1970, India declared itself free of food shortage and stopped imports. Concurrently, the White Revolution was also fast gaining momentum and milk dairies opened up in all parts of the country. Nonetheless, the silver lining faded into the background very fast. The showers that arrived were increasingly accompanied by lightning and thunderstorm and proved devastating for both the individual and the nation. India’s success in food self-sufficiency leading to exports in the subsequent decades was increasingly accompanied with large sections of the population marred by poverty. Without enough purchasing power to buy or to eat, Mother India’s many children remained hungry. This brought her into the league of nations with the highest numbers of undernourished population. The culprit was the inexorable growth in population.

❄

Karnataka has taken part in all kinds of crop-insurance schemes since they were first introduced in India to help farmers manage or mitigate the risks of crop failure. The last time farmers in Gubbi benefited from the compulsory national agricultural insurance scheme was when they had a total potato crop failure. A dairy outlet under Karnataka’s milk cooperative scheme ensures that everyone in the village has access to milk under subsidized rates.

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As other measures for boosting the agricultural income of small and marginal farmers, the Karnataka government has laid out timely sourcing of agricultural inputs through fair price shops, which are managed by gram-panchayat-led institutions. This has helped in expediting the mechanization of agriculture with emphasis on implements suitable to small landholdings, development of seed farms, increased supply of electricity, establishment of warehouses for cold storage and agro-processing, AGMARK grading of agricultural products, e-tendering for transparency in the sale of agricultural produce, improved legalities and the establishment of a market intelligence cell. Keeping in mind the aim of bringing more dry land under horticulture cultivation, an enhanced watershed development for soil conservation, forest conservation, crop insurance; rainwater harvesting structures for groundwater recharge and protective irrigation; online MIS and improved infrastructure have been planned. Recently, Karnataka, along with a few other states, allowed foreign direct investment in agriculture retail with an aim to ensure greater price security for farmers by linking them to the global supply chain and to create jobs for small and marginal farmers in agro-processing and allied industries of retail chains. ❄ Bhaviah’s tryst with his native Gubbi continued notwithstanding Shiva’s constant rebuttal of the court’s decision in Savitri’s favour. Shiva had now filed an appeal in the district court of Hassan. On each day of the hearing, Shiva would faithfully attend the court proceedings from Gubbi, and on the opponents’ side, Savitri and Bhaviah would do the same. On one such day, Bhaviah bought some cucumbers and stood on the court premises sharing them with his sister Savitri. The judge, who happened to pass by, felt a pang of sympathy for the elderly gentleman and the woman eating cucumber

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and stopped to ask why they were in court. Deeply moved by their side of the story he indicted Shiva of creating problems for his sister and passed the judgment in her favour. This made an apoplectic Shiva run behind the fast-moving bus carrying his brother and sister. Very soon Bhaviah was called to help Savitri again regarding a theft that had occurred in the portion of her house occupied by a tenant. Shiva had helped the tenant in drafting a complaint letter to the police. The complaint specifically alleged that “Satamma” was the suspect. By the next evening, two police constables reached Gubbi with a notice addressed to “Smt. Satamma”. Though she pleaded her innocence, the constables insisted that she accept the notice and go to the police station. Savitri appealed to her neighbours and relatives, but no one wanted to intervene in her matters. Resigned to her fate, she was about to accept the notice when she observed that the complaint talked about a “Satamma”. Without wasting a moment, she mustered enough courage to yell out, “I am Savitramma and not Satamma. This notice is not meant for me, and I refuse to receive it.” In support of her claim, Savitri produced a postal letter received a few days ago clearly showing her name as “Savitramma”. Unable to rebut her claim, the constables left. Savitramma thus narrowly escaped the ignominy of visiting the police station on false charges. Shiva’s plan was foiled, but he did not accept defeat. A few days later, when Savitri left the village there was another theft in her house. On returning, she was shocked to find her house nearly emptied and many of her saris, utensils and several other items missing. When news reached her brother Narayana, he immediately bought some saris and utensils and set out for the village to offer solace and comfort to his sister. Shiva then went on an avenging spree against both his brothers. In his next move, he sought to unravel some of the supposedly false information in Narayana’s employment records. He tried to convince the education department of Karnataka of Narayana’s apparently falsely recorded date of birth which wrongfully entitled him to benefits.

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He even brandished a dagger at Narayana. While a couple of days of incarceration in Holenarsipur was inevitable, it was his brother Bhaviah and sister-in-law Akka who brought him food in jail during those days. But Shiva finally won. Narayana received retirement orders three years earlier than he was actually due. For Narayana and his family, who, consequent to the charges, were dreading severe punishment, the government’s decision came as a big relief despite their loss in earnings.

❄ In July 1969, the United States of America conquered outer space and sent the first man to set foot on the moon. “A small step for man and a giant leap for mankind” was broadcast and heard by millions of people across the world. Despite India’s giant leap in conquering food shortage with American help and the setting up of new industries with help from Britain and the USSR, millions of rural Indians remained unemployed and hungry. As a young girl, I too remember seeing many hungry faces, whether in Jagdalpur, Madhya Pradesh, or in Mysore, Karnataka. Poverty and malnourishment were ubiquitous—in bus stands, market places or trains, among the tribal people in Jagdalpur who made a living by selling in the weekly bazaars or among their womenfolk who worked as daily help in people’s houses. One day, Ravi and I accompanied Mother to the evening market, looking for some sweet items. A vendor’s black laddoos looked especially attractive. When my mother asked what it was made of, the vendor replied, “We have plenty of black ants around us, so why not make desserts from them without investing too much on the ingredients.” The sweet ball almost fell from her hand. In those years, Mother used to sing us a popular bedtime story in Kannada, “Dharani mandal madhya dolage” (in the middle of the

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earth, in the kingdom of Karnataka …). In this fable Punyakoti, a cow, unwaveringly keeps her promise of returning to become the meal for a hungry lion after being allowed to meet her calf once, exemplifying the moral of truth. Visits to our native state revealed many other facets of hunger. Once while visiting my maternal grandparents in Mysore, I saw Ajji cleaning up the courtyard with buckets of water as the fresh morning air and the first streaks of sunlight entered the house through the high-ceilinged tiled roof. After cleaning, she made rangoli and venerated the tulsi katte (basil plant). Just then, a middle-aged woman came singing a song “Bhagyada Lakshmi baramma” (oh, Lakshmi, the goddess of luck, please come and bless us). On hearing the woman’s voice, Ajji scurried back inside her kitchen and came out with a few cups of rice grains. While she poured rice into her bag, the woman shared her myriad household woes with her. Again, late in the night, we heard distant growls slowly approaching us. Our maternal uncle, then an engineering student in the NIE, frightened us by saying that the sounds were made by the prowling ghosts. Ravi and I quickly climbed into our beds and hid under the covers. As the sounds came closer, we could distinctly hear “Koula thai, koula thai.” As we peeped out of the windows fearfully, we glimpsed men in rags, fully covered, with bowls in hands. Such “Koula thais” would come daily and put their bowls in front of houses hoping for someone’s charity. The woman in the morning and the men at night showed the ugly side of India which had remained hungry despite experiencing growth. How unfortunate that they had to use different garbs to veil their desperation! With perseverance Bhaviah could successfully transform his destiny. Undeniably, his education helped him to wade through life and reach ashore.

❄

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According to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization, known as the Rome Declaration on World Food Security, food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Food security in India in the post-reforms era is confronted with issues of trade, climate change, financial crisis, food and fuel prices, and so on. After much consideration, realizing that the TPDS (targeted public distribution system) scheme, introduced fifteen years ago to feed the poorest and most vulnerable of the country with essential commodities like rice, wheat and edible oils at subsidized prices, has not been able to ensure food security, the Indian government announced the National Food Security Bill in December 2011. The bill was signed into law in 2013. It offers significant government subsidies to the poorest for staples like rice and wheat and gives a legal right to food to roughly two-thirds of the country’s population. About three-quarters of the rural and half of the urban population will be covered under this proposed bill. The bill comes with a liability of `949.73 billion for the Indian government with a requirement to invest `1.1 trillion to boost farm output over the next few years. The existing social protection schemes targeting the poorest segments of the population like Antyodaya Anna Yojana, the midday meal scheme, the integrated child development scheme and women empowerment policies are being continuously revived to achieve more effective outcomes under the government’s Five Year Plans with special emphasis on women’s health and education in the 11th Five Year Plan (2007–12). NGOs like Goonj have made a notable contribution towards the welfare of the rural poor, whereas those like Akshay Patra in Bangalore have worked to feed the hungry. In view of the increased need for food production, Indian leaders have called for a second green revolution based on modern technology and modern business practices.

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To boost the income of rural citizens, especially from unorganized sectors, and to increase their purchasing power by providing them with guaranteed employment, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act was launched in September 2005. This act aims at providing at least 100 days of guaranteed employment to the rural poor in every financial year. This act, whose primary objectives are employment creation, regenerating the natural resource base and creating productive assets through a transparent and accountable rural governance, was renamed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in 2009. The peasants and poor labourers from Gubbi have benefitted immensely from this scheme. The gram panchayati in Holenarsipur has been delegated the responsibility and funds to employ the rural poor at their discretion under MGNREGA for many state development projects like roads and construction of other infrastructure. Recently, to help the loanee farmers and peasants, loans amounting to `25,000 and more with interests were waived off by the Panchayati using these funds. In neighbouring taluks, drought-hit lands have been compensated nominally. The Karnataka government also offers Yeshasvini cards to drought-hit farmers for free health checkups. ❄ Though Bhaviah had received the money and settled the court case with Shiva, he was still not living in peace. The autumn showers of his life were set to increasingly being accompanied by thunderstorms. The last of the storms was unusually strong and embittering. The Zamindari Abolition Act—a policy aimed at land reforms and introduced with much fanfare in the early days of India’s independence—was implemented in the late sixties as the Land Tenancy Act to which my grandfather could never reconcile till his

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end. After nearly five years of its implementation, this act swept all over Karnataka and, during the tenure of Chief Minister Devaraj Urs, brought tectonic changes to the land rights of a farmer. Big zamindars to small farmers like my grandfather helplessly watched their land being seized by the government to be given away to their tenants. The act implied that the farmers who actually worked on the land were entitled to their ownership. It was meant to discourage absentee landlordism. Subsequently, tribunals were formed to invite applications from tillers and to quickly give judgment after hearing the parties in person. Despite Bhaviah being the legal owner of the land for all practical reasons, the tillers and cultivators were the masters of the land. The initial bounty that used to come to my grandparents had dwindled considerably in the later years. The submergence of land had reduced the size of cultivable land to only about 5 acres, thus also reducing the produce a great deal. But the man who always had a soft corner for the farming class hardly ever grudged or expressed his unhappiness to them for not sharing the produce. He continued to maintain an affectionate relationship with the cultivators, trying to voice their concerns through his correspondence with the court or the state government. They would visit him regularly in town, lovingly addressing him as “anniah” or “aynore”, and whatever little of the produce they brought, according to their wish, was gladly accepted by him. They continued to cultivate his land with full freedom. He would have never imagined that five years after the Land Tenancy Act was implemented, the tenants would become cognizant of its rules and betray his trust and usurp his authority over his land. As fate would have it, the brain behind the betrayal was none other than his own sibling Shiva, who saw it as an opportunity to avenge his defeat in court. Shiva instigated them and made them aware of the ramifications of the new act, according to which if they fought for their rights, they could make the land their own. Once the

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farmers and tillers were convinced of their rights, they started filing applications with the tribunals. Although my grandfather produced records to show that he had engaged the tillers on a daily-wage basis, the tribunal did not accept his pleas. Based on the statements of the farmers and their applications, the ownership of the land was decided in their favour. Thus, the land that had escaped submergence, up to about 5.5 acres in size, was transferred to the tenants. My highly displeased grandfather now wrote a petition about the unfair transfer of land to the tenants. This was the only piece of land left of his ancestral property and by no means would he give it away to someone else. All his efforts to convey to the officials his love for his ancestral land and the fact that he had actually not been receiving his share of the land’s produce for many years, went in vain. All efforts to convince the policymakers that he had never questioned the tenants, nor ever penalized them for not complying with the sharing arrangement agreed upon and that what truly mattered to him most was that the tillers were able to cultivate and earn their bread from his land, proved futile. His land was precious and priceless. It pained him that his ancestral asset was taken away from him. The strong bond that a farmer or a tiller shares with his land, like the one between a child and her mother, has been immortalized in movies and songs like “Mere desh ki dharti sona ugle” (my country’s land can grow gold), but the same did not touch the heartstrings of the policymakers. Their policy was devised to discourage the zamindars who engaged people to work in their land but never once held the plough themselves. For a cultivator and landowner like my grandfather, whose bond with his land was stronger than the one with his own mother, this policy proved devastating. His agitated mind refused to accept any kind of compensation from the government. After years of appealing and reappealing, he lost the case. It was the end of yet another story of Bhaviah’s deep association with the green Mother Earth. His daughter Sarasu became a widow

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after ten years of her marriage. Her husband died of an unknown illness leaving her with an unborn child after many miscarriages. Thanks to the outstanding medical care given to her by Dr Ramashastri (the well wisher of yesteryears) and his son, the baby survived due to frequent checkups and timely medication. Sarasu’s daughter was born a couple of months after her husband’s death. The child, Jayashree, was precious to her and to the entire family, especially to the grandparents Akka and Bhaviah. With her continuous transfers in and around Hassan district, Saraswati was unable to tend to her child and so the responsibility of taking care of her infant daughter rested with the grandparents. It was time for another leaf of the earlier era to wither and fall from its tree. Bhaviah lost his father-in-law Anniah, after which his mother-in-law came to stay with them for her remaining years. This time too, Bhaviah served the old lady with total devotion, utmost affection and compassion.

❄

It has been observed that in many states the land reforms undertaken after Independence with the stated purpose of removal of semifeudal agrarian structure and equitable distribution of land among the rural poor to ensure them social justice and dignity have increased agricultural productivity to some extent but have not alleviated poverty. Unlike the post-Independence land reforms, the postliberalization land-reform policies of the government are marketdriven, aimed at increasing the GDP to fulfil the macroeconomic objectives of financial institutions. Land titling and registration for better property rights for the rural poor and linking them with financial markets are steps in this direction. In the face of the indigenous struggles across the country for sovereignty over land, even though many states were divided over linguistic lines and availability of natural resources, violence and unrest continue in the North East states and the tribal region of Jharkhand.

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A new holistic view of land reform includes rehabilitation of people displaced due to huge irrigation projects, water resource management and joint forest management—to preserve not only the environment but also the people living in and around forests. To control the Maoist movement in Jharkhand, the Saranda Action Plan was proposed by the union rural development minister in 2011 which encompasses the overall development of the region of Saranda, including building of houses and roads and providing all the basic amenities to the tribal people of Saranda. ❄ Subsequent to the end of my father’s deputation in Jagdalpur in May 1971, we shifted to Gwalior, another city in Madhya Pradesh, where temperatures soar very high in summers and dip very low in winters. A charming historical city with a fort and old monuments and the base of the royal Scindias, Gwalior is also the birthplace of the legendary Tansen. Tansen was a great Hindustani classical musician in the Mughal Emperor Akbar’s durbar. He was known for his ability to bring rains with his rendition of “Raag Megh Malhar”. The brave Rani of Jhansi fell from the Gwalior fort while fighting the British soldiers in 1857. The valleys in the mountainous regions around Gwalior were, till the 1970s, a haven for bandits and dacoits. Shifting and adjusting to the new city had its own challenges, including the sporadically fearful nights resulting from the IndoPak War in December 1971. Slowly, however, with Ravi and I being admitted to Kendriya Vidyalaya (Central School) and our moving to the AG’s office residential quarters, we settled down. Life in the colony along with my father’s colleagues had its own charm in the absence of the clout of royalty. The central government took care of the basic needs of its employees and gave their children a competitive education system. The festival of Holi was as enjoyable with our North Indian friends as the performances by famous musicians and dancers from South India to which we were invited by our Tamil friends.

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My grandmother had visited North India only once and Bhaviah had never been there. My father regularly wrote to him inviting him to visit our home at least once. But in all those years, Bhaviah was too busy with court cases and tuitions. He said he was waiting for the right opportunity, and as soon as it came, he would come running. Concurrent to the increase in defence spending after the 1971 war, Indira Gandhi’s government invested further in agricultural research and innovation which led to a continuous increase in the country’s food production. The states that benefited most from the investment, however, were only Punjab and Haryana which were at the heart of the Green Revolution from the outset. Many other regions and their people continued to be in a moribund state. On the one hand the country’s ever-increasing population needed employment, while on the other its low and sluggish growth rate was becoming widely known as the Hindu rate of growth. Having emerged from the shadows of subjugation, every common citizen felt an urgency to work for survival. I remember that I was in the eighth grade back then. During a Hindi class, we read a poem titled “Lala, Tum Kis Chakki Ka Khate Ho” (brother, even in these difficult times how do you manage to eat and grow fat?). Suffused with patriotism, it was written during the independence movement. While it elicited many guffaws from the students who were from diverse regional backgrounds, its bottom line was clear: “Nar ho na nirash karo man ko, kuch kam karo kuch kam karo” (man, don’t be disheartened; embrace work for life). But unfortunately, despite the government’s continuous efforts to increase jobs in the public sector, the country’s unemployment rate kept increasing with more people falling below the poverty line. Food, clothing and shelter were still a problem for the masses. The energy crisis of 1974 had made the situation more challenging. Cinemas took no time to depict the same. Hindi films like Roti, Kapada aur Makaan came along with blockbusters like Sholay. Now my parents’ concern was the last of the list—“makaan”, a house. After living for almost two decades in northern India, my parents decided to go a step further in digging roots in the Hindi heartland by

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building a house—a common desire in most government employees in order to make use of the CPF loan. When Bhaviah came to know of this, he wrote an earnest letter, “Why do you want to settle so far away from us? Why not do the same here in Karnataka?” After some initial apprehension my grandfather went out of his way to show his enthusiasm for his son’s venture. By now, Bhaviah had sold off his land in Pillenhalli for a sum of `3,000. He sent the money to his son saying that it should be utilized for the house. After the spade work and ground-breaking ceremony, the work progressed but didn’t finish at the expected time much against Bhaviah’s optimistic thinking. That, however, didn’t deter him from planning his visit to see his son’s house. My grandfather made his maiden visit to Gwalior, his firstever travel out of Karnataka, in 1976. With his excellent English, he was able to converse with our neighbours and friends. My parents took Bhaviah and Akka to Agra and Delhi. That was the time of the Emergency in India and people would speculate a lot. On the train, there was hushed silence as we were told not to speak aloud, especially anything political in nature. Bhaviah, whose wound of losing his land was still fresh in his heart and mind, felt pressured to keep quiet through the journey and not launch into his usual rant against the Indian government. It was their first visit to historical places and Bhaviah was immensely happy to see the magnificence of monuments like the Taj Mahal and Delhi’s Qutab Minar. I remember that in Gwalior Bhaviah would go to a grocery shop and enquire in Kannada for some essentials. It surprised him that people in Gwalior didn’t understand even a bit of the Kannada language. Of course, his English was of no use with shopkeepers. So we taught him some basic words in Hindi. Later he would go to shops and ask “subji dev”, “gud dev” (give me vegetables and jaggery). Thanks to my grandfather, Ravi and I were introduced to the basic Kannada script. Gwalior’s heat was unbearable and the court case continued to bother him. While both my grandparents felt happy that my father

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had settled well, they desired that at least their son Suryanarayna who had also started his career at the AG’s office in Gwalior returned to Karnataka and be with them in their old age. They stayed in Gwalior for two months, after which they wanted to leave. Our new house in Gwalior was visited by many relatives, one of the first being Venkatramu, who was visiting India for the first time after migrating to the USA and completing his Phd. Going to a far-off country and being away from his kin hardly seemed to have brought any change in his core being. As Ravi and I hovered around the savouries of kodbale and kobrimithai that my mother served him, he quipped, “Let’s see who grabs a kodbale first.” In the summer of 1979, a group on pilgrimage from Karnataka visited us in our new house in Gwalior. They were mostly my mother’s relatives accompanied by my maternal grandparents. Along with them was a frail old lady, her bent body clad in a red sari—Shankaramma. She had succumbed to the orthodox traditions of the times and subsisted on only one meal a day ever since she had become a widow at the age of twelve. Nevertheless, despite her emaciated physique, she displayed remarkable mental and physical strength. She was the only one in the group to successfully trek up to the holy Kedarnath in the Himalayas without any problems. Even in Gwalior, she climbed all the steps up to the fort under the hot sun without once asking for water. Only after much coaxing did she finally accept a glass of sugar cane juice. But the summer months in the new house were difficult with frequent electricity cuts and acute water shortage. Bhaviah, who had got a feel of the summer and its heat in the last visit, wrote to his son, “Please make use of this last instalment of crop compensation so that all of you have at least cold water during the hot months.” My parents bought a small refrigerator with the money. The court had yet to give a verdict on the land that was “usurped” by the government.

❄

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Energy is the prime mover of an economy. India’s sustained economic growth is closely linked with its projected energy needs. Currently, India depends on imports for its huge requirement of energy, even though it is endowed with the best of natural resources like solar, wind, hydel and bioenergy. The National Action Plan on Climate Change provides a direction for changes at the national level in policy, planning, and public-private partnerships and lays out a global vision for modifying long-time trends for sustainable development. Under the National Plan, India has committed itself to increasing its share of solar energy (National Solar Mission) and other renewable and non-fossil-based energy sources like nuclear energy in its total energy consumption, apart from initiatives like green buildings to enhance energy efficiency in energy-intensive sectors (National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency). Energy being one of the main factors in agricultural productivity, India’s National Action Plan for “sustainable development” is aligned with the pathway for mitigation of the impacts of climate change as suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). ❄ The final verdict for Bhaviah’s “usurped land” was given in 1979. He was to be paid a sum of about `4,000 as compensation. It was nowhere near the amount he would have got if he had sold the land to a party chosen by him at the market rate. The act had favoured the tenants and robbed him off his basic rights on his property. While he empathized with the tenants, he could not compromise on the ownership of his beloved ancestral asset. My grandfather spent sleepless nights worrying and despairing over the loss of his land. It was unfair and unjustified, but it could not be changed.

❄

Harvest   

Many difficult seasons passed, An arduous journey completed successfully. Birds are happy, gardens have bloomed, It is now harvesting time.

T

oday only eight Brahmin families continue to cultivate in the village. Of the 2,000 acres, only 30 acres of land remain in their hands. Shiva’s grandson continues to live in the village as the representative of my family’s lineage. After Narayana’s death, Shakuntala moved out of Gubbi to his son’s home. But Savitri stayed on till 2003, by which time it had become predominantly a colony of the Vokkaliga farming class. Today there are about 300 families of the Vokkaliga class and 150 of the tribal class in the village. Language, traditions and cuisine unite people, and that is one of the reasons why people from the same community and region form associations wherever they live; their commonalities ensure them a platform to bond and interact. These associations then carry the mantle of safeguarding the culture and heritage of their own communities. The descendants of JodiGubbi’s Brahmins have recently formed an association to bond and meet and help their brethren

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in the village, be it by financial or other means. I attended their first meeting in Bangalore and it was interesting to hear people reminiscing about the village. For Prasanna, a gentleman who holds a special post in the ministry of Karnataka, JodiGubbi used to be his childhood’s pilgrimage (char-dham) centre and his wife remembers the unparalleled taste of tamarind rice in the village homes. Many descendants of the Brahmins who moved out of the village have settled in various parts of the globe with nearly twentyfive in the United States alone. Of Narsihebbariah’s descendants, many are engaged in professions as varied as genetics research and software development for the auto industry. ❄ The decade prior to 1980 had seen much turmoil in the Indian political scene, with Indira Gandhi having reinstated herself after being embroiled in a case of corruption leading to a Janata Dal regime at the Centre for a couple of years. Her younger son Sanjay Gandhi had also been roped into politics and was seen as a crusader of population control. As part of the growth plan, much investment was made in the public and private sectors, and consequently, in the 1980s the nation’s GDP growth rate shot up to 5 per cent. Agricultural exports grew along with manufacturing and other components of the organized sector. Investments were made in science and technology, broadcast and communications and infrastructure resulting in higher employment in these sectors. For the young and the qualified, it was the dawn of a new era with exciting new employment opportunities sprouting everywhere in the country. An opportunity to work in the public sector came to my father too in 1979–80. He received an offer from the Rural Electrification Corporation, Jabalpur, subsequent to which we moved to the city of the world-famous marble rocks and Bhedaghat waterfalls on the

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banks of the Narmada River. Jabalpur is also the nearest landmark city to the world heritage site of Khajuraho and the wildlife sanctuary Kanha National Park located in the heart of Madhya Pradesh. Akka and Bhaviah were now great-grandparents to Lakshmi’s grandchildren. Having fulfilled all their responsibilities, they were living with their second son Suryanarayana who was now married and had taken a transfer from Gwalior to his home state Karnataka. At nearly eighty years of age, my grandfather picked up the study of philosophy. After retirement, the younger sibling Narayana had also kept himself busy studying scriptures like the Vedas and Vedanta, and giving discourses in his trademark Gamaka style. Narayana would travel from Mysore to Holenarsipur to discuss only philosophy with his elder brother. The brothers would spend hours discussing the philosophy of Vedanta. Narayana sought his elder brother’s insights as he felt that the latter had a deeper knowledge of philosophy, but he also griped that after some time, almost invariably Annayya veered off from philosophy to politics, especially about the wrong done by the government against the nation’s farming community. After the court’s verdict regarding his land, Bhaviah spent a year writing to the government of Karnataka to at least consider increasing the amount of compensation. In his correspondence with the government authorities he called them thieves and robbers and condemnable thugs for having taken away his land without proper proceedings. He repeatedly demanded to know why the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act were not applied before taking possession of his land with his consent. He also asked why he was not paid the market value of the land; paying him only a pittance at a rate fixed unilaterally by the government was not a substitute for the market value. Many hearings and counter hearings ensued. Finally, the government agreed to raise the compensation amount by a couple of thousands. My grandfather was not satisfied. He refused to collect the money paid as compensation by the government.

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I had started my degree in engineering at Jabalpur University and my brother was a student at St. Aloysius when my grandparents visited us in the winter of 1980. During this visit, my grandfather, having temporarily put aside his fight with the government, appeared more relaxed and free. Within a couple of months of their stay, Bhaviah had befriended an Anglo-Indian gentleman working in the railways. He took great pleasure in challenging him with questions of philosophy in the context of heat and light. The gentleman would also invite Bhaviah to take part in the religious meetings of their Anglo-Indian community in Jabalpur. It was my second year of engineering, and while I pored over my engineering drawings with the drafting board, Bhaviah would stand next to me, smiling, quite pleased with my diligence. He would spend time teaching Ravi trigonometry, algebra and calculus. In a happy mood, he would talk to my brother about his days in Beekanhalli and the irrigation well with the water-drawing equipment that he had created and which was being considered to be nominated for a patent or a cash prize. I remember that my grandparents had brought ragi flour from Holenarsipur. They wanted me and my brother to savour this product from the soil of their homeland. My grandfather eagerly enquired in English, “How do you find the taste of these things?” I had seen a spark in his eyes and didn’t want to disappoint him by saying that we needed a little more time to get adjusted to the taste that was at the time a bit alien to our palates. Those were the days when the newspapers were awash with stories about the dacoit queen Phoolan Devi, detailing the number of times she changed her clothes to hide from the police—a fact that would immensely intrigue my grandmother. Her alacrity in doing things was astounding. Even though her eyesight had weakened considerably by then, the speed with which she could cook and wash was amazing.

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There was also news about the probe into the tragic way Indira Gandhi’s son Sanjay had lost his life in a plane crash. While we all felt sympathetic towards the young widow Maneka and her small son, my grandmother would wonder how effective the family planning programme advocated by Sanjay Gandhi would be. She often regretted that such schemes were not available during their days in the village. Both my great-grandparents’ death anniversaries happened to fall during their stay in Jabalpur, and my grandparents were happy that far away from their own home, they could carry out the rituals as fastidiously as tradition demanded, especially those related to the food preparations. While in Jabalpur, my father took his parents along with his sisters to the holy city of Benaras to take a dip in the holy Ganges. When they were all taking a dip in the river they suddenly realized, to their utter horror, that their father wasn’t with them. Their utmost worry was how he would communicate with other people and find his way to them without knowing Hindi. While they searched and enquired, Bhaviah appeared unexpectedly from nowhere, very nonchalantly holding a small bronze container with holy water from the Ganges. Apparently, he had been whisked away by a North Indian Brahmin family on the banks of the river to attend to the rituals of a wake ceremony. He had gone along with them, becoming a part of their rituals and even had a hearty and sumptuous meal. While everyone heaved a sigh of relief, Bhaviah was his usual calm self. The year 1984 was eventful for us. It was when my father received the most pleasant surprise of his life. Accompanied by his son Venkatramu, his beloved uncle Acchanna made the much-cherished visit to Jabalpur from the USA to see his nephew’s home and family despite having recently undergone an angioplasty.

❄

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Globalization and technology have enhanced connectivity and flattened the world, creating a level-playing field where any individual with the right skills can play and reap rewards. Today just the way a skilled knowledge worker is travelling to different corners of the globe, an Indian IT specialist working in metros like Bangalore is on the world map, reducing the regional and cultural gaps for the millennials. An educated Indian chooses the destination where he can use his skills and knowledge in his chosen career and doesn’t necessarily identify with the place he comes from or the family he belongs to. Young children of Indian diaspora who are not conversant with their mother tongue or who would have never set foot on their motherland are made aware of their roots and cultural heritage by regional associations and societies in their resident countries. We have a Kannada Sangha in Singapore which hosts singers and popular programmes for the community members. It is common for people including my husband, who were born and bred in Karnataka, to get sentimental at these gatherings when topics such as the use of the mother tongue are raised or when patriotic state songs are sung by small children. With people from all over India working in multinational companies in Bangalore, it ceases to be solely a Kannadiga city. Although arranged marriages are still in vogue, love marriages, intercaste and intercommunity marriages, which were once considered taboos, are fast being accepted in society. Upanayana is still considered very important to continue the tradition, but the jet-setting, go-getter new generation finds rituals like Sandhyavandane or chanting mantras rather unnecessary. Strict vegetarianism is also becoming passé. A well-heeled, young educated Indian who attends office parties around the globe finds it increasingly difficult to hold on to his Brahminical traditions and prefers to adapt to his multicultural, multiracial office environment. ❄

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The year 1984 witnessed many milestones of the nation’s achievements in science and technology and also, sadly, some of the blackest days in its history. Operation Blue Star resulted in the unfortunate assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, followed by violent communal riots in which thousands of people were massacred. The same year the world witnessed its worst industrial disaster in Bhopal which claimed tens of thousands of lives and caused severe environmental damage. The Indian trade and industry scene, nevertheless, further improved when Rajiv Gandhi went on to bring liberalization into the market by relaxing import duties and tariffs. Along with liberalization came greater benefits for public sector employees and government employees with higher dearness allowance rates and better pension schemes. The changes and increasing benefits to government employees fuelled my grandfather’s complaints further against the government. The one who had never stopped corresponding now started demanding to let him know the yardstick applied to evaluate the services of a government employee, who is paid a pension due to his inability to work, whereas for an agriculturist there is no age limit to do physical work in the fields. An avid news follower, Bhaviah kept track of his country’s development plans. The boom in technological feats like television and communications in the country excited him. He exulted when Rakesh Sharma went to space and his voice was heard over the radio “Sare Jahan Se Achcha Hindustan Hamara” (our India looks the best from space). When television came home in the mid-1980s, every day, without fail, he would finish the Sandhyavandane ritual and Gayatri Mantra chants early in order to watch the Ramayana and Mahabharata serials. While the country’s plans to expand indigenous manufacturing pleased him, he was extremely unhappy that a similar transformation in the rural way of life was not happening in the country. A major irrigation project undertaken by the Karnataka government which had made possible a constant supply of water to be channelled to Beekanhalli delighted him, but the increasing disparity and uneven

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distribution of national wealth between the people in cities and villages was now the main issue concerning him. In 1986, my grandparents visited me in New Delhi. It was my grandfather who insisted that they visit me. He was already eightytwo and my grandmother, seventy-four. They were keen to see how I managed to juggle housework with a job. Around this time, my grandmother’s eyesight had deteriorated irreparably. But her enthusiasm for new things and new places was amazing. She would ask me all the details of the nature of my job in the electronics industry. During their stay in Delhi, we took them around the city. The capital city’s aura enthralled them.

❄ Even though food exports grew between 1980 and 1990, further investment in agriculture had started declining. With the public sector investment directed more towards service and industry, agriculture suffered a lack of investment in research and fertilizers. Crop productivity improved only in those states which had good infrastructure improvements; five states of North India were labelled as BIMARUO (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha) states due to their poor growth resulting in the country’s overall low GDP. Inexorable growth in population reduced the land-man ratio; large areas of land remained unirrigated. Thus, a large percentage of the rural population that was still dependent on agriculture had to take the beating. Initiatives like the crop insurance scheme and minimum support price (MSP) scheme didn’t help the marginal farmers much. Bhaviah had refused to accept the money that was given as compensation towards the land lost by the Land Tenancy Act. Many years had elapsed and even after constant reminders, he was unwilling to accept the money. He didn’t want to feel defeated by taking the money; the sum was too paltry to compensate him for the worth of

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his ancestral land. He kept dodging the reminders despite his children’s insistence. He was an aggrieved man, a man gravely wronged by the government of India that took away his land, his only asset to fall back on in his old age. He sought gratification through his philosophical writings, but he was not at peace. All his life he had identified himself as a man of the soil, and his grievance rightfully displayed the wrong done to the farming community at large. When the people around him asked him why he was worried when his children were well settled and he was being cared for by his sons, he would remark, “I am fine, but what about the farmer in the villages? Has anybody given a little thought to what would befall him if he were in the same circumstances as me?” After seven years of the court’s verdict, my uncle Suryanarayana, now working in the Gorur dam project, finally succeeded in persuading his father to take the compensation money. He took him to the chief inspector’s office in the city of Hassan. It was already night when they both reached the office. The place looked deserted except for a lone man who was preparing to leave. Suryanarayana informed him of the purpose of their visit. The officer demanded a bribe before releasing the compensation amount. Without letting his father know, Suryanarayana paid a few hundred bucks and extricated the long overdue money, equal to `7,000, from the office. With my grandfather receiving the last sum of money as compensation for the land taken away, his tryst with his ancestral land had come to an end but not his grievance. He couldn’t let that go so easily. He continued to show his displeasure with the policies of the government that were, according to him, not pro-farmer, and especially ignored marginal farmers. He would assert in his correspondence with the government that Ramarajya in the country could only be established by strictly following the cardinal principles laid down in the constitution of India that promise equality, fraternity, unity, justice and equal

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protection under the law to all its citizens. So far, the government’s actions had gone against these principles. The programmes and plans of the government, the Congress in particular, had failed to build an inclusive society which, he had hoped, would happen after India’s independence. He would cite the discriminatory policies of the government as the reason for a large number of youths leaving their villages for the cities.

❄ The first city flower blossomed in Shiva’s household in 1980. His first son left his village and stayed with his maternal uncle in Hassan to pursue a diploma in mechanical engineering. After he had completed the diploma successfully, he secured a reasonably well-paying job in the Kudremukh Iron Ore Project, from where he could send money to his parents in the village. Shiva was already sixty years of age, and by the time his son took up a job, he had married off all his eight daughters with the help of his wife’s close relative. In the following years, his second son also took up college studies and subsequently got employment. With both sons settled in stable jobs, Shiva didn’t want to hold on to his thota any longer and sold it for `13,000. He continued spending time, mostly playing cards, in the neighbourhood and other neighbouring villages. Later he and his wife moved to Mysore to their son’s home. Narayana pursued his interest in adhyatma, literature and philosophy under the guidance of Sri Amaranda Swami of Mandya district. He sufficiently mastered the subjects to give discourses to gatherings in Kannada and Sanskrit. In his trademark gamaka style which earned him the name “Gamaki-Narayanararu”, he would melodiously recite poems from the Torava Ramayana and Kumarvyasa Mahabharata. While narrating his discourses, he would often get emotionally charged and his eyes would flood with tears. He studied books written by Sri Sachidananda Swamiji of Holenarsipur and gave lectures at various community gatherings

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in Bangalore, Mysore, Shimoga and Tumkur, besides taking part in Vedantic discussions. Apart from these activities that sharpened his intellect, concern for his sisters occupied his mind and heart. He would often travel to Gubbi to see to their welfare. All his sons pursued professional courses and settled well in their lives. His daughter followed in his footsteps in her devotion for learning music and achieved a doctorate. Her years of dedication bore fruit and today she is an accomplished carnatic vocalist. After her retirement Shakuntala would spend considerable time with her brother-in-law’s family at Gubbi and take care of her nieces and nephews. Like Narayana she was a government pensioner and could thus spend her retired life accompanying him to holy pilgrimages in northern India. By her seventieth year, she had visited many holy cities like Kashi, Amarnath and Haridwar. She remained humble and affectionate, selfless and philosophical in her outlook. She would spend most of her free time reading books on the Bhagavadgita with commentaries, epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and other philosophical writings. Till her last day, she would look at her husband’s photo with unstinting regard and reverence. In later years, people came to know that Appanna had left his home and family and had taken shelter at Haridwar/Rishikesh, where he breathed his last. Savitri had led almost three decades of her life in her parents’ home, looking after the kitchen garden and collecting rent. Eventually, bore wells were dug in the village fields and the government also made provisions for tap water to be used in the kitchen. This made her life more comfortable. She got the opportunity to enjoy her share of life’s luxuries when her nephew in Bangalore got her a small radio from Dubai. She had also bought a pressure cooker and a gas stove for herself. The woman who had lived her life in subsistence, which did not change even after her marriage due to the capriciousness of her husband, got a sudden windfall after his death. Accompanied by her nephew Suryanarayana, Savitri travelled to Bangalore to perform the last rites for her husband’s body which had been rotting for three days. Worried as she was for the money needed to carry out the final

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rites and wake rituals, the help that came was no less than divine intervention. She was told by the Bangalore corporation office that money amounting to a little over `1,000 was available in the thrift fund left by her husband. Besides getting the family pension sanctioned, she also received money by way of gratuity and provident fund. From these funds Savitri got an amount of over `10,000 which she prudently invested and which grew into a few lakhs over two decades. The money helped her to live in the city of Bangalore in her old age. Till the age of eighty-three she lived a peaceful life all by herself in a small rented house. Despite Shiva’s sour relationship with the rest of the siblings, he continued to be the adorable little brother to his eldest sister-in-law Akka. But whatever said and done, it is certain that despite his best efforts he could not have achieved what his counterparts in the cities managed to achieve. Such is the fate of the farming community— despite complete dedication to their profession, their income levels can never match those of the city people. And that’s what always bothered and pained my grandfather.

❄ I met my grandparents again in 1989 during the Upanayana of my brother Ravi in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, where my father had made yet another move. Ravi had completed his engineering course from the MANIT Bhopal and was a trainee with the Indian Telecom Service. The recent announcement of an improved pension scheme for retired government employees and the hike of their dearness allowance rates in the Five Year Plan policy of the time had disturbed Bhaviah’s mind all over again. He was besieged by a strong sense of discrimination against tillers. Leave alone a dearness allowance, there was not even a benefit like maintenance for them in their old age. It was the time when the song “Mile Sur Mera Tumhara To Sur Bane Hamara” was composed and played in major national media

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outlets as a fresh effort to instil national pride and strengthen national integration. An agriculturist at heart, even in Bhubaneswar, despite his ripe age my grandfather wanted to work on a small vacant land belonging to the house. To some extent, he was successful in planting some vegetables and flowers in six months. Nearing almost the final stage of his fight, he accused the government of India of not paying pension to an agriculturist who toils all his life to produce food for humanity and is left helpless when he is no longer fit to work on the land. Bhaviah went on fighting in courts starting from the munsiff court, Holenarsipur. He charged the government of discrimination, inequality, injustice and step-motherly treatment. Hearings after hearings went on for months till one day when he was told that he had lost the case. He then appealed to the high court, Holenarsipur. To demonstrate his contempt for the government’s negligence towards farmers, he took a packet of rice and a few potatoes to the high court in Holenarsipur. He thumped the articles on the judge’s desk, looked him in the eyes and said, “Sir, I have stolen these items since I didn’t have enough money to survive. Please arrest me and put me in jail. I am sure I’ll be better off in prison. At least I will have two meals a day.” Once in the court, to underscore the level of discrimination and ill-treatment meted out to agriculturists, he quoted the example of Indira Gandhi’s bodyguards. He alleged that an agriculturist was treated worse than criminals—those murderers or killers were at least given shelter and food. All along he had the ardent support of his son Suryanarayana who would unfailingly accompany him to the town about 30 km from Gorur for every hearing. They travelled so frequently that at one point Narayana advised his nephew not to bother about his father’s court proceedings and waste money, time and effort on something so very futile. It was sincere advice, but no amount of well-wished words or thoughts would deter my grandfather from taking his grievance to the highest legal authority of India.

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Alongside the hearings in court demanding pension for farmers, he also continued his intensely passionate activity of forming a voters’ association. For that purpose, he would walk to the nearby villages from Gorur and ask the farmers to come and support the voters’ association. At times, he would also bring them home and discuss with them how to elect a candidate who could truly represent the village community.

❄

Undoubtedly, the countries that adopted green revolution in the postcolonial era saw exponential increases in agricultural productivity through paradigm shifts in labour and land productivities. Whereas the growth model of the Western countries that cultivated wheat and maize was based on “labour substitution” through capitalistic machinery, the rice-growing regions of East Asian countries depended on “land substitution” through the adoption of new technologies. Concurrent land reforms implemented in countries like China, Japan and parts of Europe also brought in favourable changes to land tenures, abolishing the age-old feudal system. However, despite the tremendous growth in food production, many countries have not been able to reduce the wealth gap, and it is a bitter irony of this century that conflicts over land and territorial disputes continue between nations, regions and communities in the face of the global threat of food, water and energy shortage. More than two decades since the end of the Cold War and disintegration of the USSR, a colder war is continuing over regions of the Middle Eastern countries that are rich in natural resources. Though globalization paved the way for some East Asian countries to experience an export-led growth and prosperity, it has also made the world an unlevelled playing field for many other countries, particularly the African countries where people don’t have the skills or technology to compete in the global economy.

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Sadly, the green revolution too bypassed these countries and left large tracts of their land fallow with low productivity due to population pressure. Unlike their counterparts in the Eastern and Western worlds, African countries are still experimenting with various pathways to land reforms through land titling and land markets to promote sustainable natural resource management practices and to ensure access and control over land to the poor and marginalized rural households, women and pastoralist groups, especially in Southern African countries where the apartheid legacy of unequal land ownership between black farmers and white farmers is continuing. Yet another bitter truth is that industrialized countries are contributing twice to the world’s yearly loss or wastage of 1.3 billion tonnes of food, attributed largely to consumer behaviour, as against developing countries where loss occurs mainly in the early stages of the food chain due to the lack of infrastructure and financial and technical constraints. A collective action involving developed and developing countries is needed. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz suggests many ways to make globalization work. Advanced countries can help developing countries by providing them aid, debt relief and direct investment for development projects like irrigation, productivity and infrastructure. They can also open up opportunities through reforms in global trade arrangements. Removal of subsidies and opening of markets, even though not in favour of urban consumers, will help farmers in developing countries by increasing the price of their products. The governments in developing countries need to focus on sustainable, equitable, and democratic development, increasing the purchasing power of people and alleviating poverty. Corruption can be reduced by limiting bank secrecy, increasing transparency and enforcing anti-bribery measures. Changes in the intellectual property regime can include additional funds and a purchase guarantee for a new innovation from the developing world. International agreements on recognizing

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the traditional knowledge of developing countries in some vital areas would give them a comparative advantage. A biodiversity convention signed by all the countries would protect the rainforests, forests and other environment-related property of developing countries while providing them protection against environmental damage and appropriate compensation by multinational companies extracting natural resources in these countries. Trade agreements should include enforcement of auction procedures, designing of model contracts, and so on in favour of developing countries. The governments in these countries should ensure development in terms of GNNP (green net national product) that accounts for capital depreciation, depletion of natural resources and degradation of the environment rather than just GDP. An accounting framework reflecting the depletion of scarce resources would help create stabilization funds—buffers to fall back on during difficult times, so that countries are insulated against volatility in the prices of natural resources. Citizens’ right to know laws is necessary to promote democracy and accountability. ❄ In the beginning of the 1990s, Indian economic policies changed drastically. This was in response to a major economic crisis due to “balance of payments” problems India was facing since the mid-80s. As a part of a bailout deal with the IMF, the Indian government introduced liberalization policies to dismantle the License Raj and bring in economic reforms. The reforms helped the country’s overall GDP growth to increase to a remarkable 8 per cent in a decade, but not in the agricultural sector. Paradoxically, these years of high economic growth were marked by a low performance in the agricultural sector, thereby keeping employment to the same dismal levels in rural areas. Increase in work opportunities in the unorganized sectors of industry didn’t bring any major improvement in the economic conditions of the rural poor. Money-lending banks saw the agriculture sector as a high-risk area, resulting in a “lost decade for agriculture”.

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During the high economic growth period of the country, when their counterparts in the cities were amassing wealth by way of opportunities in service and industry sectors, the rural people, sadly, remained unemployed and underfed. In the “lost decade for the agriculture sector”, production and the resulting export of agricultural goods dropped. It was in the 1990s that the first farmers’ suicide cases in most regions of India were also reported. How unfortunate that debt, uncertain monsoons leading to poor crop yield and low prices were the reasons for their drastic step. When India joined the WTO in 1995, Indian agricultural exports had declined considerably. Controlled prices and subsidies created distorted crop production with large granaries of rice, wheat and cereals, but hardly any production of pulses. Thankfully, the export of wheat and rice reached record levels in the later decade due to the removal of trade barriers, but it also created large stockpiles of food grains that couldn’t be bought by the rural poor because they didn’t have enough purchasing power. My father retired and moved to Bangalore after his last assignment with the Central Electricity Authority in 1991. After Suryanarayana also shifted to Bangalore, it became easier for my grandfather to vent his grievance before the concerned officials in the state’s capital. When his appeals in the Holenarsipur court and the Bangalore High Court were rejected in 1992, he insisted on seeing the then chief minister, Ramakrishna Hegde, at his residence in Bangalore. He also met Yeddyurappa, the leader of the opposition in the 1990s, at his residence. Lastly, he met Nanjund Swami—a professor, researcher and also the president of the Raytara Sangha (farmers’ association)—who was instrumental in bringing about high-quality oilseeds in the state. My grandfather made an earnest request to every politician or leader he met to consider a pension scheme for farmers. The essence of his pleas was that those who till the land to produce food in their prime should be looked after by the government when they become physically unfit to till the land, since their contribution to the economy is on par with any other employee in the public sector and

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they deserve equal treatment. Every official gave him the same answer which was more evasive than empathetic. Disgusted at their non-committal answers which reflected their near indifference towards the farming community, my grandfather decided to knock on the doors of the Supreme Court in New Delhi. He sent appeals accusing the Supreme Court of violating the articles 13, 14, 20, 23, 32 and 132 as laid down in the constitution. At least twenty such article numbers were quoted in all his appeals. Being already 88 years old, neither could he go to Delhi himself nor could he engage an advocate since that required a lot of money. Although he continued to write to the Supreme Court, there was no further response. All that my grandfather asked in his letters was a maintenance fund of `100 for farmers. He then continued sending letters to the Yelahanka police station, warning them that he would commit a theft if his appeal wasn’t given heed. He would also walk to the police station under the blazing sun to meet and explain to the concerned officials in person as to what he actually intended by sending those letters. His frequent visits to the police station bothered the officials so much that one day the superintendent of the police station called my father to express his displeasure about the frequent visits of an old man at his office. He was more concerned about the fact that the old man strained himself by walking all the way to the police station rather than about the issues the latter discussed. My parents then decided to give Bhaviah a break. Unknown to him, they instructed the postman to bring a money order of `100, which was given beforehand to the postman by my father himself. Henceforth, for almost a year, till my grandfather breathed his last, he received a monthly pension of `100. Although it was a delusion, my grandfather was a triumphant man at his death having won recognition for the agriculturists. He was at peace.

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According to Joseph Stiglitz, reforms need to be sequential and balanced with a focus on real stability. Ensuring a continuous supply of finance; strengthening of the laws of corporate governance; investing in education, infrastructure, planned and advanced technology and local industries; and compulsory savings to help build up funds for investments are some of the most important responsibilities of any government. Privatization should mean efficiency and limiting the transfer of money into the hands of a few individuals. African countries can learn many lessons from the Asian green revolution of the 1960s to ensure food security. They can also learn from each other’s land reform lessons of efficiency, sustainability and equity in agricultural production, especially from Zimbabwe’s recent success in land reform and redistribution which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of coloured Zimbabweans becoming successful farmers. Indian experts emphasize on the following: a proactive policy to foster exports of highly valued commercial and export commodities; building innovative institutions to develop new technologies for small farmers to enable them to diversify their products; expediting efforts to create institutions like trading houses, market intelligent services and a network of information on national and international prices; and building the necessary infrastructure for agro-processing, marketing and grading of produce. As it is understood that water harvesting with micro- and macro-irrigation techniques for different cropping patterns and different agro-climatic situations is the primary need, a capital investment from both private and public sectors with good governance can evaluate the risks in the farming business and devise a rural credit scheme that works for the holistic development of each village by encompassing water harvesting techniques, employment opportunities and diversification of agriculture. The public sector and Indian agri-business companies should work hand in hand with farmers. They can help in cutting

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down red tape; increasing investment in infrastructure, research and biotechnology; offer advice on price, weather, soil testing and finance; and provide inputs for increasing productivity. Additionally, they can help in brand-building and value addition and create institutional arrangements to strengthen the supply chain so as to increase the competitiveness of the final produce in the world market. Companies can help set up alternative markets so that farmers grow only those commodities and become aware of the market which fetches the highest price by using the new wireless and internet technologies in villages. Farmers should also do their part in adopting modern farm management practices so that they can also grow as prosperous as their counterparts in other parts of the world. With the WTO negotiations, India faces a big challenge from foreign quarters. FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) is welcomed across different sectors of Indian industry but faces severe opposition from the agriculture retail sector in some states like West Bengal. Agricultural diversification is being recognized as vital to economic growth and is widely implemented in several states, with extraordinary success in Bihar and in the North Eastern states where industrial growth has been slow. It is also encouraging that a few states in recent years have considered paying the farmers a monthly pension. Bihar was the first state to implement a pension scheme for dairy farmers. Karnataka has considered increasing the pension amount given to farmers in recent years from `500 to `1,000. Kerala also has a scheme for financial assistance to paddy farmers for the marriage of their daughters. Under Vision 2020, the Karnataka government aims to bring 4.5 per cent growth rate in agriculture and allied sectors and thereby improve the net income of rural citizens. Some additional steps towards achieving this mission are the use of micronutrients, organic manures, sprinklers and drip irrigation; biofuel plantations;

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alternate sources of power generation; expansion of agricultural technology; restructuring the administrative setup of the agricultural marketing department; legalizing contract farming for cultivation of horticultural crops; support for on-farm cogeneration of energy (solar and wind); simplification of the procedure of importing planting material; adding vaccination centres, veterinary service units and cold storage units for dairy development; importing silk-reeling machines; setting up a state sericulturist forum and an alternative silk market; development of watershed for dryland farming; development of a Bangladesh model for fishery development; afforestation of vast lands for generating employment opportunities and promotion of biofuels; providing research support for intervention in forest and wildlife management and measuring the impact of climate change; and creating mass awareness about biodiversity conservation. ❄

According to an estimate by the IPCC, there has been a reduction in the yields of grains and cereals due to the changing climate over this century, which has led to a rise in the price of food grains. Due to this, nearly 35 million more people will face a risk of hunger by 2020 and the numbers will go up to 50 million by 2080. Experts suggest a two-pronged strategy—“adaptation and mitigation”—to deal with climate variability and change. Change in plantation seasons and in cultivars of wheat are some of the examples of successful adaptation strategies employed in the UK. Conservation tillage and irrigation methods for C-sequestration are being successfully used in US farming as an adaptation strategy. Adaptation is more needed for vulnerable regions like poor low-lying areas, small islands, subtropics and tropics. Adaptations include new technology, crop breeding for new climate, resilient varieties of crops and mixes, rural electrification, management

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(employing systems that use water efficiently) and changes in institutions like market and tariff structures. Many of these strategies have already been implemented in countries like Africa and India. Researchers have studied the impact of climate change on the economy using different models that include factors like consumer adaptation to different foods, food prices, crop yields, input prices, technological changes and resource availability. The models also consider land values and are incorporated with geographic information systems for an accurate estimate of the impact on regional price. As technology-driven farming is more sensitive to climate variability, financial resources, technical assistance, water, fertilizers and infrastructure costs are also included to assess the adaptation response time of farmers. Markets also determine the impacts due to climate change. The effects of climate change should take into account the trade patterns between countries trading in food commodities. As climate change’s positive impact on Europe and North America and negative impact on India will cause imbalance in food trade, shifts in cropping zones and reforms in global distribution of food are needed. The changes in prices affect the economic welfare of agricultural consumers and producers. An assessment of the national economic welfare effects, which takes into account different temperature, precipitation and CO2 effects (fertilizer effects), that has been done by a few researchers for the United States, has reported a net increase in exports, drop in prices and overall improved economic welfare. Some other assessments have reported losses in earnings with increased consumer welfare but reduced gain for producers. These assessments have been done for wheat, rice, maize and cereals but no estimates are available for coffee, cocoa, tea and rubber products which give huge export earnings to the US. According to the study by the IPCC on the impact of climate change under four different scenarios, taking factors of market,

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population, growth strategy and governance into consideration, a scenario with global sustainability, low population, moderate growth and global environmental agreements puts minimum people at the risk of hunger. As a major milestone of the mitigation strategy of climate change or the global management of global warming, the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1991 by many countries which set regulations on the emission of greenhouse gases. As per the WTO’s principle, in case any country’s export industry endangers the global environment, it will be suspended from access to markets which the WTO guarantees for its members. The huge subsidies given to the United States—the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world after China—in the form of non-compensation for polluting can be offset by other countries through countervailing tariffs and duties. In the face of the US losing its dollar’s hegemony in recent years, imposition of tariffs on partnering countries on charges of currency manipulation in new trade agreements is no solution for its multilateral trade imbalance—it needs to fix its own domestic policy agenda. As the developing countries are expected to emit more greenhouse gases than the developed world by 2025, a compromise needs to be found between the targets based on emissions per dollar of GDP and those based on emissions per capita. A trading mechanism called carbon trading enables a high cost country to buy carbon credit from a low-cost country so that the surplus reduction in one would offset the shortfall in the other. While the rainforest coalition put forward by developing countries offered to commit to greenhouse gas limits, in order to be able to afford a sustained growth, they asked for compensation by way of selling carbon offsets not just for new forests but also for avoiding deforestation.

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An alternative framework for reduction of emissions for every country is to impose a common tax on its citizens on carbon emissions generated, thereby avoiding the issues of selling to other countries. The countries can keep the money they collect as tax and use it for their development programmes. The inclusion of China’s yuan in the IMF and FED basket of currencies has paved the way for the Asian giant to be the new economic powerhouse set to recast the world order and trading systems, with its new Silk Road initiatives. India’s Look East policy for greater economic space has led to an Act East policy in recent years and strengthened relations with ASEAN and its member countries. Being a founder member of the WTO, India should work towards removal of trade barriers, abolition of zonal restrictions, compulsory procurement, opening future markets, protecting patent rights, and so on. It should also force removal of subsidies by other countries. As a member of G-20 and a part of the BRICS nations, India faces the challenge of committing itself to reducing carbon emissions by 2020 while maintaining its GDP growth. Its multipronged eight areas of focus under the National Action Plan on Climate Change include adaptation, mitigation, energy efficiency, conservation of natural resources, ecologically sustainable development through recycling and management of solid urban waste and public transport. It is crucial that it switches completely to clean and energy-efficient resources so that in the long run global security with regard to food, water, and energy is ensured and the hungry people in India and the world are fed properly. To worship Mother Nature in the true sense and save our planet is the responsibility of every citizen. By 2050, the world should be a better place to live in and people should be free of the malaise of poverty and hunger. Hopefully India regains its lost glory, too, by 2050. ❄

Epilogue   

Almost a decade after Bhaviah’s death, a good deal of literature he had produced on Vedantic philosophy was suddenly discovered in the attics. His works include his stanza-wise translation/comments on “Manku Timmana Kagga” and “Maralu Muniyana Kagga” by the famous Kannada poet DV Gundappa. Quietly, over many years, his interest in Vedanta had led him to write a compilation of 180 lessons in Kannada named “Vedanta Lessons”. Verses from the Bhagavadgita; Vivek Chudamani by Sri Adishankaracharya; works of Bhagwan Ramana Maharshi, Sant Ramananda Tirtha and Sri Vinoba Bhave are freely quoted in the lessons wherever appropriate. In the Vedanta lessons, knowledge of science including the latest discoveries/inventions by scientists, personal experiences and current affairs are found interlaced with Adhyatmic philosophies. The preface of the compilation says that the lessons are based on true and factual matters, scientific principles and practical experiences of people and not on any single religious teaching. They question certain mythological matters which are not based on true experiences and are contradictory to such experiences. Therefore, it is hoped that the lessons would be acceptable to all people without any opposition. The book is meant to promote peace and mitigate sorrow. It will make people realize that it is a crime to enjoy material prosperity by exploiting others. These lessons will be useful to people aged sixty and above, and the intention behind this book is to see to

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it that people give up their selfishness and strive to achieve not only their own happiness but also that of society. He further says that if people hold meetings to discuss matters of Vedanta it would help reduce selfishness and promote brotherhood and unity besides enabling them to realize that life is transitory. If they adopt a more philosophical outlook, they can control their animal nature and blossom into better human beings.

❄

Selected Bibliography

Adams, Richard M., Brian H. Hurd, Stephanie Lenhart, and Neil Leary. “Effects of Global Climate Change on Agriculture: An Interpretative Review”, Climate Research, vol.11:19–30, 1998. Agrawal, PK et al. Vulnerability of Indian Agriculture to Climate Change, undated Power point file posted on the internet site basic-project. net, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. Agriculture Statistics at a Glance, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers welfare, Government of India. Aiyar, Mani Shankar. A Time of Transition: Rajiv Gandhi to the 21st Century. New Delhi: Penguin, 2009. Basu, Kausik (ed.). Land Reform in India. Undated paper from Oxford University Press. Bray, Francesca. The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles California, 1986. Clarke, Daniel J., Olivier Mahul, Kolli N. Rao, Niraj Verma. Weather Based Crop Insurance in India, The World Bank, Financial and Private Sector Development, Vice Presidency, Non-Banking Financial Institutions Unit and South Asia Region, Finance and Private Sector Development Unit, 2012. “Dandakaranya: Struggles of a Different Kind”, March–April 1999, available at http://www.bannedthought.net/India/PeoplesMarch/ PM1999-2006/archives/1999/mar-apr_99/Dandakaranya.htm Das, Tarun, Colette Mathur, and Frank-Jürgen Richter. India Rising: Emergence of a New World Power. Marshall Cavendish, 2005.

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Lata holds a BE degree in electronics and telecommunication from Jabalpur University, India, and an MPhil in materials science from the University of Malaya, Malaysia. She moved to Singapore with her family in 1998. Prior to making her foray into writing, she worked with the Institute of Materials Science and Research, a premier research institute under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore.

The Energy and Resources Institute

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Lata Vishwanath

In an evocative narrative that spans over a century, the author takes the readers on a journey to her ancestral land and depicts her grandfather’s life through the various anecdotes she has collected over time. A dedicated farmer, he passionately fought for farmers’ rights till the end of his life. Part memoir, part history and part reportage bordering on fiction, Autumn Showers narrates the dynamic tale of the quintessential Indian society woven closely around agriculture and also details the challenges agriculture today faces in India and the world.

Autumn Showers

While growing up in northern India, away from her native place, the author was often intrigued by her agriculturist grandfather’s constant letters to the Indian government. More than a decade after his death, she delves deep into the letters he left behind and unravels a fascinating saga of her agriculturist family in her ancestral village in the southern state of Karnataka.

Autumn Showers Lata Vishwanath

The Energy and Resources Institute