Notes from a trip to Uttarakhand (India) Trekking in Helambu NOTES FROM A TRIP TO Uttarakhand (INDIA)
Haridwar
Sitting on the banks of the Ganges look at the steps of the ghat in the river that descends vertically.
The river, however, runs horizontally.
represent a step by step, in successive steps, logical and hierarchical levels in sequence, and the way in which man sees his approach, his dive into the true reality, the attempt to penetrate change in the size of the eternal life that is within the sacred river.
The steps are firm and would remain so into the water, in its size.
But the river is sacred because it is never the same when we already immersed. It can not be achieved.
Water flows horizontally, without end. It does not contain steps. Simply, the flows above.
Water is water flowing under the circumstances, it runs continuously, adapting to contingent forms of the land, as it is.
not that movement, change, change, has no purpose or design.
For this reason, the steps are still strangers.
He moves to another plane.
Meanwhile, on boats of banana leaves, flowers and a little 'rice, running on the waves fiammele offered by the faithful.
the river flow together.
I go to the ceremony in the evening daily Ganga Aarti. Every day at 19.00, here in Haridwar, a large crowd gathers along the ghat leading down to the Ganges to offer fire to the Mother Ganga, the goddess of water. Each night gets a standing ovation given to the gods, almost a standing ovation from the stadium and thousands of small fires and flames, which are floating on the River.
Moment of good earnings for the Brahmins, who sell promises of afterlife, and even vendors of incense and flowers in this great business that I think has a great religious significance in India's GDP.
If any country in which one sees first hand how religion is "the opium of the people", this is certainly India.
One way to forget the difficulties of life, poverty. Yes, too, but not only this, I am not all poor in India. There is first entrusted with the irrationality of the whole relationship with the "divine" all'emozionalità, feeling, as if it were a lover - and perhaps it is also a bit 'a substitute, given the communication between the sexes very controlled according to tradition - and second, to see life always in the light of something that goes beyond the capacity of love in all its forms - so sacralized - and beyond as it is, a capability that arises directly from the fundamental peacefulness of those great "caciaroni" that the Indians ("always a bit Louder Than Loud" as the Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan).
And then ... ... and then there are certainly many other components and a thousand other ways of seeing, as in India you can find everything and the opposite of everything: it is understood never to the end .... Indeed, perhaps he is right there on purpose: to show that we can not understand everything.
Not even the Indians, I think, fail to understand, but for them this will not be a problem only - like everything else, for that matter - a fact of life.
NATIVE SEED SAVERS: Vandana Shiva and Navdanya
In the countryside near Dehra Dun, the capital of Uttarakhand, there Bija Vidyapeeth, the 'University of the seeds, the center of Navdanya, l' organization founded by Vandana Shiva in which they are cultivated and preserved the seeds of many traditional varieties of cereals, vegetables, legumes, medicinal plants has always been the heritage of the Indian villages.
A quiet and well maintained which contains, in addition to the seed bank, the fields, soil testing laboratories, a library and a multimedia center with simple rooms, a canteen and services to accommodate the frequent visitors and volunteers that make it an international meeting of persons actively involved in organic farming and protection of biodiversity. The atmosphere that makes you breathe very soon feel at home, a house previously unknown to what seems to be back, maybe because we deal here with the basics, common to all humans, so while we help to mow the small lots with the varieties as basmati or amaranth as we continue to chat with people around the world at the table while we wash our dish after eating.
do not know, actually, because the contribution of volunteers is crucial to the work of the center, but it is clear that this is designed with great attention to them, I think with the knowledge that the days spent here will certainly leave its mark on the lives of many who pass and have an impact on their choices and then around the world in one way or another - perhaps even for roads or indecipherable quiet, but very real and immediate.
Navdanya (www.navdanya.org) is an organization that knows how to talk and work just as well as the illiterate peasant government official or NGO, the intellectual, the political scientist, international institutions and United Nations. It is the work of Vandana Shiva, along with other people, that we owe the successful lawsuit that stopped the attempt to pirate the corporate agro-chemical-genetic to put a patent on basmati rice and neem tree, used by the Indian population from time immemorial for a variety of applications, including that as an excellent natural pesticide for fruit and vegetables.
Important aspects of the work of Navdanya is allowing farmers - thanks to organizations like Slow Food event in Turin and its biennial Terra Mother "(www.terramadre2008.org) - not only to get in touch with other realities of the world and see how well their products in rich countries can be appreciated and considered the issues that concern them, but perhaps most importantly, to meet other farmers like them. This is of utmost importance if we consider that one of the biggest weaknesses of the farmers has always been their isolation, not so much from other sectors of society (as, pressed, is the only area that could also do without the others), but among themselves. The peasants (except for external differences not significant) are in all places of the world the same life, they share similar experiences and problems: those in the basic way of life around the world. But against this, living a condition closely linked to where they are, often without a lifetime opportunity to visit places not far from their little village. Accordingly - and also because of the propensity to trust any stranger precisely due to this isolation - will never force the idea that if combined would potentially vacessero express their true weight in the progress of society, such as to stop it at all world, nor of the substantial unity of the mechanisms and the interests behind the tragedies of their condition.
Central in the activity of Navdanya (Which means "nine seeds" or "new seed") is the maintenance of traditional varieties of seed used by Indian farmers and their biodiversity. What they say explicitly is that there can be no independence of the peasants on their own if they do not produce their own seeds. Hence the clear rejection of patents on life, GMOs and hybrid varieties selected industrially sterile or unable to reproduce as a specific cultivar. Hence the careful maintenance of biodiversity, to extend and improve it in (as indeed has always done, albeit in a less systematic or scientific) to have a better chance of adapting crops to a variety of possible circumstances, given by the different geographical areas of climate change that we see occur with increasing evidence.
Speaking of the recent history of agriculture in India with Dr. Vinod Bhatt, who directs the center, he described the transition that occurred at the time of the British colony, from a situation of a multitude of small plots held by households (more or less extended) the emergence of large estates in the hands of the zamindars , large landowners favorites for this purpose by the British. These owners, related to the world of agriculture, but farmers, this reorientation toward the same world market, in the sense of priority and no longer only for the surplus. Therefore, since the main purpose of the sale of production, it had to deal with what was sold and refer to where and what was sold. Obviously, the products could be sold where there was money to buy them, or in the "motherland" and therefore British cotton, indigo, tea, coffee and things like that may be traded, yes, but not more food to live on . Here is the farmer who ceases to be such: no longer has to eat first and secondly to buy and sell the surplus so that it can not produce, but become a producer of goods, an agricultural worker (even if self-employed) -directed and / or eteroindirizzato. Here is the beginning of the loss, with food, biodiversity, traditional knowledge and techniques, independence is the beginning of many changes in the lives of all days, even in seemingly irrelevant details, but instead very significant. For example, the common use today in India - even outside of the semi-desert areas where it was inevitable - to use dry manure as fuel, spread when the English crown forbade the people - as centuries before had done at home and started to ' rural exodus to the cities - the common use of forests. This turns manure into fuel resource depriving the peasants of free natural fertilizer and they always had. The first factory of chemical fertilizers in India began producing back in 1904, but their use still remained very limited until independence when Jawahrlal Nehru came to mind - with all due respect the project of nation to which Gandhi dedicated his life - that India had become an industrial nation, therefore, for a country of farmers, the way to go was that of heavy industry and the "Green Revolution" in agriculture (chemicals and machinery to go-go). When, at the time of the colony, the agronomist Sir Albert Howard was sent to teach farming techniques to the Western Indians, this returned by writing books ("The rights of the earth" - Slow Food Editore) in which the techniques explained in detail and concluded that the native English had more to learn and teach against the peasants who had colonized. In India it grew then about 200,000 varieties of rice. Today there are still two or three thousand, but the ones that actually are commonly found in markets are only ten. One hectare producing fifty tons of rice as against twelve today. Since the adoption of Green Revolution on the use of pesticides and insecticides has been growing with increasing incidence of pests and diseases. India was once self-sufficient As for rice and spices and is now forced to import. On the other hand is currently the fourth largest producer of chemical fertilizers (produced something even agree on their own). In addition to the massive sponsorship from both public and private (and especially both together as there were in all likelihood agreements between U.S. and Indian government that the provision of economic aid conditional on the adoption of programs of "modernization" setting - after all, "if not want to learn how to produce more means that you will not eat ... and then, why should we help you? ") the rapid acceptance of chemicals in agriculture has certainly been accepted because spectacular results in the short term: the farmers have grown crops with great effort much less. ... maybe, accompanying it with tributes to the initial amount of free testing, and that's it. The real issue is that the progressive depletion and the resulting soil erosion, increase in pests and diseases, the growing dependence on machinery, fuels, synthetic products, poisons, selected seeds and sterile, up to the latest GM resulted in twenty to thirty years, many farmers find themselves in a land that produces most if not 'addicted' constantly chemicals less effective and increasingly essential, expensive and not such as to results that go to offset costs. In recent years, more than 250,000 Indian farmers have killed themselves no longer able to pay its debts nor support his family. At the same time on the walls of many houses in country towns there are those who agreed to paint the advertising and seeds RoundUp RoundUp Ready seeds that do not reproduce and which require the entire line of fertilizers and pesticides to grow ... . a complete cycle (do not know if it includes a voucher for the funeral in case of suicide).
Navdanya's work, which has a remarkable success so far to allow its forces to arrive, it is therefore clearly of the utmost importance and should be supported. But we can not see what he can say to us that concerns us: the gap between the spectacular effect immediate and imminent danger and impoverishment overall success is something that concerns the whole of our reality, so that we may be less noticeable that in the case of Indian farmers, but also more subtle and pervasive concern a bit 'all over the background of our situation. If in India, organic farming and self-managed from the villages is the basis for a recovery of a self-centered and sustainable economy materially from us and neo-peasant farming can be a way of salvation to reclaim our lives as a whole, its rhythms, its sense of it and we recognize ourselves in his way. In both cases you have to start from a vision of size (new) country overall and not as mere producers of food (like a profession like any other). In a context such as India is in first place to cultivate the ability to work and healthy food for the mass of the population. In our context it is, so to speak, to cultivate our soul, our spirit - or as we call it - by doing. In both cases it comes to saving the planet.
On the one hand it should be borne in mind that the change (distortion) is the crucial moment when the farmer stops being, to be considered and regarded as a peasant in the round and becomes only a producer of food, merchandise, food. Secondly there is a point that they Navdanya stress - and on which he lingers Carlo Petrini of Slow Food in his remarkable "Good, Clean and Fair" - that is the important role of the buyer, the consumer, considering a sort of co-producer, as is the one that allows the farmer to continue to produce and make his life knowing that it can sell its products and so secure that part of income that would not be able to self produced - ie making it possible for the fact that this remains only a part and then that even those who produces many of the things he must buy the manufacturer of these may be only partially, and self-producer (often, but not limited to, a farmer in turn) for the rest.
Tehri Dam
From Dehra Dun to go to the mountains to the north passing through Tehri, where local people have protested long and hard against the project, was given a dam large proportions that led to the evacuation of 100 villages, the ancient town of Old Tehri, all now submerged, along with the camps they lived in the 130,000 displaced residents, now one of the most fertile valleys of the Himalayas. It is a huge dam on Baghira, the initial stretch of the Ganges. Now the dam came into being two years, produces only 10% of electricity have already been budgeted and there are numerous landslides that have raised fears for his safety. However, even that little bit 'of electricity that is produced is not intended for people of this area, where there continue to be daily rounds for those who must remain in the dark part of the twenty-four hours.
energy goes away. In the world of factories and large cities (where there are frequent power outages as well, since electricity production is not keeping pace with the galloping pace of development in India).
makes me think of another world away, to our house, where opposition movements often arise in landfills and incinerators, bridges and high-speed lines. All holy things (these protests). But I wonder: you can sort it out merely to preventing the execution of certain works close to your garden? You never really take into account the fact that, as long as there are huge amounts of waste, we must also delete them from somewhere? That if one wishes to run the economy at some level also takes certain infrastructure - that can not always be zero impact, anything? What if you want to consume a certain rhythms also takes a certain production / consumption of energy, which can not be cleaned sufficiently? I wonder how far we realize, for us, that if you really do not want to pollutants and hazardous work, neither at home nor others (take for example the disposal of radioactive and toxic waste), should be taken very different styles life, many other ways and levels of production / consumption. You can not escape from this reality, otherwise it is just passing the buck to someone else or the consequences of its claims / freedom unsustainable. Maybe people like the farmers of this valley, which certainly can not be counted against the slightest responsibility, who lived a life truly innocent of this point of view, a life that has not changed now in not having electricity who had not before, but that has changed a lot for losing land, housing, local memory and remained under water along with their rights violated by the search for profits of some big company willing to "modernize" the country.
These displaced people really have no involvement of co-responsibility, even in principle, are the only ones who could really talk. But their voice is heard.
I am reminded of the leaflets with the hammer and sickle that I saw on the wall of a house at this time of Indian elections. I am reminded of what he said yesterday Vandana Shiva on the great expansion of the current movement Naxalite (Maoist-like) in India: guerrilla groups that control large parts of the country, particularly marginal areas of forest, border, tribal areas and farmers, are impossible to guard all of the army of the central government, and perhaps not so important from their point of view, but the center of the world for many ethnic minorities who had heard the words enshrined in law on their own lands, but who have seen him trample on the interests of powerful and far unknown.
The resumption of revolutionary communist movements in the Indian subcontinent (since the rise in the government of ex-guerrilla Maoist party in Nepal) can play - and can possibly be - the answer a little 'naive' of people poorly equipped to dialogue with the contemporary reality, give credit to the ingenuity of local Capetti, future dictators. But if there is also inadequate because the non-inclusiveness of this global system to certain populations and ways of life is a reality and disappointment that arises from so many talk about progress and democracy as well. The result is that there are people on these and many mountains in the world, many forests in many villages (a beautiful piece of humanity, if we counted them) feel that there is no more, and we do not want to hear.
Unless those who says this is a nice NO. Perhaps dull, perhaps simplistic, perhaps a harbinger of more problems .... Yes, But a nice NO, clear and sharp.
One thing you should pay attention.
to the mountains
Together with some operators Navdanya a visit to some villages, going up to the mountains of Uttarakhand.
is cultivated amaranth, red rice, blacks beans, lentils, orange, and there is a kind of mango that tastes of ginger, goats, similar to our Kashmiri Girgentana (Agrigento) - who knows which roads and what stories be related?
Every family has its traditional breadbasket, risen now to the dignity of "seed bank", a treasure of identity and culture, independence and knowledge to pass on to future generations.
will stay as guests with something to offer - but also to the world - truly a typical fruit of the earth and work of these places and just these. Something that can not be found among the few varieties of rice or beans or vegetables that the global market makes it available on all markets, on all shelves.
will remain some alternatives to eat when new diseases and changing climatic conditions exterminate superspecializzate monocultures and monopolies. And there will still be free seed, though perhaps now illegal (?) On the day - if it ever will - that all food sources have been privatized, when each segment of DNA has found his master and his excluded.
Currently there is only increased biodiversity, increased real wealth on this earth, preserved in these villages. We, too, we had, we we still have, though few know it, Italy is full of typical local varieties, sometimes only a particular small village or a few acres of land.
purple potatoes, tomatoes, striped, spotted beans, garlic rose, orange beets, and many other products with less "spectacular", but all the result of patient selection and treatment of generations farmers, now largely forgotten because of the escape from the earth and standardization of production. Fortunately, not everything that is gone now thanks to those who, even by us, is working to save this biodiversity, as Alberto Olivucci and the network of Rural Life (www.civiltacontadina.it).
The people here in the villages has nothing of the modern comforts, but even they lack nothing really necessary. Wooden houses, strong and dignified.
Community rather solid and integrated (also with their immigrants from Nepal and seasonal poor Indian state of Bihar). Some families are also able to send their children to college in Dehra Dun. Many of these, after graduation, would like to work in the area for the future of their communities, but they often must follow in industrialized cities in the plains or her career, this is largely due to (also) the policy of the government Indian - as it was even here - is not to cater to those who live in the mountains, but to let these spopolino you and that is people to come down, meet the development progresses.
The valleys are quite culturally homogeneous within them and, thanks to the work of Navdanya, the villages of some of these have gone to organic farming as a whole - or are still have not yet chosen to remain ever taken chemistry. Along the same valley
you share your local worship the same god, different from valley to valley, but mostly it's various incarnations of Shiva, the god recognized and revered throughout the Himalaya.
God of infinite transformation, the dance of the things, Good and evil are at different times of his game.
Shiva is the bull and cobra, the dense smoke charas.
Incarnate in trees and piles of stones, adorned with bells and tridents.
Summoned by wanderers and perhaps true perhaps false and sometimes, in human terms, both.
God of forests, and mountains. Wind, crevasses and avalanches.
of dark caves and ice beam.
A god of rainbows.
Not that these things are symbols of Shiva. Yes, but I am not his metaphors: God is Shiva who is in these things.
Even a god is a fact. Or maybe vice versa ... rather ....
trek to Kedar Khanti
When you go trekking usually remain very soon the last of the group.
This is the beauty of walking in the mountains: that everyone can not go at their own pace, as it is.
You can not follow the performance of others, we would ruin their precious energy and then there is no reason, sooner or later, everyone comes.
I like to enjoy this luxury. The luxury of the slowness of its pace, whatever, to support his own way, and our own efforts, and also move forward, slowly. Even
I stop to think how this possibility has now become valuable. And how to reverse the ranking of the rich and the poor of this world, successful people whether or not to measure the scale was that other meters.
I look around in the forest and the trees do not need to tell me ... how long it took them to grow.
