Diwali: Festival of Frights

Yesterday was Diwali, the 'festival of lights'. In Koraput, there was no electricity all day. I assumed at first that this was at least partly deliberate - that the intention was that for one night the whole town would be lit solely by the candles that traditionally dot everybody's houses for the occasion.

It turns out that it was actually just another in our regular series of 24-hour power cuts, but nevertheless it seemed well-timed to create some magical, candle-lit scenery. At least, it would have been magical if it wasn't for the constant explosions lighting up every street in town. Diwali, it turns out, is more about bundles of firecrackers than serene candles.

The constant drumroll chatter of these smaller explosions was regularly punctuated by a ground-shaking boom from some truly heavyweight explosives, cutting through the air like a full stop.

I ventured out into town for a while but eventually decided to retreat. There's nothing like a series of loud explosions to sharpen your sense of being an outsider. It's not that the fireworks were particularly impressive - but the relaxed attitude to lighting them made them scary in the same way that neglected seaside fairground rollercoasters contain much more real terror than any of Disney World's chrome dreams.

I was keenly aware that I wasn't familiar with 'the rules', or if there were any. Does everyone else know not to go down this or that pitch-black street because they've just rigged it with explosives? Speaking of not being familiar with 'the rules', I'm pretty sure nobody in Koraput has ever heard the phrase "never go back to a lit firework". As for keeping pets indoors, I was surprised by how calmly the packs of street dogs reacted to it all - but then, I suppose you don't last long as an Indian street dog with a nervous disposition.

On my way back home I met my boss and his family stood on their porch watching the neighbour's children play with catherine wheels on sticks. He started to explain to me the significance of Diwali in Hindu culture - it marks the occasion of King Rama and his wife Sita returning from exile, and imprisonment, to their Indian kingdom in the 15th century BC.

He asked, naturally, if we have a similar celebration in Britain. By coincidence, this year Diwali, which is decided by the lunar calendar, fell on 5th November. "Yes, tonight is Guy Fawkes night", I replied over the noise, "We mark the occasion of a terrorist getting caught trying to blow up the government. It probably would have sounded a bit like this." He looked at me like I was quite mad.

Dussehra

Over the last week it has been the Hindu festival of Dussehra, which is one of Orissa's main holidays. Everyone at Ekta had a few days off work, and many people either visited their family or had their extended family come and stay with them.

In part, the holiday is to celebrate the victory of the goddess Durga over Mahishasur. Durga is a powerful goddess, and is depicted with ten arms, often riding a lion or a tiger and carrying swords and other weapons. She is said to represent two forms of female energy - one mild and protective and the other fierce and destructive.

During dussehra offerings are made to effigies of Durga. This large statue was erected near to the Bus Stand in Koraput, which is effectively the town centre. On the final day of Dussehra, a procession known as Bhasani Jatra takes place. Durga is loaded on to the back of a van and paraded around the town. People dance around the vehicle, which moves slowly and plays loud music. Eventually, the image of Durga will be taken to a river or lake and immersed in water.

Towns like Koraput do not just have one image of Durga, however, so on the occasion of Bhasani Jatra the roads were clogged with vans taking different statues of Durga to find water. Being cast into the water is supposed to be symbolic of Durga travelling to the Himalayas to be re-united with Shiva. However, in recent years people have become increasingly concerned about the impact the effigies, which are often made with cement and plastic and decorated with toxic paints, have on local water sources.

Water

Blog Action Day 2010: Water from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Today is Blog Action Day 2010 and this year the world is writing about 'Water'.

One of the biggest differences I've had to get used to while living in Koraput is not having running water in my house. I have a large barrel which I refill every few days using a hose pipe attached to a communal standpipe which only works at certain times during the week. It's inconvenient, of course, and naturally I have to boil the water if I want to drink it (which leads to me drinking an inordinate amount of coffee).

My situation isn't that unusual though, and my inconvenience is nothing compared to what many people here in Orissa deal with, particularly those living outside the main towns. There are over 50,000 villages in Orissa but only 1,881 have access to tap water. This leaves 36,791 villages where they must haul water from wells, and 24,563 villages where they rely on large communal water tanks. Both wells and tanks are notorious for harbouring water-borne diseases such as cholera, dysentery and typhoid. The likelihood of these diseases spreading increases rapidly when combined with a lack of adequate facilities for sanitation.

I wrote about the need for better sanitation in the slums of Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the same is true in many parts of India.

However, India is at least blessed with a remarkable organisation called Sulabh International, who work to spread the use of sanitary toilet facilities. Their public toilets can be found all over the country and they have also developed low cost toilets which are easy to construct and can be tailored for slums or rural areas.

The toilet pictured below is designed to keep waste away from the village water supply. They have calculated that it costs on average 1,700 Rs. (£24) to dig and fortify the substructure and 950 Rs. (£13.50) to build the superstructure. That's surely worth spending a penny on?

Indie in India

My article about the indie music scene in New Delhi has been published by The Guardian.

Back to School

My article about Ekta's work to get rural children back to school has been published by UNICEF.

Summit To Think About

World leaders gathered in New York last week to discuss progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, the ambitious targets set in 2000 for reducing poverty. Just days earlier and eight thousand miles away, another group of politicians, academics and development workers met in Bhubaneswar, the state capital of Orissa, to talk specifically about the chances of achieving the MDGs in one of India’s poorest states.

I arrived at the summit just in time to hear the opening address by the state governor, MC Bhandare. He gave the proceedings a sense of cultural context by quoting Mayadhar Mansingh, a renowned Oriya poet: “Orissa is the most beautiful and scenic place in the world. Minerally it is the richest, culturally richest, scenically richest but economically poorest. How could such a beauteous nation be so cursed?”

With his challenge to answer that question, and to find a solution, hanging over us, we divided up into smaller groups to discuss progress towards the Goals, and where there was still more work to be done, just as was done later on a global scale in New York. Looking back now, it’s interesting to compare the overview that world leaders saw with the specifics here in Orissa.

The region suffers from many of the problems crystallized in the MDGs, but it has unique priorities all of its own. For example, while HIV is a major issue in many parts of the world, here the rate is still thankfully relatively low, but malaria and cholera remain big killers. That is where medical resources need to be directed.

Similarly, while many areas in the world are struggling with massively inflating urban populations, in Orissa the people in most need are still to be found in the rural areas, particularly scheduled caste and tribal populations. ‘Scheduled’ caste and tribal people are recognised by the Constitution of India as being the most neglected and marginalised in the country, and their population in Orissa is much larger than in other Indian regions.

Development indicators are significantly lower for these groups across the board: for example, the literacy rate for Orissa is 54%, but for tribal people that falls to 37%, and just 23% for females. Similarly, while the percentage of the population living below the poverty line has fallen from 47.15% in 1997 to 39.90% in 2005, the percentage of tribal people living below the poverty line exceeds 78% in some areas.

The summit may not have been able to answer Mansingh’s lament for his cursed nation, and only the most optimistic think that the Goals will be met by 2015, but for the delegates that is no reason to stop fighting. One of the key lessons is that world leaders making the headline-grabbing decisions must be attuned to local contexts and realities on the ground.

Speaking to Shairose Mawji, the Chief of UNICEF’s field office in Orissa, at the end of the summit, she told me that even within the state they need to vary their approach widely between cities like Bhubaneswar and the rural areas in the south of the state. However, she made it clear to me that she’s undaunted by this challenge. “Now is the time to act, for all of us. Focusing on the poorest, the most marginalised, is the way forward,” she said. “The answers are known, the key interventions are known, but we need to continue to take action.”

Published in Ctrl.Alt.Shift

MDGs: The view from Orissa

My coverage of the Millennium Development Goals summit in Bhubaneswar has been published by New Internationalist.