Problem of "scale-up" in architecture education

DURING MY STINT WITH TEACHING ARCHITECTURE, I wouldn’t loose an opportunity to bring up the issue of “scale-up”, a major lacuna here in architecture education. It was no different forty years ago when I was a student. Obviously the problem of scale up continues in architecture and planning.

Once I gave a curtsy call to A’s town planning class. They were discussing on the drawings of a large housing project in Mumbai. It was for a few thousand residential units of various standard sizes, in high-rise buildings with roads, open spaces, amenities, FSI (Floor Space Index) and so on.

I thank them all for sharing, and asked, ‘Whatever may be the numbers and statistics, how do you deal with the toddlers, children, youth, working and non-working women, the aged and the unemployed?’ 
Of course, none, including A, had thought about it. I asked A, ‘What kind of poison are you giving the students?’ They were treating people as if objects.

I once asked my final years students in design studio, ‘You are working at 1:100 scales. Tell me, how much the thickness of one of the wall lines will amount to actually on site?’ Predictably they were harassed at the bizarre question and fumbled at calculations: 0.5 mm lead line 100 times.

WE GO BY CONVENTIONS, perhaps, without stopping once to question, even though the social, economic, political, environmental conditions keep changing, now at a faster pace. Slowly, imperceptibly, a bureaucratic attitude of "status quo" and to treat "people as objects" creeps in the students.

Students live, go in and around, and work at buildings, like all others. Do they notice how the lines on the drawings get translated at the work site? Yes, of course. There must be workshop facilities at some of the colleges. Some students document the existing buildings in drawings for the NASA (National Association of Students of Architecture) Conventions.

They draw and see pictures on flat paper, or on the screen: cinema/TV/computer, which are either stills or moving in frames by selection. They make paper/wood/plastic models at a sale to fit standard size sheets. A project may be worth a few lakhs or crores of rupees.


THE QUESTION IS, whether the project is scaled-up on their mental screen to its real size on the ground? What and how many dimensions of architecture would they notice, or assimilate, or explore during the learning period, and thereafter?

A biotechnologist illustrates the problem of “scale-up” giving examples of a lion and a flea:

‘by comparison with its length, if a flea were the size of lion, it would be able to jump a mile. However, weight increases more rapidly with increasing size than strength, so that the scale-up flea would probably be unable to move. …It should be noted that such design is appropriate to its scale, and flea-sized lion is as impractical as lion-sized flea’ (‘Principles of Biotechnology’ Ed. Alan Wiseman, Urre University Press, 1983, p 96).

This classic problem of scale-up is faced when laboratory operations are to be carried out at industrial plant to process several hundred tons of material. This may be evident when the Regional Plans look like blown-up Land Use City Plans. It may also be evident in other areas such as, government policies, projects and laws, if examined without bias.

ONCE I GAVE A QUIZ to my students in final year.
By now they were familiar with Secretariat building at Chandigarh by Corbu. I told them to go to seashore at any of the bays in Mumbai. They should sketch the bay with two land ends and place the building floating on the sea at any distance they chose. I also gave them an option to place the building against the backdrop of any chosen mountain near Mumbai. Anyone could predict the result!

On the drawing board, straight lines follow the Tee and Triangles. Now erotic curves appear in fashion, perhaps without a thought to how sight – sound – light – air work.
Whispering galleries! 
Under the Millennium Dome everything is fitted in straight lines. 
A square peg in a round hole! 
Now computers draw the lines at a command.

Now there is CAD-CAM: a fine tool for multimillion rupee projects or for mass production of thousands of prototype units/buildings for the mass of people of the mass society, like china made at ceramic factory. 
This, of course, facilitates the centralization of power and monopoly and grandiose. Otherwise about 30000 architects in the country of a billion people would have enough work anyone for more than one lifetime. 
What happens to the growth and economics of people and buildings is another matter.



IN THE PROCESS OF DESIGNING, production, and also the maintenance, of a building, how does one read a fine print produced on a drawing board or by CAD-CAM? 
We are reminded, without malice, few classic examples. 

1. Sydney Opera building languished for some time during its construction; not knowing how to make it on the site, leave aside the city coffers went dry.
2. Engineering Building (by Sterling and Govan) at Leicester University, suffered freezing internal temperature in the winter of 1960, due to the glass curtain walling failure (Bill Holdsworth, Antony Sealey, ‘Healthy Buildings’, Longman, 1993). 
3. The Pruit-Igeo flats in St. Louis, Missouri, which had won award from the American Institute of Architects only seventeen years before, were blown up in 1972 at the unanimous request of the residents, because they had proved impossible for daily living (Graham Green, ‘Philosophy of the Arts’, Routledge, 1997). 

We learn from mistakes. (Not being a celebrity I don’t quote my failures. However, one could guess they are embedded in here: the reason to write this paper.)

IS THERE A TOOL to blow a whistle time to time during the design process? 
Yes, there is a professor. 
Perhaps there may be such a software package for a learner. 
Or, a checklist! 
We, perhaps, learn from mistakes (if they are made public) rather than instructions, if it is a part of the discipline. 
How does one foresee a room or a city that gets cluttered, crowded and starts over spilling with people, goods, furniture, and garbage, in a few years time, or be dead?


EXPERIENCING ARCHITECTURE AND MEASURING ITS MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS at first hand can only be realized by ‘field-work’ at a real event. For this, one has to keep aside one’s judgement, prejudices, dogmas, status, and likes–dislikes; indeed they have no place in the public realm. More the dimensions more elegant and simple architecture is, like Kabir’s “Sakhi” – a verse form.

Starting to learn architecture at that age, however, has its own problem/s to negotiate. The curve of learning ability, which is upward from the birth as the brain is growing, sags substantially after the age of 17/18 years, and at the old age it either deteriorate or even picks up. Developing perception by “anushasan” – rigorous practice, however, could compensate the slow rate of learning, as if “Life” matters.

IT (Info Technology) and multimedia may pump up or dump as mush information as period of time allows. But validity of any information (including this paper) must be scrutinised at ground level. Besides there is need to ruminate the swallowed information. 
However looking at the present the trends, there is greater need to balance the quantity and quality, with major emphasis on quality, of the output and the reward – both in scholastic and profession areas, by popular demand.

THE ISSUE OF “SCALE-UP” BEGINS from the very inception of a thought /idea / concept that appears in our boundless inner space. Where does it come from? Does it come from within – mind – brain – conscience, or from outside – say, from some glossy magazine or an authority? But any thought / idea/ concept must be examined without believing, before it takes to a demonic scale, like Nazism, either directly or by proxy, and swallows or eats us away.
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NOTE:
I restore this article that was hacked sometime ago from other blog: ARCHETYPES INDIA.


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Remigius de Souza
Mumbai (10-05-2007)


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© Remigius de Souza. all rights reserved.
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South Asian Jazz (Review)

South Asian Jazz in Architecture (Event Review)

Event: disContinuous Threads: Memory, Freedom and Architecture in Contemporary India, Conference at National Centre for Performing Arts [NCPA], Mumbai, December 10–12, 1997

Traditional Warli House, Thane Dist. Maharashtra, India

Warli hut built by self-help and community participation; it is truly green, organic and sustainable; its technology standards are unsurpassed any civilized society until now.

What is Architecture

Architecture is Mother of All Arts(!)

Proverb among Indie-architects

PEOPLE ENERGY

Key Words: Indian Westernized Architecture, Contemporary Western Architecture, Biodiversity, Culture

‘THREADS’ certainly bring to our mind Kabir the weaver and Namdeo the tailor, and others of Indian high culture. This is in contrast to the present Western and contemporary westernized Indian notion of wealth, consumption and market economy.

EMPERORS PASSED AWAY, but Kabir, Tukaram likewise other saint-poets continue to rule for centuries. However, history books made by the British-made Indian schooling, are crammed with wars, murders and murderers. Even an unassuming village traditional doctor is cautious to give away his formulas of traditional herbal medicines to guard, of course, against misuse, namely by moneymaking, desecration, exploitation… This is in contrast to western culture of ‘Intellectual Property Rights’. A question of morality!

THE ARCHITECTS who gathered for the conference came from India, Pakistan, Bangla Desh and Sri Lanka. They belong to the First World of minority. We are well aware the architecture, modern architecture, in the subcontinent is an extension, a tail end of western architecture.

IN MODERN ARCHITECTURE there is neither North nor South, nor West or East. It is a one-dimensional world where the world is flat for the architects who struggle to create two-dimensional images of three-dimensional space, unaware that they are being manipulated by the Super-strings of Corporate Powers.

The professional ladies and gentlemen here, gathering and splitting threads at the conference, were speaking alien language, and referring to Kant, Kahn… aesthetics, technology… cults and post-modern-cults, and reflecting western concepts mostly at a gross level of existence.

Some tried typically to capitalize on poverty in fashion. Language matters when one speak of regions. Language and culture are so intimately entwined; they are “almost one and the same thing” (Pagel) [1]. Yet when we dig the buried past (Harappa etc.) we try to read cultures of the bygone times from its artefacts, architecture irrespective of its being good or bad.

IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT there are about fifty - sixty social and cultural sub-groups, a great warp and weft, and numerous mother tongues, many more times than the officially recognised and state-supported languages. As is said, the shades of languages change at ten miles.

As the ecologists have long known, that from the poles to the Equator the number of different species of flora and fauna increase… so also in the size of territory the species range over… both these ecological rules also apply to languages [2]. This is perfectly in harmony with rich biodiversity of land and waters of the sub-continent.

Now the folk languages, rich with traditional wisdom and knowledge accumulated over many lifetimes are on the way of extinction together with arts, crafts and indigenous architecture following the extinction of the plants, birds, animals, insects…following the extinction of indigenous food grains, replaced by hybrid culture.

“Languages began dying in droves from late 15th century onwards as the Europeans colonized the world. Some languages died because of mass killings of ethnic communities. Each time a language dies we lose something we do not even understand (Woodfield)…we loose a way of perceiving the world…a way of learning (Pagel) [3].

Only trade is global; culture and cultural expressions cannot be global. Even the currencies cannot be global. Then how could architecture be global? Architects may have to deliberately and constantly watch out how every point and line put on the paper or computer screen affects land and waters, and the people.

High on agenda of Western high culture of ‘development’ is to disintegrate and dis-empower the people and turn them into zombies – programmed robots of mono-culture of mass-type society for the greed of power and profit.

IS CREATIVITY A PREROGATIVE OF A FEW – Corbu, Kahn, Gehri…? Aesthetics for that matter is a clouded issue due to social-cultural-economic issues, geography, urbanism, high culture, mass culture, and Environment-Ecology-Energy crisis. Centuries ago Kabir – Tukaram – Chokhamela challenged the gross concept of aesthetics by giving examples of plants – sandalwood, clove, sugarcane etc.

Beauty – Truth – Bliss – Love is not the opposite of ugly – lie – pain – hate. But to speak of this area is a taboo. It is so, for simple reason that this area cannot be institutionalized. Discourses by gurus though are institutionalized.

Somewhere in the development process we have lost ‘rt’ – good – the noun was replaced by adjective. However ‘rt’ is beyond definition, though science is not. Science continues to discover the ‘Frontiers of Ignorance’ [4].

Architects of the sub-continent are still chained to, caught up in and victims of orthodox view of modern architecture. “Development of modern architecture suggests it has taken us about four thousand years to progress from pyramid to a box’ says Papworth [5]. While modern architecture seems to have lost direction and people all over the world are facing identity crisis, it displays architect’s signature, sometimes that of the corporate client, hardly of the user.

Merely adopting effects and epithets of vernacular is not enough. It was Einstein who said that you couldn’t expect to solve a problem within the mind that created it [6] (quoted by Edward Goldsmith).

Architecture today is a goldfish in a glass bowl. It is time now to let loose the goldfish into the stream. Rest will take care of itself. But that demands morality, dignity and integrity. Do architects and scientists perceive that they are tools in the hands of empires of development, which control the access to the resources? In search of architecture the major task is to humanize and democratize the community … ‘but you cannot have morality without community. Without community morality becomes humbug’ (John Papworth) [7].

THE CONCLUDING SESSION was a deflated event like afterbirth. It did not reflect the preceding part of this grand South Asian Jazz, which was coupled with occasional Shahanai – Pakhavaj of Shubhendu Kaushik.

There were no issue/s at stake at the event.

It is understood that the participants had to put their perceptions, experiences and references within the limitation of period of time, words and visuals in their presentations, discussions (and this review, too) cannot cover entire gamut of the theme of the conference.

THE MAJOR CHALLENGE today in the context of the theme is to free both, land and waters and community, which are shattered and disintegrated in the cobweb of market and its allies. Let loose the goldfish of architecture from the glass bowl into the stream of community.

Remigius de Souza
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Referances and Notes

1 Vines, Gail. ‘Death of a mother tongue’ New Scientist, Jan 6, 1996, p.25
2 ibid. p 26
3 ibid. p.27
4 Theme of the 125th anniversary issue of Nature, 3.11.1994
5 Papworth, John. ‘Shut up and Listen – A new handbook for revolutionaries’, Academic Inn, London, 1997
6 ibid. Preface
7 ibid. p.4

[Published in Janata Weekly, Mumbai, March 15, 1998, P.11-14.]

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© Remigius de Souza।, all rights reserved।
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TRIBAL SKILLS: Clay country roofing tiles

TRIBAL SKILLS: Clay country roofing tiles


THE USE of half round country roofing burnt clay tiles with some variation goes back to centuries in several parts of India and other parts of the world. Handmade-burnt country tiles are commonly used in the rural areas of Gujarat and Maharashtra. The author’s house in Konkan (West Coast Region of India) is made of mud walls and covered with country tiles. It is like other houses, many older in age, built similarly in traditional manner. The house is built of mud walls with mud plaster, and mud floor, and roofing of country ti8les on scantling of bullies of secondary wood and split bamboo battens. This region enjoys over hundred inches (2500 mm) average annual rainfall.

In recent years, some individuals and organisations have fortunately become aware of mud building and traditional methods of construction, perhaps because of publicity to mud architecture in foreign countries: West. Most city dwellers in India are migrants from rural areas, their ties severed with rural India. Those connected with the field of construction have no knowledge of traditional ways. Yet it is positive direction in this country of a vast illiterate majority, that some urban elite is becoming aware of MUD ARCHITECTURE. And perhaps in the course of time it may become as popular as, “KHADI” is today, in spite of the fact that in the countryside, the rural population, illiterate as well as educated, poor as well as the rich, are entering into the cult of English Education and Concrete Houses. The rural population is yet to understand how some people in the city though English educated have become aware of the importance of MUD as material for housing.

Many alternatives are being suggested for roofing in low cast housing... from treated thatch to asbestos cement sheets, Mangalore tiles, G.I. sheets, aluminium sheets, precast cement concrete, asphalt sheets, cellulose waste sheets, stone slabs, brick vaults etc. I was surprised to read a remark in one of the publications of National Building Organisation [NBO], which rejected country-roofing tiles as breakable and destructive to timber substructure or supports. In rural low-cost housing undertaken by the outside agencies, the roofing in Mangalore roofing tiles is preferred. The country roofing tiles are rejected by the government and non-government agencies while building low-cost houses. Yet when the people build houses for themselves in rural areas, they continue traditional handmade-burnt clay tiles. Country clay tiles are also called ‘potter’s tiles’. In some parts of India, Kumbhars (potters’ caste) make them, as it is their family tradition.

There are two methods of making half round country tiles. One made on the potter’s wheel in cone shape, cut into halves, and baked in kiln. These are mostly crude – not in uniform shape, size and thickness. The other method is to lay a sheet on flat surface, in a form or mould, or required size, shape and thickness. The sheet then is removed and shaped by placing it on a half-rounded wooden block; dried in the shade and baked in a kiln. The potters in the Konkan region of Maharashtra State practice this method as well as the tribal communities of Gujarat State.

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PRACTICE WITH DIFFERENCE

In the tribal villages of Panchmahal, Sabarkantha, Baroda, Bharuch etc. district of Gujarat state, the method of making is same as described above. However the practice is different. Here the every household makes its own tiles for annual need for replacing broken tiles, as well for building the new houses, or for the making of additions to the old houses. It is a normal practice in the Adivasi [tribal/aborigine] families. Everyone knows the art of tile-making, just as they know the ways of growing crops, building a house, making Roti [bread], rolling Bidis [hand made cigars rolled in leaf for smoking], making cow-dung cakes, manufacturing and playing flutes, and the implements for farming.


They know which mud [clay] to select to make a good tile, without the aid of laboratory. The tiles they make are uniform in sized and colour, sound in strength, are waterproof. There is no room for the sub-standard goods here. The tiles to cover the ridge are larger, and sometimes with decorative motif.

Tile making is a household CRAFT alike the cottage industry such as KHADI sold from the emporiums for the use of elite and which is seldom used by those who produce it.

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PROCESS

Country roofing tile is 100 percent labour intensive product. No machine or any factory product is involved in making the tile. Raw material for the tile is fine clay, taken from the fields, or riverbed. The clay is cleaned of roots, gravel etc., then wetted, tempered by legs, and allowed to season for two days. Fuel required for baking is no threat to forest, as leaves, branches, grass, rice husk, cow dung etc. are used as fuel; the P.W.D. Handbook of Bombay Presidency described the fuel as “rubbish”. Simple equipments consist: (1) a flat wooden base to make a clay sheet; (2) a form made of bamboo or wood strip (¼” x ¼” size) – for a common tile; (3) a larger form for the ridge tile; (4) half round wooden moulds – one for the common tiles and another for the ridge tiles – to shape the clay sheet. The top of base plate is sprinkled with dry ash from “chulah” – hearth – to prevent sticking. Prepared clay is spread, pressed on the base in a frame, compacted by hand and smoothened by spraying little water. The clay sheet is then removed, placed on the mould and shaped. The mould is removed and the raw tile is left for drying for a day or day and a half. The dried tiles are baked by keeping them in rows with gaps in between them, filled and covered with fuel. If the area is windy, then the kiln is formed in a shallow pit, to prevent fuel from burning out fast, resulting in the tiles being half burnt or over burnt.

COST

It takes about four working days for one person to make 1000 tiles. The operation can spread over seven days enabling a person to carry on with other activities in between the whole operation, such as collection of raw material, fuel and water, or household work or farming. The cost is Rs. 80/- to 100/- or more for 1000 tiles, depending upon labour component and cost of equipment.

The Mangalore tile is superior to country tile. It is an industrial product, prepared only where large quantity of specific clay is available to sustain the industry. In addition, the product involves high-energy consumption. The distribution takes place through transport system, which adds to the cost, besides commission of the agencies.


SUBSTRUCTURE FOR ROOFING

There is notion that country tiles require a heavier support structure as compared to Mangalore tiles. The weight of both types of roofing together with battens is equal, which is about 14lbs.per-sq. ft. area. However no well-cut wooden battens are needed to support country tiles as in Mangalore tiles. Bamboo battens are sufficient to support country tiles.

Poor people use even Carvi (Strobi Lanthes Ciliatus) or other material obtained from the brushwood. The uneven level is corrected by inserting a tile over a batten. Lying of country tiles, so also its maintenance can be done even by a twelve year old child. For Mangalore tiles require perfect alignment is essential to prevent leakage. Two man-days are required to cover 100 sq. ft. of roof area.


MAINTENANCE

It is another misguided notion that country-roofing tiles require high maintenance cost. This notion is based on a bias of the urbanites and professionals. It does not take into account the time distribution and occupation round the year of a villager, as well as rural unemployment.

Before the monsoon, people remove the tiles, clean them with brooms and replace them. This action is called ‘turning the tiles’. This operation to cover 100-sq. ft. roof area requires 1.5 person-days. It costs at Rs. 15/- per person per day with no specialised skills, industrial equipment or products. Compare this with the cost of maintenance of a leaking R.C.C. roof slab.

A bamboo sapling or root (offset) planted in the fence grows into 50/10 bamboos and continues to grow and starts giving return in about three to five years’ time. Thus, the household is not dependent on market supply of bamboo or tiles for construction, repairs or additions to the house. For preservation of bamboo from white rot, the tribal follow a simple method of keeping it in the water for three days before fixing it in the roof. In some areas bamboo are kept in salt water.


ECONOMY

Self-reliance, low-cost, conservation, employment, sustainable life-style are some of the aspects of economy in housing. While travelling through tribal areas of Gujarat the author came across several settlements where Government Agencies and Panchayats have distributed Mangalore tiles either free or at subsidised rates. This may be happening in other states also. The government may have noble intentions of giving the poor a good industrial and urban roofing material. It may not be even be a second quality or substandard rejected stuff left-over at the factories. But it is doing a great damage, to the extent of killing the household craft acquired and evolved through generations by the tribal. It is nothing short of weakening their economic independence and skills in such vital areas as roofing their own house. Such an act of charity is making the tribal dependant on factory product and also pushing them even below the poverty line.

The government may achieve popularity by this act of support to the manufacturing industry, but this has perhaps a parallel in Indian history: the death of traditional art of famous “Malmal” [the finest textile] Sarees of Dhaka.

The substructure used for the country is adaptable to take Mangalore tiles when economic situation of the rural poor improves. Self-reliance though is the first step to such improvement.

This roofing product has 100% wage component [self-help], low energy consumption and low cost. The cost works out to Rs 24/- per sq m compared to improved thatch roof, which would have cost in 1986 @ Rs 29/- to 35/- per sq. m. (Ref: BRN - 13 of August 1986 by Central Building Research Institute (CBRI), Roorkee).

Roofing with country tiles may not be adoptable all over the country. Traditional roofing materials are different according to region. The roof in Rajasthan is made of stone slabs, in some parts of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka the roof is flat, made of one meter mud slab provided with skylights and vents, whereas some parts of Karnataka granite stone slabs are used for walls and roofs. Why does the rural population go for Mangalore tiles? The villagers look up to the city as model of good living. The use of Mangalore tiles or R.C.C. roof in rural areas is partly a n urban cult that the relevance or needs or resources. At the beginning they were attracted by the glamour of the city; now it is need for employment. The new generations of potters are moving away from traditional vocations with the advent of education and migrate to urban centres for employment while the city people spend thousands to learn pottery. Unfortunately, the learned and the experts have rejected country tiles as substandard, breakable, and expensive roofing material.
Indeed, with the most welcome programme of housing for the rural poor that has come into force, the aid given should not be an instrument of marketing industrial goods for the housing product, but optimum utilisation of local resources – skills – products. It should not look down upon the rural people as an “untapped rural market”, as popular commercial jargon says, to plough back money to urban centres.

It should be possible for institutions and organisations such as C.B.R.I., N.B.O., HUDCO, CAPART, NGOs, and government agencies, engaged in research, policy making, training, finance and building to save and revive this centuries old craft, through their housing programmes in rural and semi-urban areas.

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Fig. 5. Cost analysis
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Fig. 6. Chinese roof

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Remigius de Souza
1987

Figure 1: My house in Konkan region on the West Coast of India.
Figure 2: Bhill adivasi (aborigine) house in Satpuda Ranges.
Figure 3: TYPICAL TRADITIONAL METHOD OF HALF ROUND COUNTRY TILE ROOFING
Figure 5: Cost Analysis of Half Round Country roofing Tiles
Figure 6: A CHINES METHOD OF USING COUNTRY ROOFING TILES (Source: ‘Conference on Tropical Architecture’, University College, London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London.)

(This paper was published under the title, “Country Roofing Tiles for Low Cost Rural Housing” by DESWOS in BRIEF No.3 June 1989 Germany; SHELTER (HUDCO, New Delhi); and Moving Technology[CAPART, New Delhi)


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© Remigius de Souza. all rights reserved.
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Senses and SenseAbility – 7: Seeing

Senses and SenseAbility – 7: Seeing

SENSE OF SEEING is the function of eye. Seeing, when one is looking, witnessing, going beyond a cursory glance, reveals many facets of an event. Perhaps one may discover roots of some great event in an ordinary one. Fr example, Galileo watching a chandelier swing back and forth at the Cathedral of Pisa or Newton looking at the falling apple, or Dronacharya (of Epic Mahabharata) demands a thumb from Ekalavya as his fees [a dakshina or deed of gratitude] for being an absentee guru.

The descendants of Ekalavya, the Bhil tribe do not use their thumb even to this day. This is his living memorial that signifies Aryan atrocities on the aborigine communities. The aborigine, then, though assimilated in the Aryan society, its purpose was to add a service class, which was identified as Shudra caste. Even in the free democratic India the discrimination continues. In the era of Industrialization in India the peasants are now facing the onslaught of elimination. In the last decade, between 1997 and 2005 about 150,000 farmers have committed suicides (Ishwari Prasad, “Significance of Farmers’ Suicide”, Janata, Vol. 69, No. 32, August 31, 2008, p. 3-8, Mumbai), one of the reasons is farming is no more sustainable.

Such a seeing or watching or witnessing also combines other senses. The whole body becomes an eye, as in archery, which has iconic dimensions in eastern cultures. Or for example, a cricketer who throws or hits a ball: be alert or miss the target.

Observing (without malice, likes-dislikes, taboos or judgments) during even the ordinary routines such as, seating, reading, eating-drinking, walking, traveling etc. or watching the people watching TV, the ordinary activity of seeing becomes an action, which could be a creative action.

Such an action, which involves self and the outside, has values of entertainment (leisure) and education both. No investment. No time schedule. No rules and regulations. No legal curbs (in case you don’t intrude in other’s privacy). No losses in time-money-health… on the contrary, by being alert the senses become sharp.

#

Scientists say all animals received vision some 540 million years before now (identified as Cambrian Explosion); they were in the sea then. It is said the vision brought great change in their lives also: the conflict between the pray and the predator accelerated (see: Andrew Parker, ‘In the Blink of an Eye’). “Pikaia”, our remote ancestor, survived: thus we are.

In modern times the sense – vision – has overtaken even other senses. ET-IT has taken this change to great heights. We live more and more in virtual reality than ever before through canned visuals, canned music, canned games, canned wars, canned education… on cell phones, computers, TV screens… The worst victims are the youngest, younger and young generations in the increasing proportions. The poor little ones, who have not yet seen even a smallest fraction of real world, are trapped by the game called virtual reality. It is happening before our eyes but we don’t see or notice it.

A few decades ago the children were provided with toy-guns and toy-cars. Now as they grow a little they are with violent games in the Vice City or Road Rash or Sports of cricket or football etc. on the TV mast, and quietly Porn enters…

Neither parents (citizens) nor educationists nor the planners, and never the governments of any brand, dogma, right or left or fundamentalist ever think of play grounds for the children of different ages within their neighborhoods. And they boast of holding Asian Games and Olympics: indeed the height of hypocrisy.

#

A true story of an extreme case of a computer-nerd

“Y”, a young man, is, or now was, a student of engineering in second year. His father – a professional engineer, mother – a high school teacher, sister – a medical student. Y spends hours on computer, almost an addict, many a times late at night, while other family members are fast sleep. (I don’t know what he was looking at, and don’t want to know). His eye sight was very low from childhood. On one fateful day, or perhaps night, Y’s both the eyes started bleeding profusely, it was a hemorrhage. The veins busted. There is no remedy. Y is permanently blind. I don’t give the names for obvious reason. Hid kin should have informed all their contacts and the public about the gory incidence as a warning and caution. Precisely because the cause is absolutely foolish, though unfortunate and sad it may be. The educated could be ignorant in many, many ways.

#

Vision – inner vision, light, an eye, eyesight etc. – has been a subject of visionaries and scientists, of metaphysics and scientific discoveries… There are a great number of volumes on vision written by scientists and pundits; great schools of theories have been founded; great monuments have been erected.

Yet vision is still elusive, still a mystery, and the mystery deepens with every invention… Reading about them my eyes have gone foggy, but in vain. No salvation. What am I to do? In my ordinary life I must find my own answers. When I took and followed an advice and took a curative measure I saw the ‘Rainbows’.

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© Remigius de Souza. all rights reserved.
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Cow dung and paddy: a critique of Amartya Sen

Cow dung and paddy: a critique of Amartya Sen
Challenges of 21st Century
by Remigius de Souza

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“Everything, in this world, exists in order to culminate in a book.” —Mallarmé (1842 – 1898)
“The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding” – Albert Camus

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(Key words: Land (with waters) is the source of Life and the sustenance to all living beings, and culture to humans. Peasants – the landless and the landholder alike, the artisans known as twelve ‘Balutadars’, and the forest dwellers or the tribal, which amount to 900 millions including those languish in the city-slums. Development is an ongoing process and not an abstract economic theory. When means and goals are same then there is possibility of development: here land is the means and goals, so also the peasants. Environmental-Ecological-Energy Cost (E-E-E Cost): It is not enough to count cost-price-profit (loss) in currency any more; it is already an outdated mode the economists have been following.)

I AM BROWSING Amartya Sen’s book, ‘Resources, Values and Development’ (1984), a selection of his essays from 1961 to 1984, republished in paperback in 1999 (OUP), after about fifteen years. Perhaps the author and the publisher did not see any need to include subsequent essays, if any, a sequel to the theme of this book, perhaps due to the restraints of economy.


At the start of the introduction, Professor Sen declares, ‘Much of economics is neat and elegant; but some of it is not. The essays included in this volume belong to the later category (p.1).’ It is because, I think, they are holistic. They relate mainly to development economics that take into account many aspects. I, of course, skip theories, equations, diagrams, tables etc., as I am not equipped to comprehend; I look for fiction. I, however, find something amiss, something desirable to the heart of a peasant. Hence, without defining or theorising I straight go to an example:

In the Chapter 13: Rights and Capabilities, Section 3: Capabilities, I notice:
‘Consider a good, e.g. rice. The utilitarian will be concerned with the fact that the good in question creates utility through its consumption. … But that is not the only thing it does (p.315).’ he further writes, ‘Four different notions need in this context. There is a notion of a good (in this case, rice); that of a characteristic of a good (e.g. giving calories and nutrition); that of functioning of a person (in this case, living without calorie deficiency); that of a utility (in this case, pleasure or desire fulfilment from the functioning in question, or for some other functioning related to the characteristic of ice) (p. 316).’

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AS I READ THIS PART, I wander away from the book into the realms of my perceptions, experience, information and impressions that I gathered during my journey through places, events and time. It is also keeping in with an idiom in my native tongue, Konkani, “you need not check every grain of ‘rice’ in pot if cooked.”

Sometime around 6500 – 5800 BC, the archaeologists say, people in the Fertile Crescent in South-east Asia domesticated rice. That included a part that we now call India, Bharat, or Hindustan as per our convenience. However, even to this day the tribal, in the backyard of Mumbai, cultivate wild Jowar – millet – and use it for various purposes: grains for food, its stocks that grow 7-8 feet for fodder and in housing.
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I TAKE THE EXAMPLE of Konkan, a rice-producing region on the western coast, where I was born, and grew up on paddy farms during my formative years. For a peasant, her homestead is the yard around her adobe abode with plants, fields, groves, grassland, hills, and of course, the community well, a stream, water reservoir if any; and a cow, goat, chickens, cat, dog or bullocks join her kinship.

During all the dry days, besides other chores, she collects cow dung, brushwood, dry leaves, which go for fuel and/or manure in a compost pit. She collects even the ashes from ‘Chulha’ – cooking hearth, and ashes from the burnt leaves and spread in the farms. For the peasants this is ‘conventional’ agriculture, which continues in many places. The western and the westernised call it ‘non-conventional’ or ‘organic’ agriculture.


In between, there are four months of monsoon that witness hectic activity at home and the fields – transport, process, sowing and caring paddy, other grains and vegetables.

The harvest brings the work that involves transport, process and storage. For example, there is a process for parboiled rice. Until few decades ago, they used the wooden grinding wheels (Ghirat) at home to remove husk, similar to stone-mill (Jaate) for flour. Now they take paddy to rice mills. They take home even the husk of the ground paddy. They feed the finer husk after boiling to the chicken / cattle. They mix the course husk in cow dung to make ‘govari’ – a flat cow dung disk – for fuel. Paddy straw is stacked in a mound (Koodi) around a wooden bully 10 – 15 feet high. It is stored for cattle feed during dry days, as green fodder is available during monsoon.

The seeds, paddy, parboiled rice and rice are stored according to the quantity in a bamboo mat silos, or in paddy straw bundles (Moodi). Silos are covered from outside with cow dung wash. The bundles look like huge pumpkins of about three feet in diameter. The paddy straw cover is about three inches thick when compacted. They use a hand-made paddy-straw rope to tie around the bundle, compacted by using a wooden batten. The vertically tied rope looks like altitudes on a map of the globe. Indeed, it was a beauty, a work of art (or craft!) now perhaps lost forever. Paddy straw is also used for roofing in some cases, as may be seen near saltpans to cover and protect the un-disposed stock of salt in the open, during monsoon.
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(Fig. 5: Cow dung cakes, 100 % labour intensive)

In between, there are four months of monsoon that witness hectic activity at home and the fields – transport, process, sowing and caring paddy, other grains and vegetables.

The harvest brings the work that involves transport, process and storage. For example, there is a process for parboiled rice. Until few decades ago, they used the wooden grinding wheels (Ghirat) at home to remove husk, similar to stone-mill (Jaate) for flour. Now they take paddy to rice mills. They take home even the husk of the ground paddy. They feed the finer husk after boiling to the chicken / cattle. They mix the course husk in cow dung to make ‘govari’ – a flat cow dung disk – for fuel. Paddy straw is stacked in a mound (Koodi) around a wooden bully 10 – 15 feet high. It is stored for cattle feed during dry days, as green fodder is available during monsoon.

The seeds, paddy, parboiled rice and rice are stored according to the quantity in a bamboo mat silos, or in paddy straw bundles (Moodi). Silos are covered from outside with cow dung wash. The bundles look like huge pumpkins of about three feet in diameter. The paddy straw cover is about three inches thick when compacted. They use a hand-made paddy-straw rope to tie around the bundle, compacted by using a wooden batten. The vertically tied rope looks like altitudes on a map of the globe. Indeed, it was a beauty, a work of art (or craft!) now perhaps lost forever. Paddy straw is also used for roofing in some cases, as may be seen near saltpans to cover and protect the un-disposed stock of salt in the open, during monsoon.


This is a very brief description of few details of peasants’ actions related to rice in the example above. Simple and ordinary as they may seem, there is a complex interrelationship between resources, values and development, which modern economics may not have fully explored. There is much more: besides skills, tools, processes and products related to rice, so also number of other “utilities”, not only for livelihood, but also culture/s of peasants. This has been going on for generations, for ages.

“Consider a good, e.g. rice”, again. A few hundred miles north of my birthplace is Riagad District. Here, for example, in the coastal plains, the peasants don’t plough the paddy farm, but directly broadcast the seeds. They also use water-flooded paddy terraces to farm favourite local specie of fish, ‘Jitada’, by digging pits that retain water for few months after monsoon. People have used diversity and adversity both to their advantage discovered by ‘collective creativity’ and not by theories. In the land of great diversity that is India, what variety and wealth of knowledge, skills and practices must there be.

However there is no time or will among the ruling minority, which is obsessed with western-style ‘development’ of capitalism with a benevolent name ‘duel economy’, hence, no records of “Intellectual Property Rights”, which may come up or be ignored in future; every time there may not be cases like Basmati rice, Neem and turmeric. The theft and smuggling of plants and herbs out of the country that is taking place is apart! While the elite enjoy a status of neo-Brahmanism, the 900 million peasants are like Shudras, or second-class citizens, or an underclass; that’s ‘duel economy’! Without right empowerment how would the peasants care for the vanishing precious biodiversity?


With industrialisation, and without appropriate rehabilitation, it is not only the loss of the people’s knowledge, tools, and skills and the indigenous seeds, but also the loss of environment of the natural habitat. The ground water is going lower or is getting poisoned. We do not hear the chorus of frogs during monsoon nights any more. We were shocked to hear a hundred peasants died at a stroke in Karnataka by consuming crabs that had concentrated pesticides in their bodies. What will be the fate of the land, waters and the people when the SEZs (Special Economic Zones devised recently to take over agricultural farms in India) will become operative in near future?

The governments, at the centre or states, have shown total apathy for the past six decades to organise and implement rehabilitation of the peasants, while bringing in and supporting industrialisation with their ad-hoc policies, projects and the laws. Why is this apathy? It is only because the peasants and the farming communities in six lakh villages is not an organised sector like commerce, trade and industry, which can twist government’s arm at a single call. Are the peasants on their way out to annihilation? It is as mute a question as the peasants.

Perhaps the plain reason for this failure of the government is that the British Raj did not leave any formula as their legacy while parting; or it failed to invent any on its own; or it failed to imitate others. It failed because it failed to do necessary fieldwork. It is easier to produce nuclear weapons or space ships, at any cost. How could anyone invent a theory or an equation or a formula for application for such a great diversity and the great disparity?

Certainly, Sen must be aware of many examples as one cited above, and the anomaly thereby, as may be guessed from his writing. However, what will happen to economics, if it has to take into account the above example? It will have to count also the “Environment–Ecology–Energy Cost” (EEE Cost) of the conventional agriculture of the peasants, here and now, at least in the Twenty First Century, and revise all its equations and formulae, hypotheses and rationale. It will have to re-write the equations after assessing the “EEE Cost” of all the industrial products.

The example cited above clearly shows the practice is labour intensive, uses local resources, and conserves the soil regularly by its rehabilitation, and so far it is a model of sustainability. The capitalist society and its culture of production and consumerism beyond needs, and the waste thereby, do not envisage this aspect. Even by conventional system the peasants do not get a fair deal, even by the governments. The experts, even those rebellious against the system, are recognised by awards not by action. But who could guarantee the theories work? As Paul Valéry says, ‘there is no theory that is not a fragment.’

See, for example, the Census Survey of India 1991 (Census 2001 is not yet printed). It defines, “persons engaged in household duties, students, dependants, retired persons, rentiers, beggars are some of the categories grouped as non-workers” (Section 10, part 10.2). This seems to be applied to both urban and rural populations. How crude? Among peasants, the women share major responsibility at farms as well as home; the help comes from the aged and the children – students, dropouts, or those never enrolled. The peasants, even if aged, never retire unless invalid. The village data, if checked, will show substantial number of non-workers. See also the number of inhabited villages in the Census data. How do the people survive? Where do people go?


How reliable are such data that may be extensively used by economists, other experts and planners to shape the fate of the people, but never reach the peasants? The amazing fact is the government may approve to send a man on the moon, but never sends complimentary copies of the Census Survey to the Gram Panchayats so they can scrutinise its work: only the peasants are qualified to do it, but they are languishing in illiteracy – innumeracy.

The peasants are not aware of their status recorded by the government every ten years. And now Census 2001 is available only in electronic form. What would be the response of the peasants, particularly women, who feed not only their families but also the nation, to their status of ‘non- workers’ along the beggars, in the country that is so rich in resources? Whosoever may be responsible, the hypocrisy is unprecedented, it has no match anywhere.

Having, of course, a will, in the modern times, and by hard work, the government can open many new avenues and areas to the peasants to elevate their skills, knowledge, livelihood, sustenance and self-reliance.

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Taking the example of rice, we name a few options as a reminder:


Rice husk: cement; Paddy straw: cattle feed Paper; Rice bran: bran oil; Defatted bran: Agricultural farm;
Animal waste and farm residue: methane gas, manure; Waste water: filtration plant --- algae pond (nitrogen-rich manure) / fish pond; Recycled water: farm/ kitchen garden;

Plantation: fruits / fibres / spices and condiments / medicinal plants / aromatic plants / colours and dyes / gums and resins /paper / timber / and conservation of vanishing species; and now bio diesel (e.g. Jatropha);

Land: conservation, restoration, use of soil testing kit, and as the subcontinent now is known to be earthquake prone, to be prepared for self-help;

Waters: conservation, recycling, aquaculture, health, recreation, use of water testing kit, and water management in the times of floods and draughts by self-help, having known that the government help does not reach in time to save life and property.

Market: (1) arithmetic to derive the price-cost-value-benefit of their actions and input into their work, sustenance and the way of living; (2) idea of modern ‘economic developments that are conducive to a proliferation of middle-men, where commodities take over things, even humans, and prices from values; (3) work to master the market, neither to serve it or patronise it.
These options should be the focus of education and main part of the curriculum for 900 millions peasants and 600,000 villages in the country, and not the British-made schooling, which is still being followed by the authorities and the departments.

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Having a will and courage, the government, as it has vast infrastructure, it turn every village into a Special Agro-tech Parks (SAPs) across the country. Taking a clue, if need be, from the West that sent the youth to the armed forces, or China’s example of ‘Cultural Revolution’, India too can develop on an indigenous tool, which is partially in operation.

Introduce a compulsory ‘internship’ of six months for all the candidates who go for Diplomas, Degrees, Masters and Doctorates from every discipline of higher education, without reservations. They must go to the villages and work with peasants and SAP, without any stipend. They should support themselves by using, and also testing, their learning of 15 / 17 / 20 years of formal education. (The likely fallout that there may be a countrywide wave of ‘bribery and corruption’ to escape the internship, or otherwise we trust the Response-Ability of the younger generation, irrespective of all the prevailing waves in the country!)

Deliver the “Pro-poor” products, not the promises.
Give them the ‘fishing-hook’, not the fish.
Be the facilitator, being democratic government, not a ruler.
Return the land to the peasants, by their ancestral right, don’t sale to the corporate.
Start six lakhs SAPs for six lakhs Villages of India on war footing.

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Remigius de Souza, 69–243, S. B. Marg Mumbai 400028 India (7/12/2006)
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Sense and SenseAbility – 4: Hearing

Sense and SenseAbility – 4: Hearing
-- Remigius de Souza

Hearing: It is a second sense, though some musicians may claim it’s a first sense. Never mind. Now modern science says listening to music while in the womb improves the child’s mathematical power.

We have heard stories from Itihasa – Epics and Puranas. Abhimanyu, while in the womb, learnt about how to enter the Chakravyuha – a strategic circular maze formation of army in war – while his father Arjuna was telling his mother. He, however, did not hear about how to come out. During the great civil war of epic Mahabharata took place, Young Abhimanyu was defeated and killed. Perhaps he did not use his senses…

Another story is of sage Ashtavakra (bent in eight places in body). His father while reciting Vedas made some errors. Ashtavakra, from his mother’s womb, pointed out the errors. The father was offended and cursed that he will be deformed in eight places in his body, and thus he was born with eight deformations. Later in his youth he preached a king on spirituality, which is known as “Ashtavakra Gita” or “Ashtavakra Samhita”.

We may have heard these stories several times. What we understand and how we interpret them is another matter. Sri Krishna and many saints have preached “Sahaja Dharma” – natural dharma or inherent nature. Accordingly one may deduce there could be seven billions of dharma – religions.


What do the foetuses in modern urban environment hear? Isn’t it ring tones on cell phones, 24x7 noises on TV sets, household electronic gadgets including their electromagnetic radiation, noises in the city…? No wonder some children are born with deformation. Viva!

Hearing with attention (not concentration, said J. Krishnamurti) becomes listening. So also, seeing with attention becomes noticing. Listening and noticing reveals many facets of an event, even an ordinary one.

Silence, it is said, is the heart of music. Listening to silence is supreme. The silent spaces in between words and sentences, and the silence before the storm…

Woefully we are so much used to the noise (and hurry) that silence unnerves us; we are irritated by silence, particularly in urban environment. We want 24x7 excitements.

Our governments, too, have lost the capacity to listen notice the reality. Unless people take to the streets, burn the public and private properties, a few people are dead by police-and-or-public violence, they can’t take notice of the malady. Of course, of course, we all know the government is a faceless entity.

Hence, hearing loss is a common phenomenon. Loud noise with impact, for example, a gunshot close by, could cause deafness. However, on such an event, if we observe, mouth opens instantly to counter the impact on the eardrum from inside. We call it reflex action; perhaps that’s homeostasis.

An extreme example of hearing loss

I know at least one person who became permanently deaf because of noisy work environment in an industry. Mr. Lobo was working at one of the oldest cement plant at Savalia in Gujarat State. That was a few decades ago. I don’t know how many were affected like him?

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Sense and senseAbility - 3.2: Touch

Sense and senseAbility - 3.2 Touch
-- Remigius de Souza

Sense of Touch is attributed to the skin.

Senses and SenseAbility are important for our personal and social health, in fact, all the four aspects – Work, Leisure, Education and Health – for our survival (survival means, said J Krishnamurthy, living sanely).

In the blind the other senses are highly active and enhanced. Their sense of touch works in the feet even while wearing shoes, not only hands, and cane.

In the growth of babies, emphasised Margaret Mead, anthropologist, in her famous book, ‘Coming of Age in Samoa’, it is important to hold them close. Among the young from their infancy, their senses are alert and highly active. In the course of time, their senses and creative ability are stunted by the contemporary education here in India. Even the educated parents are hardly aware of what is happening.

As we know the skin is the organ largest in area. It is also the youngest as the body continues to shed the skin until last. When one gets a fever – say, malaria fever or love-fever – the skin is an indicator.

It is not only the nose, the skin also breaths, and protects us. (Buchanan mentions there are millions of microbes on our skin as well as in the gut.) Hence we call the clothes, a second skin, and house is the third skin of man – both are expected to breath (particularly in the tropical climate0 and protect. Well, whatever may be the result of synthetic fibres and, and the houses with sick building syndrome!

The touch is the first sense that we experience in our mother’s womb that is oceanic. There is tradition among Indic people. They wrap newly born baby in soft cotton linen, which is mother’s recycled sari. The mother and the infant/s stay in confinement room that is dark. Modern gynaecologists may differ, though!

Touch obviously reminds us of the Untouchables in India (see: A tale of a scavenger in India). It continues in spite of efforts by the most revered saints of India across the country for centuries and in modern times by several social reformers: they could not eradicate this obnoxious distinction.

In very recent times, the young Indian elite had been holding agitations and campaigning against the reservation for the untouchables (official term is Scheduled Castes) in educational institutions and jobs in the name of equality. Perhaps they did not check the worth of this British-made education? The atrocities on the untouchables in various forms sometimes result in killings, house burning, rape, and physical assaults.

Another class of untouchables is the women when in menstrual cycle. Though it is less due to contact with the urbanised, the women do not enter the places of worship and the temples. Traditionally they suppose to ‘sit out’ i.e. do not cook, not even enter the kitchen, and touch to any person, and actually sit in out side veranda. The orthodox families and those who perform religious rites and rituals and magic – Mantra-Tantra, and those who practice traditional medicines strictly observe this custom. Perhaps it may continue for unknown time.

I would not judge, like or dislike, or accept or reject any of these issues, but prefer to examine in historical, social and scientific context, keeping aside what the western societies believe or approve of.

Until now what I understand that both the classes of untouchables originally were service classes in the civilised Indic societies. In the course of time, as population increased, the high castes and men, to keep their power, attached the stigma upon them as untouchable. Perhaps the original context of the rites and rituals and customs were lost and got distorted in the course of time.

We, however, can’t ignore a fact that society, which refuses to evolve, which remains stagnant like water in a pond, stinks. Do such things happen in the Industrial Society, which would lead it to decadence? Or has the decay already begun?

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Sense and Sense-Ability -3.1: Homeostasis

Homeostasis: The Wisdom of the Body
(Continued from the previous Part 2)


Body houses our senses, perceptions, memory, mind, intellect, intelligence… and soul.

Unfortunately in the modern times, “body” is yet another four-letter word like Self, Soul, Love, Life, Work etc. that are much abused in our fast pace of hedonic lifestyle.

We take our body too much for granted: Mind has become the colonial master that colonises the body like a bonded labour and exploits it without restraint, until it is exhausted, in part or full. Just check our work pattern/s. certainly we decorate it, beautify it; it is rather to satisfy demands of our egoistic mind than to elevate.

We take even our senses for granted. While eating/ drinking, for example, most of the time, we rarely pay attention to the action of eating. We simultaneously are involved with something else: daily news, TV shows, talk over the matters of business or gossip, think over the “urgent” matters on mind, or flatter our taste buds forgetting the need of the body: We at times call it a passion.

It is almost the same situation, more or less according to our passions, with other senses (except perhaps sex impulses: We shall come to that later).

Quite often we ignore or forget, if we know, that body too has intelligence just as we have. At least, we as Indic people have recognised the body-mind connection for a considerable time.

Body, however, continues to work, whether we are awake or asleep, till the end like a “Nishkam” – without desire for fruit – Karma Yogi. And whenever necessary, when something goes wrong with the system, sends us the signal – hunger or starvation for example. But we are too busy with our mental flights, passions or addictions: We tend to ignore it.

A Case of My Ailment of Heart

My own experiences are not very different from what I just mentioned above. However I have also been aware of the “Presence of Body” on several occasions. One of them was my ailment of heart, some fifteen years ago.

I started getting palpitations. In the beginning it remained for a second of two and recurred at interval of a couple of weeks. There was no apparent cause: fear, or worry of any kind. It would appear any time. Later it was for 2-3 minutes at a few days’ interval. I had started taking medicines, including exercises in self-hypnosis under a guidance of psycho-therapy specialist. I stopped the medicines and exercises.
One day the palpitations remained from noon to midnight. That was an opportunity for check up while it was on. With a note from family doctor I met a heart specialist at a neighbourhood hospital.

After the necessary check-up he diagnosed and told me in simple words, that my heart is sound, that it is a case of “electrical short circuit” in the heart, and the present rate of palpitation is at 250 per minute. He added, if the rate increases to 400-450 per minute it would be fatal – an instant death. That was music to my ears.

For me the diagnosis was enough. The specialist, however, did not tell me why it happens. He advised me to get admitted there and then in the ICU for observation and prescribed some medicines. Of course I flatly refused both. He was furious. I returned home, remained on fruit diet, gave rest to my mind and body.

After two days, I left for Delhi to attend a workshop on “People, Law and Environment” organised by Centre for Science and Environment. It was very romantic episode though I report it in brief.

I, then started dialogues with my body, and observations – or call it meditations as I am inside my body – without judging, my likes-dislikes, prejudices etc. leaving the information baggage.

I am aware of the “Presence of Body”, and this awareness is constant like breathing, even during my pet indulgences and petty vices. There has been no palpitation for last fifteen years.

A decade or so after this episode, while reading “The Ages of Gaia” by James Lovelock, I came across the word “Homeostasis”, which now has a meaning.

Links to MINI-TEXT :1. Solemn Celebration and 2. Body Dharma


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iTECHNOMAN

Self-portrait by Remigius de Souza, Mumbai, India (1972)
Colour on handmade paper 9"x 12"
© Remigius de Souza

You may read or interpret “iTECHNOMAN” in various ways that you may prefer.

Remi (Remigius de Souza) is marginally literate, not only in computers, but also in any of the Arts and Literary disciplines.

He began to learn writing Letters and Numbers of his vernacular language MARATHI on a slate, at his native village in Konkan.Simultaneously he also took lessons in his basic needs, which are farming in agriculture, horticulture and aquaculture; mud house building and its maintenance; and spinning and handloom weaving of cotton fabric: FOOD, SHELTER and CLOTHING.

Industrial society has failed after centuries to reach this ability or level, which is mentioned above, to impart education to any citizen anywhere in the world, certainly not in India.

Decades later he learnt computer programming in an antique language “1401” in an intensive course of one month, which was given by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS): that was the only formal training he received in computers.

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Illiteterate Farmer women of Andhra (Comment)

IN THE FIRST PLACE, They should show these movies to the ruling minority in India – politicians, bureaucrats, experts, specialists, planners, the educationists and the self-proclaimed leaders, and the urban elite – before showing them to the world.

This “Soil Unrecognised Indian” is now being seen…

Link to the Image above (Hindustan Times)

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Water Parks in Wanting

1: Floods in Mumbai is a recurring feature


2. Water reservoir in the traditional city centre

SURSAGAR, the lake at the city centre of Vadodara, Gujarat, is an example of reservoirs as a typical element of Indian cities, towns and villages, before the British Raj, or of pre-industrial era. Vadodara City has many reservoirs besides the tanks attached to the villages that are added after the expansion of city limits. It should be a surprise if some of them are now in a neglected state. Yet they remain and function as vital public and community places. All the tanks of the villages could be turned into natural water parks with little planning action.


3. Traditional water tanks in tamilnadu villages

The extraordinary number of tanks (reservoirs) in Tamilnadu, India, is one of the most heavily modified environments in the per-industrial world. This, of course, must have been possible by ‘community participation, and not merely by the feudal powers.( Source: Spate O. H. K. 1967: “India, Pakistan and Ceylon: The Region” 3rd ed. London)


4. Rivers are mothers to Indic People
Children at play at River Narmada near Bharuch City. There are many dimesions to this play.

5. Paddy farmsare nearest good example of Natural Water Park

Rice paddy fields, though seasonal, are nearest to a good example of ‘water parks’. They are rich with flora and fauna, and are generally breeding places for fish. Some peasants dig ponds in the fields to conserve fish where they are assured of water even after the harvest.

Water Parks in Wanting
Remigius de Souza

“Sujalam. Sufalam.” (Plentiful water! Plentiful fruits!)

– Bankim Chandra Chatarjee

[Preamble: Civilizations have been following a number of Yoga practices, from Jnan Yoga – Vijnan Yoga to Karma Yoga – Bhakti Yoaga to Hatha Yoga – Tantra Yoga. People in the Vedic times, in the Garden of Eden were perhaps blessed with plentiful of water and fruits. It is only our wishful thinking that we sing “Sujalam, Sufalam”, which falls short of action. It is time now for ‘SRISHTI YOGA’ – union with Nature.]

Water: Elixir of Life

Water gives sustenance to life, and culture to man. It is precious and sacred. In this magnificent land there are innumerable rivers and lakes, a great coast, great volume of frozen water on the Himalayas. There is plenty of rain, but there are also draughts, famines and floods recurrently happening. There is pollution of waters, and of the land; both are synonymous. Are we managing water well?

Let us take, for example, City of Bombay (now Mumbai), said to be the financial capital of the country. Mumbai city was founded by the British. They also developed excellent natural harbour. They reclaimed the creeks around the original natural islands.

The land grabbing continued unabated since then by reclaiming the sea, lakes, and water bodies in the city and by expanding the jurisdiction of the city government by extending the boundaries beyond the island city. There are now one million people.

They continued to exclude water by paving the land with tar – concrete – stone to make it watertight and free of soil (spoil!), not only the roads, but also the open spaces around the building and estates. Most of the city’s open space is taken over by the car for roads and ‘Car Park’. There are no ‘Water Parks’ in the city.

Water is imprisoned in the pipelines, and in the concrete – iron – plastic water tanks, and on the top of the Malabar Hill. Even the rainwater is imprisoned. To compensate the loss of water absorbing soil and loss of water bodies due to reclamation, Mumbai now gets regularly flooded during monsoon (Ill. 1).

Let us take an example in contrast. Thirty kilometers away there is more ancient town of Panvel. In the old Panvel of 25,000 people there are seven built water tanks. Some of them are now in a derelict condition. The great Wadala Tank is partly bulldozed by the modern town planners while planning for the extended area of Panvel. The remaining part of the lake is now getting silted and infested by weeds. Perhaps the planning manuals do not write about ‘maintenance planning’!

Let us visualized for a while! Mumbai could have been the Oriental Venice, if the creeks were not bulldozed, and if the traditional waterways were not sealed by the British.

Following their footsteps the planners of Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority [MMRDA] have twice prepared 20-year plans for the Mumbai region. But they ignored or failed to notice that the people in the coastal area of Raigad and Thane Districts use the natural-inland watercourses as waterways for transport. Neither could they see the pollution of waters and land and the salt pans as an after effect of planning for development. The British, of course, had their goal/s, which is known, and for them the goals justified the means. Planning is not to coerce the people [Patrick Geddes] but demands vision with insight into that which is.

Our ancestors acknowledged the presence of water in life by sanctifying it and associating with it in the rituals from birth to death, and in the religious places. They built lakes and tanks within and around cities (Ill. 2) and tanks for the villages (Ill. 3). They built great Ghats along the rivers, and the rivers were sacred and mothers (Ill. 4) to the people. Rivers became places of pilgrimages. They brought people together, including those from the far away dry places in contact with water. People regularly took holy dip in the sea. It was a national policy for health, education and national integration, which no amount of preaching, coaching and slogans can ever achieve.

Modern developments of concrete jungles in the cities have created heat islands. The modern Indian City planner continued to ape western models and manuals instead of studying and learning from indigenous Indian habitat planning. Indigenous cities have city centers with lakes. The modern city centre displays ‘Car Parks’ The planners perhaps do not recognize water beyond its use for plumbing, sanitation, construction and aesthetics of hedonism.

But the worst of all draughts is that what is ‘known’ of the environment from virtual reality of books and multi-media, is hardly ‘witnessed’ and rarely ‘experienced’ in the daily personal and social life. The coming generations are successively and progressively draught- stricken, not only in urban areas but also in rural areas, waiting for some white angel to come with magic wand to solve their problems. We perhaps ‘know’ intellectually the worth of water, but are we intrinsically ‘aware’ of water beyond H2O? We have taken water too much for granted.

Water Parks as Public Open Places

The Indian society is caught up in the web of vertical and horizontal divisions. The vertical divisions of caste, which brought the society to the decadent state, once denied the access to the untouchables to water on community wells. The horizontal division is of the class and status, which was successfully grafted by the British Metropolitan Imperialism [David Canndine, ‘Ornamentalism’, Penguin] on the fertile soil of the feudal society. Now the class, the upper division is colonizing even the water in the name of common good.

Water – one of the five elements, instead of becoming unifying element for the society is a cause for conflict between class and the underclass. The sayings, such as, ‘One cannot draw a line on the water’; ‘River is afire’ [Kabir]; ‘Water goes to sleep. Water gets (wakes) up” [Indian farmers] can only be learnt from the water itself, not by discourses and treatises. In the cyber age of animated virtual reality it is not even a remote possibility to learn the lesson. It will only lead to aggravate the conflict, perhaps leading to annihilation of the underclass. To learn from water, however, there is no bar of gender, age, caste, creed, class and status.

We therefore need ‘Water Parks’ alike ‘Public Parks’ and ‘Play Grounds’. Perhaps they may be combined. Water Parks need to be developed as public open places in the cities and rural areas, both, in all regions.

Water Parks, perhaps, are not written in any known treatise or manual, ancient or modern, on architecture and planning. Every society, however, has to prepare its own treatise as expression of its own time. We may learn from the past, but cannot imitate it.

Water Park has three primary conditions

It must have water – sweet or salt water; it must have aquatic life – fishes, amphibians and plants; it must be accessible to any citizen to work with hands, basic tools and equipment and to develop, maintain and enjoy the fruits – the products of it.

What is Water Park?

We must clearly understand what is Water Park. Water Park is not a water–conditioned nightmare created by the corporate sector [or the class] in the metropolitan cities fashioned after Disney Land, Water Kingdom, for entertainment and profiteering, or rickety fountains peeing around artificial rookeries and statuaries, imprisoned by fencings, gating and ticketing. Water Park is not glass–conditioned aquarium. Water Park is not a water sports centre; though both could co-exist. Water Park is not a swimming pool, but both could be neighbours on strict conditions. For example, ‘Chlorine’ and such other poisons consumed by humans is the enemy of Water Park.

Rice paddy fields (Ill. 5), though seasonal, are nearest to a good example of ‘water parks’. They are rich with flora and fauna, and are generally breeding places for fish. Some peasants dig ponds in the fields to conserve fish where they are assured of water even after the harvest.

We can derive a broad outline about what should be Water Park?

1. Water Park must have a water body – sweet water or salt water, which is built with organic materials, where aquatic life – fishes, amphibians and plants – could live and grow in the natural and appropriate conditions. It should be designed for breeding, conserving and cultivation of all kinds of aquatic life forms, particularly the species that are on the verge of extinction

2. Water Park should have infrastructure according to its increasing complexity, such as, water testing equipment, laboratory, water recycling plants, water conservation models, various irrigation systems etc. in working conditions.

3. It should be provided by various working models of ‘water machines’, such as pumps, windmills, desalination plants, mini-turbines, even one where Archimedes exclaimed “Eureka! Eureka!”

4. Design, content and context should be appropriate to the region, land characteristics, climate etc. Local cultures and traditions should find appropriate place and featured at the water parks without the taboo of secularism.

5. Area of Water Park as a public open place could be of any size above one half acre.

6. Water Park as a public open place should be owned, developed, managed and maintained on participatory basis by the members of the local community who actually work with their own hands and should enjoy income from its proceeds.

7. It is anticipated that the Water Park has the educative as well as leisure value through creative efforts of the participants.

How Water Parks?

Industrialization destroyed the community and created ‘mass society’. It also created institutions, which take control of almost every aspect of life of individual and the collective, which has resulted in loosing their autonomy of decision and action. Thus there is want of identity, or the identity crisis.

Water Park is likely to get caught up in the spider’s web of natty-gritty of institutionalisation, i.e. ownership, funding, MoU, constitution, rules and regulations, office bearers, trustees, and many imaginable or unimaginable issues raised by the officialdom, and may even see the last drop of water lost in the heat…before it actually materializes.

It is time to counter the forces of the Class and the Status by the Community and Water as basic need. Therefore now in the changing times we need to change the mindset. We can learn a lot from the ethnic communities and their institutions, which still prevail. In Orissa and Bengal, for example, in the villages, almost every household has a pond. This practice must have been there for many thousand years. No building bye-laws, development control rules,, or no Indian Standards [IS], or National Building Code {NBC] are needed here. (The author regrets the mention here for fear of the zombies in the bureaucracy may come up with their axe to destroy this tradition.)

In the cities the cars and the ‘Car Parks’ are given thousand of acres of land for the moving and stationary cars by legal instrument. What is a big deal for the law making and law-abiding elite citizens to give equivalent of that area for the ‘Water Parks’ in the urban areas under the instrument of law?

Water Parks should be attached to, beginning from primary schools to colleges and universities to all educational institutions, along with playgrounds, as an instrument of non-formal education; to the public parks in the urban areas. Water Parks should be attached to all the government, judicial and legislative institutions, beginning from the President’s Palace, the Supreme Court, and the Parliament at New Delhi to the offices of Gram Panchayat, Talathi and Tahasildar at village and the Taluka levels, as an instrument of non-formal adult education; all the estates of corporate sector and NGO sector, and local self–government sector in proportion of their ‘land–buildings–cars’ holdings. In urban areas water parks should be part of the Compulsory Common Open Spaces or Recreation Grounds to all housing – mass housing – Real Estate Housing – development. If the Revenue Act could be implemented, why not the Water Park Act?

All the environmental activists and pundits can join in the building the Water Parks all over the country. The land required, 3,287,000 square kilometres is there. All that is needed is to “catch a drop”. Water Parks could at least provide work and livelihood to the under-privileged of the underclass, provided these are not hijacked by the class, or the elite class, or the corporate society under different garbs, such as ‘privatisation.

After all why do people build temples – with or without images – in the name of Creator? Water Park is the celebration of Life.

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Remigius de Souza
(9-4-1997, Revised 30-8-2001)
Mumbai

© Remigius de Souza., all rights reserved.
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