Their faith in me was making me impatient, and my guilt pangs were making me anxious.
It was January 2018, and I was on fieldwork as part of my curriculum. The village I went to was suffering from a seasonal irrigation problem, and the people wanted the government to construct a small check dam. I was staying with them and discovering how the “water stress” magnifies during the summers and how it affects everyday life. A check dam could have helped in the drought-prone region.
One day, the sarpanch came and requested me to do something to build the dam. I told him that I was a student and nobody would pay heed to me. He said, “No! You write it in your report that the dam ‘must’ be built.”
I assured him I would do that, but still, he should not have any hopes, as I knew my report was worth nothing more than 100 marks. Anyway, he was happy to know that somebody is going to document their woes.
I met several other village folks who told me that the rich had dug borewells and raised lucrative water-intensive crops. They charge for using the water from their borewells. A small dam would be free to use, besides it would save groundwater. The poor farmers had small plots of land and bought water and rented tractors for farming. They worked in the fields of the rich to supplement their income. Some of them were women whose husbands had left for the city to earn.
Misplaced optimism
They used to see me wandering in the village. Often, I used to go to them while they were working in the fields and they would offer me a banana or a sugarcane piece. For them, I was an outsider who had come to “inspect” things.
They had high hopes of me. They thought when I went back, the Sarkar would listen to me and construct the dam.
I tried my best to make them understand that I had come here as part of my studies and that I had no business with the government. Some of them understood this, but most did not. This made me anxious. When you fail to live up to someone’s expectations, it feels bad. In the words of Voltaire, “Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.” They were not the “poor farmers” who were showering me with whatever they had. It was me who was poor, who had nothing to give them back. It was me who was helpless and not the farmers, who were fighting poverty in the best way they could. Academia has documented a lot of problems as “data”, but could not solve them. Nobody is to blame.
The fieldwork got over and I got an emotional farewell from the villagers. I got 84% marks, but they got nothing.
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