High and Dry
As our stay here in India continues, we’ve grown more and more used to the practice of “eating local“. I did a recent calculation, and realized that, except for commercial products like biscuits, cheese, butter, and oil, a good 85% of our groceries come from within a 25 kilometer radius of our house. Another 5% perhaps originates from as far away as Punjab. Chickens are free-range birds from a ranch several kilometers away. Sheep and goats are also local; often a member of a flock passing along the road is destined for the butcher’s shed.
Some things, like milk, are much closer. The cow our milk comes from lives just down the hill, within perhaps 50 meters of the house. Our produce, for the most part, comes from local farms. Our bhi-bhi, Chinta, explained that most farmers hereabouts don’t like the idea of chemically enhancing their produce “with injection”, and that many people are suspicious of commercially-grown produce from Punjab. After all, she asked us, if you don’t know who grew your food, how do you know it’s not full of chemicals? And so we have learned to ask while shopping at the subji wallah where the produce was grown. In Mandi, it’s not uncommon for a subji wallah to retort that the vegetables in his baskets came from his land, “just up there,” while pointing to a nearby hillside.
While it’s true that eating locally has been much healthier for us, and has given us the chance to support local people, this year has been a hard lesson in the other side of the equation. When you’re eating this locally, your food supplier’s problems are your problems, too.
Monsoon is late this year. Very late. Instead of the cooling rainstorms that make the summer rice crops possible, northwest India has had incredible heat waves, and day after day of brushfires up in the hills. Without water, the rice paddies are dry, allowing mice to overrun the fields and eat the crops. The supply of rice is already in trouble. Without water, other crops grow badly, or not at all. Healthy, unwilted vegetables are less common and more pricey. Without water, milk cows dry up and suddenly milk, yogurt, and paneer are a lot more expensive.
Two days ago Rewalsar experienced water rationing for the first time. “Water rationing” in India is very similar to the “rolling blackouts” California went through nine years ago. During water rationing they cut off the water supply at the source, except for the public pumps. Once that happens, whatever water you have, or can carry, is what you have until the water is turned on again. Our landlord came over to tell me his family was down to two buckets of water, and asked me to check our water tank. I discovered it was only half full, and not refilling from the water line. For the next day or so, Rewalsar was full of folks carrying bottles, buckets and jugs to the public handpumps for filling.
The “trickle down” effect of drought doesn’t stop there. The rivers are the dryest they’ve been in years, and even the level of the holy lake of Tso Pema is much lower than usual. This also means that water-powered electrical generation is having problems, leading to power outages, in addition to the water shortages and brush fires already happening.
To imagine the effect of all these shortages, just go to your local grocery store. Put the stuff you usually buy in your cart. For every item, multiply the total price by two. If you buy any imported stuff from another country, multiply the price by three. If any items require constant refrigeration–which assumes you have access to stable electricity–multiply the price by four.
Shopping just got a lot more complicated, didn’t it?
For projects like our Emergency Medical Fund, this situation is making medical assistance a complicated task. Helping someone isn’t as clear-cut as it used to be. When you’re assisting a diabetic, which do you sponsor first–food for a better diet that will keep her sugar levels manageable, or medicines that she will need more of, because she’s not getting enough of the right foods? With someone elderly, do you just give vitamins, or do you also donate a bunch of mustard greens because he hasn’t had them in a while?
Theoretically monsoon may arrive by the first week of July. But the damage of the drought will have already been accomplished.
It sounds miserable. Time for a rain dance?
I know that humans don’t care to eat mice, but if the mice are eating the rice then there should be more, fatter mice, and chickens will DEFINITELY eat mice. They love the things. My girls used to swallow them whole, but if the mice are too big you could whack them in half with a cleaver. We didn’t have any disease transmission problems in MT, but would that be an issue in your part India?
And yes, you include a bunch of mustard greens. Good luck!
Comment by Sylvia | June 26, 2009