EPW
Sustaining Water Regimes -
The Work of Anupam Mishra
Author: Jyoti Raina, Economic
and Political Weekly | January 28, 2017
Anupam Mishra’s work on how
the indigenous water systems of Rajasthan have sustained a water
regime not only made it possible for a robust civilisation to
thrive in the desert but along with his writings on sustainable
use of water, also inspired a college lecturer to find solutions
to her domestic water problem.
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Sustaining Water Regimes
The Work of Anupam Mishra
Jyoti Raina (jyotiraina2009@gmail.com)
teaches at the Gargi College, University of Delhi, New Delhi.
Anupam
Mishra’s work on how the indigenous water systems of Rajasthan have sustained a
water regime not only made it possible for a robust civilisation to thrive in
the desert but along with his writings on sustainable use of water, also
inspired a college lecturer to find solutions to her domestic water
problem.
Nearly
a decade ago I came to live at the teachers’ quarters in the salubrious
premises of Gargi College located adjacent to the historic Siri Fort Wall in
South Delhi. It took me very little time to discover that the residential
complex had a water system which worked arbitrarily or did not work so far as I
was concerned. My quarter was the last in the water supply chain and hardly
received any water, the resource most critical to our daily lives. A long-time
resident there who was familiar with the eccentricities of the system explained
that this scarcity occurred since water needs to find its own pressure. All the
preceding tanks need to be full in order for the water to gush forward into the
pipelines. My tank being the last, received its supply only after those
preceding it got filled. The previous residents of the quarter corroborated
this information.
Struggling
to find ingenuous solutions to my domestic water problem, I got interested in
water infrastructures and started paying careful attention to possible local
water management and conservation systems I could adopt in my individual
capacity. Guided by this new interest I was introduced to the seminal work of
activist Anupam Mishra on how Rajasthan manages its water in spite of receiving
it so parsimoniously. His books on the indigenous water cultures of Rajasthan—The
Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan and Aaj Bhi Khare Hain Talab
—provided me with ideas that brought to my mind what YiShan Lea wrote about
“alternative political referents potentially free our attachment to the status
quo” (2013: 307). These referents provoked an interrogation of the dominant
water paradigm that I grew up believing in during my upbringing and education
as a city dweller.
The
Delhi resident presumptively thinks of water as being a product of an
efficacious modernity which pipes this precious resource into our homes through
the state-managed system. I was simultaneously struck by the revelation that
historically North India had a water culture and a water-literate society which
harnessed premodern traditional knowledge systems to nourish the local
communities in towns and hinterland, century after century through “a
mythopoiesis between men, earth, heat and water” (Mishra 2001: 11).
Preserving Drops
In
Rajasthan, a robust and extant water regime is based on a tradition of water
collection. It consists of a network of ponds, wells and tanks ranging from
small kund, kundi, tanka (pond, small ponds, reservoir), narrow
wells, vast step wells, family tanks and big reservoirs. This network continues
to be an integral part of the local knowledge tradition. The principle
underlying this highly efficacious system is simply to hold, stock and
“preserve for tomorrow the drops that have fallen today” (Mishra 2001: 53), in
a very clean place. With an average rainfall of just 60 cm which is half the
national average, the region is a vibrant living desert with villages, fields,
towns and no water scarcity.
The
knowledge of this water culture and the larger water systems of Rajasthan is
not available in our “modern” education, Western science or conventional
schooling. Mishra learnt and wrote about it by drawing upon the memory of the
local peasants, pastoralists and other “ordinary” folk he met during his
travels. It is not a formal education or textual knowledge that constructed his
knowledge. He developed and deepened this understanding during a decade of
engagement slowly, drop by drop, like the water conservation techniques by smiriti
(memory), shruti (revelation) and kriti (creation). This could be
among the reasons of why the state government’s public and water works
departments or even the progressive civil society social action groups have
ignored such a sophisticated work of their own society. Moreover he has
conceptualised these water management and conservation models in terms of a
cosmic inter-connection between physical nature, human action and socio-ethical
fabric of the local communities. His writing establishes that water security or
insecurity developing from a water-literate society “is a product of nature
plus culture, not just a given of nature” (Mishra 2001: 1).
The
homogenised urban milieu, that I came from, may not provide adequate foreground
or space to seek an understanding of such communitarian practices rooted in
local knowledge systems. This makes it imperative to consciously provide space
in school and college curriculum for such indigenous knowledge practices
without which it may not be possible to sustain water regimes for long.
Persuaded to Speak
I
invited him to speak with student teachers of the elementary education
department of my college some years ago. He was reluctant to come as he wanted
to be known through his writing and work alone and it was difficult to
correspond with him since he had no email or mobile telephone. A colleague
resided in his neighbourhood. It was a handwritten invitation in Hindi
delivered by her schoolgoing daughter that persuaded him to come. The topic was
“Gandhi, Environment and Emancipation.” In his unassuming, understated manner
he spoke of the fact that the term environment was not to be found in any of
Gandhiji’s writing. Beyond that it was an uplifting experience to listen to his
moving critique of modernity.
An
article on his passing away pointed out how inadequately his work has been
known even within the conventional development and environmental discourse
(Guha 2016). The article also revealed to me that at some time Delhi’s water
system had worked successfully based on retention of rainwater through an
intricate network of tanks and canals. A reconstruction of these around my
premises could offer emancipatory possibilities for my domestic water
infrastructure.
References
Guha,
Ramachandra (2016): “The Quiet Fighter,” Indian Express, 21 December.
Lea
YiShan (2013): “Travel as a Ritual Toward Transformative Consciousness:
Juxtaposing Che Guevara’s Biography and Teacher Candidates’ Narratives,” Journal
for Critical Education Policy Studies, Vol 11, No 3, November, pp 306–25.
Mishra,
Anupam (2001): The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan, New Delhi:
Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.
Sustaining Water Regimes
The Work of Anupam Mishra
Anupam
Mishra’s work on how the indigenous water systems of Rajasthan have
sustained a water regime not only made it possible for a robust
civilisation to thrive in the desert but along with his writings on
sustainable use of water, also inspired a college lecturer to find
solutions to her domestic water problem.
Nearly
a decade ago I came to live at the teachers’ quarters in the salubrious
premises of Gargi College located adjacent to the historic Siri Fort
Wall in South Delhi. It took me very little time to discover that the
residential complex had a water system which worked arbitrarily or did
not work so far as I was concerned. My quarter was the last in the water
supply chain and hardly received any water, the resource most critical
to our daily lives. A long-time resident there who was familiar with the
eccentricities of the system explained that this scarcity occurred
since water needs to find its own pressure. All the preceding tanks need
to be full in order for the water to gush forward into the pipelines.
My tank being the last, received its supply only after those preceding
it got filled. The previous residents of the quarter corroborated this
information.
Struggling to find ingenuous solutions to my domestic water problem, I got interested in water infrastructures and started paying careful attention to possible local water management and conservation systems I could adopt in my individual capacity. Guided by this new interest I was introduced to the seminal work of activist Anupam Mishra on how Rajasthan manages its water in spite of receiving it so parsimoniously. His books on the indigenous water cultures of Rajasthan—The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan and Aaj Bhi Khare Hain Talab —provided me with ideas that brought to my mind what YiShan Lea wrote about “alternative political referents potentially free our attachment to the status quo” (2013: 307). These referents provoked an interrogation of the dominant water paradigm that I grew up believing in during my upbringing and education as a city dweller.
The Delhi resident presumptively thinks of water as being a product of an efficacious modernity which pipes this precious resource into our homes through the state-managed system. I was simultaneously struck by the revelation that historically North India had a water culture and a water-literate society which harnessed premodern traditional knowledge systems to nourish the local communities in towns and hinterland, century after century through “a mythopoiesis between men, earth, heat and water” (Mishra 2001: 11).
Preserving Drops
In Rajasthan, a robust and extant water regime is based on a tradition of water collection. It consists of a network of ponds, wells and tanks ranging from small kund, kundi, tanka (pond, small ponds, reservoir), narrow wells, vast step wells, family tanks and big reservoirs. This network continues to be an integral part of the local knowledge tradition. The principle underlying this highly efficacious system is simply to hold, stock and “preserve for tomorrow the drops that have fallen today” (Mishra 2001: 53), in a very clean place. With an average rainfall of just 60 cm which is half the national average, the region is a vibrant living desert with villages, fields, towns and no water scarcity.
The knowledge of this water culture and the larger water systems of Rajasthan is not available in our “modern” education, Western science or conventional schooling. Mishra learnt and wrote about it by drawing upon the memory of the local peasants, pastoralists and other “ordinary” folk he met during his travels. It is not a formal education or textual knowledge that constructed his knowledge. He developed and deepened this understanding during a decade of engagement slowly, drop by drop, like the water conservation techniques by smiriti (memory), shruti (revelation) and kriti (creation). This could be among the reasons of why the state government’s public and water works departments or even the progressive civil society social action groups have ignored such a sophisticated work of their own society. Moreover he has conceptualised these water management and conservation models in terms of a cosmic inter-connection between physical nature, human action and socio-ethical fabric of the local communities. His writing establishes that water security or insecurity developing from a water-literate society “is a product of nature plus culture, not just a given of nature” (Mishra 2001: 1).
The homogenised urban milieu, that I came from, may not provide adequate foreground or space to seek an understanding of such communitarian practices rooted in local knowledge systems. This makes it imperative to consciously provide space in school and college curriculum for such indigenous knowledge practices without which it may not be possible to sustain water regimes for long.
Persuaded to Speak
I invited him to speak with student teachers of the elementary education department of my college some years ago. He was reluctant to come as he wanted to be known through his writing and work alone and it was difficult to correspond with him since he had no email or mobile telephone. A colleague resided in his neighbourhood. It was a handwritten invitation in Hindi delivered by her schoolgoing daughter that persuaded him to come. The topic was “Gandhi, Environment and Emancipation.” In his unassuming, understated manner he spoke of the fact that the term environment was not to be found in any of Gandhiji’s writing. Beyond that it was an uplifting experience to listen to his moving critique of modernity.
An article on his passing away pointed out how inadequately his work has been known even within the conventional development and environmental discourse (Guha 2016). The article also revealed to me that at some time Delhi’s water system had worked successfully based on retention of rainwater through an intricate network of tanks and canals. A reconstruction of these around my premises could offer emancipatory possibilities for my domestic water infrastructure.
References
Guha, Ramachandra (2016): “The Quiet Fighter,” Indian Express, 21 December.
Lea YiShan (2013): “Travel as a Ritual Toward Transformative Consciousness: Juxtaposing Che Guevara’s Biography and Teacher Candidates’ Narratives,” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, Vol 11, No 3, November, pp 306–25.
Mishra, Anupam (2001): The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan, New Delhi: Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.
Struggling to find ingenuous solutions to my domestic water problem, I got interested in water infrastructures and started paying careful attention to possible local water management and conservation systems I could adopt in my individual capacity. Guided by this new interest I was introduced to the seminal work of activist Anupam Mishra on how Rajasthan manages its water in spite of receiving it so parsimoniously. His books on the indigenous water cultures of Rajasthan—The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan and Aaj Bhi Khare Hain Talab —provided me with ideas that brought to my mind what YiShan Lea wrote about “alternative political referents potentially free our attachment to the status quo” (2013: 307). These referents provoked an interrogation of the dominant water paradigm that I grew up believing in during my upbringing and education as a city dweller.
The Delhi resident presumptively thinks of water as being a product of an efficacious modernity which pipes this precious resource into our homes through the state-managed system. I was simultaneously struck by the revelation that historically North India had a water culture and a water-literate society which harnessed premodern traditional knowledge systems to nourish the local communities in towns and hinterland, century after century through “a mythopoiesis between men, earth, heat and water” (Mishra 2001: 11).
Preserving Drops
In Rajasthan, a robust and extant water regime is based on a tradition of water collection. It consists of a network of ponds, wells and tanks ranging from small kund, kundi, tanka (pond, small ponds, reservoir), narrow wells, vast step wells, family tanks and big reservoirs. This network continues to be an integral part of the local knowledge tradition. The principle underlying this highly efficacious system is simply to hold, stock and “preserve for tomorrow the drops that have fallen today” (Mishra 2001: 53), in a very clean place. With an average rainfall of just 60 cm which is half the national average, the region is a vibrant living desert with villages, fields, towns and no water scarcity.
The knowledge of this water culture and the larger water systems of Rajasthan is not available in our “modern” education, Western science or conventional schooling. Mishra learnt and wrote about it by drawing upon the memory of the local peasants, pastoralists and other “ordinary” folk he met during his travels. It is not a formal education or textual knowledge that constructed his knowledge. He developed and deepened this understanding during a decade of engagement slowly, drop by drop, like the water conservation techniques by smiriti (memory), shruti (revelation) and kriti (creation). This could be among the reasons of why the state government’s public and water works departments or even the progressive civil society social action groups have ignored such a sophisticated work of their own society. Moreover he has conceptualised these water management and conservation models in terms of a cosmic inter-connection between physical nature, human action and socio-ethical fabric of the local communities. His writing establishes that water security or insecurity developing from a water-literate society “is a product of nature plus culture, not just a given of nature” (Mishra 2001: 1).
The homogenised urban milieu, that I came from, may not provide adequate foreground or space to seek an understanding of such communitarian practices rooted in local knowledge systems. This makes it imperative to consciously provide space in school and college curriculum for such indigenous knowledge practices without which it may not be possible to sustain water regimes for long.
Persuaded to Speak
I invited him to speak with student teachers of the elementary education department of my college some years ago. He was reluctant to come as he wanted to be known through his writing and work alone and it was difficult to correspond with him since he had no email or mobile telephone. A colleague resided in his neighbourhood. It was a handwritten invitation in Hindi delivered by her schoolgoing daughter that persuaded him to come. The topic was “Gandhi, Environment and Emancipation.” In his unassuming, understated manner he spoke of the fact that the term environment was not to be found in any of Gandhiji’s writing. Beyond that it was an uplifting experience to listen to his moving critique of modernity.
An article on his passing away pointed out how inadequately his work has been known even within the conventional development and environmental discourse (Guha 2016). The article also revealed to me that at some time Delhi’s water system had worked successfully based on retention of rainwater through an intricate network of tanks and canals. A reconstruction of these around my premises could offer emancipatory possibilities for my domestic water infrastructure.
References
Guha, Ramachandra (2016): “The Quiet Fighter,” Indian Express, 21 December.
Lea YiShan (2013): “Travel as a Ritual Toward Transformative Consciousness: Juxtaposing Che Guevara’s Biography and Teacher Candidates’ Narratives,” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, Vol 11, No 3, November, pp 306–25.
Mishra, Anupam (2001): The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan, New Delhi: Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.
Sustaining Water Regimes
The Work of Anupam Mishra
Anupam
Mishra’s work on how the indigenous water systems of Rajasthan have
sustained a water regime not only made it possible for a robust
civilisation to thrive in the desert but along with his writings on
sustainable use of water, also inspired a college lecturer to find
solutions to her domestic water problem.
Nearly
a decade ago I came to live at the teachers’ quarters in the salubrious
premises of Gargi College located adjacent to the historic Siri Fort
Wall in South Delhi. It took me very little time to discover that the
residential complex had a water system which worked arbitrarily or did
not work so far as I was concerned. My quarter was the last in the water
supply chain and hardly received any water, the resource most critical
to our daily lives. A long-time resident there who was familiar with the
eccentricities of the system explained that this scarcity occurred
since water needs to find its own pressure. All the preceding tanks need
to be full in order for the water to gush forward into the pipelines.
My tank being the last, received its supply only after those preceding
it got filled. The previous residents of the quarter corroborated this
information.
Struggling to find ingenuous solutions to my domestic water problem, I got interested in water infrastructures and started paying careful attention to possible local water management and conservation systems I could adopt in my individual capacity. Guided by this new interest I was introduced to the seminal work of activist Anupam Mishra on how Rajasthan manages its water in spite of receiving it so parsimoniously. His books on the indigenous water cultures of Rajasthan—The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan and Aaj Bhi Khare Hain Talab —provided me with ideas that brought to my mind what YiShan Lea wrote about “alternative political referents potentially free our attachment to the status quo” (2013: 307). These referents provoked an interrogation of the dominant water paradigm that I grew up believing in during my upbringing and education as a city dweller.
The Delhi resident presumptively thinks of water as being a product of an efficacious modernity which pipes this precious resource into our homes through the state-managed system. I was simultaneously struck by the revelation that historically North India had a water culture and a water-literate society which harnessed premodern traditional knowledge systems to nourish the local communities in towns and hinterland, century after century through “a mythopoiesis between men, earth, heat and water” (Mishra 2001: 11).
Preserving Drops
In Rajasthan, a robust and extant water regime is based on a tradition of water collection. It consists of a network of ponds, wells and tanks ranging from small kund, kundi, tanka (pond, small ponds, reservoir), narrow wells, vast step wells, family tanks and big reservoirs. This network continues to be an integral part of the local knowledge tradition. The principle underlying this highly efficacious system is simply to hold, stock and “preserve for tomorrow the drops that have fallen today” (Mishra 2001: 53), in a very clean place. With an average rainfall of just 60 cm which is half the national average, the region is a vibrant living desert with villages, fields, towns and no water scarcity.
The knowledge of this water culture and the larger water systems of Rajasthan is not available in our “modern” education, Western science or conventional schooling. Mishra learnt and wrote about it by drawing upon the memory of the local peasants, pastoralists and other “ordinary” folk he met during his travels. It is not a formal education or textual knowledge that constructed his knowledge. He developed and deepened this understanding during a decade of engagement slowly, drop by drop, like the water conservation techniques by smiriti (memory), shruti (revelation) and kriti (creation). This could be among the reasons of why the state government’s public and water works departments or even the progressive civil society social action groups have ignored such a sophisticated work of their own society. Moreover he has conceptualised these water management and conservation models in terms of a cosmic inter-connection between physical nature, human action and socio-ethical fabric of the local communities. His writing establishes that water security or insecurity developing from a water-literate society “is a product of nature plus culture, not just a given of nature” (Mishra 2001: 1).
The homogenised urban milieu, that I came from, may not provide adequate foreground or space to seek an understanding of such communitarian practices rooted in local knowledge systems. This makes it imperative to consciously provide space in school and college curriculum for such indigenous knowledge practices without which it may not be possible to sustain water regimes for long.
Persuaded to Speak
I invited him to speak with student teachers of the elementary education department of my college some years ago. He was reluctant to come as he wanted to be known through his writing and work alone and it was difficult to correspond with him since he had no email or mobile telephone. A colleague resided in his neighbourhood. It was a handwritten invitation in Hindi delivered by her schoolgoing daughter that persuaded him to come. The topic was “Gandhi, Environment and Emancipation.” In his unassuming, understated manner he spoke of the fact that the term environment was not to be found in any of Gandhiji’s writing. Beyond that it was an uplifting experience to listen to his moving critique of modernity.
An article on his passing away pointed out how inadequately his work has been known even within the conventional development and environmental discourse (Guha 2016). The article also revealed to me that at some time Delhi’s water system had worked successfully based on retention of rainwater through an intricate network of tanks and canals. A reconstruction of these around my premises could offer emancipatory possibilities for my domestic water infrastructure.
References
Guha, Ramachandra (2016): “The Quiet Fighter,” Indian Express, 21 December.
Lea YiShan (2013): “Travel as a Ritual Toward Transformative Consciousness: Juxtaposing Che Guevara’s Biography and Teacher Candidates’ Narratives,” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, Vol 11, No 3, November, pp 306–25.
Mishra, Anupam (2001): The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan, New Delhi: Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.
Struggling to find ingenuous solutions to my domestic water problem, I got interested in water infrastructures and started paying careful attention to possible local water management and conservation systems I could adopt in my individual capacity. Guided by this new interest I was introduced to the seminal work of activist Anupam Mishra on how Rajasthan manages its water in spite of receiving it so parsimoniously. His books on the indigenous water cultures of Rajasthan—The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan and Aaj Bhi Khare Hain Talab —provided me with ideas that brought to my mind what YiShan Lea wrote about “alternative political referents potentially free our attachment to the status quo” (2013: 307). These referents provoked an interrogation of the dominant water paradigm that I grew up believing in during my upbringing and education as a city dweller.
The Delhi resident presumptively thinks of water as being a product of an efficacious modernity which pipes this precious resource into our homes through the state-managed system. I was simultaneously struck by the revelation that historically North India had a water culture and a water-literate society which harnessed premodern traditional knowledge systems to nourish the local communities in towns and hinterland, century after century through “a mythopoiesis between men, earth, heat and water” (Mishra 2001: 11).
Preserving Drops
In Rajasthan, a robust and extant water regime is based on a tradition of water collection. It consists of a network of ponds, wells and tanks ranging from small kund, kundi, tanka (pond, small ponds, reservoir), narrow wells, vast step wells, family tanks and big reservoirs. This network continues to be an integral part of the local knowledge tradition. The principle underlying this highly efficacious system is simply to hold, stock and “preserve for tomorrow the drops that have fallen today” (Mishra 2001: 53), in a very clean place. With an average rainfall of just 60 cm which is half the national average, the region is a vibrant living desert with villages, fields, towns and no water scarcity.
The knowledge of this water culture and the larger water systems of Rajasthan is not available in our “modern” education, Western science or conventional schooling. Mishra learnt and wrote about it by drawing upon the memory of the local peasants, pastoralists and other “ordinary” folk he met during his travels. It is not a formal education or textual knowledge that constructed his knowledge. He developed and deepened this understanding during a decade of engagement slowly, drop by drop, like the water conservation techniques by smiriti (memory), shruti (revelation) and kriti (creation). This could be among the reasons of why the state government’s public and water works departments or even the progressive civil society social action groups have ignored such a sophisticated work of their own society. Moreover he has conceptualised these water management and conservation models in terms of a cosmic inter-connection between physical nature, human action and socio-ethical fabric of the local communities. His writing establishes that water security or insecurity developing from a water-literate society “is a product of nature plus culture, not just a given of nature” (Mishra 2001: 1).
The homogenised urban milieu, that I came from, may not provide adequate foreground or space to seek an understanding of such communitarian practices rooted in local knowledge systems. This makes it imperative to consciously provide space in school and college curriculum for such indigenous knowledge practices without which it may not be possible to sustain water regimes for long.
Persuaded to Speak
I invited him to speak with student teachers of the elementary education department of my college some years ago. He was reluctant to come as he wanted to be known through his writing and work alone and it was difficult to correspond with him since he had no email or mobile telephone. A colleague resided in his neighbourhood. It was a handwritten invitation in Hindi delivered by her schoolgoing daughter that persuaded him to come. The topic was “Gandhi, Environment and Emancipation.” In his unassuming, understated manner he spoke of the fact that the term environment was not to be found in any of Gandhiji’s writing. Beyond that it was an uplifting experience to listen to his moving critique of modernity.
An article on his passing away pointed out how inadequately his work has been known even within the conventional development and environmental discourse (Guha 2016). The article also revealed to me that at some time Delhi’s water system had worked successfully based on retention of rainwater through an intricate network of tanks and canals. A reconstruction of these around my premises could offer emancipatory possibilities for my domestic water infrastructure.
References
Guha, Ramachandra (2016): “The Quiet Fighter,” Indian Express, 21 December.
Lea YiShan (2013): “Travel as a Ritual Toward Transformative Consciousness: Juxtaposing Che Guevara’s Biography and Teacher Candidates’ Narratives,” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, Vol 11, No 3, November, pp 306–25.
Mishra, Anupam (2001): The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan, New Delhi: Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.
Sustaining Water Regimes
The Work of Anupam Mishra
Anupam
Mishra’s work on how the indigenous water systems of Rajasthan have
sustained a water regime not only made it possible for a robust
civilisation to thrive in the desert but along with his writings on
sustainable use of water, also inspired a college lecturer to find
solutions to her domestic water problem.
Nearly
a decade ago I came to live at the teachers’ quarters in the salubrious
premises of Gargi College located adjacent to the historic Siri Fort
Wall in South Delhi. It took me very little time to discover that the
residential complex had a water system which worked arbitrarily or did
not work so far as I was concerned. My quarter was the last in the water
supply chain and hardly received any water, the resource most critical
to our daily lives. A long-time resident there who was familiar with the
eccentricities of the system explained that this scarcity occurred
since water needs to find its own pressure. All the preceding tanks need
to be full in order for the water to gush forward into the pipelines.
My tank being the last, received its supply only after those preceding
it got filled. The previous residents of the quarter corroborated this
information.
Struggling to find ingenuous solutions to my domestic water problem, I got interested in water infrastructures and started paying careful attention to possible local water management and conservation systems I could adopt in my individual capacity. Guided by this new interest I was introduced to the seminal work of activist Anupam Mishra on how Rajasthan manages its water in spite of receiving it so parsimoniously. His books on the indigenous water cultures of Rajasthan—The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan and Aaj Bhi Khare Hain Talab —provided me with ideas that brought to my mind what YiShan Lea wrote about “alternative political referents potentially free our attachment to the status quo” (2013: 307). These referents provoked an interrogation of the dominant water paradigm that I grew up believing in during my upbringing and education as a city dweller.
The Delhi resident presumptively thinks of water as being a product of an efficacious modernity which pipes this precious resource into our homes through the state-managed system. I was simultaneously struck by the revelation that historically North India had a water culture and a water-literate society which harnessed premodern traditional knowledge systems to nourish the local communities in towns and hinterland, century after century through “a mythopoiesis between men, earth, heat and water” (Mishra 2001: 11).
Preserving Drops
In Rajasthan, a robust and extant water regime is based on a tradition of water collection. It consists of a network of ponds, wells and tanks ranging from small kund, kundi, tanka (pond, small ponds, reservoir), narrow wells, vast step wells, family tanks and big reservoirs. This network continues to be an integral part of the local knowledge tradition. The principle underlying this highly efficacious system is simply to hold, stock and “preserve for tomorrow the drops that have fallen today” (Mishra 2001: 53), in a very clean place. With an average rainfall of just 60 cm which is half the national average, the region is a vibrant living desert with villages, fields, towns and no water scarcity.
The knowledge of this water culture and the larger water systems of Rajasthan is not available in our “modern” education, Western science or conventional schooling. Mishra learnt and wrote about it by drawing upon the memory of the local peasants, pastoralists and other “ordinary” folk he met during his travels. It is not a formal education or textual knowledge that constructed his knowledge. He developed and deepened this understanding during a decade of engagement slowly, drop by drop, like the water conservation techniques by smiriti (memory), shruti (revelation) and kriti (creation). This could be among the reasons of why the state government’s public and water works departments or even the progressive civil society social action groups have ignored such a sophisticated work of their own society. Moreover he has conceptualised these water management and conservation models in terms of a cosmic inter-connection between physical nature, human action and socio-ethical fabric of the local communities. His writing establishes that water security or insecurity developing from a water-literate society “is a product of nature plus culture, not just a given of nature” (Mishra 2001: 1).
The homogenised urban milieu, that I came from, may not provide adequate foreground or space to seek an understanding of such communitarian practices rooted in local knowledge systems. This makes it imperative to consciously provide space in school and college curriculum for such indigenous knowledge practices without which it may not be possible to sustain water regimes for long.
Persuaded to Speak
I invited him to speak with student teachers of the elementary education department of my college some years ago. He was reluctant to come as he wanted to be known through his writing and work alone and it was difficult to correspond with him since he had no email or mobile telephone. A colleague resided in his neighbourhood. It was a handwritten invitation in Hindi delivered by her schoolgoing daughter that persuaded him to come. The topic was “Gandhi, Environment and Emancipation.” In his unassuming, understated manner he spoke of the fact that the term environment was not to be found in any of Gandhiji’s writing. Beyond that it was an uplifting experience to listen to his moving critique of modernity.
An article on his passing away pointed out how inadequately his work has been known even within the conventional development and environmental discourse (Guha 2016). The article also revealed to me that at some time Delhi’s water system had worked successfully based on retention of rainwater through an intricate network of tanks and canals. A reconstruction of these around my premises could offer emancipatory possibilities for my domestic water infrastructure.
References
Guha, Ramachandra (2016): “The Quiet Fighter,” Indian Express, 21 December.
Lea YiShan (2013): “Travel as a Ritual Toward Transformative Consciousness: Juxtaposing Che Guevara’s Biography and Teacher Candidates’ Narratives,” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, Vol 11, No 3, November, pp 306–25.
Mishra, Anupam (2001): The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan, New Delhi: Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.
Struggling to find ingenuous solutions to my domestic water problem, I got interested in water infrastructures and started paying careful attention to possible local water management and conservation systems I could adopt in my individual capacity. Guided by this new interest I was introduced to the seminal work of activist Anupam Mishra on how Rajasthan manages its water in spite of receiving it so parsimoniously. His books on the indigenous water cultures of Rajasthan—The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan and Aaj Bhi Khare Hain Talab —provided me with ideas that brought to my mind what YiShan Lea wrote about “alternative political referents potentially free our attachment to the status quo” (2013: 307). These referents provoked an interrogation of the dominant water paradigm that I grew up believing in during my upbringing and education as a city dweller.
The Delhi resident presumptively thinks of water as being a product of an efficacious modernity which pipes this precious resource into our homes through the state-managed system. I was simultaneously struck by the revelation that historically North India had a water culture and a water-literate society which harnessed premodern traditional knowledge systems to nourish the local communities in towns and hinterland, century after century through “a mythopoiesis between men, earth, heat and water” (Mishra 2001: 11).
Preserving Drops
In Rajasthan, a robust and extant water regime is based on a tradition of water collection. It consists of a network of ponds, wells and tanks ranging from small kund, kundi, tanka (pond, small ponds, reservoir), narrow wells, vast step wells, family tanks and big reservoirs. This network continues to be an integral part of the local knowledge tradition. The principle underlying this highly efficacious system is simply to hold, stock and “preserve for tomorrow the drops that have fallen today” (Mishra 2001: 53), in a very clean place. With an average rainfall of just 60 cm which is half the national average, the region is a vibrant living desert with villages, fields, towns and no water scarcity.
The knowledge of this water culture and the larger water systems of Rajasthan is not available in our “modern” education, Western science or conventional schooling. Mishra learnt and wrote about it by drawing upon the memory of the local peasants, pastoralists and other “ordinary” folk he met during his travels. It is not a formal education or textual knowledge that constructed his knowledge. He developed and deepened this understanding during a decade of engagement slowly, drop by drop, like the water conservation techniques by smiriti (memory), shruti (revelation) and kriti (creation). This could be among the reasons of why the state government’s public and water works departments or even the progressive civil society social action groups have ignored such a sophisticated work of their own society. Moreover he has conceptualised these water management and conservation models in terms of a cosmic inter-connection between physical nature, human action and socio-ethical fabric of the local communities. His writing establishes that water security or insecurity developing from a water-literate society “is a product of nature plus culture, not just a given of nature” (Mishra 2001: 1).
The homogenised urban milieu, that I came from, may not provide adequate foreground or space to seek an understanding of such communitarian practices rooted in local knowledge systems. This makes it imperative to consciously provide space in school and college curriculum for such indigenous knowledge practices without which it may not be possible to sustain water regimes for long.
Persuaded to Speak
I invited him to speak with student teachers of the elementary education department of my college some years ago. He was reluctant to come as he wanted to be known through his writing and work alone and it was difficult to correspond with him since he had no email or mobile telephone. A colleague resided in his neighbourhood. It was a handwritten invitation in Hindi delivered by her schoolgoing daughter that persuaded him to come. The topic was “Gandhi, Environment and Emancipation.” In his unassuming, understated manner he spoke of the fact that the term environment was not to be found in any of Gandhiji’s writing. Beyond that it was an uplifting experience to listen to his moving critique of modernity.
An article on his passing away pointed out how inadequately his work has been known even within the conventional development and environmental discourse (Guha 2016). The article also revealed to me that at some time Delhi’s water system had worked successfully based on retention of rainwater through an intricate network of tanks and canals. A reconstruction of these around my premises could offer emancipatory possibilities for my domestic water infrastructure.
References
Guha, Ramachandra (2016): “The Quiet Fighter,” Indian Express, 21 December.
Lea YiShan (2013): “Travel as a Ritual Toward Transformative Consciousness: Juxtaposing Che Guevara’s Biography and Teacher Candidates’ Narratives,” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, Vol 11, No 3, November, pp 306–25.
Mishra, Anupam (2001): The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan, New Delhi: Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.
Sustaining Water Regimes
The Work of Anupam Mishra
Anupam
Mishra’s work on how the indigenous water systems of Rajasthan have
sustained a water regime not only made it possible for a robust
civilisation to thrive in the desert but along with his writings on
sustainable use of water, also inspired a college lecturer to find
solutions to her domestic water problem.
Nearly
a decade ago I came to live at the teachers’ quarters in the salubrious
premises of Gargi College located adjacent to the historic Siri Fort
Wall in South Delhi. It took me very little time to discover that the
residential complex had a water system which worked arbitrarily or did
not work so far as I was concerned. My quarter was the last in the water
supply chain and hardly received any water, the resource most critical
to our daily lives. A long-time resident there who was familiar with the
eccentricities of the system explained that this scarcity occurred
since water needs to find its own pressure. All the preceding tanks need
to be full in order for the water to gush forward into the pipelines.
My tank being the last, received its supply only after those preceding
it got filled. The previous residents of the quarter corroborated this
information.
Struggling to find ingenuous solutions to my domestic water problem, I got interested in water infrastructures and started paying careful attention to possible local water management and conservation systems I could adopt in my individual capacity. Guided by this new interest I was introduced to the seminal work of activist Anupam Mishra on how Rajasthan manages its water in spite of receiving it so parsimoniously. His books on the indigenous water cultures of Rajasthan—The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan and Aaj Bhi Khare Hain Talab —provided me with ideas that brought to my mind what YiShan Lea wrote about “alternative political referents potentially free our attachment to the status quo” (2013: 307). These referents provoked an interrogation of the dominant water paradigm that I grew up believing in during my upbringing and education as a city dweller.
The Delhi resident presumptively thinks of water as being a product of an efficacious modernity which pipes this precious resource into our homes through the state-managed system. I was simultaneously struck by the revelation that historically North India had a water culture and a water-literate society which harnessed premodern traditional knowledge systems to nourish the local communities in towns and hinterland, century after century through “a mythopoiesis between men, earth, heat and water” (Mishra 2001: 11).
Preserving Drops
In Rajasthan, a robust and extant water regime is based on a tradition of water collection. It consists of a network of ponds, wells and tanks ranging from small kund, kundi, tanka (pond, small ponds, reservoir), narrow wells, vast step wells, family tanks and big reservoirs. This network continues to be an integral part of the local knowledge tradition. The principle underlying this highly efficacious system is simply to hold, stock and “preserve for tomorrow the drops that have fallen today” (Mishra 2001: 53), in a very clean place. With an average rainfall of just 60 cm which is half the national average, the region is a vibrant living desert with villages, fields, towns and no water scarcity.
The knowledge of this water culture and the larger water systems of Rajasthan is not available in our “modern” education, Western science or conventional schooling. Mishra learnt and wrote about it by drawing upon the memory of the local peasants, pastoralists and other “ordinary” folk he met during his travels. It is not a formal education or textual knowledge that constructed his knowledge. He developed and deepened this understanding during a decade of engagement slowly, drop by drop, like the water conservation techniques by smiriti (memory), shruti (revelation) and kriti (creation). This could be among the reasons of why the state government’s public and water works departments or even the progressive civil society social action groups have ignored such a sophisticated work of their own society. Moreover he has conceptualised these water management and conservation models in terms of a cosmic inter-connection between physical nature, human action and socio-ethical fabric of the local communities. His writing establishes that water security or insecurity developing from a water-literate society “is a product of nature plus culture, not just a given of nature” (Mishra 2001: 1).
The homogenised urban milieu, that I came from, may not provide adequate foreground or space to seek an understanding of such communitarian practices rooted in local knowledge systems. This makes it imperative to consciously provide space in school and college curriculum for such indigenous knowledge practices without which it may not be possible to sustain water regimes for long.
Persuaded to Speak
I invited him to speak with student teachers of the elementary education department of my college some years ago. He was reluctant to come as he wanted to be known through his writing and work alone and it was difficult to correspond with him since he had no email or mobile telephone. A colleague resided in his neighbourhood. It was a handwritten invitation in Hindi delivered by her schoolgoing daughter that persuaded him to come. The topic was “Gandhi, Environment and Emancipation.” In his unassuming, understated manner he spoke of the fact that the term environment was not to be found in any of Gandhiji’s writing. Beyond that it was an uplifting experience to listen to his moving critique of modernity.
An article on his passing away pointed out how inadequately his work has been known even within the conventional development and environmental discourse (Guha 2016). The article also revealed to me that at some time Delhi’s water system had worked successfully based on retention of rainwater through an intricate network of tanks and canals. A reconstruction of these around my premises could offer emancipatory possibilities for my domestic water infrastructure.
References
Guha, Ramachandra (2016): “The Quiet Fighter,” Indian Express, 21 December.
Lea YiShan (2013): “Travel as a Ritual Toward Transformative Consciousness: Juxtaposing Che Guevara’s Biography and Teacher Candidates’ Narratives,” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, Vol 11, No 3, November, pp 306–25.
Mishra, Anupam (2001): The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan, New Delhi: Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.
Struggling to find ingenuous solutions to my domestic water problem, I got interested in water infrastructures and started paying careful attention to possible local water management and conservation systems I could adopt in my individual capacity. Guided by this new interest I was introduced to the seminal work of activist Anupam Mishra on how Rajasthan manages its water in spite of receiving it so parsimoniously. His books on the indigenous water cultures of Rajasthan—The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan and Aaj Bhi Khare Hain Talab —provided me with ideas that brought to my mind what YiShan Lea wrote about “alternative political referents potentially free our attachment to the status quo” (2013: 307). These referents provoked an interrogation of the dominant water paradigm that I grew up believing in during my upbringing and education as a city dweller.
The Delhi resident presumptively thinks of water as being a product of an efficacious modernity which pipes this precious resource into our homes through the state-managed system. I was simultaneously struck by the revelation that historically North India had a water culture and a water-literate society which harnessed premodern traditional knowledge systems to nourish the local communities in towns and hinterland, century after century through “a mythopoiesis between men, earth, heat and water” (Mishra 2001: 11).
Preserving Drops
In Rajasthan, a robust and extant water regime is based on a tradition of water collection. It consists of a network of ponds, wells and tanks ranging from small kund, kundi, tanka (pond, small ponds, reservoir), narrow wells, vast step wells, family tanks and big reservoirs. This network continues to be an integral part of the local knowledge tradition. The principle underlying this highly efficacious system is simply to hold, stock and “preserve for tomorrow the drops that have fallen today” (Mishra 2001: 53), in a very clean place. With an average rainfall of just 60 cm which is half the national average, the region is a vibrant living desert with villages, fields, towns and no water scarcity.
The knowledge of this water culture and the larger water systems of Rajasthan is not available in our “modern” education, Western science or conventional schooling. Mishra learnt and wrote about it by drawing upon the memory of the local peasants, pastoralists and other “ordinary” folk he met during his travels. It is not a formal education or textual knowledge that constructed his knowledge. He developed and deepened this understanding during a decade of engagement slowly, drop by drop, like the water conservation techniques by smiriti (memory), shruti (revelation) and kriti (creation). This could be among the reasons of why the state government’s public and water works departments or even the progressive civil society social action groups have ignored such a sophisticated work of their own society. Moreover he has conceptualised these water management and conservation models in terms of a cosmic inter-connection between physical nature, human action and socio-ethical fabric of the local communities. His writing establishes that water security or insecurity developing from a water-literate society “is a product of nature plus culture, not just a given of nature” (Mishra 2001: 1).
The homogenised urban milieu, that I came from, may not provide adequate foreground or space to seek an understanding of such communitarian practices rooted in local knowledge systems. This makes it imperative to consciously provide space in school and college curriculum for such indigenous knowledge practices without which it may not be possible to sustain water regimes for long.
Persuaded to Speak
I invited him to speak with student teachers of the elementary education department of my college some years ago. He was reluctant to come as he wanted to be known through his writing and work alone and it was difficult to correspond with him since he had no email or mobile telephone. A colleague resided in his neighbourhood. It was a handwritten invitation in Hindi delivered by her schoolgoing daughter that persuaded him to come. The topic was “Gandhi, Environment and Emancipation.” In his unassuming, understated manner he spoke of the fact that the term environment was not to be found in any of Gandhiji’s writing. Beyond that it was an uplifting experience to listen to his moving critique of modernity.
An article on his passing away pointed out how inadequately his work has been known even within the conventional development and environmental discourse (Guha 2016). The article also revealed to me that at some time Delhi’s water system had worked successfully based on retention of rainwater through an intricate network of tanks and canals. A reconstruction of these around my premises could offer emancipatory possibilities for my domestic water infrastructure.
References
Guha, Ramachandra (2016): “The Quiet Fighter,” Indian Express, 21 December.
Lea YiShan (2013): “Travel as a Ritual Toward Transformative Consciousness: Juxtaposing Che Guevara’s Biography and Teacher Candidates’ Narratives,” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, Vol 11, No 3, November, pp 306–25.
Mishra, Anupam (2001): The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan, New Delhi: Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.
LINK: http://www.epw.in/journal/2017/4/commentary/sustaining-water-regimes.html#
************
A Clerk Who Saw the Genius
in the Ordinary - Anupam Mishra (1947–2016)
Author: Sopan Joshi, Economic
and Political Weekly | January 28, 2017
Anupam Mishra’s personal
qualities characterised his work. There are others who
researched and wrote about traditional water management in India
with great depth and commitment. Mishra, however, saw himself as
the voice of his people, his society. He did not see with the
eyes of academic objectivity or impartial commentary, but with
empathy and imagination. He noticed the environmental wisdom in
the ways of ordinary people and appreciated the cultural threads
and values that carried that wisdom from generation to
illiterate generation.
http://www.epw.in/journal/ 2017/4/commentary/clerk-who- saw-geniusin-ordinary.html
LINK: http://www.epw.in/journal/2017/4/commentary/clerk-who-saw-geniusin-ordinary.html#
Home » Journal » Vol. 52, Issue
No. 4, 28 Jan, 2017 » A Clerk Who Saw the Genius in the Ordinary
A Clerk Who Saw the Genius in the Ordinary
Anupam Mishra (1947–2016)
Sopan
Joshi (sopan.joshi@gmail.com)
was associated with Anupam Mishra over a long period and is a research fellow
at the Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi, which published his book Jal
Thal Mal in July 2016.
Anupam
Mishra’s personal qualities characterised his work. There are others who
researched and wrote about traditional water management in India with great
depth and commitment. Mishra, however, saw himself as the voice of his people,
his society. He did not see with the eyes of academic objectivity or impartial
commentary, but with empathy and imagination. He noticed the environmental
wisdom in the ways of ordinary people and appreciated the cultural threads and
values that carried that wisdom from generation to illiterate generation.
Since
Anupam Mishra’s death on 19 December 2016, after an 11-month battle with
cancer, numerous tributes have been published, several condolence meetings
held. Most have dwelt on his personality, more than his work. Not without
reason, for his work is now quite well known, especially his bestselling Hindi
book Aaj Bhi Khare Hain Talab, first published in 1993. An extraordinary
person in several ways, Mishra steadily and actively managed to avoid
attention. On the day that Mishra died, journalist Ravish Kumar said on his
show on NDTV India that he could now talk about the person, and not just his
work, since Mishra was not around to deter him from doing so.
Mishra’s
work is inseparable from his life; his personality created his work, his work
shaped his persona. He is often described as an environmentalist, although he
did not like the term; he was averse to new-fangled language or any kind of
emphasis on classical/technical learning. His words of choice came from farms
and pastures, railway stations and bus terminals, from dialects and
sensibilities not often found in learned circles. He called himself a faithful
clerk of ordinary people, of ordinary communities.
In
1969, when he started working, “environment” was not a common term, as also its
Hindi translation paryavaran. He was a young postgraduate in Sanskrit
from the University of Delhi. He had dropped his plan to work on a doctoral
thesis because his professors were not interested in his proposal to make 3D
models based on the descriptions in Natya Shastra, the ancient Sanskrit
treatise on the performing arts.
From Journalism to Himalayas
He
was born and brought up in an atmosphere that prized Indian languages and
socially relevant work. His father Bhawani Prasad Mishra, a renowned Hindi
poet, had learned Persian and Bengali during his incarceration in 1942–45 for
taking part in the Quit India movement. After his release, he settled in the mahila
ashram in Wardha, Maharashtra (close to Sevagram where Mohandas K Gandhi
lived and worked), along with his wife Sarla and a young family. The family
moved first to Hyderabad and Bemetara (now in Chhattisgarh), and in 1958 to
Delhi. In the late 1960s, Mishra’s father was editor-in-charge of the Collected
Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG) in Hindi. The 22-year-old Mishra joined the
Gandhi Peace Foundation (GPF) in 1969 as an apprentice in the research and
publications unit. He spent his entire productive life—47 years—at the GPF,
politely turning down several lucrative offers from newspapers and well-funded
organisations. He treated people at the GPF like his family, and he did not
believe in changing families.
The
GPF had been set up in 1963 for research, publication and advocacy on socially
relevant issues. Its founders were important figures in government like
Rajendra Prasad, Zakir Husain, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari and Jawaharlal
Nehru, among others. Yet they felt the need to create an independent, autonomous
body that worked only in the social framework, free from the trappings of
government machinery. Mishra wanted to be part of such a body.
He
started as an editorial assistant contributing to Gandhian publications like Sarvodaya
Press Service and Bhoodan Yagna, honing his skills as a writer,
editor and photographer. When the Gandhian leader Jayaprakash Narayan engaged
with dacoits in the Chambal Valley to persuade them to surrender, his
three-member team on the ground in 1972–74 included Mishra. After the dacoits
surrendered, the GPF brought out a book titled Chambal Ki Bandookein Gandhi
Ke Charnon Mein. Veteran journalist B G Verghese called it “the fastest
journalism in India.”
It
was around this time that Mishra’s attention turned from the Chambal ravines to
the Himalayas, towards ordinary villagers protesting the commercial logging in
the higher reaches of Chamoli district of Uttar Pradesh (now in Uttarakhand).
In October 1972, at the Gandhi Samadhi in Delhi, he met Chandi Prasad Bhatt, a
sarvodaya activist from Gopeshwar. Mishra took him to meet Raghuvir Sahay, the
editor of the influential Hindi magazine Dinman. This resulted in a
special issue on this mountainous region, which talked about the struggles of
villagers in the face of loggers and the forest department.
From
1973 onwards, Mishra began travelling to some of the villages in the region but
not simply in his role as a journalist from Delhi, but to lend a sympathetic
ear. Wherever he went, he stayed for a few days to understand the villagers,
their hopes and fears. It was much later that Mishra wrote a feature article in
Dinman. It was perhaps the first major report by a journalist from
outside the hills on what later came to be known as the Chipko movement; it was
published along with the famous photograph of Gaura Devi, a protagonist of
Chipko.
Along
with Satyendra Tripathi, Mishra wrote a book in 1977 on the Chipko movement
that was to herald a new environmental consciousness. Historian and writer
Shekhar Pathak calls Mishra the first historian of Chipko. But Mishra never saw
himself as either a journalist or historian or photographer or an
environmentalist. He preferred to be a faithful messenger of the villagers and
activists, as their man Friday in Delhi. He readily assisted Bhatt in his work
and became an associate and guide to other journalists and researchers writing
on Chipko.
During
the Emergency, Mishra worked as a freelance reporter and photographer, often
alongside other journalists protesting the government’s excesses. The GPF had
emerged as the hub of anti-Emergency activities, and Mishra did his bit.
Around
this period he began travelling to the Narmada River basin, not far from his
father’s ancestral village. Irrigation canals from the Tawa dam had caused
waterlogging in the otherwise fertile fields with black cotton soil. When the
villagers joined hands against the ill-effects of the dam and its canals, it
became the Mitti Bachao Andolan, also the title of a thin book Mishra wrote on
the struggle. Again, Mishra was not just the first chronicler and messenger of
the villagers but their friend and associate. Later, this movement segued into
a wider protest against dams in the valley.
Role as a ‘Bridge’
The
early 1980s drew Mishra to Bikaner in western Rajasthan, where social activists
were rallying to protect common pastures. He made friends there, brought
journalists from Bikaner to Delhi, and took journalists from Delhi to Bikaner.
(One of his favourite words was saakav, which in western Maharashtra
means a small, seasonal bridge; Mishra saw himself as a saakav.) It was during
these travels that the wisdom of the desert folk and their traditional
water management came to his notice. Over the past decade, he had observed how
ordinary people related to their physical environment. How their practices and
lifestyles were shaped by the physical conditions, and how they, in turn,
shaped their physical conditions. They had not learnt this through a classical
education or modern learning; it was common sense, accumulated over
generations, transferred in the oral traditions.
Mishra’s
had an affectionate nature which encompassed all kinds of people he met during
his work and travels, and he made it a point to stay in touch with them, to
foster the relationships, through good and bad times. He wrote numerous
postcards by hand and telephoned people regularly, a habit he had acquired from
his father, a generous man with a charming manner that made each person who met
him feel special. Mishra was no networker; he simply kept expanding the range
of his home and his family ever further. His office in the GPF gradually became
a source of great recourse to all manner of people, who came there just to meet
him. He always found time for each visitor.
Among
his regular visitors were a few mentally disturbed people, who had been cast
aside by their near and dear ones. One of them, a schizophrenic, did not trust
anybody other than Mishra. He appeared regularly at the office, and Mishra used
to leave aside all work and step outside to meet him, hear him patiently, help
him in some small way, come back to his seat, and remind other visitors that
mental health is a lottery; any of us can lose our mental balance at any time.
Among his favourite works of fiction was Anton Chekhov’s Ward No 6.
Mishra had compassion even for colleagues who mistreated him. Since his death,
obituary after endearing obituary has mentioned his remarkable composure and
social warmth. On meeting him for the first time, some people suspected his
humility was pretence. Those who knew his family recognised its origin: his
mother Sarla. Mishra had been raised by a devout mother who offered compassion
and reassurance to even total strangers.
Voice of the People
Mishra
often talked of how we can get carried away with what we know, and make
assumptions about what we do not know. He stressed the need to be forthright
about what we do not know, and to acknowledge the limits of our knowledge.
After he relaunched the GPF’s Hindi bimonthly magazine Gandhi Marg in
2006, he often published articles that dealt with the humility required to
handle knowledge, be it the views of Vinoba Bhave or a modern scientist like
Stuart Firestein. The magazine steadily grew under his editorship and acquired
a committed readership.
His
personal qualities characterised his work. There are others who researched and
wrote about traditional water management in India with great depth and
commitment. Mishra, however, saw himself as the voice of his people, his
society. He did not see with the eyes of academic objectivity or impartial commentary,
but with empathy and imagination. His discerning editorial taste meant he
allowed his readers plenty of room for doubt, just as he was forthright about
the limits of his knowledge. He noticed the environmental wisdom in the ways of
ordinary people and appreciated the cultural threads and values that carried
that wisdom from generation to illiterate generation.
His
writing did not alarm; there were no rallying cries, his tone was always
understated. With a quiet dignity, his prose showed how to respect the ordinary
and the powerless, as also the folly of judging people and things we do not
understand. His criticism was laced with wit, although tempered with friendly
warmth. When he was asked to comment on the proposal to interlink rivers, in
which political leader Suresh Prabhu was involved, he said in Hindi: “Nadiyan
todhna aur jodhna prabhu ka kaam hai, ise Suresh Prabhu na karein” (It is
up to prabhu/god to join or separate rivers, Suresh Prabhu best leave it
alone).
He
produced crisp, vivid text; all his books are slender, because his editing
pencil was carved out of Ockham’s razor. No tome, no compendium. He wrote only
in Hindi, not out of any ideological obduracy, but because it was the language
in which he had grown up, the language in which his friends and subjects were
comfortable. His Hindi was steeped in an earthy idiom; his narratorial voice
was that of a friend being candid over an evening walk. Yet literary critics
fawn over the lucidity, simplicity and attractiveness of his Hindi prose.
Gentle Stewardship
This
meant that the environmental good sense he described appealed to ordinary
people and urged on their imagination. Sachhidanand Bharati, a schoolteacher in
a village of Pauri-Garhwal, Uttarakhand, found in Mishra’s book a description of
traditional structures that captured runoff in the mountains, preventing
erosion and improving soil moisture. These were called khal and chal.
As a young man, Bharati had taken part in the Chipko movement, but he could
find no examples of these structures in his region, even if his own village’s
name—Ufrainkhal—indicated the traditional waterbodies. Mishra had kept in touch
with him over the years, so he asked the writer how to revive these structures.
Mishra did not hand him a recipe for a solution, for he was averse to the
prescriptive mode; instead, he urged Bharati to talk to old, experienced people
in his region. And to experiment with the ideas on his own.
Gradually,
along with ordinary village women—the menfolk from these parts usually migrate
to the plains in search of employment—Bharati and his associates built scores
of such traditional structures. Today, the health of hundreds of hectares of
forests in the region owes to the revival of these structures by ordinary
village women. They have an abundance of fodder for their livestock, irrigation
for crops, and the moist forests are less vulnerable to forest fires. Bharati
credits Mishra for this, acknowledging the latter’s gentle, wise stewardship.
Likewise,
in the parched regions of western Rajasthan, a peculiar kind of well was built
traditionally in areas that had a belt of gypsum running underneath. This
narrow well, called kui, taps rainwater trapped in the sand. The
droplets percolate slowly towards the well, but the impermeable layer of gypsum
keeps them from sinking into the saline groundwater. This marvel of engineering
had become a thing of the past, and was described by some as a dead tradition,
since nobody was making new kuis.
After
reading in Mishra’s book a description of how the kui was built, an
organisation called Sambhaav has built about 200 new kuis. While these are
based on the same concept as before, they have been built with a new
material—reinforced cement concrete. In Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and
Rajasthan, ordinary farmers in some regions have revived their waterbodies
after reading about it in Mishra’s book, Aaj Bhi Khare Hain Talab. He
often stressed that ordinary people have an intrinsic technical knowhow, without
which they could not have survived. Just that this knowhow exists in a cultural
idiom. If you develop a taste for that idiom, you can access that knowhow.
Apart
from how it is written, the influence of this book has a lot to do with
the fact that Mishra did not employ copyright. Several people published their
own editions of the book, either for free distribution or for sale. It has been
translated into several Indian languages by enthusiastic readers, who felt
compelled to move forward the message of folk wisdom. It has been translated
into Braille, French and English, and an Arabic translation is in the works.
The book has been serialised by several publications and radio stations.
Whenever
Mishra was asked about his decision to forgo copyright, he agreed willingly: if
you want the fruit of good effort to be dispensed far and wide, you have to let
other people own them; you have to let go of personal claims and credit. Like
Mishra’s research, his writing also followed the open source principle. He believed
he was drawing from the collective, so he needed to put something back into the
commons.
How
did he manage to finance his efforts, then? For one, he kept down costs. Most
of his work was accomplished on a shoestring budget. His commitment and manner encouraged
generosity in other people, so there was always enough to get the job done. In
his personal life, Mishra lived frugally, just like he had been brought up. He
often said that the most important lesson he learnt was from his father’s
friend Banwarilal Choudhary, an influential figure and an agriculture scientist
who had led the Mitti Bachao Andolan in the early 1970s. He had told a young
Mishra that good work does not depend on a wealth of resources and that an
abundance of resources becomes a preoccupation and a distraction from the
overall objective. Mishra took this lesson to heart and made it the cornerstone
of all his efforts over almost five decades.
On
his chair in the GPF is an anti-dam sticker from the 1980s. “Power Without
Purpose,” it says. It is a reminder that Anupam Mishra believed only in the
power of purpose and in the genius of the ordinary.
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