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On the Road: Travels in Bihar
In the interests of catching up with all the blogging I've wanted to do but haven't had time to in the last few months, here's something I wrote when I was travelling in India this summer.
Wed Aug 8, 2007. A train in India.
I’m glad I took this step outside my comfort zone, that brought me to Bihar. After all the concerned and shocked faces and warnings about what an unsafe, uncivilized, corrupt place Bihar is, I was almost ready to reconsider the whole trip. But this is exactly what I needed – long train journeys where I can stop and sit and think and think and read, taking me to places of distance and fresh perspective; the experience of stepping outside my bubble and getting immersed in a completely different reality and way of life.
Bihar happens to be the most extreme state in India in terms of all the development scales and statistics: the lowest income figures, lowest literacy rates, highest infant mortality rates, worst roads and infrastructure, and so on. Even the train ride here was an eye-opener, as we passed villages of tiny mud houses and people slogging on the fields – one of the worst places in the world on most development scales.
Yet what would development look like in a place like this? I just started reading this book ‘Walking With the Poor: Practices and Principles of Transformational Development” by Bryant Myers. Myers describes the ideal of transformational development as the process of people discovering their true identity as children of God, and discovering their true vocation as productive stewards of God’s gifts for the benefit of all. And in a way, some aspects of the lifestyle here are a lot closer to that ideal – the simple lifestyles of people here, toiling the earth, living off the fruits of their labour, living together in community and not striving after money and vain ambition…I may be romanticizing it a bit, but how can I say that the quality of life of people here is that much worse than of people in big Western cities, who have their own problems of alienation and loneliness and materialism and dysfunctional relationships? Who am I to come here and tell them that their life is all wrong, they should instead be going to school and joining the rat-race and getting involved in political activism and fighting to get the big AC house and flat-screen TC that they’re entitled to..??
Development is a funny business. It almost gives you a god-complex, thinking that you as a development worker can come and reform people’s lifestyles and conditions of living and allow them to live happy and fulfilled lives.
How do we determine the ideal of development? How can we be justified in coming in to a community and trying to tell them how to live?
Perhaps if we look to God’s plan for lives and patterns of relation and communities – and hold that as the standard against which to measure all communities – then we begin to realize that both Indian villages and Western metropolitan cities are in need of transformational development. Development is not about going and imposing change on some needy people based on our predetermined ideal of what their life should look like, from a position of having already attained it. It’s more about a transformative relationship where both parties learn from each other in areas where they fall short of God’s ideal, where both grow and change. I’m beginning to think more and more that the ideal of development is not modern western societies, but rather, communities founded on just and peaceful relationships and on Biblical values of sacrificial love.
Wed Aug 8, 2007. A train in India.
I’m glad I took this step outside my comfort zone, that brought me to Bihar. After all the concerned and shocked faces and warnings about what an unsafe, uncivilized, corrupt place Bihar is, I was almost ready to reconsider the whole trip. But this is exactly what I needed – long train journeys where I can stop and sit and think and think and read, taking me to places of distance and fresh perspective; the experience of stepping outside my bubble and getting immersed in a completely different reality and way of life.
Bihar happens to be the most extreme state in India in terms of all the development scales and statistics: the lowest income figures, lowest literacy rates, highest infant mortality rates, worst roads and infrastructure, and so on. Even the train ride here was an eye-opener, as we passed villages of tiny mud houses and people slogging on the fields – one of the worst places in the world on most development scales.
Yet what would development look like in a place like this? I just started reading this book ‘Walking With the Poor: Practices and Principles of Transformational Development” by Bryant Myers. Myers describes the ideal of transformational development as the process of people discovering their true identity as children of God, and discovering their true vocation as productive stewards of God’s gifts for the benefit of all. And in a way, some aspects of the lifestyle here are a lot closer to that ideal – the simple lifestyles of people here, toiling the earth, living off the fruits of their labour, living together in community and not striving after money and vain ambition…I may be romanticizing it a bit, but how can I say that the quality of life of people here is that much worse than of people in big Western cities, who have their own problems of alienation and loneliness and materialism and dysfunctional relationships? Who am I to come here and tell them that their life is all wrong, they should instead be going to school and joining the rat-race and getting involved in political activism and fighting to get the big AC house and flat-screen TC that they’re entitled to..??
Development is a funny business. It almost gives you a god-complex, thinking that you as a development worker can come and reform people’s lifestyles and conditions of living and allow them to live happy and fulfilled lives.
How do we determine the ideal of development? How can we be justified in coming in to a community and trying to tell them how to live?
Perhaps if we look to God’s plan for lives and patterns of relation and communities – and hold that as the standard against which to measure all communities – then we begin to realize that both Indian villages and Western metropolitan cities are in need of transformational development. Development is not about going and imposing change on some needy people based on our predetermined ideal of what their life should look like, from a position of having already attained it. It’s more about a transformative relationship where both parties learn from each other in areas where they fall short of God’s ideal, where both grow and change. I’m beginning to think more and more that the ideal of development is not modern western societies, but rather, communities founded on just and peaceful relationships and on Biblical values of sacrificial love.
posted by The Big Banana | 9:50 AM
1 Comments:
Suzy,
As you have correctly observed, all types of attempts at materialistic improvement will eventually lead to serious spiritual deficit in any society.
So you have reached the conclusion that if you really want to help the poor and downtrodden in Bihar, or any other backward community, you will have to develop a new method, based on mutual learning, rather than impose your superior attitudes over the lowly.
Have you taken into consideration what goes into the remaking or reprogramming of a conditioned mind, that its filled with traditional rubbish and preconcepts ( karma, the class system, untouchability, superstition, a thousand gods etc.) and free such a mind to receive intelligent thought which is essential for change? Start with yourself, and only then you will know how to change others.
Love you,
D.
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