Everybody Loves a Good Drought Quotes

“If we were to define a sleeping bag as a house, India would move swiftly towards ending her housing shortage. A shortage of nearly thirty-one million units. Accept this definition, and you could go in for mass production of sleeping bags. We could then have passionate debates about the drastic reduction in the magnitude of the housing problem. The cover stories could run headlines: ‘Is it for real?’ And straps: ‘Sounds too good to be true, but it is.’ The government could boast that it had not only stepped up production of sleeping bags but had piled up an all-time record surplus of them. Say, thirty-seven million. Conservatives could argue that we were doing so well, the time had come to export sleeping bags, at ‘world prices’. The bleeding hearts could moan that sleeping bags had not reached the poorest. Investigative muckrakers could scrutinise the contracts given to manufacturers. Were the bags overpriced? Were they of good quality? That ends the housing shortage. There’s only one problem. Those without houses at the start of the programme will still be without houses at the end of it. (True, some of them will have sleeping bags, probably at world prices.)”
― P Sainath, Everybody loves a good drought

“Too often, poverty and deprivation get covered as events. That is, when some disaster strikes, when people die. Yet, poverty is about much more than starvation deaths or near famine conditions. It is the sum total of a multiplicity of factors. The weightage of some of these varies from region to region, society to society, culture to culture. But at the core is a fairly compact number of factors. They include not just income and calorie intake. Land, health, education, literacy, infant mortality rates and life expectancy are also some of them. Debt, assets, irrigation, drinking water, sanitation and jobs count too. You can have the mandatory 2,400 or 2,100 calories a day and yet be very poor. India’s problems differ from those of a Somalia or Ethiopia in crisis. Hunger—again just one aspect of poverty—is far more complex here. It is more low level, less visible and does not make for the dramatic television footage that a Somalia and Ethiopia do. That makes covering the process more challenging—and more important. Many who do not starve receive very inadequate nutrition. Children getting less food than they need can look quite normal. Yet poor nutrition can impair both mental and physical growth and they can suffer its debilitating impact all their lives. A person lacking minimal access to health at critical moments can face destruction almost as surely as one in hunger.”
― P Sainath, Everybody loves a good drought

“Denying the poor access to knowledge goes back a long way. The ancient Smriti political and legal system drew up vicious punishments for sudras seeking learning. (In those days, that meant learning the Vedas.) If a sudra listens to the Vedas, said one of these laws, ‘his ears are to be filled with molten tin or lac. If he dares to recite the Vedic texts, his body is to be split’. That was the fate of the ‘base-born’. The ancients restricted learning on the basis of birth. In a modern polity, where the base-born have votes, the elite act differently. Say all the right things. But deny access. Sometimes, mass pressures force concessions. Bend a little. After a while, it’s back to business as usual. As one writer has put it: When the poor get literate and educated, the rich lose their palanquin bearers.”
― P Sainath, Everybody loves a good drought

“TB, malaria, diarrhoea, and dysentery affect many in Palamau. But the cure for almost all ills here is the saline drip. In remote areas, quacks mesmerise people with the drip. Even malaria patients are subjected to it. Many villagers believe that paani chadaana (infusion of water) is a mighty cure. So they borrow money to pay the doctor for the miracle.”
― P Sainath, Everybody loves a good drought

“The global aid community is mobilised into fighting drought in a district that gets 1,500 mm of rainfall annually. The reverse spiral begins. Donor governments love emergency relief. It forms a negligible part of their spending, but makes for great advertising. (Emergencies of many sorts do this, not just drought. You can run television footage of the Marines kissing babies in Somalia.) There are more serious issues between rich and poor nations—like unequal trade. Settling those would be of greater help to the latter. But for that, the ‘donors’ would have to part with something for real. No. They prefer emergency relief.”
― P Sainath, Everybody loves a good drought

“As the problems of her children’s education grew more, India spent less and less on them.”
― Palagummi Sainath, Everybody loves a good drought

“Paharia women like Guhy walk a distance equivalent to that between Delhi and Bombay—four to five times a year.”
― Palagummi Sainath, Everybody loves a good drought

“There are probably less than 15,000 Kahars spread across Godda, Banka and Bhagalpur. They scrape out a living in brick kilns, earth works, harvesting—but always in seasonal occupations. No one has ever bothered to make a systematic count of their actual number. Official data relating to them seem to be flawed. ‘They don’t count us because we don’t count,’ says Jagdev Laiya.”
― Palagummi Sainath, Everybody loves a good drought

“Dr Daradhiyar’s study estimates that 46 per cent of a Paharia’s earnings go directly to the mahajan in repayment of debt. Up to another 39 per cent go to the lender indirectly (through the purchase of necessities, etc.).”
― Palagummi Sainath, Everybody loves a good drought

“This is where those extra earnings from human transport become crucial. So farmers who can use bullock-carts refrain from doing so because of the distress it would cause. A senior official in Bhopal calls this the ‘subsistence ethic at work’. An unwritten understanding that the better off should not ruin the little stability the poor have. It springs not so much from altruism as from sensing the possible consequences of putting further pressures on the poor.”
― Palagummi Sainath, Everybody loves a good drought

“The problem with the plague of 1994, really, was that unlike so many other diseases, it refused to occur and remain 'out there' in the rural areas. Nor would it confine itself to urban slums. Plague germs are notorious for their non-observance of class distinctions. Methods are yet to be devised to prevent their entry into the elite areas of South Bombay or South Delhi.”
― Palagummi Sainath, Everybody Loves a Good Drought