FROM SOMEWHERE ON THE INDO PAK BORDER

I hadn’t seen the international border between India and Pakistan before. Until then, an Indo-Pak border evoked two distinct images in my mind, undoubtedly implanted by Hindi movies. One during peacetime is a lonely isolated place, a no-man’s land, a desert with soldiers wearing broad solo-hats while riding slow camels, on the lookout for fully draped intruders who are supposed to be carrying guns and drugs. The other is a typical war zone with guns and cannons blasting across a barbed wire fence, soldiers running helter-skelter for cover, with radio transmitters passing quick messages and of course the quintessential loudspeakers blaring towards the opposite army. Both images until now had held a rugged charm in my mind; that this was a dangerous place and therefore justifying a desire to flirt with it. Foolhardy as it may sound, the joke turned on me. I saw unfold in front of my eyes another image of a border which involved tractors tilling the land within meters of the barbed wire fence (thankfully the fence from my image was present as the essential commonality representing the border) and a typical village with human and animal habitation, with a school hospital and motor vehicles. Yeah, the soldiers of the BSF were also there in the middle of this normal milieu. It was a classic so near and yet so far moment for me that there was no other option but to became wiser.

It was obvious that people had been living all along the border before the fence was constructed and long before the border was decided. Politics intruded on them, upsetting their regular lives and they have just accepted the new situation as always. Infact below the surface, I could sense that politics had to take a back seat and accommodate the will of the local population living on the border who would not give up on their land even for lofty idea like national security nor for ordinary idea like protecting themselves from gunfire. Though some people have been displaced others have taken their place. It seemed to me that the human spirit had triumphed over some narrow-minded considerations. It has always been intriguing how various lifeforms have been drawing lines on this planet calling something as their personal space. We humans take it a bit further. Not only do we have personal space but beyond that we also have community space and then national space. It highlights and celebrates our differences. We have gamed our psyche to accept that marking lines on the land would secure us our future.

I was in Rajasthan this month and wanted to visit the Naggi War Memorial. It was a first for me in terms of visiting borders. On way to Naggi my driver stopped at Bhullars place to take some local person along so that our visit could be fruitful. Bhullar is a VIP of the place, huge and burly with handle bar mustaches, who happens to be a big time farmer and at the same time a construction contractor as well as a construction material supplier.  There is a huge framed picture of his along with the previous Chief Minister of the state in his home office. It so happened that over the past couple of days some drug movement had been detected and confiscated on the border and therefore the BSF were not too keen with strangers. Bhullar diverted me to another village a little further away but right on the border and called up a resident of the village to be with me. That was a boon. A local resident is known face and worked like a charm in getting conversation rolling with the BSF. I spent an hour at the BSF camp and border fence. I wanted to write in detail about my visit to the border but the words of two wonderful BSF jawans requesting me not to go on social media with specifics ring in my ears. That they were Bengalis also weighs-in its appropriate share. They were extremely courteous and helpful to me but were worried about adverse impact from publicizing. The border at certain places like Wagah have become a tourist destination however respecting the wishes of my BSF jawans I shall try to go into a few facts without divulging anything which they wouldn’t appreciate.   

  

Here are a few nuggets from the fence;

-               - The Zero line or the Radcliffe line is a trench and represented by pillars of 4 - 5 feet each placed every few kilometers. The maintenance of these pillars is done by both the sides. The pillars are numbered, while one side looks after the even pillars the other side looks after the odd ones.

-          - The barbed wire fence is placed within 100 meters from the zero line on the Indian side with farming permitted upto the Zero line. The fence runs through farmers land but they have been compensated. While the farmers on the Indian side are not permitted to grow tall crops in excess of two feet near the fence the farmers on the Pakistan side have no such restrictions. There are no trees on the Indian side of the Zero line too.

-              - A BSF camps placed every 5 kms on the border with its watch towers has an intense patrolling schedule all around the clock. The BSF uses night vision equipments and flood lights all long the fence during the nights, the light from which is used by the Pakistani farmers to work on their farms during the night. Previously services of horses and camels were utilised but now it is motorized. The intensity on the Pakistan side isn’t visible atleast in Rajasthan. Their presence on the border is minimal though I learnt that they have a huge army base about 5 to 10 kms inside their territory.

-             - The BSF camps keep their portion of the fence well maintained and employ locals for grass and shrubs cutting mainly through the NREGA scheme. They inspect the Zero line frequently for telltale footprints of infiltrators and meet up with their Pakistani counterparts regularly over civilized conversation.  

-         - Our conversation threw up an interesting comparison between the borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Bangladesh border has Muslim population on both sides while on the Pakistan side it is so only in Kashmir. That makes the borders in Bangladesh an unfriendly place while on the Pakistan side barring Kashmir the rest of the Border States is friendly and co-operative. On the Bangladesh side the population on both sides of the border are related to each other through family ties while this isn’t so on the Pakistan side barring Kashmir. On the Bangladesh side the border infringement is mainly on account of cattle, textile and human while on the Pakistan side it is drugs, arms and terrorists.

-             -  The BSF watch tower near the fence is a two storied structure which offers unrestricted panoramic view on all sides to detect and monitor every type of movement near the fence on both sides.

      

       

      Returning from the border a few more interesting things struck me.

Some of the villages near the border in Rajasthan have alpha-numeric names like 5 SA, 11 FA, 9 FD, etc. The villagers call themselves by such alpha-numeric names and it comes as a surprise initially. It is as if the original names were coded and the person who coded them couldn’t retrieve their real names.  The reason for such alpha-numeric names was not clear to me and someday I hope to understand this.

Rajasthan is an extremely arid and dry place with little rains and extreme weather. However in Shri Ganganagar agriculture is the major occupation and every inch of land is utilised. The soil here is almost powdery and clayish. Bhullar tells me that the nature of the soil is such that it has a great capacity to retain moisture. Agriculture in Shri Ganganagar being all canal fed, the farmers are able to take four crops in a year. Wheat needs to be watered only twice before harvesting, cotton only once and mustard needs no water at all. I found that to be amazing and it is no wonder that farmers prize this land and are unwilling to let go inspite of strained relationships between the two countries.

Kalibangan is a small town near Shri Ganganagar and is an archeological site belonging to the Indus civilisation about 4000 to 5000 years ago. The ASI Museum at Kalibangan possesses some jaw dropping exhibits collected during excavation. The Saraswati River mentioned in the Vedas used to flow near Kalibangan before it was disrupted. The entire region was also rain fed and supported a huge and rich civilisation which traded with Mesopotamia and Egypt. The river basins of the past fed and supported the population and contributed majorly to the richness of the soil.  

Due to the river system and strong flow, the excellent properties of the soil go a couple of meters below the surface as well. One can see farmers selling a couple of feet of their top soil to brick kilns in the region who are several in numbers and baking bricks in huge quantities. Bricks have been the basic construction material for over thousands of years all across the Indus civilisation as can be seen from Lothal, Dholavira and Mohenjo-Daro.

A NATURALISTS VIEW ON INEQUALITY

For starters I am restricting this discussion on inequality only within the human species without including all other life forms. If I do include every natural being under the sun then this would be an opaque exercise leading to a vague nothingness because there is too much inequality around. Now amongst the human beings too, there are a lot of natural inequalities. Some inequalities are visible like colour, height, weight, hair, bone structure, etc., and some inequalities are invisible like intelligence, understanding, creativity, etc. Normal natural life is made unequal. However when we pick a backdrop subject like socio-economics as our canvas, and plot human beings on it as colours and lines, then we begin to believe that we can force a conceptual idea like inequality of income and wealth distribution into our minds and discussions.

Economic inequality has become a vastly popular topic. Everyone loves it because the argument is always a one-way street. It suits all of us; everyone wants to see inequality reduced on this planet since each one of us feels or experiences depravity in some or other manner. Every economist worth his salt right from Sir William Petty (17^th century) to the latest Thomas Piketty have rendered yeoman service to the idea arguing against inequality and have almost succeeded in brainwashing the world against the rich capitalists. The United Nations promotes it vociferously, the underdeveloped countries crave for it, and even the developed countries have joined the band wagon because they too have poor people living within their borders. We hear increasingly about governmental initiatives like additional taxes on the rich and corporate social responsibility in India, and also private voluntary declarations of philanthropy by the rich across the world. Being rich is viewed negatively and sometimes when the rich alienate themselves then it leads to situations like the French revolution. The biggest offence of the rich is that they are minority in numbers and the biggest paradox of the poor is that they all want to become rich.  We all love to hate the rich but aspire to become rich ourselves. Evidently clownish! Had being rich been the crime then laws could have been framed dissuading everyone from treading on such a heinous path. Incidentally and rather ironically we do realise the aspirational potential of financial soundness, it pumps the urge to industry, it fuels the desire to exert efforts, and it is the mother of creativity and inventions, all of which are the basic ingredients of growth and prosperity. Nevertheless in an absurd yet intellectual way we want the capable to generously sacrifice their benefits for the sake of their incapable brothers. We risk the capable getting demotivated and the poor getting lazy, a lose-lose situation. Anyway, this isn’t the disagreement that I wish to put forth. Let me take the deliberations a little further.

Is inequality desirable; not really. Inequality breeds exploitation where the capable exploits the incapable. Exploitation dehumanizes. Exploitation has its roots in greed and fear and is a vastly negative feeling. Not only do the exploited suffer but even those who are unfortunate to view the exploitation go through agony and emotional pain. This probably is the basic cause behind all international appeals and drive against inequality over the past two centuries. Correctly the target has been exploitation by the rich of the poor; wherein economic concept of socialism was propounded and legal frameworks were laid down to protect the rights of labour. However this has made the problem take another ugly turn. Let me explain.

Is equality desirable; my answer is a flat ‘No’. The focus and drive towards equality in income and sharing of wealth is showing solid and positive results across all countries. As more and more human beings across the planet are being pulled above some inconsistent poverty levels, it is having a grave consequence on the planet. Better health conditions, better education, better earnings are all leading to increase in population and purchasing power of the human species. Since the past hundred years as we have started living a better life condition, we have exponentially exploded in numbers. All of us together are demanding more grains, more meat, more clothing, more electricity, more petrol and diesel, more cement concrete housing. Our governments take pride in being able to provide it to all of us because being unable to do so, they face international condemnation. We have reduced on exploiting the human species but instead have started increasingly exploiting the natural resources. We have as a consequence increased the levels of greenhouse gases and global temperatures, shrunk the polar ice tables, are in the process of sinking coastal settlements, and have made global weather erratic and unpredictable in terms of high summer heat waves, dry forest fires, colder winters and frequent cyclonic storms across the planet. We need to pause and rethink about where this is leading to. Has our insistence on equality which incidentally was neither the intent nor condition of the natural world, made life on this planet unsustainable?

Differences or rather inequalities between the various life forms are bound to continue. Inequalities between human beings also are bound to continue and it should. That is the natural order of life energy. This planet has its own scale for balancing its energies. Any effort at disturbing the balance is dealt with severely and in the interaction of energies a new balance gets established. This planet has seen several ice ages sandwiched intermittently with meltdowns. Several species have walked on this planet only to be eradicated and replaced with another different species. Like every other life forms we humans also are insignificant and inconsequential. This cycle will continue as long as our sun continues to burn whether we like it or not. This does not mean that we open the doors for exploitation of the weak. Since ages, people from India have been trading with the Romans, the Egyptians and the Chinese, and these businessmen were always encouraged through religion and through their kings to donate generously towards the welfare of the common people. They did and should continue to do so.   

Finally it brings us to our eternal enquiry ‘what can we do’. Progress is fundamental to our lives. We all should work to live better. But the right question to ask ourselves is ‘progress towards what’. And my answer is happy sustainable living. Unassuming as it may sound; progress in life depends on (i) efforts (ii) attitude (iii) intelligence and most importantly (iv) divine grace.  Progress is impossible without all the four elements in good measures. However my insistence on divine grace is unequivocal because even if several of us exert equally hard and are equally educated, our results are widely dissimilar. On the other hand someone with little efforts walks away with fantastic results.  Better efforts, attitude and grace would definitely lead to better progress and they feed on each other, like a cyclic effect. The problem started arising when progress got measured in material terms. The ostentatious hoarding and display of material good is downright immoral, self-indulgent and counter-productive. One can argue that it has served to motivate others to emulate the efforts required thereby giving rise to a hard working society. But to my mind the long term result where everyone has the capacity to demand more materialistic stuff is very damaging to the environment. Maybe we humans need to wake up to the reality that we have peaked optimum progress and any further progress would work against our survival. Today progress has necessarily to be nudged towards general good, general happiness and towards a sustainable planet.

We have a couple of hard choices in front of us. One is where we restrain ourselves, and channelize our efforts towards progress in certain areas while stopping or reversing it in other areas thereby leading all our efforts to a sustainable path. Material goals should be shunned and replaced with planet sustaining goals. We have to reward the successes of individual efforts in new and unique ways other than monetary terms. Primarily it is hunger and insecurity or in other words survival which drives humans towards efforts to overcome them. Strong message has to be developed and percolated that our survival as a species into the future would depend on forfeiting certain privileges and confirming ourselves to a deliberate pick and choose of bare planet sustainable acts. Possibly some complacency and sacrifice would be called for from our lofty but impractical goal of equality for all humans.

The other option is to continue the way we are going. Absurdly developing natural conditions will give birth to unique bacterial epidemics which could prey on humans for its own survival and growth. That would expose the inequality amongst us since the weaker amongst us will fall prey first. We may or may not survive into the future but if we do surely we would share this planet with a few new species and with continued inequalities between us. Escaping this planet to colonize a similar planet would also mean the same thing. First of all only a privileged few amongst us would get that chance contrary to the concept of equality. Secondly for arguments sake even if some of us do escape and survive, our cells would mutate given the new environment where they find themselves and they may not mutate in a common similar manner. But then those differences would be pure science fiction to speculate.