Lapod Diary: Part 1

Lapod Diary: Part 1

Lapod is a small village in Rajasthan, about 15 kilometers away from Rani. Located in a desert climate, the village does not have any prime water body in or around itself. The village is bounded by a wheat farm, a dry lake and forest on one side and houses on the other. A ring road completes the boundary of the village. It has a community kitchen, some inns a little away, three schools and a village chowk which is the most active place here. The infrastructure is very basic: There is no special transport system except a single bus that stops at the chowk once a day. People otherwise use tractors to move within the village and nearby villages. The nearest railway station is Rani from where everyday necessities are sought out and the nearest city is Jodhpur which is about 3 hours away.

The local language spoken here is Marwari. The village comprises of Hindus and Jains, however shows no signs of a big or prominent Hindu or Jain temple. There are smaller private temples scattered over the village. They never really catch your attention. They are not spectacular.

Consisting of not more than 500 people, Lapod has a typical hierarchical setup of an Indian village. There are distinct communities that do different jobs and command distinct powers. The primary occupation in the village is agriculture. I did not really observe any allied by product craft activities of agriculture in the village. The village has its own set of tailors, masons, blacksmith and carpenters. Most people have cows or buffaloes (sometimes sheep) within their own houses which supply them with the basic stock of milk and related products all round the year. Butter milk is a daily preparation and all guests are greeted heartily with a bowl of salted refreshing buttermilk during the day. The daily supply of vegetables is brought by a local vendor who brings some basic stuff on a hand cart every day. They have electricity but only for some part of the day. Houses are minimal. They do not consume much resource. Many houses do have television and people watch tv serials regularly. Electricity, more than televisions, I feel is a luxury. They exploit electricity by switching on most appliances when they have power. Whether required or not, perhaps it’s only to acknowledge the presence of an electrical appliance in the house. Inspite of this, the village is quite humble.
The ethnographic cross section of this village will reveal a set of narratives which echo the difficulties of the village. One wonders how to locate oneself in its problematic. There are several issues one can list:

1. The problem of water: The most pressing problem of the village is the absence of sweet water. There are wells in the village, really deep ones, which only give out salty water. Often, people have to drink only hard water that is extracted from the ground using tube-wells. Apart from the 3 rainy months, there is no sweet water across the year. Villagers complain how the hard water makes their food tasteless, damages their body and  erodes their utensils. This hard water is said to have excess quantity of a certain unrequired mineral that shall lead the human body stoop over age. The villagers have tried to convince the District collector to get a source of sweet water to the village, but their requests have not been met by far.
About 10–12 kilometers away runs a canal that supplies sweet water to other villages.  There is a possibility that a secondary canal line can be drawn to bring in water to Lapod village that can fill up the village lake and replenish the wells of the village. However, the district magistrate explains that it has been difficult for them to divert water here because of the topography of the land that prevents the natural water flow of water towards the village.

2. The scene of education also seems to be critical. We visited two schools here - one which is till 8th standard and the other which continues from 8th to 10th. The schools do not have sufficient teachers and the available teachers have additional responsibilities by the government, such as making surveys and collecting demographic information of the village. It seems that the government sees teachers as the ‘educated’ people of the village and entrusts them with a lot of work that sometimes leaves them with no time for any additional initiatives for the school. They are burdened by physical tasks which interfere their academic interests...
The schools do not have any libraries or information network. The teachers have knowledge, but not adequate infrastructure. The teachers, in their capacities try, but I wonder if they have original thinking capacities.

We found that the school we went to had an extremely pessimistic principal who thought he had tried enough only to fail himself in bringing up the level of the students. Students, as everywhere, are enthusiastic. We looked hopes in them, as we shared a drawing session along. However, there have been a lot of people from the village who have moved to cities like Mumbai, Mangalore, Hyderabad, etc., and made big money. They have also managed to civilize themselves of city culture and get out of age old binding customs. Some earning heads of the families in the village continue to work in the cities, who frequently visit back Lapod where their families stay.

3. Gender divide is a very sensitive issue of the village. Women are not allowed to come out in the open, they are not allowed to speak freely, behave freely and their education is also stunted. The purdah system is still followed and most women can still be seen in ghoonghats. This dominance is to a level where school girls shy away even from speaking their own names. They are extremely quiet, but when we tried talking to them, we realized that they did want to open up. Their desires were suppressed and their lives were controlled by the society.

Boys were naughty, and very interesting. They participated enthusiastically. A teacher from another school staying in Lapod told us about how he finished his BA, then MA in Sanskrit, whose concern was to make students aware, through us, how they could use their education. There lies a great gap in making students realize what potential careers are available to them after their education.

The village is quintessential for the fact that it has its own village simpleton, an all rounder who can arrange for all things at any time of the day, a contractor, a ‘wise’ sarpanch, a few people who have been exposed to the city, naughty kids and shy women. Even architecturally, there is only one single node – the chowk where all important activities happen. The chowk is bounded by two general stores, the village panchayat space, a supposed library (politically named) and a group of houses.

This was a general view of Lapod and there may be a lot more stories to tell. However, I shall put them up with more relevant drawings and photos, and our intervention in the village in subsequent posts when the documentation of the village by our students will be complete. This write up was produced only as a reflection into my own critique of students' writeups that they produced as a part of their document over the study tour. I hope I have kept the adjectives to a limit and been able to report the village factually. The participants of this tour must respond here.