The Song of a River: A Missing Voice in the Symphony of Progress

Yeshey Pelzom
USA

“No, not yet…because the employment is drying here,” I shout over the phone to my mother-in-law in Nepal, particularly emphasizing on the word drying. It is 2008 and I am desperately looking for job. This is the best explanation I can give to the woman who has been going around the town bragging that her daughter-in-law has studied beyond grade 20, that too in America. In the 10 minute conversation, which is half lost in repeated “Hello..HEL..LO” due to poor connection and her deteriorating hearing ability, I cannot talk about recession, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the country’s deficit or that my undergraduate degree in English Literature is not career oriented. But I catch her. “Drying…even in America?” she yells before the calling card abruptly exhausts. I place the phone into the cradle; my mind pictures employment drying, dehydrated and brittle like the rice field of my mother-in-law. At least, the message has been delivered. So, it is not my fault. I have tried, but there is a drought. My mother-in-law, now in her early eighties, stands a little taller than 4 feet but if I had to personify a cell of nuclear energy, she would be the right candidate. If everyone in the third world had the mentality of this woman, there would be so much less poverty. She was orphaned at the age of eight, but by nine, she was running a full-fledged business of her own and was also working odd jobs as a babysitter for women who worked in the fields. She ran her shop from her big shoulder bag. She bought tobacco, paan, candies, peanuts, etc from shops and took with her to the fields where the tired workers eagerly bought from her.  As she earned her wages, she also reaped profit from her sales. By the time she married, she was a moneylender and she finally settled down as a shopkeeper. Her business did not end there; she had rice fields and ginger plantations. The fields did not belong to her but she cultivated the lands, which the owner was glad to sublet it and charge a tenant fee. The land had been barren for ages as far as anyone remembered. When the lands, after a few years of almost no production, finally bore rice plants that drooped low with heavy fruit, the villagers could not believe her luck. Only she knew that her luck came from the endless nights that she spent changing the course of water channel to make sure that every patch of the field was not overwatered or lacked water. Only she knew how close she had come to surrender when the fields bore no fruit and instead wasted the labor and fees she invested. One year, when the rains stopped and canals dried in the middle of prime monsoon season, she invited the village cows to feed on her scorching rice plants. Who knew that she was fertilizing her field for the next season? She does not read and write, but her finger-counting accuracy challenges the sophisticated cash registers. By the time her husband passed away, she was managing a grocery store and a restaurant besides her regular money lending and plantations. To her, nature can only deter a person, just deter and not stop. Drought, therefore, is temporary, but she reminds us that if allowed to persist, it will definitely lead to famine. If there are no other alternate sources of water, look for greener pastures. Once, mustering all my courage, I had asked her what inspired her entrepreneurship, and her answer was a simple word: Nature. There were no further explanation, and seeing my puzzled look, she prophetically added: You will understand when the time comes.

Her story may sound like many other clichéd rag-to-riches stories, but it is not. It is a story that has the potential of becoming a reality for not just a few geniuses, but for all ordinary men and women. The striking point in the story is that my mother-in-law expects no outside help. She survives and then excels because of her profit-making mentality. She does not go in search of relatives/well-wishers when she is orphaned. If she had done so, it is very likely that she would have ended up begging in the streets. This is what is going wrong with the poor countries; waiting for the next aid to be sanctioned, we have adapted ourselves to living in expectation. Because the others are richer does not mean that it is their responsibility to shoulder our poverty. Help in a humanitarian form during calamities is exceptional; expecting help to run ordinary daily lives is sheer avarice. It is a mistake on both the sides, the giver and the receiver. An hour of drizzle does not bring an end to a dry summer spell. It may settle the dust, but not dampen the soil for a plantation. Instead, it gives a false hope that more rain is coming. No other water sources will be sought and no preparation for an imminent famine will be made. The drizzle is wasted in the dry dust; no one even appreciates it as a rain. The goodwill is sadly distorted into pernicious manifestation of social acceptance of poverty and social expectation of an outside rescue. I have not read or heard about a single country where poverty has been eliminated because of UN aids or donations from richer countries. Instead, people internalize this dependency and inculcate an opinion that the rich are obligated to help the poor. For example, the Bhutanese refugees in Nepal are assisted by the UNHCR and other generous agencies for almost the last two decades. The once very studious farmers now have forgotten the feel of the plough in their hands. They await the weekly distribution of ration and complain about how little they receive. I know that in the refugee camps, they do not have a choice for independence and self-sufficiency, but my argument is that they do not utilize the time to produce anything else. They can, at the least, spend the time to learn to write their own names. They do not because they find no need to; the knowing of where the next meal is coming from permeates into a sad, but yet a forced acceptance of the life they lead. “What more can a refugee expect from life?” is a common principle amongst these people. Yet these same group of people, within a timeframe of two years when resettled in the US, are back leading a productive life and more than half of them are proud owners of vehicles and other assets. Even the oldest of the elderly has found the zeal to learn English language. They know that UNHCR is not with them anymore, and if they do not learn English, outside help is limited.[1] Learning English language has now become a means, an investment that secures their benefits.

The second point in the story is that my mother-in-law knows that it is not luck that is favoring her. Only she knows that her rice fields are lush because they breed in her blood and sweat. As much as rich the third world countries are in culture, we are culturally poor in rationality. We have allowed social norms and cultural beliefs to dominate our thoughts and actions. Even Gandhi, the staunch believer of karma and dharma, realized how the concept of karma hindered the alleviation of poverty. He was concerned that the poor remained satiated in their poverty because for them, the present was an uncorrectable inscription of the past.[2] Karma prescribes your life. An outside aid therefore is not an opportunity given to promote your condition, but a mere meeting of what was already in store for you. For instance, I lived my entire schooling years in a public school dormitory, in Bhutan, that was mainly funded by UNICEF and WFP. For twelve years, my body literally functioned on wheat from the US, rice from Australia, and fish from Canada, but not once did my teachers or any government officials tell me that we should be self-sufficient one day. Where was dharma? Although always taught that Dharma and Karma is give and take, we were just taking and not giving anything back. Instead, I was always taught to be glad that I had food on my plate although I was not born lucky like a princess.[3] As a little girl, I thought that UNICEF and WFP were like parents; only that they had to provide the whole world, except for princes and princesses, with food. Like our parents sent parcels from home, a truck loaded with food would arrive at our school once or twice in a month. I was never once told that the food was provided because our country was poor. I was just deemed lucky to have done something good in my past life to have a chance to eat Canadian fish in the mountains of Bhutan. I would like to ask the chief of UNICEF what she would want to hear from the beneficiaries – a word of thanks or a promissory word that they would soon stop receiving the aid because they no longer would need it. Unless change is not intellectually materialized in the mindset of a society, monetary assistance will not ease the misery that is gripped in the clutches of conventions and traditions. The assistance itself is absorbed as a ritualistic practice that is destined by karma; I am sure the UNICEF food trucks still crawl up the dusty roads of my school in Bhutan even as I write this.

The third point that makes the story extraordinary is its power behind its simplicity. Upon closer study, there is an anomaly that begs attention of every entity concerned with the issue of global poverty. To my mother-in-law, gender is never a liability; the misery of an orphan life does not shatter her, the bondage of marriage does not stop her and the loneliness of widowhood does not empty her. Instead her entrepreneurship expands, with which she secures her children’s education. Is this typical in the parts of our world? Absolutely not. However, it is being proved, time and again, that women empowerment is the best route to development of a family, and hence the community. It follows the sheer law of physics. Rise up, fall down. To build anything strong, we start bottom up. Any development like economic strengthening or poverty eradication therefore should start from the most vulnerable and the marginalized.  Besides this telling story of my mother-in-law, the success story of Grameen Bank is the empirical proof of what I mean. Grameen Bank became effective because of Professor Yunus’s profound foresight to recognize the necessity to empower women and the poor[4]. Development in the villages of Bangladesh stemmed from one person’s profit increasing from a few cents into a few rupees. On the contrary, we know what the fall of Lehman’s Brothers has done. It threatens to take down the world with it; it has irked the lives of many like my mother-in-law who does not know the existence of such entity. Similarly, major development projects supposedly targeted to reap herculean profits and bring positive changes in the lives across demography have proven to further widen the gap of wealth distribution and pushed the poor beyond their already exigent conditions. Yes, I am also talking about aid given directly to government entities and national level institutions/organizations. For example, we all know dam building projects in Thailand funded by the World Bank in the name of development. With homes of indigenous communities being uprooted and environment being perturbed, a few rich might have tasted the fruit of development[5].  What if the World Bank had supported a Grameen Bank–like project for the indigenous groups before the dam building? They would have been empowered and stopped the dam building or they would have properly migrated and equally benefitted from the project. I can almost hear the laughter of some skeptics. Don’t you see the difference in the profit range? Grameen Bank project and a hydro-electricity dam?

These questions take me back to a very recent epiphanic moment, which made me realize that I have some say in the subject that I once thought I lacked the slightest insight. I have had no formal classes in economics or finances nor do I have any entrepreneurial genes running in me. However, I took everyone including myself by surprise and from then one, I believe that my views should be made heard. That evening, I was as usual, thinking of remaining laconic in the daily kitchen discussions that the students have when we prepare our meals. The topic that day was not the regular types of broken relationships or disagreements with professors, but about the economic stance of our countries (all of us happened to be from the third world countries). One said we were pessimistic in our development ventures; the other claimed that our cultural values forbid us to develop because our upbringing is overemphasized on humility and therefore we lack the ingenuity to economically prosper. Another actually argued that we are in the right path; our ultimate judgment is not based on wealth. He supported his argument with the present recession and according to him, the developed countries were affected the most because the sins committed in the processes of becoming rich were higher. A wave of disbelief swept over me. I did not commit any sin nor did the millions of unemployed. Poverty and unemployment do not necessarily mean that we lack ingenuity. I stopped my cooking and joined the group at the table. Everybody stopped and looked at me; when a usually silent person talks, people listen. I began. If culture holds a barrier to progress, it needs to be changed. Culture is man-made and therefore malleable, adapting to the change of time. Do you really believe that living in poverty is the right path? I do not think the millions living back home will say that. Every one desperately wants to prosper. If it is a sin to want something, why are we studying? Don’t we all want a degree?  Lord Buddha searched for truth; Jesus asked to seek love and Prophet Muhammad taught to strive for virtues; are they sinners? There is an end in every thought, and a profit in every action. Give and take is rooted in the very nature of our existence. For example, look at the majestic mountains and the mighty seas. They give and take from each other. There is selfishness involved in their majesty and might. The mountains retain enough snow to maintain their grandeur and give away only the excess and the oceans do the same with their water. And both equally profit from each other. Similarly, the harmony of duality exists on the principle of give and take – the air we breathe in and out, the day and night, to name just a few. The only problem is when one is excessively thrift or prodigal in the processes; that is when disasters occur.  I do not see profit making as unethical or sacrilegious. We may say that we cannot be the sources like mountains and oceans, but we can be the rivers. Like the rivers, as we move forward, we should sing the song of change and carry the responsibilities of nourishing our lands.  We are the ones who can check and balance the power of mighty.  It is also in our hands to see that some areas are not flooded while some are parched dry. Then I suddenly stopped. Everyone looked at me. Without a word, I left the kitchen. Once inside my room, I cried all the tears that my mother-in-law must have buried in her chest. I was overwhelmed by the truth in my own words. I spoke in the ordinary language of the poor. I remembered my mother-in-law’s words. Her inspiration for her entrepreneurship was Nature.

And today, I not only understand what she meant, but I truly believe that this simple principle will be much better understood, by the greater poor population, than theories developed in some ivy league classrooms or laws that prevail in the wealthiest of nations. My message, like the principle, is simple. Profit making is not a sin, but deep rooted in our existence, which is based on give and take. Even the greatest teachers taught us to live a meaningful life, and that every step should be toward progress. If an eight year old orphan on her own rose up to become a successful entrepreneur of her times, it looks as if poverty eradication is inevitable, especially when so much effort and resources have been spent on it. The problem, however, is in creating a right mindset for progress. And this can be achieved when the poor takes the first step to turning the wheels of economy. The change does not need to be dynamic; a great change often reflects destruction, not progress. I also strongly believe that benefactors, when concurring a development plan, should consult not just strategists and experts, but walk the walk of the poor and speak the language of the poor. It is then that you know if poor means having no shoes or having no roads and if hunger means no food or no food production.  Only then you would know what actually is needed: distribution of shoes or a road connecting them to towns, supply of food or assistance in food production. I think that only when both benefactors and beneficiaries stop becoming passive givers and takers, there will be a sign of active progress.

[This paper was submitted to an international symposium on morality of profit. It was selected amongst the top 50 essays out of nearly 2000 submissions—Writer]

Tags: Yeshey Pelzom