Friday 10 December 2010

Wealth and well-being

Gaviotas sounded like a never-never land when I heard of it six years ago. The State of The World Report 2004, brought out by the Worldwatch Institute, had a box item on ‘the Gaviotas experience’ in a chapter titled ‘Rethinking the good life’.
For beginners, Gaviotas is a tiny village tucked away in Colombia in South America. According to the report, its 200 residents (nearly 50 families) paid nothing for meals, medical care, education or housing. All adults had work, and music and other cultural events were a regular part of life in the village. What’s more, the community had had no police force, jail, or mayor for three decades since its beginning!
Not Utopia, but a real place.
If that seems like yet another example of ideal community living, hang on. Gaviotas is self-sufficient in energy, making use of solar and wind power and biogas. All agricultural activities here are organic. The people here are also engaged in the reforestation of thousands of hectares of the savannah. The villagers extract and sell resin from the Caribbean pine grown here.
Gaviotas is known worldwide for its many inventions too. This includes “a water pump that village kids work as they ride their seesaw, windmills designed for the gentle breezes of the Colombian plains, a pressurised solar water heater, and a pedal-powered cassava grinder”. None of these inventions is patented; there are hundreds of Gaviotas-model water pumps or windmills all over South America.
In 1989, the United Nations’ Regional Project for Overcoming Poverty published a set of three volumes containing details about appropriate technologies for developing societies. Gaviotas accounted for more than 50 of them!
Gaviotas is the brainchild of Paolo Lugari. He was joined by the likes of Dr. Jorge Zapp, who left the “priesthood of science” in which experts deliver knowledge to “the masses” and involved ordinary people in developing their own solutions.
It was never Lugari’s intention that other societies should copy the Gaviotas model. Instead, he wanted to show the world that it was possible to live sustainably by drawing on local resources.
In the beginning, many felt that Lugari’s was a pipe dream. “It’s just a big, wet desert out there,” he was told repeatedly. “The only deserts,” he would reply, “are the deserts of imagination.” (www.friendsofgaviotas.org)
Closer home, a village called Elappully in Kerala has become an oasis of imagination and hope.
Till a few years ago, farmers in the tiny Palakkad village were on the edge of survival. Many had left paddy cultivation, the mainstay of the village’s economy, because of the high cost of farming and low returns. The panchayat pushed dairying as an alternative option and assisted women in the village to set up dairy units.
A detailed study conducted to identify the factors leading to the low production of milk was revealing. One of them was shortage of fodder. The panchayat’s next initiative was to grow fodder on 50 hectares of land. The Elappully Government Higher Secondary School students too pitched in by growing fodder on two acres of land. That was proof enough of the positive attitudinal change in the village. The panchayat also set up a model veterinary hospital.
In two years, the production of milk was doubled. Last year, the production increased fourfold to 10,000 litres and the combined turnover crossed Rs.7.5 crore. “Elappully Farm Fresh Milk” is a new brand now!
Dairying had a beneficial effect on paddy cultivation too. From 1,830 hectares, paddy cultivation has spread to 1,870 hectares now. The panchayat solved the shortage of farmhands by leveraging the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). The crowning glory came when Elappully won the best panchayat award in Kerala in a social reality show (www.greenkeralaexpress.org).
That is another great story. Titled Green Kerala Express, the daily 40-minute show hosted by Thiruvananthapuram Doordarshan was a welcome break from the usual mind-numbing reality shows on TV. All the local self governments in the state — (then) 999 grama panchayats, 57 municipalities and five corporations — were invited to join a competition by producing a 10-minute video on any sustainable developmental model in their respective places; 150 panchayats were shortlisted from among 200 applicants.
The programme was in the format of a travelogue, with anchors taking the viewer on a tour of the village on a bicycle. (What better motif than a bicycle to promote sustainable living?)
The visiting teams came back and produced two short films on the basis of their impressions. One of this was on the cultural and historical profile of the village. The other was on the developmental model itself, but in a modified form. The films were screened before an eminent jury who, based on their interactions with the selected panchayats, chose the winners. Viewers were also encouraged to send SMS votes.
Elappully bagged the Rs.1-crore award from among the 15 finalists while Akathethara from Palakkad and Adatt from Thrissur district came second and third respectively. Ottapalam came first among municipalities to win Rs.50 lakh.
All this leads one to believe that there is a growing awareness among people on what is meant by the ‘good life’. Does the gross domestic product (GDP) of a country reflect the standard of living of its people? What is true wealth? Is it just economic capital? What about other forms of capital — the health and biodiversity of the natural environs, the strength of communities, the well-being and happiness of people?
What is wealth without well-being?