Mark and Augustine Leaving

We had breakfast with Mark and Augustine, and over breakfast we had some really interesting talks about social issues in India, development issues, cultural issues, and so on.

In discussing cultural constructions of privacy, I mentioned my observations about different tasks that would be thought as more private in our own western cultures, that are conducted publicly here. I was thinking of things like washing, cleaning, and sleeping, all of which happen outdoors a lot here. I guess this is a good example of the impact of environment and economics upon culture. The climate here is warmer and people have fewer possessions, so having less indoor space is not such a problem as it might be in other places. The level of development in the villages means that indoor plumbing is rare, so water is often gathered from shared sources. Washing of clothes, dishes, and even bodies then takes place outside because many of the homes have only one room and so they obviously don't pour water around inside. Many people in the villages lack self-consciousness in a really beautiful way, and I've been wondering about the causes. I think there is a combination of factors at work, I have thought of:

• a lesser reliance on media for entertainment (partly because people are so busy) so there is less exposure to those 'ideals' of style and beauty
• a less private existence, so people are familiar with life and its details, rather than obsessing with presenting a curated image
• a more communal culture, so that the interactions and relationships with people are more important than the more superficial elements
• different priorities, because when you are so busy and there is drought and you don't have enough food or medicines, who cares if you have the 'right' kind of thigh gap, or 'correctly' manicured nails or shaped eyebrows etc?
• a stronger attachment to certain traditional elements of culture here is very beautiful too, and the fact that women still wear saris and men in the villages often wear lungis, means that people are not concerned with constantly updating fashions and whether or not those look right. They know what they will wear, when they buy their clothes they pick the colours and patterns they like, and that is all entirely perfect as it is. (I have been to other countries where traditional clothing is worn too - as someone inept at fashion, I feel as though it would be very liberating to have the option of a traditional costume to wear so that you don't have to stress about fashion or style).
• I had thought of more but I didn't make good enough notes - I will update this if I remember!

Noticing different constructions of the private and the social or public realm, and how privacy is culturally constructed, this also led to an interesting discussion of respecting privacy and giving consent for images to be used. We talked about the difficulty of communicating a western perspective of a parent giving consent for their child's photograph to be taken and the image to be used, when people have a different concept of what use of an image means, a different construction of privacy, and an excitement about having their photographs taken. This all affects an ability to give consent as we define it, because you are dealing with concepts that are constructed within a different society and are therefore understood differently, and true consent relies on a firm understanding of what you are consenting to. 

I had been keen to take Mark into Penukonda to show him some of the local cultural and historical sites/sights here, but Augustine was less keen and so we extended our chats further before they left to head back to Bangalore.

Another really interesting topic was about the progression of development agencies. Augustine pointed out that development organisations which don't fail can either wrap up once their objectives have been met - as giving the community sustainable ownership of their development is a key factor - or the organisation can try to grow and adapt in order to survive. If a development organisation wants to survive, then you see that the organisation as an entity becomes the primary focus. No longer is development and improving the community the prime focus, as the utmost importance is that the entity survives. In the case of larger organisations, this can mean that they can become very self-serving, even if they do other good work. Unfortunately, with a changing climate of funding arrangements these days favouring competitive tendering and social enterprise more than grants and donations, development organisations will have to become self-serving enterprises in order to carry out their work. I feel like this insight will be really helpful for me in looking at organisational values in future job hunting.

We had some new visitors arrive today too, Sunil and Manuela, and their daughter Shazia. Sunil used to be on the board of SEDS, and the family have known Rajan and Manil for many years. They seemed a very lovely family, and Sunil has recently arranged the sale of his landscaping and gardening business in order to retire, while Manuela works at a centre for people with intellectual disabilities, which she is very passionate about. I asked if we could visit her centre with her when we come back to Bangalore, and Manuela very kindly agreed, so we swapped contact details during lunch.

After lunch, I went to the staff meeting. I'd had a delay in actually receiving my translated survey, but I had a copy now and so we went through it at the meeting. Manni read through the Telugu version and there was some argument about appropriate phrasing for the Telugu version. With all 16 staff members there, it was a good chance to ensure that the survey did make sense and was appropriate, so although it was very tedious I was really grateful to Manni for making everyone go through it until consensus was reached for each part. I also gave some training on how to conduct the data gathering, and tried to reinforce how important it was that the families were able to answer the questions themselves.

Tanveer editing my survey in the office

Once it was all annotated for any adjustments, I took it back to the office to have the edits made on the softcopy, and then I had to format the whole thing ready to get some printouts. The printouts didn't arrive in time, but I did get to assist with some English tuition - the first time that the timing has worked out since we agreed to do this. 

Alex had already begun by commenting on people's construction of present-tense sentences. I tried not to interfere because Alex has started and I didn't want to take over, but I noticed a phenomenon that I knew I had experience of and clearly Alex didn't. Buoyed up by my encouragement from Mark and Augustine yesterday, I tried to assert my 'expertise' on this particular topic. 

I had learned from my Pashto language course that in many Asian languages, the grammatical construction of present tenses is a little different to English. As an example, I'll use the verb 'to run'. In English, we have one present tense to indicate that something is done on a regular and ongoing basis, e.g. I run regularly every week then I will say "I run". There is also a present continuous tense, to indicate that something is taking place right now. So if I am actually running right now, I can say "I am running". 

In many Asian languages, there are not different conjugations to create this difference, so for people with the English as the second language, using the normal English present tense can be quite tricky to master, and that was occurring here - it had also been the source of some of the argument about correct translation on my survey, because not everyone realised that "I use biogas in my home" is the correct English way to say that biogas is used routinely, and some people had thought that the question referred to past tense use only. Once they realised that my question was the same as what they would phrase as "I am using biogas in my home", then things were clearer for everyone. (It was funny though when some people dismissed the correct English as saying "it must be some Australian English...")

Following the meeting after all the staff left, I waited for the printouts of my survey and then joined in with the tuition again. I tried to be unobtrusive, but it's harder to fade into the background when you are one of only 2 pasty white people in the whole area, so I ended up with several students trying to help me with stapling my surveys together while I tried in vain to get them to focus on their homework... Luckily the surveys were stapled pretty quickly and order was returned!