Adventures in Aipotu: Episode 12, Part 2
"I see what you are saying", Damini said. "By observing a system, we change
how the system behaves."
"Though there are some 'scientific systems' -- such as in the quantum regime
-- that change when a student observes them, most 'mechanical' systems are
not affected by the process of studying them. However societies and people
are", Sophie pointed out. "Further, the human communities are not
particularly given to be treated as machines --- you cannot break them into
simpler pieces, study each piece and then put them all together. There are
too many complex relationships between each of the pieces."
"So I understand that modern scientific methods are not given to studying
societies though they are good for helping us gain knowledge about how
things work", Damini said after a long pause.
"That is correct", Sophie said nodding her head vigorously. "And yet, we
continue to use such methods to make decisions about how society must
progress. For example, it is appropriate that we study how a windmill works,
or how a dam works, or how anything else works by mechanistic approach.
However, if we use mechanistic approach to acquire knowledge about how human
society will interact with these things, then the knowledge we gain from
such a study will be flawed if not incomplete. If we decide to base our
policies our ideas of how society should organize itself with respect to
this thing then we will be making a mistake."
"And you think that the younger folks in the Bishko community are making
such a mistake?", Damini asked.
"Yes",
"So how do we gain knowledge about societies?", Damini queried.
"For one", Sophie replied, "when we claim that 'scientific' knowledge is the
only way of acquiring knowledge, we ensure that other knowledge gained by
traditional means is not valued. Thus, the importance of herbs and local
medicines that has been understood over centuries of experience is
pooh-poohed as superstition."
"So does this mean that there is no superstition?", Damini asked, a little
confused.
"No", Sophie answered patiently. "Everything that folks claim to know on the
basis of traditional knowledge is not valid. However, we can't throw the
baby with the bath water. There is value in the traditional knowledge that
we may disrespect but only at our own expense."
There was a pause. Damini was thinking over what Sophie had been saying,
while Sophie wondered whether she was saying too many difficult things to
this little girl. But it was necessary. She shook her head and continued,
"Further, when these other forms of knowledge are said to be useless, one
also makes the choices and decisions of the communities that value such
knowledge as worthless."
At this point, they had come to a large intersection. On one corner of the
intersection was an open mud-baked platform. There were a number of people
sitting there talking animatedly. One woman who seemed to know Sophie waved
her hands and called them over. Leaving the road, Sophie and Damini walked
over to the gathering. There were three men sitting on chairs around a small
table. From the clothes they wore and their demeanor, it was clear that
these were folks from a big city; not from this two-store rural town. There
were about fifty other men and women who sat on the floor around the table.
The group seemed to be engaged in a heated discussion. As Sophie and Damini
approached, some men and women came over from the discussion and hugged
Sophie affectionately.
"The Block Development officials are here with some new hare-brained plan",
one woman said.
"We don't mind them pocketing money that is meant to come to us through
various programs", another man said. "I just wish they would stop bothering
us with their weird plans."
"What is the new plan?", Sophie asked.
"They keep calling it the FPCP", one man said.
"It's the Forest-Pasture Coexistence Plan", another woman piped in. "It is a
plan to conserve the forest and help optimize our pasture use."
"Which forest do they want to conserve?" another voice asked and the whole
group burst out laughing.
Sophie turned to Damini and said, "Despite the dryness of the region, this
was an area of dry forests. It was a haven for foxes, small deer, rabbits
and a number of small animals and birds. In the last eight years, there has
been extensive cutting of trees for the paper mill. The forest is almost
wiped out --- it has become a region of small bushes and bald hills. Only the
maps show that this is supposed to be a forest."
"The new plan seems rather complex", one man said.
"Oh, they keep using big words to look important", another woman replied.
"All they are saying is that we will not have any more access to the forests
that border our village. But, they say that they understand that it will
cause us hardships. So they have another plan where they will work on
constructing various earthen structures to conserve water and also help us
get big, strong cows that give lots of milk from some place far away."
"Pah", the man snorted. "Like with all their earlier plans, they will forget
about this in two days. Or else this one will fail too."
"No", another man responded, "they already have money allocated to this
one."
Sophie, Damini and the rest of the group moved back towards the gathering
that was still involved in their discussion.
"You don't understand", one of the city dwellers said. "These plans are
based on scientific studies. It shows that by increasing the green cover
around here, we could increase water retention by up to 400%. That would
improve your pastures and your crop yields. A denser forest would also
increase the diversity of the fauna in this area. Cost benefit analysis done
by experts has shown that you will actually benefit from this policy."
"We understand that a thicker forest is useful to us", an older man
answered. "You do not have to tell us about your science to convince us. We
have been living happily with these forests for centuries and they lived
happily with us till your modern scientists came from the cities to cut them
down for your paper mills. While you make rules to prevent us from using the
forests, these mills cut down acres of forests every day. How does that save
your forests?"
Sophie jumped into this discussion too. "In fact, the relationship between
our society and forests is not harmful to the forest. The community here
largely uses fallen wood as a source for fuel. Removal of excess wood from
the forest floor reduces the chance of forest fires. We also take honey from
the forests as well as find medicinal use for certain plants and herbs. None
of these activities destroys our forests. How has your cost benefit analysis
accounted for these relationships between the forests and the human
community?"
"Oh, don't worry about losing economically", another bespectacled man who
seemed like the leader of the group said, waving off Sophie's arguments. "We
are also offering to exchange all your starving cattle for high milk
yielding, healthy cows. Our research shows that they will give you double
the milk that your cows give and thus help you economically."
"Sir", Sophie began sarcastically. "Do you know what our cows eat? They live
off the scrubland eating the little grass that is available. The cows you
bring will give double the amount of milk only if we can feed them high
quality fodder. Such fodder is neither easily available here nor can we
afford that. As a result of your policy, we will have no cows. The cows that
have adapted to this vegetation --- you will take them away. The cows you will
get for us -- the high quality hybrid cows -- they will die. This is the
result of your policies based on modern science. It would have done you good
to have come and spoken with us about our experiences and our knowledge
before you made your policies."
"Bah!", the big man from the city stood, looking very angry. "You village
buffoons know little and cannot appreciate when good is being planned for
you. I don't need to take your insults." With that he stormed out of the
gathering, the other two men following him.
Sophie turned to Damini. "This is what I meant when I said that we have
thrown out all knowledge that centuries of observation and living had given
us. And you can see the implications. Now, this big man from the city is
angry --- he will not listen to anything we said but will go and do exactly as
he likes. We are idiots after all with no understanding of modern science.
But he and his experts have developed their policies based on modern science
but with little knowledge of how we live with the forests or the
relationship between how voraciously our cows eat and how that affects our
pastures or how much water is needed by the crops they say we should grow
and how that affects our water table. Most importantly, the rural community
have been declared idiots and their input is not necessary is deciding how
they live --- even if they are part of a democracy. Weird, is it not?"
"When you said", Damini asked, after some thought, "that there were other
methods of knowledge that mechanistic methods did not include, is this what
you meant?"
"This was part of it", Sophie answered. "Broadly, when we want to understand
societies, how we organize ourselves, and how we make rules for ourselves,
we cannot do it well by mechanistic methods. We can understand them by using
methods that assume that the observer is in fact related to what he or she
is trying to learn. There is actually a whole spectrum of methods that fall
in this category. But one principle that comes out of any methods that
assumes connectedness between the student and the object, between various
individuals and societies is that of non-violence."
At this point, they had come to an open doorway of a mud-baked single story
building. Loud noises and shrieks were coming from inside. As the two
stepped in, the rambunctious shouting made any further conversation
impossible.
