Day 28-29 : Why don’t small businesses grow in Konkan?

My mother and a few other friends have come to see me. It is after a month that I am seeing my mother again. She is running towards me, crying, waiting eagerly to take me in her arms. Her little child has been walking through villages, sleeping in temples, camping on the roadsides and she has been watching him through the black screen in her hands.

From Teleshwar Nagar, I walked down through the steepest road that I have walked thus far. Manganale Sir, who joined me yesterday, experienced it within a short while, “it’s not easy what you do,” he said, his hands folded, his legs measuring the distance and his eyes trying to map the surface. The weight on the trolley pushed me forward. One misstep and I would tumble down the hill like Jack and Jill did. The overgrown trees on each side were foreseeing the day when they would be axed. All this while they were growing freely, away from the hands of the machine— the villagers had nothing but an axe and felling even one tree  was extensive work for them. Not anymore though. The modern man had invented cutters that would chop trees in minutes and now the modern villagers had got a hold of these modern man’s techniques. The surmaad had flowered. Drops dripped from its flowers which felt as if it wept while it looked down on us. Bees were relishing the sweet nectar on the flowers.

Nature has given each little creation of her with bountiful supplies. She keeps giving. She never asks questions as to why one of her creations grabs more or why another of her creation gets next to nothing. That, she has left with her creation to decide. She tests our resilience, our morality, our kindness and compassion. She watches from a distance— always smiling with content and sees how her children make the best of what she has given.

As we walked down from the steep hill, we saw the villages bloom with betelnut and coconut trees once  again. The road was dug- no roadsigns, no time line as to when it will be finished. Just a perpetual flow of dust gathering on each house. The layers of dust towering upon the cars, the windows, the roof. When I washed my face, even I had a layer of dust on my face. A reddish hue, thanks to the laterite stone found under this land. Madhav Mahajan, an agri business owner, was waiting for us at his office. Kolthare, a quiet agricultural village, with the most pristine coastline, is about to be thrusted into the casino paradise that the ministers son and other big business people are about to build. Madhav uncle spoke of the issues that are put in place in order to not help the small businesses grow. His past experience with government paper work, which is extremely painful in practice, showed us the dire state of the rural economy and why it doesn’t grow as it should. He had spent months and years to make the government officers and the ever changing ministers, realise the potential that rural small businesses hold. His major observation was that the small businesses— “that the government sees as small business, is actually suitable only for the extremely rich people. Government looks at 50 lac turnover as small business. Everything is measured in money. They don’t care for the better lifestyle in the villages. Even when the wages in the villages are low, the people live a much better life as compared to the metropolitan cities. Why can’t the 5-10 lac bracket be brought under the small businesses umbrella. That’s when the village people will actually get the benefit of government schemes.  You will see many small businesses popping all over then,” his ideas had been well worked on in his head. Ofcourse, in his late 60’s, he knew every nook and corner to create and maintain a business. His small scale agri business employs many people. These small scale models can be scaled all across Konkan.

“Why can’t we use each and every fruit that grows in this region? We have mangoes, cashews, surmaad, coconuts, karvand (berries) amongst many other fruits. Why don’t we get permissions to create wine out of these? This can be as good as the western wines. We would have the best of the best! Instead of pushing hard liquor to the tourists, why not give them healthier options?” his wine-making experience said a lot, but his infrequent laughter, after which his face turned pale, gave away his frustration. It is true that we have a lot of potential and interesting people like Mahajan kaka in our vicinity, but the lack of government support pushes them to edge. How are we supposed to grow local economies when people like him are not allowed to grow organically? The middleman eats everything and the actual business owner gets nothing out of it.

The porch that we were sitting in, was adjacent to a house that had seen atleast 5-6 generations. The wooden pillars, which were holding the house together, were as large as fully grown tree trunk. How did these konkani people build these impressive houses? If we were all poor and useless, how did we create such intricate roofings which didn’t let even a bit of heavy monsoon rain within the house? This house in front of me is over 100 years old, maybe more. Its still intact. Beauty and elegance flowing through its wooden and mud interior, but all this will be changed in no time.

“Konkan is gone. Its finished,” he said after a prolonged pause. “Where is the land left? We have lost 80% of land to the big business and rich buyers from urban areas and Gujarat. Another sad reality is, 80% of houses within each village are shut. Everyone is in Mumbai, living in tiny compartments. Fighting for money and survival in an extremely polluted environment. Each time someone goes to Mumbai, we can bet that another few acres of land is lost.”

He made sense. The situation is dire. The way things are changing— the speed of it seems unstoppable. As technology and machines improve this speed will be exponential. Now, do we call this growth? I don’t know about that. In fact we are regressing. Our mother is watching us dance this intricate dance. Like the waves that come with force and in great numbers during a tsunami, we are waiting for those waves to pass. Because after each tsunami comes a time of quiet, a time of contemplation, a time to rebuild.

When people ask me, why am working on this, why do I walk this walk, my answer is simple— and even if its mythical, for Noah to save the species on earth in the face of the great flood, against all odds he worked on building a ship, gathering animals, making sure that he put in the efforts. When everything calmed down, his efforts made sense. So will mine..

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Thank you for the help provided so far and for being a part of this walk! I now have a team assisting me and if financial support can be provided to keep them going, then please do so. here’s the link

The idea of this walk is to highlight the issues, spread an ecological conscience within the people, listen to them and bring them together to see if we can bring about a change that can move towards a future that aids people rather than pushes them away from their homeland.

If you can help me by contributing for this walk, then please do, I could start a kickstarter or manage crowdfunding through some other website, but none of those options are available to me here in India. So, I will be dependant on your donations. You can contribute through paypal - here’s the link. I will send out a personalised postcard if the donations are above $30 and if it’s above $100 then whatever comes out of this walk - a book, a documentary or anything else - you will be the first ones to receive it.

Thanks for your continual support. I am truly grateful!