This weekend, we moved into the guest house on the farm. It's a one room, kitchen, bath-toilet configuration. It's nice to wake up to coconut trees swaying to monsoon winds.

Now it's much easier to tend to the farm and communicate with construction folks working on the main house. And such a relief not to be riding the moped 6 times a day on bumpy roads. 

Since my last post Accepting Inefficiencies I've been looking at and thinking about the State-of-Unorganized-Labour in India. Phenomena like the breaking down of communities, unraveling of the social fabric etc were vague concepts in the past. Now they are staring at me every day.

Timeliness, frugality, good skill and experience, deep subject knowledge, work ethics and love for labour – all of these factors contribute to the efficiency of a task. Over the last one year, during the course of purchasing many products and hiring many services for our farm work and house construction, we discovered a worrisome fact: Regardless of the price one is willing to pay; patience and leniency one is willing to show; and even the loss one is willing to accept, most people are not interested in any of the factors that contribute to efficiency.

We were lucky to purchase a farmland that has a water source (a bore pump) with the water table at around 80 feet and free, state government sponsored electricity. Our current irrigation system depends on these two.

The act of placing a tree sapling in a pit seems to be simple. But the pre-work and post-work can take up a lot of time if you are planting lots of trees in a short period.

The pre-work involves figuring out:

Initially, the idea of taking care of a big piece of land was overwhelming for us. We had a lot of questions that started with, "How are we ever going to...?". But having the land divided into one acre parcels for irrigation brought some comfort. We only need to turn one valve in a day. And the further sub-division of each acre into 25 feet parcels brought more comfort. The laborers only need to prepare for planting or harvesting in one section in a given day.

When your cup is full, it overflows. When a family’s needs are well met by a farm, generosity springs up naturally. There was a time when sharing a farm’s surplus was the norm. It was not only gifted to the needy, it was also part of the payment for all kinds of services that a farmer used besides regular farm labour: vetinirary, carpentry, post harvest work, personal house work, painting etc.

Laughing, playing and enjoying together are easy, even with strangers. But all relationships develop strains at some point. Hence, it is better to first develop friendship and kinship with the workers, neighbors and strangers and get ready to weather the storms. Friction in a healthy relationship, when dealt with patience, increases the strength of the relationship. Friction in an unprepared relationship, even with uncommon patience, leads to breakups for want of trust and receptivity.
 

The seeking for efficiency in the post industrial age has come to mean getting more and more for less and less. In other words, the purpose and spirit of efficiency have been reduced to serve human greed. But around the world, for centuries, efficiency was sought at different levels to serve different purposes:

Principle #5 - Diversity is the soul of a sustainable eco system