As I Wished

Having left Hassan yesterday for Chikmaglur, the second to last of our stops in India, we detoured from the main road to venture well beyond our itinerary. The place where we’d end up was well worth the sidetrip: on a site now home to an expansive reservoir there was once a valley filled with some 65 villages, flooded over 20 years ago by a dam building project. Among my required reading in graduate school was an article by an activist and daughter of India, Arundhati Roy, called “The Greater Common Good.” Through this controversial piece I came to learn that dam building is popular in India and, while tirelessly promoted for agricultural and economic development purposes, often results in the displacement of traditional communities and some serious environmental concerns.

To be sure, each country across the globe is either learning to balance human and economic needs with environmental and social protections, or they are suffering a lack of that balance. With 23 days in India now behind me, I see that India too engages in finding that balance. The issue of dam building is one area in which they must face down the toughest of decisions. And so, our visit yesterday to Shetty Halli, once a village home to a Catholic church built in the early 1800s, was sobering and poignant for me. With a background in international development and natural resources, this was what I’d come to India for… although in my time here I have realized a lifetime of knowledge and warmth that in my naive shortsightedness I never could have expected beforehand.

The unplanned stop was awesome in every sense. Along the banks of the reservoir we found a calm and peace proffered by a near empty and breathtaking landscape. A barefoot, leathered farmer plowed along the water’s edge with his traditional bullock-drawn plow, attempting to make a crop in the fertile soil in the next four months before the monsoons return. Further up the hillside, the remains of the Catholic church stood proud despite the weathering of the seasonal waters – this time of year it stands on high ground, but for most of the year only the peaks of the towers and belfry can be seen from above the flooded valley. In the early 90′s the church still stood in entirety; today it is a withering skeleton. A majestic sight.

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