Thatta Kedona

Discussion with the Deputy Commissioner of Okara, Dr Irshad Ahmed, at the DC office Okara on the subject of Buffalo Pond project in the village Thatta Ghulamka Dheroka. A special concern here is to keep the area free of illegal construction, as well as a connection from the Buffalo Pond to the local drainage canal to dispose of the waste water, so that the drinking water well can again be put back into operation.

The amounts allocated in the federal budget for development aid say it all, namely that too much is being done and too little at the same time. How can that be, -only one thing can be true? And still, both are correct because for one it is too much and for the other too little.

Now, how does it look for the actively engaged people in development aid? They are mostly not thoroughly acquainted with the problems of the developing countries because they constantly make comparisons between their home and the project country and therefore very quickly develop a certain way of thinking, namely to develop themselves so much in the normally three years of participation in an overseas project, that they can build a small house of their own at home.

Buffalo pond is already functioning in the village. The Goal of the project is connect the (gray water) canals in different bazaars with the pond, so that grey water can run in the pond. On a special mark, the water will be pumped into the regional canal, and fresh water will be brought into the pond from the regional canal.

The city air gives freedom, one moves from the confines of the village life into the large settlements, finds work and so many new possibilities. The right to education opens new perspectives for the offspring. The progress, in general, makes life easier and creates conveniences.

Gladly accepting what is told, we arbitrarily become the nucleus of misunderstandings. We think we know but actually do not know, we only believe. A theory is produced for this reality, error quotas are multiplied and the distance to the actual reality increases even further in the process. The discrepancies give way to total disorientation, which paves the way for perplexity and false solutions.

The desire of the parents to give their children good education as millions of other parents anywhere is understandable. The investment here is for good and successful future. Parents spend good money for the future and this also serves the education industry: the publishers, schools, colleges, universities and other allied services!

Critical souls would be surprised at what is taught at schools and universalities, what is being achieved? Whom does the apparent diversity help ?

Imagine this: If all drivers would get a car for themselves and drive, how quick would they reach their destinations? If everyone would get a television and watch it with an average of two eyes, how many programmes can be watched at the same time? If the literate public worldwide should read even a portion of the advertised material, how extensive is the multitude of the literature, and in fact the quality. If all learners should absorb the information being fed, how big is the possibility of deviations?

These unpleasant questions could provide food for reflection and ultimately to the question: What can one do against this development?

One answer could be the Learning on the Project. This means as a consequence that the widely propagated comfortable way within given time frame is not taken and laborious way of the individual effort is chosen instead. Experience is evaluated independent of any given structures. Gaining knowledge is not an experience but rather squandering of individual resources.

It is clear that in future the number of industrial friendly consumers will be absolutely in majority. Those who develop new ideas while maintaining their traditional culture will be surely in the minority.

Parents and educationists must seriously ponder upon the question whether the support of the consumption friendly path really brings us further. At an imaginable point of time in future where the city population is in majority, how is the city air is supposed to make one feel free? Where would the public educated on the basis of prestige find work if they are trained to be consumers. How will the pleasantries of progress help us, if they only lead to dependency and loss of self-supporting mechanisms?

Medical examinations in the past have shown, for example, that all children under 6 years had digestion problems caused by unhygienic water. The subsequent survey regarding quality of drinking water in households confirmed the medical suspicions. The promotion of clean drinking water is therefore of primary importance. Here is a brief about some of the projects undertaken in the village:

Problems facing projects is less-developed countries

One feature of the general approach in development co-operation that is not discussed much is misunderstandings between urban and rural cultures. The diversity between the cultures is ignored -- differences between the urban and rural culture of a country as well as between different cultures, between western and western-orientated cultures.

As a consequence of misunderstandings, processes are augmented, multiplied, compounded by use of scientific and industrial methods to assess the consequences of technology.

When such projects are installed, it is more a question of concealed job creation measures with short-term economic thinking; any kind of "social efficiency is ignored and or is not recognized.

Medical examinations in the past have shown, for example, that all children under 6 years had digestion problems caused by unhygienic water. The subsequent survey regarding quality of drinking water in households confirmed the medical suspicions. The promotion of clean drinking water is therefore of primary importance. Here is a brief about some of the projects undertaken in the village:

 
Supply of water

The water project was started with the help of a donation from a Pakistani business group. A presentation during a rotary district conference led to the financial support for the drinking water project, which now needs to be extended for practical purposes.


Deep drilling with pump

Preparatory work for transport of kitchen and grey water into the canals was financed in part with the help of the Japanese government. With this example, other bazaars were also connected. However, approximately 200 m canal is still missing on different portions. The drainage water however, cannot be led into the fields but only onto a buffalo pond. A large quantity of water is collected as overflow water of the project, which is led into the buffalo pond through an approximately 150 m long canal. The buffalo pond is thereby filled to some extent and additionally the accumulated water is led into the regional canal with the help of pumps.

Canals through bazaars (200 meters)

The promotion of the drinking water takes place in the tubewell. The village population receives its drinking water through the tubewell attendant. Further clean water is led into a cleaning reservoir, where fruit and vegetables can be cleaned, dried if required and also packed for sale.

This water is led into the fish farm pond through the overflow canal and through a further canal into an irrigation water reservoir for irrigating medicinal and kitchen plants and from their onto the drainage canal for buffalo pond.

Cleaning reservoir

The process of urbanization is now more rapid and massive and affects a greater part of the world than ever before, mainly because it is now rampant in the less developed countries, which still board 3/4th of the world’s people. The migration of hundreds of millions of rural folk to cities in these still chiefly agrarian countries is revolutionizing the life of humanity just as surely as are the other major aspects of economic and social modernization. The unprecedented rates of over-all population growth are helping, along with the rural-urban migration, to swell the populations of individual cities more than ever before. Necessarily, social, economic, and political problems of major significance are being created by the huge rural-urban migration and the rapid rise of megapolises in countries whose main orientation has until recently been agricultural.

The process of urbanization is now more rapid and massive and affects a greater part of the world than ever before, mainly because it is now rampant in the less developed countries, which still board 3/4th of the world’s people. The migration of hundreds of millions of rural folk to cities in these still chiefly agrarian countries is revolutionizing the life of humanity just as surely as are the other major aspects of economic and social modernization. The unprecedented rates of over-all population growth are helping, along with the rural-urban migration, to swell the populations of individual cities more than ever before. Necessarily, social, economic, and political problems of major significance are being created by the huge rural-urban migration and the rapid rise of megapolises in countries whose main orientation has until recently been agricultural.

Prof. Dr. Norbert Pintsch, Omar M. Ali, Aaron Pinsker write still more on the future is in rural development

In the past, we have often discussed various opportunities of investment in rural areas. Mostly discussions at consumer and social oriented project forms showed the individuality of the regional possibilities.

Instead of an "either – or” it emerged more of a "this –as well as that" situation, although the combinations may be counter-productive, if the individual characteristics of the one or the other part are not sufficiently taken into consideration.

The discussion of the waveband of possibilities leads to recognition of an urban culture and a rural culture. In areas of high population and lesser access to immovable property, the residents have no other option but to continuously vary, to invest. This segment of population requires permanent income and is therefore forced to accept long-term employment in order to organize their livelihood.

The individual here can eventually juggle, in order to cover his financial requirements to some extent, multiple jobs are one other possibility, but to escape the urban system is hardly possible. It is unthinkable to create the opposite of an old saying "city air makes free", -this was said at a time, when more people lived in the villages than in the cities.


The general administrations have their own problems to overcome, which was not such a risk in a growth oriented time and appropriate tax income. The requirements and demands developed on the basis of growth economy can hardly be turned back, -privatization appears to be a logical possibility for decreasing the pressure on the households, but it fails to recognize the most general principles of economic administration in a global background. Just to mention a comment in this regard, already discussed in sufficient detail at other platforms: foreign corporations cannot invest out of social considerations of responsibility, -a well known fact, which does not interest the short-term thinking politicians.

Should we start to consider the individual and the costs of general administration, which are needed to organize the city life, we cannot but come to the conclusion that urban life in all respects is expensive and problem growth-oriented.

The city culture is international, just as also its problems. One is forced to stand in competition with each other; this leads not to a solution of the problem but to more and more brutal competition, the results being changeable and more uniform. So the main principle is Hope and –in the absence of other possibilities- the affected masses are forced to live on hope only.

The problem of de-population of rural areas is in-fact caused by the city culture itself; the financially stronger segment can enjoy the solitude of their expensive penthouses, what however leads to other problems already discussed at other place.

People living in rural areas, they feel the taste of backwardness, -backwardness as seen by the city dweller, who cannot judge the real situation in rural background and sees it –if at all- only in romantic context. The rural life functions in a different way as compared to the urban way, a fact which may not be not be appreciated by the politicians, because only universally applicable methods appear to be logical, which are however a basis for further problems, mostly of financial nature.

To keep a clear mind here is not impossible: still there is –let us call it-"traditional culture" prevalent in rural areas, which remains unconsidered in economic terms because their evaluation, similar to the fifties of the 20th century, is quite difficult. We are today aware of the traditional culture only sub-consciously in museum and amusement. The real traditional values are thereby increasingly being lost. Such thinking is often discarded as being obsolete, -a result of stagnation. Whereby it is exactly this thinking which should be the basis for a discussion about "Future in rural development”

Infrastructure measures in the rural areas are cost provoking only then, when these are taken from the position of the city culture. It is important in the rural areas –and with that we touch the main principles of development, to support the traditional handicraft, to make it independent of the central infrastructure and also to utilize fully the possibilities of small scale technologies.

The principles mentioned here are valid for rural areas but also for areas where the industrialization has still not fully established itself, for example. in the so-called developing countries, which after an exacter inspection and discounting the pressures of industrial standards and gross domestic product and due consideration of the value of traditional culture are actually not so poor after all!

In the times of mass production, the transfer of production to so-called cheap-labour-countries etc., an individualization of the products, i.e. production according to individual requirements is becoming more and more evident. The markets are saturated after local demand is satisfied. But the principle of industrial production is actually not production according to individual needs! If one looks at the forms of individualization in the automobile industry, the practice corresponds to designing of a single family house with the means of industrial production.

We have tried to emphasize, that when the above mentioned principles are kept in mind, the future lies in the rural areas. Up till now, the cost of livelihood in rural areas is quite cheap: a simple household and the possibility of self-subsistence in many ways are quite clear. On the other side we see the advocates of city culture and the growth-oriented strategists, the insufficient infra-structure, missing workplaces, bad education facilities and many more co-criteria.

The effects of developments in the 19th century on western societies were serious and led to the well known east-west conflicts. Even if the supposed winners of this conflict continue to follow their line, it should still be pointed out, that times have changed considerably. Unfortunately this fact is not given due consideration by decision-makers and their sub-ordinates. So we should not be surprised if the population continues to think according to old patterns and continues to energetically participate, in order just to survive. Notable is, that the solutions for bringing changes, not for reforms, lie on the floor like pearls, ready to be picked up, which unfortunately should be a difficult task for a well trained and well-fed body not so keen on change.

Where can we find the traditional culture of the past? How can we make ourselves independent of the central infra-structure? What do Small-Technologies mean?

These and many other questions arise and they are not produced in pre-arranged form as mass goods, -this is strenuous, but also a challenge. The answers lie like pearls on the floor: unheeded results of ethnologists, models for appropriate technologies, new forms of employment, etc. It is interesting to note that even from USA, the land of unlimited possibilities, interesting theories have emerged, which are gladly seen as necessary and already delayed reforms to the western system, but are useful to much further extent.

Finally, since we have become accustomed to quote and give references, otherwise we are not believed, so we name Th. Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolution), F.Bergmann (New Work). A. Gebhardt in Aachen looks forward to the period of individual manufacturing, of Recycelns, of three-dimensional printing, including developing and designing on a high-tech-level, -all challenges, new possibilities of rural development.