I received an interesting assignment a couple weeks ago: write an explanation of the gift economy. Since the request came from my dear friend Nipun Mehta, to whom I can refuse nothing, I agreed; but I knew from the outset how challenging this seemingly straightforward task would be. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously observed about pornography, some things are easy to recognize and yet quite difficult to define.

The essay, now completed, is included in a new online reference, The Dictionary of Ethical Politics, a joint project of Resurgence and openDemocracy.

I have thought long-and-hard about the gift economy over the past five years, since my friend and colleague John Silliphant first introduced me to the concept. It was John who developed the Seva Café model to nurture and teach about the gift economy and to provide a space to promote and celebrate service within the everyday world. I was fortunate to be on the team that helped John and his angelic enablers, Jayeshbhai and Anarben Patel, launch the project in Ahmedabad. One of my tasks at that time was to write an explanation of the gift economy ideal for Seva Café customers.

I have also been privileged to witness the birth and success of two brilliant gift economy projects by Uma Prajapati’s Upasana Design Studio. In the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Tsunamika dolls, made from scrap cloth by women from devastated fishing villages, quickly gained international recognition as both an important livelihood rehabilitation project and a poignant reminder of the resilience of the human spirit. The subsequent Small Steps project applied gift economy principles to high-fashion environmental activism to serve as a vital reminder of the complex, often-subtle consequences of our patterns of material consumption. Not surprisingly, Upasana Design Studio met with considerable consumer incomprehension when it decided to distribute its Small Steps shopping bags under a price-free model. Once again, I was in the right place at the right time: Uma allowed me to write a short piece (which was later incorporated in the website FAQs) that would introduce people to the pay-it-forward ideal and to understand the ethical and practical consequences of engaging in this gift economy transaction.

And then there is my beloved CharityFocus, which for ten years has been in the forefront of developing creative ways for people to play in the space of service. CF has of-late been working on a number of projects designed to bring attention to the gift economy. These include publication of Works & Conversations magazine and operating Karma Kitchen, CF’s take on the Seva Café concept. Indeed, everything CharityFocus has ever done is, in one way or another, an exercise in gift economy transaction.

So, I agreed to take a shot at producing a short essay. It would be an opportunity to see if I could synthesize anything of value from my considerable exposure to such high-practitioners of the gift economy art.

Difficult as the assignment might be, there was one extremely liberating aspect: The Dictionary of Ethical Politics is a wiki. Those with superior insight will, eventually, correct whatever errors and omissions might find their way into my attempt to explain the gift economy. Accordingly, I decided to approach this “definition” as a sui generis think-piece, devoid of any research or background reading. I wanted to try to compose rules-of-recognition from scratch, without allowing my ideas about the gift economy to be colored by the conceptions of others.

And there was another reason to stay away from prior work. Over the years, I have come across a number of short essays on the gift economy – and have been impressed with none of them. Unsurprisingly, it is a topic that appeals to well-meaning, good-natured, spiritually curious people. Unfortunately, this results in treatments that are often long on fuzzy-headed feel-good and short on rigor. I’m sure there are some very good essays on the gift economy to be found with a simple Google search; but I really had no stomach for a needle-in-haystack exercise that would subject me to the level of penetrating analysis found in the average Hallmark greeting card.

So, here’s my take on the gift economy. To watch as my essay morphs over time, as others improve it, read it online at The Dictionary of Ethical Politics.

******

GIFT ECONOMY

In its simplest form, the gift economy is not hard to comprehend: it is an arrangement for the transfer of goods or services without an agreed method of quid pro quo. Indeed, there may be no expectation or mechanism of exchange whatsoever; hence, the “gift” aspect of the interaction.

But things get complicated quickly. Application of gift economy principles varies widely; and there is, perhaps, considerable disagreement about what constitutes a gift economy transaction. Is every act of generosity, in effect, a gift economy transaction? Does every transfer of goods and services that lacks a predetermined price or definitive method of exchange qualify? The assessment is sometimes complicated and confounding.

Essential Elements of a Gift Economy Transaction

There are three essential features to any gift economy transaction. The first is that there is an act of selflessness on the part of the producer of the goods or services. This does not necessarily mean that they intend to confer the benefit without remuneration, though that is often the case; but there must be some element of altruism that transcends calculations of self-interest as judged within the narrow perspective of the transaction itself.

The second element of a gift economy transaction is that it entails an element of “free play” in the transactional structure – particularly in opposition to the dominant modes of exchange in the prevailing market economy – which fundamentally alters the way in which the giver and the recipient measure value. Thus, while in the market economy prices are usually established by the provider of the goods or services, in the gift economy the roles are often reversed, with the recipient shouldering the responsibility to place a value on the benefit. Most importantly, the gift economy calls into consideration larger social objectives extending beyond the intrinsic value of the goods or services. Market-based exchange tends to focus on the inherent value of the product – measured by the material conditions of production, relative functionality or emotional satisfaction, and relative abundance or scarcity – and therefore tends to externalize both the true social costs and instrumental social benefits associated with consumption. By contrast, the producer in the gift economy is motivated by a systemic faith that giving freely strengthens the basic social fabric, benefiting everyone, even if the transaction is quite limited, specific, and without any overtly social purpose.

The final component is, perhaps, more aspirational than actualized. Ideally, a gift economy transaction is not a single transaction at all; it aims to be a vector of giftings and re-giftings. Whereas market economy transactions tend to be bound within a single, reciprocal exchange, gift economy transactions involve catalyzing a process of selfless giving which induces the recipient of the benefits to, in turn, confer a benefit selflessly on another. This chain-reaction quality of the gift economy is commonly referred to by the phrase, “Pay it forward,” meaning that the moral obligation of the recipient is not to remunerate the giver, but rather to become the giver in an ongoing altruistic process.

Illustrations of Gift Economy Activity

There are a number of transaction models that are said to fall within the gift economy. How well do they fare against the rules of recognition described above? The assessment is sometimes complicated and confounding.

Charitable Donation: unreciprocated philanthropic gifts of money, goods, or service. This mode displays the purest of altruism and a clear conferring of economic (or economically measurable) benefit. Donations of time or resources are clearly gift economy transactions. Ironically, these transactions generally evoke the gift economy ethos in less overt ways than the more contrived, innovative modes.

Collectivism: the common pooling of the society’s resources, redistributed without regard to contribution. Early collectivist hunter-gatherer societies are sometimes considered gift economies, but these forms of sharing are probably best described as embracing socialist ideals, rather than gift economy principles. Some collectivism falls nicely within the gift economy model, however; for example, the North American First Nations Potlach tradition or its modern, culturally agnostic namesake, the potluck dinner party. The differing levels of contribution people make to these collaborations reflect their differing assessment of the value of the event as well as differing decisions about how they will participate within that social network.

Cooperativism: where individuals (rather than the entire social network, as in Collectivism) conspire to create things of social value, made openly available and free-of-charge. Famous examples include the open-source software movement, wikis like Wikipedia (and this site), citizen journalism portals, and collective volunteerism projects like charityfocus.org.

Donation Requested: where goods or services are ostensibly gifted, but come with moral suasion for remuneration. Does this mode more closely resemble Charitable Donation, Pay It Forward, or Pay As You Will? A case-by-case assessment would be required to pass judgment.

Pay As You Will: where the buyer, not the seller, sets the price of exchange. While this mode of establishing value may have an element of “free play” about it, this alone does not bring it within the gift economy. The expectation of exchange nullifies the gifting quality of the transfer and the focus remains on the intrinsic value of the goods or services, not on broader social utility. And not all Pay As You Will systems are transgressive of the market economy. Consider, for example, the common practice of tipping.

Pay It Forward: where the consumer receives a benefit with the tactic understanding that payment to the producer will be applied to the giving of similar benefits to others in the future. There can be legitimate debate about whether this conceit carriers a transaction beyond the Pay As You Will model. In cases where meaningful social contribution is significant factor in the valuation exercise and the activity involves systemic participation rather than transactional participation, this mode is an archetype of the gift economy. Where the communitarian intention of the producer, the instrumental social value in the mind of the recipient, and the incentives or inspiration to carry the gifting forward are weaker, the gift economy bona fides are also weaker and the antithetical element of simple exchange is difficult to overlook.

Portion of Proceeds Donated: where the seller pledges to donate only a part of the proceeds of the sale, usually some or all of the profit margin. This model demonstrates the difficulty of identifying gift economy transactions. Is the gift component of the transaction simply a marketing ploy to increase the volume of sales, presently or in the future, or does it represent genuine philanthropy? Variants on this mode include such things as the difference between socially progressive retooling of production or distribution methods to achieve meaningful environmental sustainability and greenmail, the exploiting of token environmentalism as an advertising gimmick. Whether a transaction under this model qualifies as gift economy depends on the true selfless intent of the producer, which be may difficult for the purchaser to divine.

Proceeds of Sale Donated: where the seller gifts both their capital contribution and profit to a charitable or social cause. This presents a fascinating example because, although it is clearly an exchange-based interaction between buyer and seller, it meets all the criteria of a gift economy transaction.

Lessons of the Gift Economy

The common thread among the various modes of gift economy transactions is that the giver of good or services contributes as much to a systemic appreciation of communitarianism and interdependence as to the individual recipient of the benefit.

The gift economy represents an optimistic perspective, engendering attitudes of compassion and generosity, favoring a outlook of relative abundance over relative scarcity, and based on faith that others will also be motivated to favor the common good over individual advantage, at least from time-to-time and in ways that are socially significant.

The gift economy shifts perspective in another important way, forcing a reappraisal of the manner in which we think about and measure value. This awareness can carry-over into to normal market transactions as well, sparking consideration of the consequential costs and benefits of specific acts of material consumption which are otherwise externalized from the price.

Finally, the gift economy reminds us of the interconnection of our lives to other human lives, to non-human lives, and to the non-living world. It offers a broader perspective on the ripple effects of our other-regarding actions, even if the specific consequences remain mostly invisible to us. It demonstrates, transaction-by-transaction, that each of us has the power to positively influence collective behavior within our communities and throughout the world.

At long-last, I joined the club: I made my first loaf of the sensational no-knead bread, from the Jim Lahey technique popularized by Mark Bittman in the New York Times a couple years ago.

I have always been a little shy about baking. It always seemed like hard science, and I have always seen myself as more of a poet, better suited to the no-measure, dash-of-this-dash-of-that of cooking. In truth, I greatly enjoy science and have been avoiding the oven all these years more from laziness than anything.

Thanks to Lahey and Bittman, however, even laziness is an unworthy excuse. The entire “active” part of the process takes five minutes, if done with absurd deliberation – maybe eight minutes if one adds in the washing-up time. It takes me longer to ride the five kilometers and back to fetch a loaf of exquisite Transylvania Bakery peasant bread than to make one of my own, leaving aside the time the dough is doing its own thing, with no help from me – fermenting, resting, rising, or baking. Way longer.

The no-knead methodology is based on two simple ideas. The first is that, by combining a relatively wet, sloppy dough and a long-ass fermentation opportunity, you get a wonderfully moist, open-structured crumb. The second involves doing the first two-thirds of the high temperature bake within an enclosed dutch oven. Patterned after the ancient French technique of baking within a cloche (clay pot), the dutch oven method traps the steam from the baking bread, providing sufficient humidity within the baking vessel to yield a loaf with a thick, crunchy crust.

There has never been a justification for eating crap bread. But now, there seems little reason to regularly spend $3-5 on decent bread when you can make better-than-decent bread for a tenth of that, with no more effort than it takes to purchase it.

All aboard!

I love train journeys. In India, where I reside half of each year, I make long-distance rail trips whenever I’m not pressed for time, generally snoozing-away most of the miles from a top berth in a second class bogey. I’d never traveled long distance by train in North America, however, until this week. On Thursday night, Yoo-Mi and I boarded Amtrak’s Coast Starlight Express at Oakland’s Jack London Station and headed north to Seattle, from which we’d jump the border to Vancouver on a connecting bus.

As a Canadian resident, I am prohibited from driving a U.S.-plated vehicle across into Canuckistan without formally importing and registering it, and paying a nice chunk of tax. Onerous as all that sounds, it’s mostly a moot point. I haven’t owned a car in seven years and don’t foresee owning one in the near future. Those kind enough to lend me their vehicles for hefty or distant errands are unlikely to want their wheels exported (and expropriated) like this.

So, public transportation it was; and Amtrak seemed a relatively comfortable way to go. Although private compartments with sleepers are available, we traveled “coach”, in reasonably broad seats that reclined almost deeply enough. The drive from San Francisco to Vancouver usually takes us about 16 hours; Amtrak takes nearly twice as long, delivering us not-exactly-door-to-door in 30 hours. The big difference, of course, is that those are hours spent reading, sleeping, or moving about, rather than stuck mercilessly behind the wheel, willing oneself to stay awake through the insistent ache of fatigue.

If there was one downside to Amtrak it was the chattiness of our fellow passengers. Not that they were talking to me – they were just talking. Loudly, incessantly, and about a whole-lot-of-nothing. And done in that peculiar middle-American accent that shreds any background noise, pierces the ears, and cuts to the bone.

All are bored!

Mother’s Day — that heinous annual celebration of last-minute, long-distance teleflorism — is once again upon our sorry selves. It is not the worst Hallmark Holiday of the year. That honor would go to Father’s Day, for which there is not even an accepted, go-to, eleventh hour gift alternative. But it is rotten to the core.

I’m sure there are a few mothers deserving of praise for their efforts, including (I grudgingly admit) the one pictured above. Probably some fathers too, at least hypothetically. Still, I’ve been to too many confessional dinner parties with people claiming to be children of parents to believe that there are so many truly outstanding (or even passably competent) child-rearers as to justify a whole day (and a prime spring weekend slot, to boot!) in their collective honor.

Which puts me in mind of a favorite joke. A guy says to his psychiatrist, “I made a horrible Freudian slip this morning at breakfast.” What was it? “My father asked me to pass the coffee, and I accidentally replied: ‘You fucked-up my whole life you son-of-a-bitch!’”

But bad parents are not really the problem. Having them allows us to participate in the nearly-universal kvetch that is so central to the American cultural myth of the self-made child. To have loving parents who offered generally sound adult supervision and served as half-decent role models is to be excluded from the mainstream of American thought and a substantial amount of intra-generational conversation.

And that’s not even the worst of it. Good parents generally make for bad children. Not awful in every respect, of course; but under-appreciative of their parents in a morally reprehensible way. The better the parents, the more necessarily inadequate the filial piety. This model doesn’t hold in every culture, mind you. In lots of places, kids are obsequiously reverential of even the most abominable parents. But in America, sucking-up to your parents is enough to get you beat-up on the playground or dinner-for-one in front of the TV on prom night. It just isn’t done.

Which brings me to my own mother, by all accounts a superstar of the genre. Her last Mother’s Day gift was probably a card I drew in crayon. This is the woman I taunt with claims that I’m searching-out “my true birth mother, who is very rich and misses me very much.” Whose every illness is met with my differential diagnosis of insanity. Who has to make her own cheese blintz breakfast on Mother’s Day morning. This year she was determined to receive at least token recognition of the fact that she fed, sheltered, and otherwise raised me. She gave me a task: for Mother’s Day, I was to compose a list of all the reasons she had been a great mother.

Naturally, I protested mightily against the injustice of this assignment. Mother’s Day is not like Christmas, where you sit on Santa’s knee and get to say what you want for a present. You smile and take the flowers — or, if you are lucky, half-decent chocolates. Shamelessly, she stuck to her demand, leaving me in a most compromised position, a cross between Oedipus and Elisabeth Barrett Browning. O mother, how do I love thee, let me count the ways. 27, but only if we are rounding-up.

Reluctantly, I pulled-out a pencil and stared at the blank page, willing my list into existence. Hell, it didn’t even have to be all that accurate! If I wrote that she was the model of decorum and taught me beautiful manners, was she really going to remind anyone that it was she who taught me to swear like a longshoreman? (What-the-fuck is it with those longshoremen, anyway?) And I very nearly wrote the thing; until something more meaningful came up, like checking the European football scores. Wouldn’t any good mother want her son to know who won when Real Madrid visited Valencia?

Besides, I still harbor hopes of someday getting a date to the prom.

Puducherry’s wonderful Lieutenant Governor, Govind Singh Gurjar, died yesterday of a heart attack. This is a tragic day. To understand just how awful — in its civic dimension, and not just on a personal level — consider how impossibly rare it is for an Indian politician to be plausibly garlanded with the epithet “wonderful”.

In a system where corruption, narcissism, laziness, ignorance, and incompetence are the sine qua non of political life, Govind Singh Gurjar was an astonishment: a politician whose greatest joy seemed to be doing well for the people in whose trust he served. He worked tirelessly to understand the nuance and complexity of the issues before him and, having decided on a course of action, would set the machinery of his administration in motion without temporizing. In the venal cesspool of Pondicherry government, the LG had but one aim: to help the Union Territory fulfill its obvious, abundant promise. Sadly, he leaves us at a time when that objective looks to be effectively, and perhaps irrevocably, snuffed by the greed and thoughtlessness of political-business-as-usual.

Puducherry is not a state; its four, tiny noncontiguous regions, representing former French holdings in India, are aggregated as a Union Territory, under the direct administrative control of the federal government in Delhi. The LG is Delhi’s top-dog in Puducherry, and never a Puducherry native. Govind Singh Gujar, for example, hailed from Rajasthan. This outsider status is double-edged sword. On the one hand, the LG is not a product of Puducherry’s horrific, inbred political corruption. He neither owes patronage within the local parties, nor is enmeshed with the monied interests whom have long-since bought-and-paid-for our politicians and government bureaucrats. On the other hand, most LGs couldn’t have cared less for Puducherry. Between 2006 and 2008, for example, the office was held by the appallingly apathetic Mukut Mithi of Assam. He spent little time in the Governor’s Palace in Pondicherry and, by all accounts, was utterly disengaged from his official responsibilities. He quickly became frustrated with the relative lack of opportunities for graft — that market having been effectively locked-up by then Chief Minister N. Rangaswami — and ultimately resigned in order to pursue more lucrative political office in his native state. Govind Singh Gujar was, once again, exceptional. He loved Pondicherry town, seeing both its vestigial exquisiteness and the ways in which sleaze, greed, and ineptitude were destroying what remained of its remarkable natural and cultural legacies. He studied Tamil language to feel more a part of the place, engaging a private tutor every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. He funded initiatives to preserve and promote the disappearing architectural vernacular of Pondicherry, re-engaging with UNESCO, whose overtures to make Pondicherry a World Heritage Site had been systematically ignored by local politicians who feared that such recognition would interfere with their ability to push-through ruinous development projects for personal gain. He rewarded the work of NGOs and volunteers who labored to make Puducherry great, often against the grain of the political establishment.

I had the very great privilege of meeting and working with the LG on a number of occasions and never ceased to be impressed by his warmth, humor, intellect, clarity of vision, steadfastness, and personal integrity. It is distressingly fair to predict that Puducherry will not see his like again in the foreseeable future.

My visit to Austin had an inauspicious beginning. Thwarted by a widespread lack of hotel availability – due to the annual South by Southwest Festival of independent film, music, and other media – and a constitutional aversion to pay big-bucks for multi-stellar lodgings, my booking for the night was at a hell-hole near the University of Texas, aptly named the Roadway Inn. I will not catalog the diverse and plentiful dysfunctions of the accommodations. I’ll mention only that my single-pane windows fronted onto Interstate 35.

I had just returned from a three hour trek through the seamier side of Austin, the cheerful anonymity of a downtown area flushed with the mirth of SXSW, and the solitude of a University of Texas campus becalmed by spring break. In my pack was an order of ribs from Sam’s BBQ and a side of potato salad. It was ten o’clock, and I was starving.

As I ascended the steps to my second-floor abode, I passed a small cadre of semi-giddy women who shared the misfortune of calling the Rodeway Inn “home”, however temporarily. We had seen each other in what passes for the hotel lobby when I checked-in in the late afternoon, so we greeted each other in the manner of foxhole buddies, if not actual acquaintances.

As I climbed the steps, one of the women called for my attention, “Hey, can I ask you a question?” They were, she advised, looking for a volunteer. The statement couldn’t fail to catch my attention since I am, by vocation-replacing avocation, a full-time volunteer and active proponent of volunteerism. Their assignment, however, was a significant departure from the humanitarian, development, and environmental projects I usually undertake.

These women were with a group of face and body painters who had converged on Austin to add color to the SXSW festivities. They were having a painting slam in the hotel conference room and were short of human canvases. I politely begged-off, wished them well, went to my grim little room, and tucked into my dinner.

I emerged from my room a while later to fetch a drink from the hotel vending machine, where I once again crossed-paths with one of the artists. She explained that the painting session was in full progress, but reiterated that some of the models they had expected failed to attend. She asked once again if I would consider participating. “What’s entailed?” I asked. She invited me into the conference room which was serving as their studio to see what was going on.

A dozen-or-more artists, most collaborating in teams of two-or-three, were fast at work covering nearly-naked people in paint – or, actually, water-based make-up, as it turns out. One pair of models were being transformed into Batman and Cat Woman, another pair were being prepared as an abstract composition, while still others were slowing morphing into witches, avenging angels, and other superheroic figures. The work was stunning.

The “models” were, in fact, exactly that: aspiring professional models, although this was an unpaid gig. These young men and women provided contours for the artwork in exchange for some rather spectacular photographs of the completed body paintings they could use in their portfolios. Most had worked with these artists on a number of occasions and were completely at their ease. Slightly more than a half of the female breasts in the room seemed real, assuming that those belonging to the artists are not figured into this calculation.

“I’d really like to be able to practice some things,” resumed the woman, “but I have no model. Are you sure you don’t want to do it? It will be fun.”

I’m still not certain exactly what possessed me to accede. Sometimes one just needs to give-in to the craziness of the situation; and that’s what I did.

The woman explained that, for this session, none of the models was naked, as is often the case for serious, high-end projects. This was more of a practice session. Indeed, a quick look around the room disclosed that each was wearing a skimpy thong, most of which were already painted-over and all-but invisible within the developing artwork. Still, nakedness is a central aspect of this medium. Leaving aside the stunning images rendered by the painters, the most compelling tension in the work comes from the play between the obvious nakedness of the model and the utter concealment of that nakedness within the completed painting. In an ironic, if somewhat facile gesture, my artists were, in fact, planning to paint clothes. Denim jeans, to be precise.

I was issued a spandex thong – a first time for everything, I thought – and retreated to my room to change. This probably goes without saying, but it should be illegal (and may well be in many states) for any man approaching fifty to don underwear that is more notable for its absence than its presence. As with any catastrophe in plain view, however, it was impossible not-to-look; and the image that stared back at me in my bathroom mirror was particularly nauseating. True, I am used to seeing myself in underwear that makes me look substantially more Mormon than Chippendale; but this scene was all-the-more horrifying since there wasn’t anything remotely stud-muffinesque about my butt-crack-underweared self. Before my last vestige of pride could get the better of me, I threw on some pants and descended to the studio.

The women who painted me were not only talented, but quite professional and respectful in their approach. In fact, I was the only one who made even the slightest off-color joke. (As one of them began to transform the front of my thong into the same denim-blue as my legs, I asked, “While you are down there, can you make my penis bigger? …No, I meant by drawing, not with a brush massage!”)

From time-to-time, more experienced painters would come by to offer suggestion on technique to my painters. At the start of the process, someone offered a razor from their art-kit so I could be properly shaved before the application of color. I averred that shaving was not necessary. “Of course it is,” said the interloper. “Otherwise you don’t get the same, clean look.” I clarified my position: “These will be furry, winter jeans.”

In all, the process took several long hours; but the results were quite remarkable, as you see above. I am only sorry that I do not have photos of some of the other works, which were far more ambitious and imaginative than the modest learning exercise undertaken, quite skillfully, by my artists. To get a broader sense of the kind of magic taking place in that makeshift studio on Monday night, take a look at some of the cover photos from Illusion magazine.

The experience was as fun as it was wacky. The artists were grateful to have had a canvas upon which to practice; and I managed to avoid a couple hours of highway noise, locked in my cell-like room. Eventually, though, the project was over, my photos had been snapped, and I took my leave.

Upstairs in my room, however, the curse of the Roadway Inn continued. My shower had only a slow drip of hot water, so it took nearly a half hour to rinse and scrub all the paint off.

I arrived in Austin as dusk was beginning to descend and was at loose-ends until a meeting at noon the next day. I had a relatively sedate, if not exactly sedentary, evening planned. I had mapped-out a three hour trek that would take me to a seemingly well-regarded BBQ joint, into the heart of the downtown South by Southwest Festival scene, and back through the University of Texas campus to the crappy hotel where I was staying.

Forty minutes after setting-out, I found myself on Austin’s East 12th Street, as grim and raw as any nighttime streetscape you might care to imagine. The streets were just empty enough to feel abandoned, just populated enough to exude a palpable desperation. There was almost no car traffic, despite the relative breadth of the thoroughfare. I had no intention, of course, of wandering into an area of human tragedy. Google Maps can chart one’s path to bypass such things as toll roads or highways, but it does not counsel the avoidance of poverty and hopelessness. And I was not of a mind to alter course, in any event.

There is an inescapable fascination to finding oneself in a landscape of human suffering, irrespective of intention or compassion. East 12th Street was an otherworldly scene I could not help but absorb in voyeuristic detail. Apparently, the exoticism was quite mutual. Conversations conducted in the topic-less, high-volume haze of booze and dope would cease as I’d approach and resume only after I walked past.

Half a dozen dazed souls, sprawled on the sidewalk in front of a boarded-up shack, still open-for-business selling cheap cigarettes, stared at me in the same hushed astonishment with which an ornithologist might regard a rare and unexpected bird. Becoming collectively self-conscious, they stuttered a “What’s up?” in semi-unison. “I’m good,” I replied. “What’s up with you guys?” My rhetorical question went unanswered as the group resumed their silent examination. “Be careful,” one man advised. “Thanks,” I called back over my shoulder.

Half-a-block later, a police car pulled along side me, rolling slowly to keep my pace. The window came down and the officer in the passenger seat inquired, “What brings you to East 12th?” “I’m looking for Sam’s BBQ. It’s supposed to be quite good,” I answered. “Be careful,” said the cop. “Thanks,” I said as the cruiser pulled away.

I passed a well-witnessed domestic conflict which, while sporting no overt violence, featured the angry epithets “nigger bitch” and “nigger whore” in every shouted sentence. She’s the one who needs to be careful, I thought, wondering where that patrol car might have gone.

Just as Sam’s BBQ came into view, I was approached by a huge, if somewhat drug-addled man who asked if I could give him seventy-five cents. “I need a little gas to get my family home,” he explained. Somehow, in the course of his entreaty, we wound up with our arms over each other’s shoulders, strolling down the street together like long-lost friends. I can’t recall the choreography that got us into that position, but it seemed like the right posture from which to deliver the bad news. “I am not giving you seventy-five cents,” I said. “Not after you break-out that tired line about needing gas money. It shows no respect for either of us.” His arm came off my shoulder and he stopped. He was certainly unhappy, though he seemed more frustrated with himself than with me. “How about you give me seventy-five cents because otherwise I’m gonna bust a cap in your ass?” he offered in a tone that failed to live-up to the menace in the massage. “Sorry,” I answered with a degree of false cheer I hoped would mask my discomfort at that moment. “You missed your chance.” He smiled in spite of himself, and I grinned back at him. “Do you smoke crack?” he asked. I told him I didn’t. He was flabbergasted: “Then what-the-fuck are you doing on East 12th? Everyone here smokes crack!” I solved the riddle for him: “I thought I’d check out Sam’s BBQ. I heard it was good.” He grinned again, his exasperation having passed. “Be careful,” he said, turning to retake his position up the block, the place from which he first intercepted me.

Sam’s BBQ is a squalid little hole-in-the-wall business. Its four nasty tables were brimming with non-customers, who seemed more like extended family than diners. Eating on the premises was not an option, so I took my order of ribs to go. The elderly man behind the counter – either Sam or whoever was playing Sam in that night’s performance – saw me off with a warm smile and good-natured advice as I headed for the door: “Be careful!”

“You are the fourth person to tell me to ‘be careful’ in the space of the last six blocks,” I told him. “Six blocks?” he asked, in an animated voice. “How’d you get here?” “I walked.” He let out a quizzical exclamation memorable mostly for being delivered in the unguarded voice-crack of a teenage boy. “You walked? Man, it is crazy shit out there!” “Not any crazier than many other places I’ve been,” I reassured him, “but I promise to be careful anyway.”

As I walked west on East 12th Street, bound for the affluence and merriment of downtown Austin, I received a friendly nod of hello from the guy who, fifteen minutes earlier, had vaguely threatened to shoot me, and more curious stares from the sparse twos and threes who loitered here-and-there along my route. I passed several semi-conscious women who may have been on professional duty, but looked more as though they’d wandered there by accident.

On an otherwise desolate stretch of one of the last truly decrepit blocks before East 12th Street began to show signs of rejuvenation, I came upon a woman who was clearly in bad shape. She was bent at the waist, clutching the rim of a garbage can in the attitude of a dancer stretching at the barre. “Are you okay, ma’am?” I probed. She looked up, nearly losing her balance in the process, blearily unable to make sense of my presence, much less my question. “I’m fine,” she offered eventually; so I set off. “You be careful, honey,” she called after me in a weak voice.

I crossed under Interstate 35 and into the carnival-like anonymity of a downtown Austin in the throes of its famous South by Southwest Festival. No one there evinced the slightest concern for my safety, or even my existence. It didn’t much matter, however, since neither was in substantial doubt.

As Oscar night draws near, Indian furor over Danny Boyle’s acclaimed film, Slumdog Millionaire, reaches a fevered pitch. India is being shown in a bad light! cry Indians who have never set foot in Dharavi or any other slum.

Indeed, they need not be familiar with the slum environment to mount their charge. Their complaint is fundamentally divorced from the question of the accuracy or fairness of Mr. Boyles’s depictions of the lives of slum-dwellers; it is about whether a foreign filmmaker is entitled to tell any story other than “India Shining”. This is a fable last told by the BJP in the 2004 elections. The Indian public didn’t buy it for a minute and, as a result, the BJP was able to snatch a stunning defeat from the jaws of victory. Congress has been running the government ever since.

Which aspect of India is shining at the moment? Politics are hopelessly corrupt and dysfunctional. The environment and cultural heritage are taking severe beatings. A vast number of Indians do not share in India’s recent economic successes; and those who have become affluent typically engage in patterns of consumption so thoughtless and aesthetically offensive as to rival Americans.

None of this is to say that India is not wonderful in many important ways or that it is not brimming with potential. I don’t need to be convinced. I live there half of each year – by choice, not compulsion.

In any event, the current furor has nothing much to do with the merits of the situation.

The root of the Slumdog protest lies in a deep-rooted post-colonial chauvinism. The national vibe is a virulent, hypocritical jingoism in which no one really believes, but from which no one would dare back down. Indians take criticism about India poorly from each other and not-at-all from foreigners. Many Indians will go well out-of-their-way to parse an insult from the innocuous, so long as outsider criticism can plausibly be gleaned. It is as though there were pleasure to be derived from whipping oneself into outrage, no matter how tenuous or foolish.

I love my India!

I was among those invited last week to the Raj Nivas by the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry, His Excellency Govind Singh Gurjar, to discuss new initiatives for creating environmentally sustainable growth in the Pondicherry region. After the meeting, the LG greeted me warmly and teased, “So, are you an Indian citizen yet?”

“Excellency,” I smiled, “I cannot begin to imagine the bureaucracy involved with attempting to become a citizen. I cannot even manage to get a PAN card issued so that I can pay my income taxes.”

“You don’t need a PAN card!” he lightly chided me. “I will give you my PAN card and you can pay my taxes.”

When the Government of Pondicherry takes decisive action in favor of environmental protection, one thing is for certain: there is more to the story than meets the eye.

Here is the astounding-but-true story of the designation of Ousteri Lake, Pondicherry’s largest water body, as an “Important Bird Sanctuary,” thereby providing a significant legal tool to stop the industrial development which is ravaging its watershed.

The story begins as do many wonderful stories in Pondicherry: with our friend Puru Kotthari. It was midday, and Puru phoned to say that he had just come from a chance meeting with Pondicherry’s Deputy Forest Conservation Officer, during which Puru boldly asked for a chance to discuss the ideas for sustainable regional development, currently being explored by Pondicherry Citizens Action Network (PondyCAN!). “Come after lunch at 1:30 and I’ll see you then,” was the answer. We had roughly an hour, said Puru, to put together some kind of presentation for this government official. “What about something on Ousteri Lake?” offered Puru.

Yoo-Mi had recently been doing substantial research concerning Pondicherry’s imperiled water supply, and had been focusing her attention on Ousteri. Fresh from a trip to the Bittarkanika National Wildlife Sanctuary in Orissa, we had met with several environmental conservation experts to explore the ways by which Ousteri might somehow receive government protection against the rampant encroachment of the nearby industrial zone. The odds were grim. An attempt to designate the lake as a protected zone had failed miserably in 2003. But at least we had a story to tell – and one which we could set to PowerPoint slides in about an hour, with a few hastily gleaned supporting factoids courtesy of Google.

At precisely 1:30 pm, Puru, Yoo-Mi, Ajit Reddy, and I strode into the office of the Deputy Forest Conservation Officer for our meeting, armed with a frantically prepared slide deck entitled, “Ornithology Tourism for Pondicherry”. Two points need to be made here. First, the Deputy Forest Conservation Officer is the highest ranking forestry official in Pondicherry. We have so little forest left here, that we do not merit an administrator of full title and authority. Second, “Ornithology” is a frighteningly bad first word to use in a slide presentation for an audience whose command of English is largely hypothetical.

Still, the Department of Forestry man seemed to like our presentation. His face beamed as he envisioned the construction of a grand ornamental gate at the road leading to Ousteri, proclaiming it a wonder of eco-tourism, and clusters of new five-star hotels for the bird-watchers. As we left the meeting, we were thankful thank the Deputy Forest Conservation Officer was as powerless as he was clueless.

That-was-that for several months. The presentation on bird-watching sat collecting dust (or rust or whatever electronic documents gather as they sit, forgotten, in one’s hard-drive) until early spring, when our local MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly, our representative in the Union Territory legislature) came a-courting. He’s a man with a problem. His seat comes up for election in less than two-years; and he estimates he will have to spend one crore rupees (approximately $200,000) on his campaign to hold onto it. Pay off the voters and make it back in kick-backs and other paid-for legislative favors; that’s how government works in India. But the recent local election had caught his attention, in which Pondy CAN’s Probir Banerjee spearheaded the election of a councilor who publicly refused to raise money for her election, spend money on her campaign, or take “gifts” from supporters. True, this could only have happened in our ward, which embraces the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and is substantially populated by a close-knit community of Sri Aurobindo devotees; but one less ward in which the MLA has to spend campaign money would represent a substantial savings. So this guy is suddenly Probir’s new best friend. Among other things that come up in their discussion is the following throw-away offer from the MLA: the legislature would soon be opening its session, and he would be happy to give any presentations with which we supplied him on the floor of the Assembly.

It was by this strange path that the “Ornithology Tourism in Pondicherry” presentation, along with two others, had their fifteen minutes of fame at the Legislative Assembly of Pondicherry. It was doubtless forgotten by almost all the MLAs even more quickly than it was delivered.

But it was not forgotten by everyone.

Here’s the back-story. Last spring, Pondicherry was in the midst of what passes in these parts for a constitutional crisis. Chief Minister Rangasamy had outraged party opponents and supporters alike by arranging the government so that almost all the spoils of corruption went to him and a few select colleagues. This violates an unwritten rule of Indian politics, whereby the CM takes the lion’s share of graft, but leaves enough substantial crumbs on the plate for the other politicians to feed. By last summer, his own party was petitioning the central government in Delhi to remove him; and, this fall, he was indeed replaced. This was bad news for an MLA named Anandan, who under Rangasamy controlled a number of lucrative ministries. With the fall of Rangasamy came the fall of Anandan.

As a side-project to his ministerial corruption, Anandan had acquired substantial acreage near Ousteri Lake, where he intended to construct a new engineering college. Sadly for Anandan, his colleagues in the Legislative Assembly thought that stopping his Ousteri-side development project might be amusing retribution for his collusion with Rangasamy. By a miracle of memory, someone in the legislature recalled that giving the lake protected status as a bird sanctuary would have the effect of stemming developments like Anandan’s. A resolution was quickly drafted and passed the Legislative Assembly just recently.

There is an important lesson in this story about how to get government support for the protection of fragile ecosystems in India. I’ll be damned, however, if I can figure out what it is.