Peanut Oil

In The late 1960’ s a government electrification program was bringing the world to India’s hundreds of thousands of villages, and the Green Revolution was introducing hybrid grains, mechanization, and more efficient irrigation, with the aim of increasing yields and guaranteeing the country a secure food supply. There was a philosophical debate about how this restructuring would eventually affect the ecology and distribution of land and wealth, by gradually taking resources from subsistence farmers and transferring them to wealthy land owners. However the population was growing by a million a month and the necessity of modernizing agricultural production was more important than the long term ecological consequences of pesticides, chemical fertilizers and altering the demographics of rural India. As it turned out, even the water table would be affected. In order for these miracle crops to grow they needed an abundance of water. An over extraction of ground water caused by increased irrigation would deplete the aquifer faster than it could be replenished. Despite all our good intentions, we played a part.

As the mechanic for a Peace Corps group in India in the early 1970’s,  I repaired and maintained the compressors, jack hammers, bore steel and other equipment used for deepening the surface wells of Kolar District, an arid, rocky landscape with sparse and undependable rainfall. By increasing the amount of water that was available for the irrigation of their small plots we would help marginal farmers supplement their incomes by cultivating cash crops. The wells had to be dry before they were drilled and blasted, so when it was necessary, we had hydraulic pumps that the farmers could borrow instead of having to bail them by the time consuming traditional method using a bullock to pull up a large clay pot or a leather bucket. The pumps were driven by an uncomplicated one cylinder diesel engine: fill it with fuel, crank it up with a hand crank and it usually chugged to life without problem and could pump more water in an hour than the bullocks could pull up in a day. 

I was on my back replacing the clutch on one of the pick-ups that we used to transport the crews and the compressors. A farmer that had borrowed a pump the day before pedaled his bike up to the workshop, hopped down and leaned it against one of the bamboo poles that held up the thatched sun shade where I was working. He deftly retied his dhoti, wrapped it around his waist, drew it between his legs and tucked it in, all in a matter of seconds. He clasped his calloused hands in greeting, took a step forward, and said in Kannaris” Namaskara appa, pamp muridide" – roughly “the pump will not work.”

We loaded his bike and my tool box onto the bed of my Jeep and took along a jerry-can of fuel for good measure. We bounced and thumped over the track that punished any vehicle that drove faster and was less sturdy than the robust, two wheeled carts that were the traditional mode of transportation. The village was no more a cluster of small huts plastered with local red clay located between the jagged granite outcroppings and patchwork of small fields that were common in the Kolar landscape. The dry heat of the afternoon had thickened by the time I parked under the wide canopy of an ancient Peepal tree, its spreading branches and dusty leaves providing the only shelter from the midday sun. I followed the farmer and the throng of curious villagers that had gathered to witness this diversion from their daily routine. A frail old woman, stooped from arthritis, pulled up a corner of her sari to blow her nose. She cleared her throat, asked in a raspy voice if I was a representative of the British King, George. 

Not so strange when you considered that England had given up India as a colony only few decades earlier when George was sovereign. I didn’t explain to her that King George was long dead and Indira Gandhi the daughter of India’s first post-colonial leader was the Prime minister now. I told her simply that I was there to fix the pump.
I turned the crank, nothing, cranked again, still nothing. I unscrewed the fuel cap. The tank was full. When I stuck in a finger the liquid felt slimy. It didn’t have the right viscosity or smell. I touched my finger to my tongue. It seemed edible. I turned to the turbaned farmer who leaned so close over me that I could almost feel the stubble on his unshaven cheeks and asked “uncle what have you put in the tank? “Oil” he answered. Oil? What kind of oil? “Groundnut oil,” he answered mystified as if there was any other kind. In Kannada oil was a catch-all term for kerosene, petrol or diesel and when I said “fill the tank with diesel oil,” he didn’t realize that there was a difference - oil was oil and should work. I tipped the pump on its side to empty the tank, poured in some fresh diesel, sloshed it around to rinse any residue of the peanut oil, drained it and refilled it with fresh fuel. I removed the injector while my audience followed every move, children crowding each other to get a better look, adults a little farther back. I washed the injector with diesel and cranked the engine to flush the fuel pipe from the oil that was excellent for frying chapattis, but not very suitable as fuel for an engine. I primed the pump with a bucket of water and cranked hard. The heavy flywheel rotated, hesitating for a few seconds before the engine came to life with a puff of silver grey smoke, and after belching a couple of times, foaming water gushed out of the delivery pipe. In a small way our pump was helping to draw the line between the past and the future and everything we did in some way changed or affected an agriculture and a complicated social structure that had evolved through the centuries.

Afterthoughts:

The goal of the Green Revolution was to establish a secure food supply for India and stop the dependency on imported grains, but in order to create good for the many others would pay the price. Huge agro companies would eventually crack genetic codes and patent the seeds and the pesticides needed to protect them, and the idea of plentiful food would be transformed into food for profit. In six years rice and grain production doubled- but the loyalties of the corporations that hijacked the green revolution weren’t as concerned about the people that they were going to feed, as they were about their own profits.

And:

No one considered the serious risks of displacing millions of small farmers and farm laborers. Families that had once lived off the land were driven from traditional village life into the squalor and anonymity of the cities looking for some kind of future. Lacking government financial support, small farmers had no other choice than to borrow from the money lenders or land owners to pay for seed, fertilizer and pesticides. When crops failed as they periodically did, the land that had fed and housed them for generations, and was used as security, would be sold and consolidated into larger farms.