Food Security, HIV/AIDS, and Peacebuilding

The recent sharp rise in the cost of food grains has reached alarming levels on the global market. Rising food costs in India, while still manageable are worrisome, forcing the government to take various remedial steps such as severely curtailing rice exports and reducing import tariffs on food items. MCC programs in rural development have become increasingly important in this new global environment.

The surge in the cost of food is partly driven by rapid economic development in countries like India and China. A more controversial reason is the spike in the cost of oil and the diversion of food grains to manufacture biofuel in wealthy countries. The scary part is the thin margin on which millions of poor people survive in the global South. We're already witnessing food riots in some countries. It wouldn’t take much to tip the balance toward massive hunger and even starvation.

I recently spent several days in the state of Jharkhand helping to launch the peace-training program of the Mennonite Service Fellowship of India (MCSFI). Our three-day seminar included sessions on HIV/AIDS education. I also visited four nearby villages where MCSFI is digging wells as a source of water for drinking and growing vegetables during the dry season. Mennonite missionaries had begun serving in this area in the 1940s; in various ways we're building on their efforts.

Food security, HIV/AIDS, and peacebuilding are linked in this part of rural India. There’s a long history of government neglect in providing basic infrastructure. Villagers are forced to migrate to find work as laborers during the dry season, greatly increasing their chances of becoming infected with HIV/AIDS. The confluence of such ruptures in traditional village life gives rise to sometimes violent conflict, including an ongoing Maoist insurgency.

Basic healthcare and primary education are still almost nonexistent in many villages. Children walk several kilometers to attend a school where one teacher teaches two hundred students. This is further complicated by widespread corruption in government services that do exist. Contractors abandon half-completed projects when funds are diverted elsewhere. One sign of progress is a work program in which the government pays villagers to help build roads connecting their communities.

A goal of our MCC peace training is to give local churches skills in conflict transformation that can be used in their families, their local churches, and their communities. Those who receive the training will form teams that work at transforming conflicts and training others. Our first session included more than sixty enthusiastic participants working in groups discussing biblical principles of agreeing and disagreeing in love and basic conflict transformation strategies.

Our HIV/AIDS training is largely preventative. The incidence of HIV infection is still low in Jharkhand compared to many other places in India. Yet the lack of basic health facilities in the Latehar district in which we are working makes the threat of infections particularly worrisome. HIV/AIDS training is just one thread in the primary healthcare needs of the area.

As energetic young members of our team led sessions and skits related to HIV/AIDS, several of us went to visit the villages where the wells are being dug. In collaboration with the villagers, it was decided to construct hand-dug wells because the villages still don’t have electricity and it’s easier to manually draw water from open wells than from tube wells. A second benefit is that it gives the villagers employment digging the wells.

Digging wells by hand is brutal work in the searing heat of the dry season. Men work down below with picks and shovels. When they hit rock, thy split it with wedges and sledgehammers. Wooden ramps are constructed on which women take the dirt to the surface in baskets carried on their heads. The wells are dug to a depth of about 45 feet and then lined with stone.

The villagers are glad to do this work for less than two dollars a day because it gives them much needed cash income. Their community spirit is impressive. A young girl is keeping the records in one village because she was the only person with the necessary reading and writing skills. Another village was having a conflict over hiring a pump to lift out the water as they worked. But the project manager used the conflict as an opportunity for the village to meet and resolve the issue.

Digging wells is not enough because the loss of forests and climate change has made the seasonal dry period more severe in Jharkhand. The ground water needs to be recharged. One simple technology is to dig a pond in one corner of a paddy field. The pond fills with water during the monsoon season and then slowly seeps out, both replenishing the ground water and extending the growing season.

Rising food prices give a new urgency to meeting the needs of poor people around the world. Rural and urban realities are linked in India. I recently wrote about the lives of rickshaw pullers in Kolkata. These men come from villages like the ones in Jharkhand where we’re digging wells. And these people’s lives are also linked to the energy and consumption patterns of those of us who live in wealthy countries. It will take all of us working together to create a more just and sustainable world.