The Diversity Blog

Praveen Gupta (PG) in a conversation with Akshay Joshi (AJ), CEO www.getambee.com.  Poor air quality is an outcome of what we have unleashed on ourselves in the name of development. The ramifications go far beyond respiratory health. India accounts for 8 out of the 10 worst polluted cities in the world. And the decline is set to continue in the foreseeable future. Akshay Joshi and team have a vision that has implications not just for health insurers but also in facilitating sustainable homes, communities and workplaces.

PG: Let’s have some insights into the origin of AMBEE?

AJ:  My co-founder Madhusudhan Anand, also called Maddy, is a technologist and computer scientist. About 4 years ago, he moved to a new home. His kid began waking up early every morning breathless and choking. Doctors were unable to diagnose him, and Maddy observed this happened only at home. He figured it was air-related, and googled the air quality. The nearest air monitoring station was about 13 km away and showed things were fine. So he hacked together a sensor and analysed the data over a few days. He found that the air quality near his house was over 800 µg/m²., whereas the safe limit in India is under 50. This is the sort of number seen in Delhi in winter.

He drove around with this sensor and built a heat-map to pinpoint the source. It turned out to be a garment factory. To avoid pollution control offices, which work 9-5, the factory turned on its boilers at 4 am. This meant that by 9 am, the smoke from their wood-fired boilers had dissipated, but at 5-6 am it was peaking. Adults woke up with itchy eyes and throats, but infants were heavily affected. This avoidance by changing working hours is something we’ve seen multiple times in different cities.

The doctors immediately signed off on this diagnosis, and other parents borrowed the device as well. This led to Maddy realising this might be a viable business. Over the course of time, once Jaideep and I joined as co-founders, we pivoted from a hardware solution to a data one. We realised that it was the data that empowered Maddy to save his son, and that data is far more sustainable as a business than hardware, especially while starting up in India.

PG: So what exactly is your business about?

AJ: Ambee builds and supplies hyperlocal air quality information and analytics. We aim to tell people what they breathe on an immediate and hyperlocal basis. This means that our granularity for large cities will be down to a city block, or possibly even lower – and this information will be updated every few minutes. This system does not currently exist anywhere in the world.

“Air pollution has been classified as the world’s gravest health and environmental threat by the WHO. It is responsible for a majority of heart disease, cancers, and even diabetes onset.

Air pollution has been classified as the world’s gravest health and environmental threat by the WHO. It is responsible for a majority of heart disease, cancers, and even diabetes onset. All these correlations are built by the WHO, by UNICEF, and by researchers, but for closed control groups. No baseline data set for air quality exists for larger geographies on a granular level, until now.

With Ambee’s data, an individual can make better choices for their life, an insurer can better price risk, and a city can effectively implement clean air policies to better the lives of citizens.

PG: Apart from monetising the data you gather how does it make the world any
better?

AJ: An individual has the power to choose how to live their life on healthier terms – the best time to go for a run, whether today you should bike to work, what time your kid should go to play, or even which school to attend. For example, the NHS spends over GBP 20 bn dealing with COPD, asthma, and other lung diseases caused by air pollution. Our system allows instant detection, better allocation of resources, both of which lower incidences of such diseases in the long run, saving both resources and human lives.

Historically, awareness of pollution has been the first step towards better air quality. This has been seen historically in California and London in the 60s, in New York in the 70s, and most recently in Beijing. All these regions have vastly improved their breathability after data availability has led to public pressure. Delhi is starting to see similar results.

“With our data, an insurer would be able to understand the difference in risk of mortality between different post codes, or even neighbourhoods, based on air quality.

PG: How meaningful would your data analytics be to the insurance industry?

AJ: We believe that a baseline data set for air quality across the world does not currently exist. All information is piecemeal. Insurance depends, amongst other things, on the ability to understand the factors that cause mortality and / or loss (please correct me if I am wrong). With our data, an insurer would be able to understand the difference in risk of mortality between different post codes, or even neighbourhoods, based on air quality. Over a 5-10 year period, a mean reading differing by as little as 10 µg/m². could have a significant increase in risks of lung cancer, heart disease and enlargement, and various other health factors. This is one of the use cases for insurance that we have ideated currently.

PG: In the midst of a serious climate crisis, are you
suggesting that health insurers are blissfully missing out on the most critical
underwriting factor? And that virtually no one knows the
quality of air they ‘consume’?

AJ: Yes, current air quality readings are limited to expensive sensors used by governments. They have the following issues:

1. Priced to governments at INR 1-2 crores. Mumbai has 22 of these sensors based on the MPCB website.
2. Each has a monthly maintenance cost that could run into lakhs. This, and the above, are the reason that cities cannot afford a high spatial density of such sensors. These are reference grade sensors that measure air quality 30 feet above ground level. Most humans breathe between 2 and 6 feet off the ground. Particulate pollution is heavier than air, so what you’re breathing is much worse at ground level than at 30 ft. No real clarity on whether this is being measured properly.
3. 16 sensors for a 500 km² city is not very useful, when every sensor has an acceptable outer radius of accuracy of 150 m².
4. New sensing tech (like we use) has evolved dramatically in the last few years. There is now increasing worldwide consensus on the reliability and accuracy of these, which previously didn’t exist.

“Air quality is a good indicator of health, a good predictor of disease and mortality, and currently a huge environmental threat.

PG: Your long-term vision?

AJ: Ambee aims to measure what everyone breathes. Air is literally the most important thing – 2 minutes without it and you’re history. Air quality is a good indicator of health, a good predictor of disease and mortality, and currently a huge environmental threat. Imagine, in the present day over 1,600 children under the age of 5 die as a result of air pollution, every single day, according to the WHO. It’s amazing that no one has measured it in any meaningful, large-scale way. From our personal experience, we know that this information should be in everyone’s hands.

PG: Many thanks and best wishes, Akshay!

An interview with Dr Lomarsh Roopnaraine

In my many ongoing conversations with Mr. Praveen Gupta who is a former CEO as well as a  freelance writer I understand that he wishes to find that missing link from his mother’s side of the family. He came across one of my references on the Indian experience in Caribbean at the British Library, London – last year. I am moved by the thought that this gentleman has been trying for years to find and connect with his family, and in particular his mother’s uncle, Dr. Ramnaraine Sharma, a medical doctor by profession, who had out-migrated from India. He was assigned to the Caribbean islands to provide medical and other services to indentured labourers. Indeed, a small number of Indians and small groups like Kabir Panthi went to the Caribbean on their own accord but somehow they were connected to the thousands of indentured Indians providing various independent services like religious and medical.

In some ways, the search for “lost ones” have become a norm driven by the facet and force of globalization which makes the idea of “lost” not so remote but a possible “find”. I am also trying to locate a son of an indentured Indian Balgobin Persaud from British Guiana who went to study in England in 1917 but traces of him remain obscure. The case commonality of Mr. Praveen Gupta, from India, and myself Professor Lomarsh Roopnarine from Guyana, to find interesting individuals has inspired me to do this interview. Who knows we might be biologically related.

Lomarsh Roopnarine (LR): What has inspired you to embark on this journey to find your mother’s uncle Dr. Ramnaraine Sharma?

Praveen Gupta (PG): I am interested in finding my mother’s uncle on two levels: one is to learn from history – so you need to discover history, and/ or two, invent or create history. I may need to embark on both options to find more about the missing relative. As I said if I am not able to discover the facts of this history, I shall have to, basis my research, create a fictional account on the life and times of Dr Ramnaraine Sharma. So some 22 years ago my mom’s late eldest sister (‘mausi’ in Hindi) and her late husband (‘mausa’ in Hindi), both doctors in Jaipur, shared the story on how efforts were ongoing from the very early days to trace the whereabouts of Dr Ramnaraine Sharma. All that the family knew was the destination of his travel. There were no links with the Caribbean or West Indies.

Then most miraculously, my aunt’s husband on a visit to New York, in 1950, bumped into Herman Sharma at an Indian Association event. Thankfully thereafter a regular connection with Herman was established. Herman was very young when his father passed away – so there was very little that he could share about his father. The late Herman Sharma and my own late uncle (‘mausa’) who discovered him and could have been secondary sources of insights into my research – are sadly no more around.

LR: Can you share some personal information of your family history?

PG: My mother’s family hails from the city of Jaipur. Two of her uncles were educated as medical doctors from Lahore (now Pakistan).

LR: What can you tell us about Dr. Sharma?

PG: The younger of the two – Dr Ramnaraine Sharma was deputed to British Guiana on behest of the Parmanand Mission to look after the Indian indentured labour. While taking care of them he was very upset with the exploitation meted to the workers, he reportedly organized them to protest against their masters. Not only were they brutally punished for their actions, Dr. Sharma was banished from British Guiana to Trinidad. I understand there were shoot at sight orders were he to return.

Dr. Sharma mysteriously passed away (1920 is what Herman indicated) at a young age.  The source of this sketchy story is late Herman Sharma, the son. Herman’s life story is truly remarkable. Growing up in the British Guiana, he eventually moved to the USA and ended up becoming a space physiologist at NASA.

LR: Can you share with us what might have inspired Dr. Ramnaraine Sharma to go to the Caribbean?

PG: Dr. Sharma is one of those several unsung freedom fighters who fought the colonial masters to free India of its yoke. He moved his theatre of action from the shores of Indian mainland to a distant exotic locale. His selfless work to uplift the living conditions of the maltreated indentured laborers and standing up to fight for their cause by putting his life at peril inspire me as a student of History. I wish to bring back his lost voice to the mainstream.

LR: This is a rather interesting and impressive philosophical thought and take on finding someone. But what about your own personal feelings, any thoughts there on the urge to find your mom’s uncle?

PG: Twenty two years ago my late aunt concluded the narrative by saying to her late husband that after us it will be only him who would really be interested in taking this story forward. That has become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy for me. My own mother who is now nearing ninety years of age has been full of stories (word of mouth) about Dr Ramnaraine Sharma and his elder brother – who was a freedom fighter based in India. Again, I struggle to find any insights into his works either. Perhaps he was the one who influenced the younger brother to defy colonialism. It is too compelling a story to be not unearthed or for that matter re-scripted.

LR: If I go back and I ask: what is the Parmanand Mission?

PG: The indentured labour literally replaced the slave trade and continued to be ill-treated by the colonial masters. In the meantime with the burgeoning freedom movement, at home in India, there was growing rallying for the wellbeing of Indian indentured workers, as well. I believe the Parmanand Mission took it upon itself to ensure that the ‘sugar slaves’ were looked after, too. The Ghadar Movement for instance was unifying overseas Indians wherever they were in large numbers. Dr Ramnaraine Sharma being a doctor volunteered to travel to BG and fend for the Indian diaspora.

LR: What makes the family think that he went to British Guiana as opposed to some other Caribbean islands?

PG:  Herman Sharma was born and brought up there by his mother’s family. So there is clear evidence.

LR: As you know, British Guiana was a British colony comprised of three counties or regions: Demerara. Essequibo and Berbice. You also know that I a descendant of indentured Indians born in the county of Berbice, home to a majority of Indians in now Guyana. Do you know if Dr. Sharma went to the country of Berbice?

PG: Well, according to Herman he was born in Berbice. It should, therefore, be very probable that Berbice is where his father made home or was stationed.

LR: What do you think is the significance of finding the lost uncle?

PG: The family was delighted to reconnect and establish ongoing ties with a branch lost for a generation. Regrettably, it’s been almost 100 years since Dr Ramnaraine Sharma passed away in distant Trinidad – virtually leaving no known trace of his life and times. Broadly this and a bit about his marriage and the two children – is all one knows – thanks to Herman. The rest is like dotted lines – the challenge, therefore, as I said – is for me to either discover or invent. The character is too important – not just because he is my mother’s uncle but more importantly an unsung hero – whose heroism deserves not to be left to fade into the mists of time!

LR: Thank you!

“As many as 1 million different species, out of a total estimated 8 million plant and animal species are facing the threat of extinction, more than at any previous time, because of changes brought about in the natural environments by human activities”: Reports Indian Express – quoting Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). A landmark report say scientists, cites Reuters in what it dubs “humankind’s relentless pursuit of economic growth”.

What could be the most inappropriate and graphic demonstration of such greed than the US Secretary of State’s recent remarks in Finland: “The Arctic is at the forefront of opportunity and abundance – it houses 13% of world’s undiscovered oil. 30% of its undiscovered gas, an abundance of uranium, rare earth minerals, gold, diamonds, and millions of square miles of untapped resources, fisheries galore.”

A long list of our horrendous misdeeds as a specie:

• 40%: amphibian species threatened with extinction
• 33%:  marine life threatened with extinction
• 680: vertebrate species driven to extinction since the 16^th century
• 50%: agricultural expansion that occurred at the expense of forests
• 68%: global forest area today compared with pre-industrial level
• 7%: reduction in intact forests from 2000-13
• 100%: growth of urban areas since 1992
• 105%: increase in human population (3.7 to 7.6 billion) since 1970
• 2500: conflicts over fossil fuels, water, food and land currently occurring worldwide
• +/- 10%: tentative estimate of proportion of insect species threatened with extinction.
• 3.5%: domesticated breed of birds extinct by 2016
• 70%: increase since 1970 in numbers of invasive alien species across 21 countries with detailed records
• 47%: proportion of terrestrial flightless mammals – besides 23% threatened birds – distribution impacted by climate crisis
• 6: species of ungulate likely to be extinct or surviving only in captivity without conservation measures
• 3-10%: projected decrease in ocean net primary production due to climate crisis alone by the end of the century
• 3-25%: projected decrease in fish biomass by end of century in low and high warming scenarios, respectively
• +/- 50%: live coral cover of reefs lost since 1870s
• 100-300: Million people in coastal areas at increased risk due to loss of coastal habitat protection
• 107: highly threatened birds, mammals and reptiles estimated to have benefitted from the eradication of invasive mammals on island
• 40%: proportion of global population lacking access to clean and safe drinking water
• 300-400 mn tons: industrial wastes dumped annually into the world’s waters
• 1 degree C: average global temperature difference in 2017 compared to pre-industrial levels
• > 3 mm: annual average global sea level rise over the past two decades
• 5%: estimated fraction of species at risk of extinction from 2% warming alone, rising to 16% at 4.3% warming
• Plastic pollution had increased 10 times since 1980
• Large dams with a height of 15m or more had reached more than 50,000

Snubbing it at its own peril:

A landmark report it might be but much of the media preferred to give it a skip and justifiably provoking this reaction from Greta Thunberg (www.gretathunberg.com), our custodian for the planet’s future:

Where are the breaking news?

The extra news broadcasts?

The front pages?

Where are the emergency meetings?

The crisis summits?

What could be more important?

We are failing but we have not yet failed.

We can still fix this.

But not if we continue like today.

Not a chance…

I will conclude this with the tweet from Amitav Ghosh (http://amitav ghosh): “Humanity is probably going out in a globe-spanning murder-suicide.” Will there be anything remaining to be insured anymore?!

Asia represents one of the fastest growing economies of the world. With growth comes deteriorating climate in the most natural catastrophe prone geography. According to Swiss Re 104 catastrophic events hit Asia last year – accounting a third of all natural catastrophes worldwide. Yet there seems to be a serious sense of prevailing apathy. I turned to Amitav Ghosh (www.amitavghosh.com), one of the foremost contemporary authors in English language, to seek some answers.  He not only lends climate change the much deserved & desired narrative but also highlights the urgency. The Great Derangement: Climate Change And The Unthinkable, his last book, is dedicated to climate crisis!

With his gracious permission I have drawn from his recent profound observations made elsewhere. These stand out as both philosophical as well as pragmatic. Asia can afford to ignore them only at its own peril!

Does one need to get rid of the bourgeois mentality if we are to tackle the climate change issue?

• The general thrust of bourgeois culture has been towards a kind of triumphalism, a sense that the external world had been overcome and tamed. These attitudes are of course, intimately connected with issues of race, colonialism and conquest – for ‘Nature’ too was seen as a domain to be conquered, dominated and used. The prevalence of such attitudes is an obvious barrier to effective action on climate change.

Why Asia’s centrality fails to be reckoned with and the existing discourse on global warming remains largely Eurocentric.

• The discourse on climate change continues to be deeply Eurocentric. But we Asians bear some of the blame for this because we do not pay enough attention to this subject.

His strong objection to the carbon economy and quoting Gandhi, holding the idea that Asia should cease to embrace their developmentalism oriented approach. An idea that would invite strong criticism in countries like India and China…

• I think we have to question the meaning of ‘rich’. If you can’t breathe the air, drink the water, or sleep peacefully at night for fear of extreme weather events then you are not rich. In fact your quality of life is very poor.

On the belief that climate change has not resulted in an outpouring of passion in India. Instead, people’s political energy has increasingly come to be focused on issues that relate to questions of identity- religion, caste, ethnicity, gender rights, et al.

• I don’t know about the situation in China but in India it is simply a fact that climate change hardly ever figures in political discussions. We have only to open a newspaper, or turn on the TV, to see that dozens of issues receive more attention than, say, the droughts, or the agrarian crisis more generally. Within the Indian political class there is a terrible indifference to climate change.

His conviction that the poor may well be more resilient, is the major reason why global warming is not framed as such a serious issue in India.

• There are many in India who say “oh it’s the poor who are going to suffer.” But in India too it’s quite possible that the people, who will suffer the most, are the middle classes. Look at the extreme downpours (‘rain-bombs’) that have hit Mumbai and Chennai in recent years. They certainly did not spare middle class people. In India the urban poor are often very mobile. They have rural connections, they constantly go back and forth to villages, and they know how to use the trains. They can move at a moment’s notice.
• In a city like Mumbai, the urban poor will be able to leave in the event of a major storm surge, but that’s not the case with the middle classes. Not only will they not be able to leave, they won’t want to leave. For many middle class people their house or flat is their largest asset. They can’t just abandon that and go away. Their whole life is based on a certain kind of stability. That’s what bourgeois life is. But that stability is no longer available anywhere. The basic guarantees that the modern state offers – stability, security, safety – have all gone up in smoke.

Does he think an identity politics approach is necessary if we are to ignite people’s passion towards climate change?

• Whether you look at India or you look at the US, the left or the right, this is the discourse of politics today. It’s actually not about politics at all – if we consider “politics” to be, in the first instance, about issues of survival, collective betterment and so on. When we look at politics, or what politics has come to mean, we see that it is now largely about issues of identity. These issues have completely eclipsed global climate change which concerns our collective survival.

How he differs with those who identify capitalism as the principal fault line on the landscape of climate change. And even if capitalism were to be magically transformed tomorrow, the imperatives of political and military dominance would remain a significant obstacle to progress on mitigatory action.

• Climate change is often framed as an economic problem, caused by consumption, production, distribution and the emissions that these processes entail – ‘capitalism’ in other words. The dominance of this framework may be a consequence of the fact economistic ways of thinking have come to pervade every sphere of contemporary life.
• But in my view these economistic framings of the issue frequently serve to mask other, equally important aspects of it, such as military competition, relationships of domination and subordination between and within countries, and indeed, the dynamics of Empire, broadly conceived. This masking happens at multiple levels and in many different ways. Consider, for example, the idea of capitalism as the principal driver of climate change – a view articulated by Naomi Klein and many others.
• The trouble is that capitalism is not one thing: we know now that East Asian capitalism for instance, was labor intensive, rather than resource-intensive, and it had a much smaller ecological footprint than the version of capitalism that was prevalent in Britain and the United States. Yet, it was the Anglo-American version of capitalism that became dominant around the world – and this cannot be understood without considering the history of imperialism and global conquest.

With the rapid growth of social media, Media Liability has assumed significant importance particularly in context of reputation. Today reputation risk is one of the top concerns for risk managers across the globe. Raheja QBE is a leading insurer of this line of business.

In this interview with Praveen Gupta (PG), Satyajit Sarna (SS) a rising star in the space of Media Law and Defamation shares some interesting insights on where it is all headed to. Himself an established author, Satyajit’s latest book The Profane, a collection of his poems, is receiving rave reviews.

PG: What are the origins of Media Law in India?

SS: The What we call media law practically is an amalgam of a number of fields of law: intellectual property law, constitutional law, and the law of torts, for example. Practically speaking, media law becomes whatever media organisations are interested in or affected by. Regulation of advertising, for example, is also media law.

PG: Is it a case of being warped in time? Does it reasonably address the emerging challenges triggered by the social media?

SS: There are voices that say that the coming of the internet has changed a lot of things. Just to take an example – defamatory content which is shared by hundreds of social media users might effectively become irremediable. How many people do you take to court? How do you counter it? In such a scenario, the traditional remedy of an injunction for example becomes a dead letter. As a phenomenon, “sharing” or replication has dissolved traditional measures of “reach”.

Another issue with social media is the end of “gatekeepers”.
Traditional media had a filter of a professional class of editors and publishers, which would exercise a level of discernment and risk avoidance. But where everyone is creator, editor and publisher, those filters disappear.

Similarly, copyright regimes worldwide are struggling to keep up with the ease of replication of data. Some solutions we come up with will be technological in nature. For example, a better class of metadata may be developed.

PG: Is defamation just about libel and slander? Are there any new risks emerging in this space?

SS: Classically, defamation was characterized into written libels and spoken slander. Over time, more of the cases we are seeing would be categorized as libel for the simple reason that slander does not carry easily, and is harder to prove.

In terms to the content of these torts, I am very interested in the space of privacy and invasion of privacy. The Supreme Court’s celebrated 9 judge bench judgment in the Puttuswamy case has opened up a lot of questions about privacy rights. Historically, there has always been a common law right to privacy, but the expansion of that right is very much a hot topic right now. Legislations going forward will have to take account of it. Another possible class of cases we may see more is business libels. Allegations of corruption against major industrialists have yielded litigations of late.

PG: As a society and businesses, how well do we risk manage our reputations?

SS: As a society, we are still not as litigious as for example, the United States. But we are getting there. Businesses have certainly become very protective of their reputations – also in a broader, brand oriented fashion. The first line of defense for reputational risk for businesses is usually public relations and correcting any misimpressions. Indian companies have gotten a lot more sensitive at brand management.

PG: Is there a growing legal activity and rising costs in the media domain?

SS: I would say that there is definitely a rise in the number of notices and cases flying about which is arising of out of the mushrooming of media outlets and the increasing level of access to media. Whistleblowers for example, as a class, now have the ability to bring public attention to their causes. The recent #MeToo phenomenon showed us the power of everyday complainants to get picked up and broadcasted by more popular accounts and bring to light wrongdoing across industries.

In terms of costs, professional legal representation is expensive but also unavoidable.

Myra, the young lady just over 4 years, wished to know first-hand as to who and why someone wanted to borrow the book dearest to her? So we met. Wide-eyed, her first question was how old am I? And I said a year older than your Dad! I could see the faint flicker of her eyebrows. Perhaps to a child at that age it does not matter how much older are you really – as long as you appear older! That is such pure innocence.

It was my turn next. Tell me Myra, I said, what happens when you read the stories from this book. Do they stay in your head or do they go back into the book? The smile turned into joyful laughter, the grip on the book eased and we were friends! I promised to return it but only after warning her that I may take some time coz am a slow reader. Very graciously and trustingly she gave me her consent.

It all started with a strong sense of curiosity. As to what narrative baby girls ought to grow on to deal with a not so diverse and inclusive world? That led me to Good Night Stories For Rebel Girls. It is important that girls understand the obstacles that lie in front of them. It is just as important that they know these obstacles are not insurmountable. That not only can they find a way to overcome them, but that they can remove those obstacles for those who will come after them, just like these great women did, say the authors Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo.

Why so special?

Good Night Stories For Rebel Girls is the most funded (more than one million dollars) original book in the history of crowdfunding, the astonishing number of backers from more than seventy countries, and the privilege of working with dozens of unbelievably talented female artists from all over the world – say the authors.

Each of the 100 stories is a rare treat. All you need to do is read one page. Young boys and men should not miss this experience either. I for one read about the characters and then search them on the internet (something that I could not when growing up) and watch the contemporary personalities talk or perform on the YouTube. But for this book I would not have found remarkable individuals like Xian Zhang; Sonita Alizadeh; Michaela Deprince; Mae Jemison and many more.

May these brave pioneers inspire you. May their portraits impress upon our daughters the solid belief that beauty manifests itself in all shapes and colours, and at all ages. May each reader know the greatest success is to live a life full of passion, curiosity, and generosity. May we all remember every day that we have the right to be happy and to explore wildly, remind Elena and Francesca.

I for sure would have never got to know about Nancy Wake – the Spy – had she not been Myra’s most read character! All this while the narratives that children read have been skewed and stereotyped. The female voice has been muffled, under-represented and misrepresented. When little girls like Myra read the real stories and hear the authentic voices such as this book portray and generate – they will be truly inspired to blaze their own trail.

Dr. Lomarsh Roopnarine, from Guyana, has been teaching, researching and writing on Indian experience in the Caribbean and its diaspora for the past twenty-five years. Dr. Roopnarine has helped to shape the field of Indian Caribbean historiography by providing fresh models of resistance and adaptation to examine and analyse structurally dominant plantation domains. He has shown how the subaltern Indian peasantry has resisted domination and turned adverse circumstances to its advantage by using its own adaptive and adaxial capacity amid some degree of conformity.

He has argued that the Creole identity (Euro-African) cannot be totally applied to many Caribbean ethnic groups, including Indians, and has developed a multipartite analysis of local, national, trans-Caribbean and global to understand Indian identity. In 2018, Roopnarine’s book, Indian Caribbean: Migration and Identity in the Diaspora won Gordon K. & Sybil Lewis Book Award. In this interview not only does he allude to his book but also shares some exceptional insights into Indian experience from India to the Caribbean.

Praveen Gupta (PG): Can you explain why Indians were taken to the Caribbean?

Lomarsh Roopnarine (LR): Indians began to arrive in the Caribbean soon after the emancipation of African slaves during the latter part of the nineteenth century (in the British Caribbean in 1838; the Danish and French Caribbean in 1863; and the Dutch Caribbean in 1873). The movement of Indians to the Caribbean was one segment of a larger movement to have Indians replace slave labor wherever African slavery was abolished.Indians were shipped to Mauritius, La Reunion, Strait Settlement, Fiji, Natal,South Africa, British Guiana, Trinidad, Suriname, Guadeloupe, Martinique,French Guiana, Jamaica, Belize, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Grenada, St. Kitts, and St. Croix.

PG: So they were brought to replace slave labor but were they, slaves?

LR: In some respects, the treatment they received on the plantations from their overlords were like slaves but they were not slaves. They were brought under a conservative and cyclical five-year contract labor system or indenture initially but by the 1860s they were given a bounty of 50 dollars to re-indenture for another five years and by the 1870s they were given a small parcel of land in exchange for their entitled return passages signed in their contract to settle permanently. An estimated two-thirds of them stayed in the Caribbean. The planters, not the indentured servants, dictated the direction of the contract and so the changes occurred because the planters wanted to prune cost and maintain control over labor.

PG: What methods were employed to have these Indians sign contracts to labor overseas to which they had very limited knowledge?

LR: This is where we have a huge gap in the literature or differences of opinion on Indian indentured emigration to the Caribbean.We do not know exactly what percentage came freely or what percentage were duped, kidnapped or were falsely led to signing contracts because the recruiters in India provided a fanciful image of the Caribbean. My position is that Indians chose to work in the Caribbean mainly because of socioeconomic reasons brought about by their own internal oppressive social system, natural disasters, civil wars, and the impact of British colonialism. These contract workers were mainly rural peasants who were not totally aware of the terms of their contracts or the severity of plantation work that awaited them in the Caribbean. Some were duped and kidnapped into the indenture, while a majority left their homeland willingly.

PG: What parts of India did they come from?

LR: Majority of them were recruited from Bihar and Bengal, the Northwest Provinces (Uttar Pradesh), Oudh, Fyzabad, Gonda and Basti in the United Province. A minority of them were recruited in Punjab and South India.

PG: They must have been a diverse group of emigrants with a goal of becoming at least marginal economic beneficiaries of the indenture system?

LR: Exactly, they were as diverse as India itself in gender, social status, religion, language, and age. The proportion of women to men varied from less than one half to a third or even less. The common ratio was 25 women to 100 men. On the whole, the caste composition of the emigrants recruited reflected somewhat the caste composition of India, which meant that more low and middle-caste Indians were recruited to labor in the Caribbean.

The religious composition of the emigrants also mirrored the religious breakdown of India,with 84 percent of migrants being Hindu and 16 percent being Muslim or other religions. They spoke Bengali, Punjabi, Hindu, Urdu, Oriya, Nepali, Gujarati, Telugu, Tamil, Oraons, Santals, Vanga, Radha, Varendra, Rajbangshi, Magahi,Maithili, Shadri, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Eastern and Western Hindi, Bangaru, Ajmeri,and Tondai Nadu. Over time, however, Bhojpuri in Trinidad, Sarnami in Suriname,and various forms of Caribbean Creole became the main languages of communication among Indians. Young men between the age of 18 and 30 were the majority.

PG: What was the size of the Indian population that went to the Caribbean?

LR: Roughly speaking, 500,000 arrived, 175,000 returned, 350,000 remained in the Caribbean. Another 10,000 – 15,000 went back to India and returned to the Caribbean for the second time. Some came to the Caribbean without an indentured contract for the second time. Interestingly, an estimated 50,000 were rejected by immigration authorities in India to come to the Caribbean because they were considered unfit for labor. Those who remained in the Caribbean, over time, eventually formed the majority population in Guyana, Trinidad, and Suriname through less out-migration, more births and fewer deaths (see my article Indian Arrival Day, May 5: May I ask for a moment of silence in Guyana Times).

PG: Can you please throw some light on the sea voyage from India to the Caribbean and from the Caribbean to India?

LR: Briefly, the sea voyage from India to the Caribbean and back was about eleven thousand miles. Nineteenth-century wooden sailing ships would make this journey in about four to five months or just over one hundred days. After the introduction of iron steamships in the 1870s, the same journey was completed in about three months. Most ships left India during August and March when the weather was more favorable. Ships from the Indian Ports of Calcutta and Madras generally traveled through the Bay of Bengal and around the Cape of Good Hope and stopped at St. Helena to pick up fresh water and food, if needed, before continuing to the Caribbean islands. On the way back from the Caribbean, the ships left in the plantation off-season. Deaths, births, abuse, diseases, trauma were common events on arriving and returning voyages but more so on the arriving.

The emigrants’ Caribbean experience made them more robust to cope with the challenges of the sea voyage. Arriving emigrants normally bowed to authority figures but returning emigrants often times said: “how do you do, Sir.” The ‘Kala Pani’ was a floating prison but emigrants formed makeshift unions of brotherhood and sisterhood to console, cohere, and coexist in times of hardship (see my article Dynamics on board the Indian floating prison: the sea in Guyana Times).

PG: The plantation experience must have been tough since harvesting sugar cane is conceivably one of the hardest agricultural jobs?

LR: The emigrants were mainly rural peasants, urban dwellers or jobless but a majority had never harvested sugar cane and so many were maladjusted to plantation labor. Many died young while others deserted or became victims of social ills like rum drinking. But those who stayed on with their contracts worked hard and eventually were able to take home with them in the Caribbean and India some savings or branched out to independent communities in the Caribbean when their contracts expired. The toughest part was the restrictive ordinances in their contracts that controlled their very existence. They were trapped in a plantation prison without walls. But remarkably they survived indenture through sacrifice and hard work that by the 1930s they were comparably better off in the Caribbean than their village base in India.

They acquired some land, retained some Indian cultures and customs, and were not subjected to the caste system as known in India. The social structure of caste was transformed into a class system. They experienced no major famine, disaster or starvation as known in India; the reasons that drove them to indenture in the first place. I would say they were building a new society in a new environment using their homeland ways and incorporating new ones in the Caribbean.

Interestingly, a majority of Indians do not understand the meaning of the Indian songs since they do not speak Hindi but they will sing along and dance to the rhythm; something that will supposedly surprise someone from India.

PG: How well integrated is the diaspora of the ‘indentured’ Indian population into the ‘West Indies’?

LR: The Indians who went to the islands – Grenada, St. Lucia and so on – in small numbers, a few thousand, were quickly assimilated into the Caribbean creole culture through mainly Christian missionary work to a point where these Indians have little connection with the Indian culture in the Caribbean or India. In places where Indians have formed the majority population in Guyana, Trinidad, and Suriname, they have not only been well-integrated in terms of participating and competing for positions and places in politics, law, medicine, business, and civil service occupations but they have retained a remarkable aspect of “Indianness” like in religion, festivals and the likeness for Bollywood films, Indian songs and cricket.  Interestingly, a majority of Indians do not understand the meaning of the Indian songs since they do not speak Hindi but they will sing along and dance to the rhythm; something that will supposedly surprise someone from India.

PG: What particular cultural practices, language or religious beliefs have they retained?

LR: Holi, Diwali, Hindu wedding customs like matching potential couples but the latter is not as widespread as it used to be some thirty to forty years ago. Indians still speak Sarnami in Suriname and Bhojpuri in Guyana and Trinidad, which are really a broken form of plantation sort of Hindi. Of course, Indians practice Hinduism without the caste system in the Caribbean. Islam is also practiced as they are huge elegantly-looking Mosques in Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad. Friction between Hindus and Muslims is minimal or non-existent. Actually, it is common to see Mandirs and Mosques situated within a stone throw of each other. The Indian culture, as elsewhere, is experiencing changes because of modernization and the impact of globalization.

PG: Do you still have any cultural roots in Guyana?

LR: Yes, I do, even though most of my immediate family lives in the United States. We do have a house and a small parcel of rice land in a rural village in Berbice, home to a majority of Indians in Guyana. I try to go for a visit every two years. I also go to Guyana and the wider Caribbean for academic reasons. My generation has out-migrated from Guyana in the 1980s because of bad politics in the country and so when I return I am somewhat a stranger in the village of my birth but I do like the Indian and the Caribbean way of life: the slow pace, the food, and the overall “traditional”culture. My cultural roots are analogous to the Guyanese adage “my navel string was buried in the backyard of my parents’ house in Guyana.”

PG: Are the people of Indian diaspora proud of their heritage? Does it anyway form part of their history curriculum in schools/ or at a higher level?

LR: I think the Indian people in the Caribbean, for the most part, are proud of who they have become over the past century, namely that they possess a uniquely Indian Caribbean culture that is not totally like the Creole Caribbean or like that of India but is a combination of both with more emphasis on things that are Indian-oriented like in religion, customs, and life in general.

Indian culture, and the entire notion of an Indian presence in the Caribbean, their history, for example, is not taught in schools as rigorously like African and European history. It may sound strange that Guyana is home to the largest Indian population outside of the United States in the Western Hemisphere but there is no such thing like an Indian studies program at the national University of Guyana.

I believe that the Indian Caribbean population is in a flux and let me share what I wrote in my recently awarded book. “Caribbean Indians will continue to migrate because of inequities in the global system as well as political, economic, and social instabilities and tensions within each nation-state where Indians have migrated and settled – Guyana, Trinidad, Suriname, and in the European and North American Diasporas. Migration will also continue because a culture of migration has now formed among Indians that is predicated on the belief that in order to grow and develop one has to migrate, despite how temporally. ‘’

PG: As a historian and author what are your pursuits?

LR: I will continue to research and write on Indo-Caribbean experience for at least the next twenty-years for two fundamental reasons. The first is that even though the field of Indo-Caribbean studies has been receiving academic growth and attention, it still lags behind when compared to other Caribbean studies, and so in that regard, my aim is to continue to contribute to the field to a point where it will probably encourage others to do research and write on Caribbean Indians. The second is that I have a passion for Indo-Caribbean studies. I get excited when I discover new things, and in some ways, I am hooked to the field in a nice way!

PG: Grateful for these rich insights, Lomarsh. My best wishes in your explorations!

Mya Kerner is a Seattle based painter and sculptor. In her words, ”Inward, then outward, guided by the space between stones” – epitomises her devotion to the mountains. Says Mya “I regard the mountains as stoic icons reflected by mortality, records of the movements of the earth and the torrents of the sky”. In this interaction she highlights our role as ”stewards of the earth” and warns about ”Western civilization’s excessive anthropocentrism”. A rare artist on her ascent to greatness!

Praveen Gupta: The stark and rugged beauty of North American mountains seem to challenge your creativity almost exclusively?

Mya Kerner: Previously, when my work explored the idea of distance, I chose from a broader range of mountains. I was interested in learning about places and formations I had not experienced myself. These days, I like to respond to a specific place of which I have my own memories, so I am painting from locations I have visited. This includes the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, my home, as well as some in Europe and Scandinavia.

PG: The intense focus on the form, texture and nuance/s of your current passion kind of blurs out any flora. There is virtually no sky either in your scheme of things?

MK: In my process, I focus on a specific subject for a length of time before expanding the subject matter in the painting. My partner, Zak Helenske, often likens my painting process to that of a potter; each painting is a continuation of the last. When I began painting mountains in 2016, I only painted the peaks. My focus then was on the geologic formations and capturing the ever-changing view of the mountain. Once I felt confident in how I portrayed the peaks, I moved down to the foothills, developing marks to represent the visual boundary of horizontal and vertical. More recently, I have moved into the foreground. In this space, I am working on a language for the rocks. This is not a planned progression, just a tendency I have noticed over the years. I’m not sure what will come next, maybe a sky, maybe flora, maybe a completely different subject all together!

When I began painting mountains in 2016, I only painted the peaks… Once I felt confident in how I portrayed the peaks, I moved down to the foothills… More recently, I have moved into the foreground.

PG: Do the Himalayas, Alps or the Andes at all beckon your attention?

MK: Yes, definitely. I am interested in the differences found in geological formations across the Earth.

PG: In terms of colours you generally choose white as your background and a dominant interplay of black and grey in the foreground? Is this how one should expect it to stay?

MK: In this series, I feel strongly about keeping the sky as white. This may come from living under the solid grey or white sky in Seattle for at least half the year. For the last two years my color pallet has been primarily different shades of blue. I was thinking a lot about distance in these works, and so blue felt appropriate. However, as my focus has started moving down into the foreground, more colors have found their way into the work.

PG: Humans as ‘stewards of the earth’! How does this conflict with excessive anthropocentrism?

MK: My understanding in this role comes from my studies in permaculture, a system of principles relating to agriculture and society, developed by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970s. The underlying ethics of permaculture are care of the Earth, care of people, and return of surplus to the Earth and people. When living these ethics, there is no room for anthropocentrism because the system is inherently interconnected. There are many mythologies which place humans in this role within the land, however, there are examples throughout history where civilizations collapsed due to an abuse of the land. I would say that the Enlightenment created the greatest rift, when we began to see nature as resource rather than Source and from this emerged Western civilization’s excessive anthropocentrism.

There are examples throughout history where civilizations collapsed due to an abuse of the land. I would say that the Enlightenment created the greatest rift, when we began to see nature as resource rather than Source and from this emerged Western civilization’s excessive anthropocentrism.

PG: How does one break the stoic silence of your subject matter – so as to wake up the mankind to the ‘unpredictability and grandeur’ that they represent?

MK: This is a question I continue to explore in my work.

PG: If you were to consider composing suitable music what could it be – to be compelling enough a wake up call?

MK: I am not sure. I think White Wanderer was a successful attempt at answering this question. In the public sound piece, Luftwerk used Douglas MacAyeal’s recordings of moving glaciers to create a soundtrack for climate change.

PG: Many thanks, Mya! May you keep scaling greater peaks…

As a Fulbright Scholar Tressa Arbow spent time in Nigeria. Later as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Rwanda, she closely observed the much threatened Mountain Gorillas. Now in Seattle (Washington) she pursues her passion for marine and environmental issues. Here Tressa shares some amazing first hand insights ranging from Africa to the Pacific Northwest. She also highlights her concerns on carbon footprint, sea level rise, ocean acidification, threats faced by marine life – particularly the orcas and the importance of eco-tourism.

Praveen: What took you to Africa and where exactly and how long was it?

Tressa: I don’t remember when I first became interested in Africa, but I know by the time I was in 6th grade I was telling people that I wanted to work there. What work I wanted to do changed over the years and still continues to change as I learn. The first time I went to Africa was in 2007. I won a Fulbright-Hays Yoruba Group Project Abroad scholarship after studying Yoruba language for two years at UT. I went to Ile Ife, Nigeria with a group of students from all over the country to study Yoruba language and culture for about six weeks.

The second time I went to Africa was when I moved to Rwanda as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I was an Education volunteer, so I taught English to students and teachers for two years in a town called Mukamira in northwestern Rwanda.

PG: How important was your understanding of Swahili in adapting to parts of Africa you worked in?

TA: I’ve only been studying Swahili for a few months now, so this is a new skill I’m developing. In Nigeria knowing Yoruba was helpful but I was at a university where most people also spoke English so it wasn’t crucial. Rwandans speak Kinyarwanda so that’s the language I studied for my Peace Corps training. In the town I lived in, knowing Kinyarwanda was important for communicating with neighbors, in the markets, in public transportation, etc. My colleagues at school spoke varying degrees of English, but many people outside of the Kigali and Butare don’t. Since I lived there for over two years I became comfortable communicating in Kinyarwanda and sometimes it was my only option.

PG: After years of unsettled environment how stable is the Rwandan society?

TA: In terms of violence, Rwandan society is very stable. There are no major uprisings, protests, etc. It is also continually growing stronger and more stable economically. There are still some ethnic tensions underneath the political stability, though.

PG: How did the upheavals of the past impact the wellbeing of the mountain gorillas? 

TA: Political unrest is a big problem for the mountain gorillas. There are two places they live: in a forest in Uganda and in volcanoes shared between Uganda, Rwanda, and DRC. When there is violence in any of those countries, the gorillas are at risk. Sometimes people fleeing violence actually kill them for meat, although I don’t think this is as common. Gorillas can be caught in snares and traps that are meant for antelope and other animals, and they can be driven into smaller areas as their habitats are destroyed either through violence or development. As humans move closer into areas where gorillas live, they are also at risk of contracting human illnesses. Currently the population is doing well, though, and even growing.

PG: Do you believe eco-tourism is the way forward to protect threatened species?

TA: If managed, regulated, and secured properly, I think it’s a very important component of protecting them. Without tourism money coming in from people viewing the gorillas, it is unlikely (in my opinion) that the three governments mentioned above would be willing or able to spend money on conservation efforts. If done poorly, though, tourism can exacerbate the problem through some of the ways mentioned above.

PG: Why would anyone want to kill a mountain gorilla? 

TA: As I mentioned above, accidental killings, habitat loss, and a desperation for meat are the main reasons. One other important one is the illegal trade of animals. Sometimes gorillas will be kidnapped (especially young ones) to be sold to zoos, people who want exotic pets, etc. Unfortunately kidnapping a baby usually requires killing an adult because the adults are very protective.

PG: Now back in Washington – are there any unique challenges that you are seeing in the Pacific Northwest?

TA: The marine world is different from the terrestrial environment in that we don’t know as much about it as we do land. People also don’t understand the ocean as well as they understand land because they don’t live in it. Development is increasingly turning to the ocean as its natural resource of choice because land has been exploited for so long.

The ocean is also more difficult to share because there are no clear boundaries like we have for land (not political boundaries, but geographic ones like the edge of a continent). Unique challenges in the Pacific Northwest that I’m familiar with are related to threats to salmon populations, infringement on tribal fishing and custom rights, industrial pollution in waterways, and the orcas.

PG: What’s the status of Orcas? Are they under any threat/s?

TA: The Southern Resident orcas are endangered. Currently I believe there are only 75 left. They only eat Chinook salmon, so part of the problem is that threats to salmon populations have a huge impact on the orca populations. Also, the water is so polluted from PCPs from decades ago that the orcas’ fat and milk are toxic, leading to high mortality rates for calves.

This is another interesting case where tourism could help or harm. If tourism money went towards conservation efforts and business became invested in saving them, perhaps initiatives would happen faster. On the other hand, orcas are vulnerable to the noise from whale watching boats, strikes, carbon emissions, etc.

PG: How prepared are we to deal with climate change in this part of the world? What’s your vision for a safer global community?

TA: I personally don’t think we’re prepared enough. There are too many coastal communities who don’t know the urgency of sea level rise, emissions, etc. Thankfully here in the PNW the aquaculture industries are invested in climate change mitigation because several years ago they started noticing that shellfish weren’t able to produce their shells because of ocean acidification (caused by carbon in the water).

In my “bubble” individuals are doing a lot to change their own habits to reduce their carbon footprint, but until clean energy is incentivized and/or mandated we won’t be able to make the impacts we need. Washington is voting on a carbon fee during the upcoming midterms, so this could be an interesting thing to follow in terms of Washington residents’ opinions and awareness.

PG: My best wishes Tressa for all that you do for the environment.