Going for the Moon
On the Success of the Moon Landing
In the past week, on a morning walk I got into a conversation with a kumhar (potter) chacha (uncle) who invited me into his home for tea. Initially, the conversation revolved around his anxiety for the livelihood of his children.
After a while, he asked me, "Ye Chandrayaan ka kya mamla hai?". [What is this Chandrayaan matter?]
He then asked, "Chand pe pani hai kya?" [Is there water on the Moon?]
"Hum dekh rahe thhe na mobile mein, us mein aa raha thha." [I was watching on the mobile. It was coming on it.]
After a while, he said, "Yaar itna bada project kiye hain ye log Chand pe yantra bhejne ka. Kharcha to aya hoga." [Friend, these people have done such a big project to go to the Moon. There must have been some expenses.]
"Jangal mein talab banwa dete yaar, janwar log ko garmi mein pani naseeb ho jata." [They could have made some ponds in the forest, animals would have got some water.]
"Ek baar hum pahadon (Vindhyanchal) mein ghoomne gaye thhe. Waha pe gaon mein pani ki badi dikkat hai." [I had once traveled in the mountains (Vindhyas), there the villages are suffering from water shortages]
Later as this conversation was drawing to a close, he asked, "Acha ye yantra wapas kab aa raha hai?" [So, when is this device coming back?]
"Wapas nahi aa raha kya?" [Not coming back?]
"Matlab wahi pada rahega?" [Meaning, it will keep lying there?]
In this village, the children of the potters went into burnt brick manufacture because of growing uncertainty in the demand for traditional pottery products. The clayey soil in this area is good for bricks. So lands around the village were leased and the kilns took the soil to manufacture bricks which supplied the demands of the booming national construction industry of which the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana is also a part. The children of the potters, knowing something about clay and how to bake it, provided the labour. Now the lands have been stripped of the clay and there are craters around the village. There is a realisation that this will not sustain them for very long.
The potters are unsure if they can continue their traditional craft. New homes are not using clay tile roofs. They are made of cement, manufactured by the big industries. New toys are made of plastic, a material innovated by the scientists. New utensils are made of steel, manufactured by SAIL, Tata Steel etc. or aluminium, manufactured by the aluminium corporations. The villagers know that clay roof tiles are healthier and more comfortable than cement slabs. They know that mud walls keep the home cool in the summers and warm in the winters. They know that clay toys are better for children because children like to put their toys in their mouth and putting plastic in the mouth is not a good idea. They know that food cooked in clay pots is tastier and healthier. But the educated people who teach in the schools and write the newspapers and control the media have set these trends and if we don't follow it, we will be seen as backward. Then who will want to come to our house?
What is the basis of the R&D for Moon Landings? We must separate our scientists from society and give them a campus and office space. The land for this may be taken from some villagers in the larger interests of the nation and humanity. We must give them a good supply of materials - such as various kinds of plastic polymers (derived from fragrant petrochemicals), rare earth mineral (extracted from the sacred mountains of some underdeveloped indigenous community which we will rescue from their traditional life with development as compesation) and other materials which I wouldn't know of. Then we must provide them some land to do their experiments - space for conducting explosions, launching rockets, etc. Again, a forest may be cleared and a river may be poisoned for this purpose - in the larger interest of course.
Who can organise the efforts described above? Is it not empires? The US and the USSR were able to secure all kinds of minerals for their scientists from the colonised and vassal states across the world in the name of national security. And then they used these projects to flex their muscle in the international geopolitics, and play magic tricks on their own people to gain sympathy for the government. Later these defence and space technologies became the basis of the consumer electronics industry, and today we have no problem in popularising the use of these materials while expanding our extraction. In fact, some people see in the expansion of the internet, a new liberation of the masses.
Our government has learned from the governments of the US and the USSR. Our government is doing its best to secure these mineral resources. At home, it has been able to identify new sources from where to get the minerals of our future - such as Manipur. It is unfortunate that some communities are not willing to walk away from the lands that contain these resources, so the government has had to adopt some tough strategies. But it has been learning from its earlier experience in places like Niyamgiri, Hadeo Arand, Singrauli, and a number of others. Our government doesn't restrict itself to domestic resources. It is making efforts to secure us a share in the harvest from Africa, South America, perhaps even China.
Our state-aligned western-tradition-educated elite have learned to do their duties in helping the larger scientific-technocratic project, and cheering it along. It bolsters our collective belief in the knowledge capabilities of the state. Events like the Moon Landing give us faith that the state is doing a decent job in organising knowledge. In turn, this constituency does its job to legitimise this exercise by pointing to the merits like how women and non-elites have been given a role in the whole thing, how India/Bharat has arrived on the world stage, how we are overcoming our downtroden-ness etc.
But what kind of knowledge is this? This is not knowledge that builds from the knowledge traditions of the potters, weavers, blacksmiths, carpenters, dyers, leatherers,..., boatmen or even the pandits. So it does nothing to bolster our confidence in our own knowledges. Instead it reduces our confidence. It signals that perhaps, valid knowledge after all really is behind the wall of the school and the gate of the university. What our elders have passed on to us is our burden. My father handicapped me by teaching me the pottery wheel when in that time I could have spent more time in the school. What was the need to observe my community festival which is not a public holiday, so I had to miss school for it. Perhaps I should not have missed that exam to go for the mela. I should forget about my community festivals and my gods and the month long, week long weddings. Now I should send my children to school and tell them to think of nothing else.
Moon landings are an exercise of empires. It is an imperialist enterprise. In fact, we are now talking about planting a flag on the Moon. We must be honest that this is what we are calling our success. We have become empire.