Hi again,

Previously, I mentioned that I researched tourism in Pune. More specifically, I was assigned to work with the local and only bus tour company, the Pune Darshan Bus Tour, with the help of the development NGO, Janwani. The goal was to determine how the decisions of actors involved in the tour (the public relations officer of the bus company (PRO), tour guides, bus drivers, tourists, and site owners) shaped local history as a tourist commodity, and specifically financial motives such as profit and budget takes priority over cultural heritage and local history. The results were as follows:

For site owners, I got to interview the director of the Kelkar Museum (a museum devoted to the display of Indian artifacts of everyday life, from combs to musical instruments to toys and so forth) and the director of the Ambedkar museum (a museum devoted to the life of Dr. BR Ambedkar, who wrote the Indian constitution).   The museum director was very keen to tell me the operations of his museum and his future plans. He repeatedly emphasized the need for funding from the local government and associated NGOs to update facilites and expand the museum so it could house the entire Kelkar collection of artifacts, most of which are in storage at the moment. Something that stuck out to me was that he specifically mentioned the maintenance of his toilets, that he always makes sure the washrooms are kept clean so that if the “Prime Minister” of the United States were to visit tomorrow and use the washroom, he would notice how clean it is. Curiously, he said that most visitors are from outside Pune, and that few actual people from Pune visit the museum. I asked him if he had a theory as to why and he said that most people aren’t aware of it because it lacks presence as a space. Also he doesn’t know completely why either, and would like to find out. Also, at the end of the interview, he extended an invitation to me as a member of the family of the Kelkar museum and asked if I had had any means of contributing to the museum from the US, I should do so. I don’t know if it is within my power, but it was rather nice of him and I also wonder if he does this to all the foreigners he works with.

For the director of the Ambedkar museum, it turns out that as it is owned by the local college, the Symbiosis society, upon which it is heavily dependent for funds. As the museum is a non-profit institution, they haven’t changed the arrangement of displays and objects since its founding in the 70s.

As with the PRO, it was a shorter interview as he was busy and people constantly came in to have him sign documents and he answered phone calls throughout. Also, a man walked in and talked to him for 15 minutes about salary matters. In asking him about the operations of the bus tour, he disproved my assumptions about the tour being a for-profit business, but rather it receives funding from the government for their services. The inadequacies on the tour wasn’t because they didn’t plan on adding A/C buses or updating the company website for public access information, it’s because there is no funding to do so.

For tour guides and drivers, their main concerns about the tour was the operations itself: sometimes the bus had to be driven without proper maintenance, due to lack of funding, putting stress on their jobs. Also, they cared a lot about local history, citing that that was the reason why they applied to work on the tour, and in addition, the PRO said it was a requirement in hiring. They all said if they were to make any changes to the job, it would be to have better buses with A/C and maintenance, a tv set, and complimentary snacks for tourists.

As for the tourists, they all held middle-class occupations such as teacher or engineer, and interestingly, came from outside Maharastra. The ones I interviewed had a mild interest in Pune, in that they don’t know too much about the city and were “passing through”.

From this, the largest lesson and conclusion I came to draw and learn was that in some ways critical thinking is a first world privilege, or at least it comes easier to those who can afford to have free time and energy to themselves to ponder: the women in Velhe were not taught philosophy, sociology, or literature as we would in our education, and according to my classmates who intern in Pune private schools, the children who attend these institutions are either in the middle to upper class of society or their families are poor and put all that they have so that their son or daughter will have a better life at their expense. Similarly, museums and tourism as institutions can only come about once there is enough money to support it: the Kelkar museum director and the PRO were quite keen on expanding their respective businesses, but cited that funding was the biggest problem. Particularly, the Kelkar museum director said that museums are “not in the blood of Indians” because most Indians just live day-to-day and don’t really think about cultural preservation or history. Ultimately, this serves as a testament to how post-industrial of an institution the museum is.

I suppose if I had more time, or if I could go back again, the scope of this study would include far more representatives of each cohort I interviewed to provide more of a representative picture of tourism in Pune, which I guess I’ll keep in mind for the future. But it’s been interesting.

Cheers again,

Kat Zheng

Greetings all,

Over this summer, I had the chance to go Pune, Maharastra to research tourism in the developing world, using Pune as an example. It wasn’t exactly easy, but in all my studies and adventures, I bring the following notable observations and lessons: Billboards and advertisements promising shiny new lives stand next to piles of trash and improvised housing; the Gokhale Institute for Politics and Economics, which is where we studied, there have been power outages despite it being rather clean; there have been minimal restorations to colonial residences and everything is a bit dingy. It’s hard to tell if a structure or building is decaying or being developed sometimes, making an interesting juxtaposition. Most notably, on a visit to the Pune Okayama Friendship Garden, a public park with manicured lawns complete with a lake and a pavilion, there was a slum neighborhood in clear view in the distance overlooking the garden. The slum itself is called Parvati, and consists of bright pastel­painted buildings about the size of Tokyo low­rise apartments (although in Tokyo they would cost vastly more). If you had to have a picture about the aesthetics of development, this would be it. There is poverty, but people still manage to live and thrive despite it, and with support. We went to a village two hours away from Pune, called Velhe. The purpose of this two­day excursion was to give us a look into how “real Indians” lived. The first day, this involved meeting with the local microfinance NGO and a visit to someone’s house in the village. The NGO worked with the local women, loaning them money to start new businesses, or teaching them new skills such as sewing or drawing mehendi so that they could leave the village to start a life in the city if they so wished. Their work in gender empowerment was not without challenges; one of the women had hitmen sent after her by some of the men in the village, and even the head of the NGO had men try to drive her out with machetes. Some of the women, although they received education from the NGO, still had to stay on the farm to work because familial obligations were too strong to pull away from. However, their successes seemed to outweigh all the conflicts, as the organization has held its foothold since its establishment in 2006, and classes have around a 70% graduation rate. Furthermore, as India is largely an agrarian society, most places have access to fresh produce. Some farms don’t use pesticides because it’s expensive. Our idea of the farmer’s market is just regular markets in Pune, which greatly outnumber supermarkets in the city. My host mother would walk to one five minutes down the road daily to buy vegetables. I asked the lecturer for our Contemporary India course, why are there no lawnmowers in India, in reference to the fact that the grass on campus was cut by workers using sickles and no power tools. He replied that it’s because labor is cheap enough in India so that employers can hire a large human staff, and automated devices are expensive by comparison. Maybe that’s partly why familial and communal relations are so strong there, because a lot more people are involved in a workplace? Anyways, the lack of automation was prevalent throughout the trip: back at Velhe, we also visited a carpenter who made tabla drums, almost completely by hand (he had a gas­powered lathe), and our host mother took us to see a glass artist, who shapes small glass sculptures by holding two glass rods over an acetylene flame wearing only sunglasses for protection.

There are street dogs everywhere! More so than street cats. Apparently, they’re protected by Indian law and it is illegal to poison or cause physical harm in any way to them. Also they’re a species of scavenger dogs that have been around for centuries. Not that they seem to live easy lives, though: many have missing limbs or ears, patchy fur, look infected generally emaciated. There was one who slept at the front of our house everyday, that we named Sam. The thing is though, there are owners of actual pet dogs, but the only way you can tell they were pets was that they had a collar and leash. Also, it seemed kind of amazing the way the dogs could just fall asleep serenely on a busy sidewalk, with light­speed traffic whizzing just mere inches from them.

Overall, I would say these observations feed into the larger lesson about travel in the developing world: it’s not so much that things are better or worse than things back home in the States, it’s just that they are different. For India, or at least Pune, I would say that although some infrastructure is missing, life is just simpler.

August 15^th, 2014

Happy Independence Day! Today was the day that India finally broke free from Great Brittan back in 1947. It is so interesting seeing how much Independence Day means to the people here. There is so much more patriotic spirit here in comparison to the US. There are flags everywhere and buttons with India’s colors and everyone is dressed up, even the shopkeepers near my house. One of the older girls at the school even helped me put on my sari, which was surprisingly comfortable. I suppose that because India got its independence relatively recently, I mean there are still people alive that remember what it was like when the country was still under British occupation. I tried explaining what the fourth of July was like for us here to the kids at the school, but all I could really think about was barbeque and fireworks.

Even though it was a holiday, students still came to the school I work in but there were no classes. Instead there was an assembly, and the different classes all put on cute performances. There were some songs, some dances, and even some speeches in English! The girls from the hostel, who live at the school, all sang the song they had been practicing for the past two weeks, and everyone loved it! I was so proud of them! It was so nice seeing the joy on their faces! This was definitely my favorite day here.

June 28^th, 2014

After being in India for about two weeks, today I finally started doing the grassroots community work I came here to do. I attended HIV workshop with the rickshaws with my supervisor, Abhinav and the foundation’s event coordinator, Bharat and it was an incredible experience. We traveled to the residential slums of Varanasi early in the morning before most of the men had to leave into the busier part of the city for work. I was informed that the brick and concrete structure I arrived to was very recently built, and up until six months ago the inhabitants of it had been living in essentially an empty lot, camped out there while they were in the city for work. Upwards of fifty people lived in this comparatively small space, with some individual rooms on the ground floor that seemed to be reserved for the oldest among them or those with families, but most of the men lived together in an open space on the second floor that seemed unfinished, as it only had three walls.

Abhinav and Bharat brought T-shirts for the men, which we handed out to the audience of over forty rickshaws. They featured facts about HIV/AIDs and HIV prevention in Hindi and began teaching about HIV by using the information on the shirts given out. The rickshaws reacted very well to this, as the meeting leaders engaged them by having all in attendance wear the shirt and called several up to the front to show what they were saying corresponded with their T-shirts. Even though I couldn’t really understand the workshop or really talk to any of the rickshaws, I was so excited to be there because I actually got to meet the people the foundation serves and witnessed their work while learning about an unique educational technique that I had never seen before. This has been the most satisfying thing that I have done since I got here and I really hope to do more work with it in the future.