Today we had a fun little visit to the office of the Soil Chemist.

The soil chemist’s office in Berhampur is a big building in an out of the way place with a doorman. I don’t understand why there’s a doorman, as I’m quite certain that no one ever comes to the door. When I asked the unit head here in Berhampur if he could give me the address of the Agriculture Department so I could get some statistics, he said sure. Then he told a field executive to take me to the Soil Conservation Department, giving only a vague direction for where to go (which, in a town like Berhampur, is all you’re ever going to get). When we stopped and asked for directions, we were circuitously taken to this office. The field executive had never been here, had no real idea what the office was either, and had other things to do. I feigned like that’s what I wanted and went in.

We entered and sat at the desk of the Head Soil Chemist. Before we entered he had been busily sitting at his desk with nothing open on it. That is what Indian bureaucrats do during the bulk of their time, as it turns out. Not even a newspaper to read. Just a big empty office with a desk, a telephone, and a Head Chemist. Oh, and a plaque listing all the Head Chemists ever to grace this hallowed empty office.

My field executive friend sat down next to me and the Head Chemist asked me what I would like to know in broken English. I said I would like to know general information about the types of soil in the district and how that related to cultivation. Since this wasn’t the office I wanted to visit, that was as good a somewhat-relevant inquiry as I was about to muster. I noted the poster on the wall mapping–of course–general soil characteristics in different parts of the district, even breaking down information on things like acidity, nitrogen content, etc. Things I knew nothing about, but I figured that could be worth hearing about. I said perhaps he could explain it for me.

At length, and in Oriya, the Head Soil Chemist responded that this was not the office for the information I sought. I would need to visit the director of Soil Conservation, who resided at the Agriculture Department Office (go figure). He then explained that his office did soil testing only, and that it made recommendations to farmers on which pesticides and fertilizers to use based on that information. Farmers brought in their soil samples, or he advised them on how to collect them, and then for a fee of about 10 cents, his office did all the analysis and recommendations. Then he pointed at a cryptic poster with some diagrams that meant nothing to me and were unexplained and looked vaguely like an exploding baked potato with lines on it and explained to the field executive what it meant. All this, apparently, precludes familiarity with the basic soil conditions of the district.

While he went on with this lengthy discussion, I jotted down the basic info I wanted from the poster. Bingo, problem solved. Sort of. Not the statistics I wanted, but something I could hang up at the end of the day and say I had in my hand that I didn’t have at the beginning. In India, that often seems to be all one needs.

The irony of this is that the field executive, the person supposed to be the professional in this field, had no knowledge of this office’s existence, didn’t know what it did, and really knew as much about soil science as I did. Nada.

Tomorrow, we’ll go find another office that no one has been to, where we may or may not find statistics I can use. In all likelihood, we’ll just find more big offices with government employees paid to do nothing and no information. I am rapidly learning to curb my expectations.

The blind leading the blind. That’s what this intership/this country/international development in general can be like sometimes, the blind leading the blind.

Posted on July 26th, 2005 by Lee
Filed under: Uncategorized