Our neighbour, Duraisamy has just bought a Diesel Engine and pump after at least two years of saving and skimping. So we were worried about all this talk of soaring Oil prices and Rationing of Diesel...

Duraisamy was pushed in this direction by various things. Till now, he cultivated Tapioca which is the cash crop here, which required him to be here three or four months of the year. The rest of the year he would work in Kerala where he could earn more money than in TN.

His wife, Pottiamma, has severe diabetes and for at least the last two years has had daily insulin shots: She spent a week in the Hospital down in Sittilingi run by our friends Regi and Lalitha, and learnt to administer her own injections. Regi and Lalitha have also advised her to include Ragi and Greens in her diet and cut down on Rice.

According to Regi, there is a lot of diabetes hereabouts because of changes in the diet of the people:

A generation ago, there was no road up from Salem, and Old-timers speak of their going to the shandy, some twenty km away, once in six months, with their cash crop on their heads (kaddukai/harda/hartaki/terminalia chebula), and returning with salt and matches. They were self sufficient with regard to everything else! So children grew up eating a variety of grain (samai, kambu, ragi, veragarisi and others which I have never seen before coming here, let alone know the English equivalents of) and legumes and plenty of vegetables (pumpkins and gourds), and fruits for the picking (guavas,bananas, papayas, jackfruit, mangoes, wood-apples, nellikai, ber....)

Now, Tapioca is a monoculture cash crop, and most people eat only Rice, and that too Rice from the Ration shop. Trees have been cut and sold for timber: hence less fruit to pick.Vegetables, too, are sold for cash, and that means fewer vegetables for home consumption. This poverty of diet shows up in an increase in ill-health and an increase in the number of diabetics in particular.

Duraisamy hopes to grow some Ragi so that the dosage of Pottiamma's insulin intake could be reduced.

Earlier, everyone used to have cattle (to plough), and rice (and other) straw were used as cattle fodder in the dry months. Now, people have sold their cattle, and instead hire tractors to do the ploughing. Rice straw has become yet another "cash crop" which travels down to the plains. The price of Rice straw has therefore become prohibitive for people like Duraisamy who could earlier get it almost free from neighbours. He hopes, with his Diesel pump to be able to feed his cattle himself.

His movements are towards self sufficiency, but he is obviously at the mercy of The Market , The Finance Minister, and the price in dollars of a barrel of oil.

Fingers Crossed for his success!