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Taiwan's tribal culture provides a boost to its tourism. Relishing the tribal flavour, suchayan mandal fishes in Matai'an Wetland and takes the cable car to Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village

The old man in gumboots, reminding one of Santiago of  The Old Man and the Sea was walking down by the greenish stream. Casually holding a river carp gasping for air, he flung it for a while. The adult carp refuses to give in. The old man, maybe in his 60s, had a heavy gaze in his eyes. The fish was like a victorious trophy for him. As he crossed the wooden bridge and walked towards his hut, dark cloud gathered across the sky above the mountain. 
What we got was a glimpse of the Amis tribe of Fat'an in Taiwan. Till date this tribe has a unique style of fishing, which is less violent than the regular fishing methods one is familiar with.  
Fishing lessons

This unique method of catching fish in Matai'an wetland, called Palakaw in the local language, involves the use of hollow bamboo poles, common tree fern trunks and branches of the subcostate Crepe Myrtle tree to build a three- layered structure that is placed in water to provide a habitat where fish and shrimps can live and propagate. After some days the Crepe Myrtle branches are raised above the surface and the shrimp adhering to them are shaken off into a triangular net. The eels, catfish and other bottom dwelling creatures, hiding in the lower layer of bamboo poles, are caught easily by just immersing the triangular net. 
 On reaching, the Matai’an Wetland, our tour guide Francis "commanded" all of us to fold our trousers till the knees. Group members in shorts were soon inside the mountain brook, where the fishing was to begin. The knee deep water currents were strong. A local fisherman, who was in charge of the tour through the village, spoke in Mandarin about the fishing technique. While most words sounded Greek to us, we kept nodding our heads in anticipation. Most of us were busy posing with the fish that the old man had caught. The deal was, more the fish caught, more one got to eat! Unfortunately, our dedicated efforts didn't yield much result. One fish was almost caught, but then the carp tried some salsa and some bhangra and it was back in the water. A catfish caught after 40 minutes by one of our group members seemed to have been forgotten when it decided to take a gigantic leap from the basket to get back into the water. When Facebook status and photos having been updated with the caption "Fishing is fun", we felt hunger pangs taking over.  
 In one of the huts in the village, a delicious meal of roast duck meat, pumpkin fry and rounded rice was underway. Santiago of Matai'an, excitedly informed Francis that cooking will also be done in the tribal way. Barks of palm trees were folded and shaped like a pan. Fire will destroy this natural pan. So rocks were heated and the pan placed on them. Marinated in rock salt and minimal spices, one of us placed the fish in boiling water. One of the tribal women, dressed in traditional attire plucked some leaves from mustard-like plant and put them in the pan. Steam released from the pan informed our olfactory nerves about a forthcoming delicacy. Witnessing an organic culinary in process was equivalent to watching a Masterchef in action! 
Once the fish was cooked, our teammates insisted on sampling it. Soon, just the skeleton was left as evidence of the delicious taste. One of members of the group, busy clicking pictures, missed the fish and ended up munching the herbs.  The lunch was light with green tea, rounded rice, duck and tender chicken with some mashed pumpkins and lots of salad. Nature has its own taste and that's much much better than processed food, was the conclusion our chopsticks drew as we sampled food at Matai’an Wetland.   
Aboriginal village 
Our next day's plan was to visit the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village. Unlike Matai'an, this has been moulded into an amusement park. Located at Yuchi Township, Nantou County, one can find tribal souvenir shops and tribal shows here. The dance performance, objectifying men (you read it right) was somehow too loud. More art could have been blended in the performance that was presented on a floating stage. The aboriginal village employs Taiwanese aborigines from nine tribes, with whom visitors can engage in living history. Activities include sculpting, weaving, pottery making, cooking, knitting, exercising, handicraft making, playing and dancing in the tradition of the aboriginal tribes. 
We toured the look alike tribal villages of different communities, Paiwan being a major tribe there. Visual illustration of Paiwan village chief and marriage rituals have been well displayed with rock structures and carvings. The enemy heads rack is a stone rack, which is generally built at the entrance of the village with skulls of the enemies killed in raids. Paiwans also worship human penis, which is to them the god of creation. Besides relishing the flavours of almost 200 years of civilization, we embarked on a cable car journey to sun moon lake, which was our next destination. 

Republic of Hunger

India’s policy addressing hunger and malnutrition in all age groups has a feast of questions and a famine of answers. India’s hunger, being worse than any sub-Saharan country, needs crisis management and a long term vision. With a new government at the Centre, is the expectation too high, wonders suchayan mandal

The change of guard at the Centre after the general elections has prompted expectations and high hopes from every nook and corner of the country. Manohar Das of Tewri village in Jharkhand, Shib Baksha of Amlasol village in West Bengal and Anita Devi in Maharashtra have no idea about the "Modi Sarkar" at the Centre, yet they hope some government will arrange for two full meals for them a day. India’s overall GDP growth at 4.7 per cent in 2013-14 due to low industrial growth and inflation, is expected to rise thanks to pro- industry steps by the present government. However, election promises for the downtrodden people and development blueprints have a vast difference, which was visible over the last few decades.

 One of the basic needs of the people, be it poor or rich has been food. And India isn’t a country that does not produce sufficient food. Rather, storage of surplus food has always been a problem. Yet, Manohar, Shib and Anita go hungry day after day and Anita’s two sons died of malnutrition before they could be sent to school. 

While development in many sectors is acknowledged, what is less known is that India has also made considerable progress on many social fronts, such as fertility decline, expansion of schooling and bridging the gender gap in education, especially at the primary and lower secondary levels. However, there is one area of human development, where India has not fared particularly well: tackling hunger and malnutrition. 

Child malnutrition rates in India are extraordinarily high ~ among the highest in the world, with nearly one-half of all children under three years of age being either underweight or stunted. Indeed, child malnutrition rates are higher in India than in many countries of sub-Saharan Africa, even though income levels are significantly higher and levels of infant and child mortality are lower in India. 

Pediatric malnutrition 

 Prevalence of child malnutrition in India has remained stubbornly high even after nearly a half-century of respectable agricultural productivity growth and two decades of post-reform economic growth and prosperity in the country. This is puzzling, since rising prosperity appears to have improved other social indicators in India, such as fertility, mortality, schooling and literacy. Adding more support to the view that child malnutrition is weakly correlated with income is the finding that among children of mothers with 10 or more years of schooling as well as mothers from the top income quintile, around one-quarter are underweight. Even in a relatively prosperous and dynamic state like Gujarat, child malnutrition rates have been stagnant over the past decade. 

The National Family Health Survey in 2005-06 showed that almost 50 per cent of Indian children aged six years or below were stunted and more than 40 per cent of children in the same age group were underweight. Moreover, almost 80 per cent of children aged six months to three years were anaemic. 

As India and the world have long known, malnutrition in young children is likely to have long-lasting functional deficits, affecting intelligence and other cognitive abilities, creating a susceptibility to various diseases and even affecting their reproductive health. Ironically, much of this pioneering research was done in India itself. 

The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) found that a significant number of adults in India suffer from malnutrition. Almost 58 per cent of pregnant women aged 15-49 were found to be anaemic. 

This reveals how the nutritional status of young children is being adversely affected from before they are born ~ stunting in children under the age of three years begins with their mothers, who are undernourished or anaemic during pregnancy. The Global Food Security Index also revealed that Indians lack adequate quantities of iron, Vitamin A and protein in their diets. 

 Public health specialist and activist, Dr Binayak Sen said, “Half of the children who die before five years of age have malnutrion as a cause in their pathogenesis. If we look at proportion of weight at birth, 23 per cent of children weigh less than 2.5 kg, which is below normal. This low birth weight has its reason in the womb, which is where they are malnourished already before being born. Low birth weight increases over time and so by the time they are three-years-old, half the children are malnourished. Because of poor sanitation we have widespread faecal oral contamination. Water and food sources have high degrees of contamination and it results in diarrhoea and other gastro intestinal illnesses, which increases the child mortality rate. 

State of famine 

In 1943, three million people died in the infamous Bengal famine. There was no shortage of grain in Bengal at that time, yet people had nothing to eat. Today, there is so much excess grain that the government is hard put to store it yet there are millions in this country staying hungry. In Amlasol, West Bengal, people eat ant eggs, earthworms and snails to stave off hunger. Interpreting the Famine of 1943, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen suggested that the reason for it was the breakdown of the social arrangement in distributing food. However, a critic of Sen’s opinion, Amrita Rangasami's had written, “The sudden collapse into starvation that has been identified with the famine condition is only the final phase of famine, when the stigmata of starvation become visible, and the victims have collapsed. Famine is not, however, an event marked by the death of the victim. The basic failure in the understanding of famine is the inability to recognise the political, social, and economic determinants that mark the onset of the process. We need, therefore, to redefine famine and identify the various factors ~ political, social, psychological and economic ~ that operate to keep large classes in the population under continuous pressure." 

Nandi Foundation had performed an assessment of children's nutritional status, covering around 44 per cent of all under-five victims of malnutrition. Former prime minister Manmohan Singh had said while releasing the study report that it was a "national shame". Of that there is no doubt ~ but the shame is familiar. Similar data are available from the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau ~ part of the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) ~ for many years, and they are also corroborated by the findings of NFHS-III, carried out in 2005-2006. Meanwhile, the NHFS-III tells people that around half of all deaths in the under-five age group were closely associated with their poor nutritional status. The CIA World Fact Book puts India's IMR (infant mortality rate) at 46 ~ 14th highest in the world, higher than that of every South Asian country except Bangladesh, which is at 49. 

 To put the matter in a world context, every three seconds somewhere around the world, a child dies of causes related to avoidable malnutrition. "In those three seconds, the world armaments industry spends 120,000 dollars in order to keep the system responsible safely in place,” Binayak Sen told The Statesman. 

Sen further suggested, “The BMI (body-mass index) is derived by dividing the weight in kilogrammes by the square of the height in metres. The critical value of the BMI is 18.5. Values below 18.5 are indicative of chronic energy deficit ~ hunger. Pednekar from Pune has demonstrated through epidemiological studies that death rates increase as BMI falls below 18.5. If the death rate above 18.5 is taken as unity, then roughly, death rates from 18.5 to 17 are about 1.33, those from 17 to 16 are about 1.5, and BMI values below 16 are associated with a death rate that is double the 'normal' death above 18.5. WHO recommendations are that any community that has more than 40% of its members with a BMI below 18.5 should be regarded as a community in famine. For which, many Indian states should fall in the criteria.” 

Rising food price 

Skyrocketing potato and onion prices spell more woe for the masses, who are already paying "too much" to survive. International Fund for Agricultural Development’s (IFAD) Rural Poverty Report-2011 states, “While international food prices have declined since mid-2008, they are still substantially higher than prior to the price surge, and they are likely to remain at 2010 levels or higher for the next decade.” The report has suggested that about 100 million of world’s rural and urban people have to remain hungry. 

“In India, from 2000 to 2005 food grain prices declined with inflation rate in rural areas coming down from 8.1 per cent in 1993-2000 to 1.90 per cent in 2000-05. In 2007 when the Planning Commission prepared the poverty estimate for the country, the decline in poverty was attributed to low food inflation. But since 2006 food prices have been rising. Food inflation was about 14 per cent in December 2010. Indeed, rise in food prices in the past two years has been higher than in any period since the mid-1970s. From 2005 to 2010, the average wholesale price index for food articles went up by 40.76 per cent,” reads a report in Down to Earth magazine. 

“It will remain high, the era of cheap food is over," asserted Richard Mahapatra, managing editor of Down to Earth. "This is because productivity of agriculture is low and thus impacts production. This is the supply side issue. Also the rainfed areas that contibute a signifcant amount of foodgrain is not getting the policy focus. Even though the new second Green Revolution is aimed at that, it seems to be flawed. Now, the demand side. Demand is increasing but we don't have robust distribution mechanism. So, it creates further price rise. Also, there is huge diversion of agricultural lands to other uses. Combined with low productivity, less lands and absence of distribution mechanism, we are set for high price rise.” 

 According to Mahapatra, because growth per se is meant to reduce hunger, it helps a particular group of people. For the poor and food insecured people we need a different model of growth. But we unilaterally focus on growth model, he added. Due to the PDS and the public wage programmes starvation deaths have definitely come down, he contended. "Often we call cheap foodgrain programmes as populist. They are indeed popular as poor find them useful and their starvation is avoided with this entitlement,” he added. 

Adult malnutrition 

“Malnutrition in children is a horror story and malnutrition in adult is equally horrendous," said Binayak Sen. "Roughly 33-35 per cent of the entire Indian population have a BMI below 18.5, which is indicative of calorie malnutrition.They aren't getting enough food to eat. More than one-third of India is on a chronic basis not getting proper food to eat. Low BMI is also restricting people’s immunity.”  

“Wthout addressing nutritional status, there can be no adequate development. Food Security Act does nothing for betterment of nutritional status of the poeple as such. The Bill is like 'something is better than nothing'. Five kilos of wheat per person per month make two chapattis per day. With two chapatis the nutritional question isn’t answered. This terrible nutritional deficit is yielding polarization in society,” he added. 

Urban malnutrition 

With migration and job prospects, people from the country-side are settling in cities. A complex attitude that makes a farmer hate farmland and dream of industry has also resulted in problem of migration. In villages, people stay in close bond with each other, who can be approached for help in times of crisis. Migrating people in cities start living in slums and ghettos, where they have to live with people unknown and untrustworthy. Moreover, people fight here to make ends meet, which actually leads to self-centric attitude. 

Most of the urban food is really not nourishing and leaves even rich kids under-nourished. Over nourishment or obesity is also hindering growth in urban society. 

Red corridor hunger 

“People who are in chronic situation and stable famine are able to withstand only because of their access to natural resources like land, water and forest," opines Binayak Sen. "Access to this resources was unrestricted. Designating the common properties as commodities that can be owned by corporates is restricting poeple’s right to access and in a way right to live. Any form of resistance is labelled  as insurgency. First they try civil ways and then take recourse in military measures. People have to confront. Application of eminent domain needs to be questioned. Under 5th schedule, govt has to ensure people’s access to natural resources but there is not a single instances of government intervening.” 

According to Mahapatra, over 1.3 million tribals and forest dwellers got rights over the land they had been using for years under the Forest Rights Act. "But six years after the Act was enforced, lives of the forest dwellers have not changed much," he pointed out. "Not one state has initiated concrete steps to officially register the title holders in the state land records. Without this they remain what they used to be ~ officially non-existent.”  

“They have mapped it as red corrridor but poeple’s deprivation hasn't been mapped yet," said Sen. "We need to relook at the arm forces and UAPA laws. Whole discourse in election has become restricted to attitudes to development. Development is about accessing resources. Nobody is saying there are vital issues involved. What is going to happen to the poeple whose right has been denied? State will not be thwarted in its course. There needs to be a contestaion in the level of people. They need to raise the issue.” 

Feast of questions 

So what needs to be done? The conclusion of most studies is that, taken together, these programmes have not made much of a dent in either protein-energy under-nutrition or child malnutrition rates in the country. Richard Mahapatra suggested, “Agriculture contributes around 16 per cent to GDP; it is coming down over the years. But still 60 per cent people depend on this. What does this mean? It is reliable as a source of livelihood or people don't have any other source thus depend on agriculture. In both the cases, shifting people out of agriculture is going to be a tough challenge. Industries or the service sectors have their own limitation and can't absorb such a huge number of people. Strategically, this will be a blunder as we kill out food self-sufficiency.”

Drum e Buzz

Insane drumming and great visuals made a deadly combo in Loop Zero. As Ben Walsh tours India,suchayan mandal asks him for his magic wand 

Drum drama. That's the best way to define Australian percussionist Ben Walsh's new show Loop Zero, which is an audio visual explosion exploring humanity, technology and reality. Melodic, rhythmic and purely scientific, this new performance plays with varying notions of how we shape and are shaped by technology in our world. Designed especially for Indian audience, it took the audience between the worlds of multimedia installation and live performance.
As the grey visuals and blue LEDs at Blue Frog Delhi started adding to the monotony of the ambience, Ben's trembling of symbols and hard hitting base drum flavoured the auditory nerves with all colours of the rainbow. Zero Loop through visuals and drum beats showed an office goer's return in a crowded local train ~ all stranded and weary. Alike this, the visuals ranged from his childhood, rejection in auditions and many more life events. With the electronic drum resounding in the music market with the thud of technological renovation, a worried Ben didn't support "electronifying" music initially, reminding one of the topsy turvy world of handicraft artists during the great industrial revolution. 
But once it got imbibed in him he realised how variety in technology added spice to his genre of performance. Talking about the inception behind Loop Zero, Ben said, "Whenever I premiere a new work there is an energy that is hard to replicate in a seasoned work. The audience will be watching me at a very new stage of exploration and that will mean I will be giving it my all."
This show is predominantly inspired by the many odd instruments that spring forth from Ben's imagination and delivers a solid dose of Walsh's trademark high energy drumming style. Ben performs upon instruments of his own creation with technological innovations designed by Kim O'Sullivan.
Necessarily inspired by Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane and Chuck Norris, the 37-year-old has been playing since age of two, when he used sticks to beat on cake tins. At the age of six he was gifted a drum kit and the journey began. He uses carton, tins and iron pipes to create music. 
A cheerful Ben says how thinking of a career out of the box was difficult to pursue but fortune has smiled on him.
Ben, who toured India many a times and has also worked with Shubha Mudgal, said, "I cannot bring anything new to India. The music here is unique and rich. Indians understand music, drumming and technology", while playing an empty barrel in the Bhangra beats, which made the entire audience try out the popular Punjabi dance move.
About music piracy Ben felt, "Internet is a good source of information and downloading for free is a good sign that at least people are interested in your music. Let people hear you, piracy or buying EP doesn't matter. You have other options to earn. Music isn't a product to be sold."