Lessons from Adilabad
As I was preparing to leave for field work just last week, one of my colleagues said to me “get ready because you’re about to experience the ‘real’ India.” At the time, I did not realize how true that statement would be. During my week in Adilabad district, it slowly became clear to me that this enormous ICRISAT campus with vast amenities did not really represent India at all. Even the bustling city of Hyderabad does not fully capture what India is all about. During my field work, not only did I collect data and speak to village residents, but I also discovered many things about India’s culture and especially life in India’s tribal villages. Since I’ve returned, many of my friends and family members have asked me how my field work went; and to all of them I’ve said “well, I don’t really know where to begin.” So I guess I’ll start from the beginning:
After our long five hour journey on Monday, we finally arrived in Adilabad district and immediately went to work, conducting a total of four individual interviews about nutrition with teachers and parents of adolescents. Looking back now, I am so glad that my first two interviews were with teachers who seemed to be well aware of nutrition and especially the importance of adolescent diets. This gave me a sense of hope that maybe other people in the villages would be just as aware and educated. However, just minutes later, as I conducted interviews with parents, I found that this was not true. The two parents I interviewed that day revealed to me that while they had some understanding of what their children should eat, they could not pinpoint what exactly nutrition meant, which foods contained certain nutrients or why the adolescence period was so unique.
Over the next few days, I spoke with more residents and discovered the unfortunate reality that this lack of knowledge was common for most adolescents and their parents.
Anyone who knows me well knows that I absolutely adore children of practically all ages, so you can imagine my excitement when I spent the next three days of my trip conducting focus group discussions with adolescents and interacting with school children of all grade levels. However, what I did not expect is the way that several of these students reciprocated my same level of excitement. At the beginning of each focus group discussion, I would introduce myself and tell the participants that if they had any questions for me they could ask me after our discussion was over. Accordingly, after each discussion, the students would ask me questions about the U.S., my family back home, and my journey to India. Their curiosity and astonishment showed how embracive they were of different cultures. This was so refreshing for me especially because of the current U.S. political climate in which people fear those who are different from them rather than trying to understand their perspectives. There was no such culture in the tribal villages. Instead, everyone was ecstatic that they could meet someone who had a completely different lifestyle. They were eager to learn and embraced our differences. Although I couldn’t communicate with them directly due to our language barrier, I felt that I had formed a special connection with all of the children I met. On Wednesday, I had finished conducting all of my interviews in Lakkaram village and would be moving on to another village the next day. As I was preparing to leave the school, a group of students came up to me and started saying “goodbye aka” as they handed me flowers that they had made in art class. I didn’t have a translator near me at the time so I just smiled and went along with it. Later on, I had to hold back my tears when my translator told me that “aka” means “big sister” in Telugu. I was so touched by how loving and accepting everyone that I met was.
My time in Adilabad also taught me that, like most things in life, field work does not always go as expected. There are so many different factors and situations that I personally had not thought of until I experienced them myself. For example, in almost every individual interview, I would ask a simple icebreaker question: “according to you, what is nutrition?” When I wrote this question, I did not really think of the answers I might get and I had just thought it would be a good way to start the conversation. However, several times, I faced the situation in which the interviewee had no clue what nutrition was or had never heard of the word. In this case, they wouldn’t be able to answer my second question: “do you believe nutrition is important for adolescents?” or the several other questions that asked about nutrition specifically. In addition, I also learned the different factors that can affect the way in which people answer questions during an interview. For example, one of my first interviews was with a mother of an adolescent girl. As I asked her questions about nutrition and her children’s diet, I could sense that she felt uncomfortable answering questions because of the crowd that had gathered around her home. Additionally, her husband was standing in the same room and essentially answering the questions for her and guiding her on what to say. I desperately wanted to step in and say that she should be the only person answering questions and that the people watching the interview should only be family members. However, I kept quiet because I was fearful of being seen as disrespectful. Often when we think about field work, we try to come up with questionnaires and ways to test our hypothesis but I learned that it is just as important to think about factors such as these that could greatly affect the data we collect.
This woman’s story leads me to my next lesson which was discovering the true gender inequality in India that I had not experienced yet. At one of the schools, my wonderful translator and colleague, Kavitha, tried to speak with a teacher to figure out the logistics of a focus group discussion. When Kavitha approached this teacher, he said “please, madam, take a seat and I will discuss this with Babu,” referring to my male colleague that had also travelled with us. It was astonishing to me that even one of the most educated people in the village would look down upon a woman simply because she is a woman and refused to speak with her about an important topic. This was only one instance of gender inequality that I witnessed. Like I mentioned earlier, some husbands would feel the need to step in and guide their wives on how to respond to interview questions. Often, when we arrived in a new place, Kavitha and I were advised to take a seat while the men discussed logistics. If I tried to carry any materials, a man would insist that they carry it for me because I am a woman. As someone who values freedom and personal independence, these situations were evidently an infuriating experience. However, I took a step back and realized that I was living the reality of the women that lived in these villages and I was only experiencing just a sliver of the inequality that they face everyday.
Finally, the biggest lesson I learned throughout this process is that you can spend hours doing research and collecting data about people living in the tribal villages. You can spend months in the lab trying to figure out a solution to a problem that they may be facing. But nothing will ever match the experience of walking a mile in their shoes, of interacting with them directly and attempting to understand their everyday struggles. Until you experience firsthand what life is like for these disadvantaged communities, it’s almost impossible to find a solution that is going to improve their livelihoods. My firsthand experience is exactly why I am so grateful to be a Borlaug-Ruan Intern.
