Rice, Maths and Kashmiris

Being good at math is no longer consideredan innate ability. It’s attitude that matters. You master math if you try hardwith persistence, doggedness and the willingness to make sense of somethingthat most people give up after 30 seconds. Students willing to concentrate andsit still long enough and focus on answering every single question in anendless questionnaire are from the same countries whose students do the bestjob of solving math problems. Asian children try little harder, take more mathclasses, and are more willing to do their homework and on and on in a kind ofvirtuous circle. They aren’t baffled by the narrative that the mathematicsdoesn’t seem to make sense and that its basic rules are arbitrary andcomplicated. As they hold more numbers in their heads and calculate faster,being good at math is seemingly rooted in a group’s culture.

Contributing around 1/5th of the caloriesand 1/8th of the total protein consumed worldwide, more than 3.5 billion peopleconsume some 740 million tons of rice (produced each year) as staple. Around90% of the world’s rice is grown and eaten in Asia. Coincidently countries thattop the list in math Olympics winners are Singapore, South Korea, china,Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan, all culturally shaped by the tradition of wet-riceagriculture and meaningful work. If coming from a culture shaped by the demandsof growing rice makes you better at math, does rice-paddy make a difference inthe classroom for rice-eating/growing Kashmiris too?

   

Travel to the Guangxi province ofsouth-western China, and you see a landscape transformed by agriculture wherepeople are still practicing a century-old way of life. Steep hills rise up froma snaking river-valley and every slope is grooved with terraces. It’s fromChina that the techniques of rice cultivation spread throughout Asia. Ricefields are built, not opened up, the way a wheat field is. Rice fields arecarved into mountainsides in an elaborate series of terraces, or plains. Theirrigation of rice-paddy invites building of a complex system of dikes aroundthe field. Channels are dug from the nearest water sources and gates built intothe dikes to enable adjustment of water-flow precisely to cover the rightamount of the plant. Working in the rice field is estimated to 10-20 times morelabour-intensive than working on an equivalent-size corn or wheat field.

In East Asia it’s all about rice. The rootsof collectivism like those of rice run deep. Communal work/collective labour isneeded for terracing mountains, building and maintaining irrigation system forcontrolled flooding of paddies and harvesting each family’s rice. And there isthe issue of dividing water fairly. For a thirsty-crop like rice, irrigationsystem is usually a delicate bargain between wasting water or just beingprofligate; the upstream users can exhaust the available supply, leaving theirdownstream neighbours dry. Usually however they’re more generous for purelyself-interested reasons. Maintaining the diversion dams is hard work; thedownstream users offer their labour in exchange for a fair share of the water.Iconic water temples regulate water access for the rice grown in Bali whereirrigation tunnels and canals bring water from mountain lakes and streams downto the farming villages on the hillsides.

In order to avoid quarrels betweencultivators of the same village in Kashmir, the system of water distributionintroduced by Emperor Jahangir ensured that shares were carefully recordedduring settlement. The ploughing for rice being far more careful than othercrops, 2-3 ploughings are considered ample. The real labor for riceweeding, Khushaba, is standing in the mud and water on all fours witha burning sun above and cold water below, scuffling with the mud and kneadingit ditto kneading flour. It’s placing the rice plants in their right places,weeding and pressing the soft mud gently around the green-seedling. Only anexpert Kashmiri can detect the counterfeit grasses which pretend to berice. Khushaba must be learnt young. The paddy requires a hardclay-floor to avoid percolation of water into the ground. Rice seedlings needto have a thick soft cover of mud (clay-pan), engineered to drain properly andalso keep the plants submerged at the optimum level. While many plants hatewaterlogged soil, rice loves it. Rice has to be fertilized carefully and achoice of the appropriate fast-growing variety made in tune withyield/performance during draught. When the rice ripens, friends and relativesburst harvest it quickly as possible to avoid winter hazards.

Kashmiri farmers know that for a goodrice-crop, days should be sunny and hot, and nights cold and warm. Muggy nightsare the signal for the onset of rai. Though cool nights aredesirable, extreme cold are almost as injurious as warm nights. The troublethat haunts a cultivator is the fear of rain and snow at harvest-time whichresults in a useless white powder instead of rice. Cold breeze chills andshrivels grains. Full grains (sirdana) depend on cold dew penetrating theouter husk and swelling and hardening the forming grain. Heavy snowfall inwinters on mountains, good rains in March-April; clear bright warm days andcool nights in May-August and occasional showers and fine weather in Septemberare important for a good rice harvest.

Compared to 12-19 hours/week by Bushmen ofthe Kalahari Desert and 20-24 hours/week in the 18th century Europe(during winters, Europeans hibernated to stay warm), people in the rice-growingcountries in Asia(Kashmir included) busied themselves with side-tasks, makingbaskets, hats, handicrafts, shawls, woodworks, paper-mashie etc. Peoplerepaired dikes in rice-paddy; rebuilt mud huts, and migrated to warmer plainsas labourers. By spring they’re back in the fields. Rice agriculture isskill-oriented; better skills help harvest a bigger crop. Throughout history,the people who grow rice have always worked harder. Kind of running smallbusinesses, juggling a family workforce, hedging uncertainty throughseed-selection, building and managing a sophisticated irrigation system andcoordinating the complicated process of harvesting the crop, it’s hard work,shrewd planning, self-reliance & cooperation and timing that bringscompetence. The genius of the culture formed in the rice-paddies is that hardwork of great uncertainty and poverty. Rice is the staple of Kashmiris, andwe’ve been expert rice-growers for centuries. Together with the lesson that hasserved Asians well in many endeavors, but rarely as perfectly as in the case ofmathematics, growing rice must also serve Kashmiris in their mathematicalabilities.

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