Back in Bhuj again - interviews finished!

After spending a great new year in Pushkar, Rajastan we are finally back in Bhuj to finish up Alice’s research. We spent 3 more days interviewing farmers in the remote town of Rapar. Rapar is an interesting place as it requires special police permission to visit (as do many towns in the area). The reason is that the military has a strong presence and they are worried about border security.

Obtaining police permission was easy, but during our 3 day visit we found out that two police had checked up on us at our hotel while we were out. They asked the hotel to make sure we had proper identification and permission. Then on our last day an officer from the ministry of interior inquired as to our whereabouts, then called our hosts (Agrocel) to ask them to hold us until the police arrived!

A bit nervous we sat around waiting for the officer to find us. When he arrived he introduced himself as an officer with the interior (we’ve been told its similar to the FBI). He said “So you are Mr. Owen Wiltshire”, and then pointing to Alice “and Madam Friser?”.

We confirmed our identities then he inquired as to why we were visiting the area. We explained we were amateur researchers (not wanting to admit Alice was working on behalf of her school, since we were visiting on tourist visas!). He wasn’t too happy about our doing amateur research, but once he found out that we were also backpackers who had visited other areas of India, he relaxed. After about 10 minutes of answering questions related to Alice’s research and the length of our stay he let us go. He also asked us for all our email addresses (i gave him my gmail at first, but he asked for more… instant message addresses in particular…)… I wonder who will be snooping my email in the future ~!

We had a new translator for this trip, and everything went very smooth. Definately some of the best interviews. We were much more relaxed, and discovered a few more ‘key questions’. During the interviews some questions worked much better than others, at least in terms of bringing out discussion. Instead of asking the farmers about children’s education, Alice asked the children themselves. Bringing the kids into the interview really lightened things up and got everyone talking on a more comfortable level.

I also asked each of the farmers for a personal message he or she would like to send back to students in Canada - something relating to fair trade that we could present on their behalf. This kind of open ended question worked well to find out what was really important for the farmers themselves, and sort of worked to get beyond the feeling that we were inspectors looking for problems!

We are now wrapping up the research here in Kutch. I’ve used the experience as the basis for my application into the masters program at Concordia. Hopefully I’ll have the chance to continue this kind of research in the future!

and now back to being a regular tourist… We tried to buy a bottle of wine to celebrate the end of the research, but we were turned down by the local alcohol dispensery. You need an alcohol permit to drink in Gujarat, and it turns out that regardless of how long you plan to stay in Gujarat, the permit you get is only good for one month. So our permits have expired, and the only way for us to get a beer or bottle of wine is to leave the country, or at least leave the state. (No wonder this area isnt popular with tourists! An insanely paranoid military (and maybe for good reason?) , and no beer!!! I wonder if the two are related…)

This entry was posted on January 18, 2007 at 11:05 am and is filed under India Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.