In her beautiful and moving novel Nectar in a Sieve, Kamala Markandaya crafts and creates an intensely powerful statement on tradition and economic growth. Written in the 1950s, Markandaya encountered and addressed socio-economic development issues that are becoming increasingly controversial and problematic. Accordingly, Markandaya has left us with a story that is relevant to India and the world even today. By creating a beautiful and intensely moving story, Kamala Markandaya has brought home a reality of socio-economic inequality that many western contemporaries do not have to realize or acknowledge. By making these issues personal�through writing a story of a struggling woman who is very easy to relate to�Markandaya has created a novel that both raises awareness and reduces apathy. She has not only painted a face and given an identity to an impersonal poverty statistic, but she has also created a statement on globalization, �development,� and the destruction they impose.
Before looking directly at Nectar in a Sieve, it is important to examine the social and historical context Markandaya placed the novel in. As in Nectar in a Sieve, India has been immensely affected by external, primarily western, sources throughout its history. In search of power and gold, Europe penetrated India by the 16th century. Portugal arrived first, followed by England, the Netherlands, and France. The English gained advantage over the other hopeful colonizers as their emigrants assimilated into Indian culture and life, and by the early 1700s, English companies were well established in the south and western regions (Heitzman 27).
As English companies grew in size and power, England�s ability to annex and control territory increased also. Motives for expansion included commerce (primarily spices, cotton, and opium), security, and the righteous �uplift� of the Indian people. England�s conquest was successful not only from their superior military might, but also through their ability to establish promising relationships with local Indian leaders. As their control of India grew, so too did their ethno-superiority towards the Indians. As the English�s attempts to westernize and �civilize� the country increased, resentment and distrust by the Indians toward the British did also (Heitzman 30).
India�s independence movement was fueled by this resentment towards England�s imperialistic policies. Their independence movement was successful in part from the leadership of one man�Mahatma Gandhi. Educated in England and a successful racial liberties leader in South Africa, Gandhi returned to India in 1915 to lead India�s independence movement through nonviolent civil disobedience. His belief��withdraw cooperation with the corrupt state� (Heitzman 42), gained overwhelming support of ordinary citizens. In 1947, with England reprieved from the Second World War, India celebrated its first independence day.
Written in 1954, Markandaya sets the novel immediately following India�s independence. Under English colonial rule for several hundred years, India was hopeful and determined to thrive as an independent country. Economic growth was deemed essential, and many thought the only way to achieve this was through industrialism. Because India�s leaders believed �Industrialization was the key to economic development� (Heitzman 304), early policies reflected the commitment to industrializing the country. The Industrial Policy Resolutions of 1948 and 1956 encouraged private companies and especially the government itself to engage in production and manufacturing in a variety of fields. From 1956 to 1960 the Second Five-Year plan, a part of a series of policies aimed at development, emphasized industrialization again (309).
In addition to looking at the historical and economic context of the novel, examining the social structures that exist in India is just as important. Not only do these social factors directly affect Markandaya�s characters, but they also largely influence the social institutions - like government, religion, and education - that help shape and determine her character�s lives and the lives of contemporary Indians as well.
The role of hierarchy shapes the distribution of power within India. Dependent on gender, age, family wealth, and caste, one�s role in society is deeply defined before birth. Tradition shapes much of Indian life, and this is clearly reflected in gender roles and the caste system. Women are expected to dress modestly, and in some regions to veil their bodies and avoid public appearance. They have limited property rights, and are encouraged not to travel except for family approved purposes. Women who do not prescribe to social expectations, especially regarding their relations to men, often bring dishonor to themselves and their families. Only women born in poor families and low-ranking groups will work in manual labor outside the home. Getting married, which could be considered the most important and celebrated passage in Indian life, can also bring hardship to women. Arranged marriages are the most common, and once in their in-laws� home, women often veil themselves before their male relatives and rarely talk to them (Heitzman 249).
The caste system reflects an intentionally structured form of social inequality. Despite a constitution that specifically prohibits discrimination based on one�s caste, this elaborate form of social stratification still affected millions of Indians in the 1950s and still affects millions today. The caste system can be traced back to sacred texts based on oral traditions from 3,000 years ago. Four groups were specified, each to carry a different role in society, allowing the community to function and sustain itself. Over time a fifth level in the caste system developed. Considered �Untouchables,� they had the unrespectable work associated with dirt and decay. Members of lower castes are generally more likely to live in poverty and at a social disadvantage. Although the caste system has received great criticism within recent years, it is still considered by many Hindus to be part of the �Divinely ordained natural order� (Heitzman 268).
Through examining Markandaya�s novel, we can easily see how the post-colonial and even contemporary trend of top-down economic growth and the country�s stringent social barriers immensely affected and affect the many subsistent farmers and the rural poor of India. Markandaya�s characters and the events that shape their lives are representative of the millions of struggling farmers like themselves�they exist as rural poor that are easy targets of domination, control, and exploitation. Markandaya sets Nectar in a Sieve in a small Indian village. Rukmani, a strong and struggling woman, narrates the story, which is essentially the story of her life.
Eloquently and humbly, she recounts the events, struggles, conversations, and experiences that made up her days. She writes in first person, and the text is simple, beautiful, and moving.
Rukmani is married at the age of twelve to a very poor peasant farmer. The fourth daughter of a formerly successful townsman, her family does not have the means to give her a large dowry. Dismissed as a disappointing marriage and deemed to lose ground in India�s intense social hierarchy, Rukmani and her husband Nathan thrive together regardless. She states, �Our relatives, I know, murmured that the match was below me; my mother herself was not happy, but I was without beauty and without dowry and it was the best she could do. �A poor match,� they said, and not always quietly. How little they knew, any of them!� (Markandaya 11).
Together they were exceptionally happy. Rukmani fills the text with passages about her joy and the love she has for her new life. One poignant example is the following passage, which foreshadows the impending intrusion they will later face. The passage also portrays Rukmani�s appreciation and love for nature that her rural life allowed. Together with the kindness and love from her husband, the passage reflects how content and hopeful Rukmani is with her life.
While the sun shines on you and the fields are green and beautiful to the eye, and your husband sees beauty in you which no one has seen before, and you have a good store of grain laid away for hard times, a roof over you and a sweet stirring in your body what more can a woman ask for? My heart sang and my feet were light as I went about my work, getting up at sunrise and going to sleep content. Peace and quiet were ours. How well I recall it, how grateful I am that not all the clamour which invaded our lives later could subdue the memory or still the longing for it (Markandaya 17).
Nectar in a Sieve is not a narrative of happiness, as Rukmani�s life is tragically altered by the presence of a tannery that moves into her traditional Indian village. Assaulted by industrialization, Rukmani�s happiness and sense of place soon disappear after the construction of the tannery. Several passages illuminate Rukmani�s disillusionment. As the tannery is being built and she is discussing it with friends who are excited about the new business, she writes, �So they were reconciled and threw the past away with both hands that they might be the readier to grasp the present, while I stood by in pain, envying such easy reconciliation and clutching in my own two hands the memory of the past, and accounting it a treasure� (Markandaya 45).
Rukmani�s initial uneasiness is justified. As Krishna Rao notes in his study of Kamala Markandaya�s work, the tannery brought �(I)nflation, vice, and disease� to her community (Rao 56). In her narrative, Rukmani is quite explicit about her feelings towards the tannery and how it disrupted her previous beloved sense of place. She states, �I had got used to the noise and the smell of the tannery; they no longer affected me. I had seen the slow, calm beauty of our village wilt in the blast from the town and I grieved no more�only sometimes when I was weak, or in sleep while my will lay dormant, I found myself rebellious, protesting, rejecting, and no longer calm� (Markandaya 88).
Even more than disrupting Rukmani�s life on an emotional and psychological level, the tannery drastically impacts the daily realities of her and her family members� lives. Her husband who �(L)iked to see his sons beside him, to teach them the ways of the earth: how to sow; to transplant; to reap; to know the wholesome from the rotten, the unwelcome reed from the paddy; and how to irrigate or drain the terraces� (Markandaya 89), is �crushed� (74) when their two eldest sons choose to work for the tannery. Later, after being involved in union activities, they are fired by the company and become completely dissuaded with their lives in the village. As Arjun, the eldest son states, �There is nothing for us here�(95), and together with his younger brother, they leave. Bitter with tears, Rukmani listens to their promises to come back stating, �I listened to them; and it was all a shame, a poor shabby pretence to mask our tortured feelings...I knew we would never see them again� (96).
Misfortune continues for Rukmani. In one season a drought ensues, and the �Rice-grain, just big enough to see, white, perfect, and holding in itself our lives� (Markandaya 98) fails. With their failed crop they are forced to sell off nearly all of their belongings in order to keep the land. As Nathan states in the book, it is better to sell mere possessions than lose the land. He remarks, �If the land is gone our livelihood is gone, and we must thenceforth wander like jackals� (103).
The drought not only meant the selling of possessions. As Rukmani notes, �Plants died and the grasses rotted, cattle and sheep crept to the river that was no more and perished there for lack of water, lizards and squirrels lay prone and gasping in the blistering sunlight� (Markandaya 108). As surrounding plants and animals struggled for life, Rukmani�s family did also. The drought brought with it the horrendous plight of severe hunger. An intensely moving part of the novel, Rukmani recounts the terrible and fruitless time her family endured. She writes, �We fed on whatever we could find: the soft ripe fruit of the prickly pear; a sweet potato or two, blackened and half-rotten, thrown away by some more prosperous hand; sometimes a crab that Nathan managed to catch near the river� (121). Rukmani also writes about her family�s relentless search for food and the terrible assault widespread hunger had on her struggling community.
Early and late my sons roamed the countryside, returning with a few bamboo shoots; a stick of sugar cane left in some deserted field, or a piece of coconut picked from the gutter in the town. For they must have ranged widely, for other farmers and their families, in like plight to ourselves, were also out searching for food; and for every edible plant or root there was a struggle�a desperate competition that made enemies of friends and put an end to humanity (Markandaya 121).
Despite their constant searches, �It was not enough� and �Sometimes from sheer rebellion we ate grass, although it always resulted in stomach cramps and violent retching� (Markandaya 121). Although Rukmani and most of the family survive, her youngest son does not. Succumbed by starvation, he dies. Having suffered so much, Rukmani honestly writes, �Although I grieved, it was not for my son: for in my heart I could not have wished it otherwise. The strife had lasted too long and had been too painful for me to call him back to continue it� (140).
The drought and hunger combined with the tannery and its throngs immensely impacted the lives of Rukmani�s other children as well. Raja, Rukmani�s third son, leaves one day to search for food and never returns alive. He is reported to have stolen a hide from the tannery, and was killed there by the tannery guards. She aches for her son. �I tried frantically to keep it [numbness]�I might as well have tried to imprison a cloud� (Markandaya 124). Three days after Raja�s death, representatives come from the tannery, and warn Rukmani not to seek compensation for her son�s life. Wisely, but feeling confused from their words, Rukmani wonders �What compensation is there for death?� (126).
Ira, Rukmani�s daughter is also �ruined� by the tannery and the drought. Trying to save the life of Rukmani�s youngest starving son, Ira prostitutes herself to the tannery �(T)hrongs� (Markandaya 181). Before barren in marriage, Ira conceives a child selling herself for sex, and accordingly, brings immense shame to Nathan and Rukmani.
Rukmani loses three sons to the tannery, her daughter�s respect, and lastly, the land that her husband and she lived, survived, and loved on. Outbid by the tannery, their landlord forces Rukmani and her husband to leave the land they worked on for thirty years. The news leaves Nathan �(T)rembling, impotent� (Markandaya 179), and Rukmani hopeless. She states, �While there was land there was hope. Nothing now, nothing whatever. My being was full of the husks of despair, dry, lifeless� (182).
Again, Rukmani writes of the tannery, but this time with complete defeat. �I had always felt the tannery would eventually be our undoing�Ira (Rukmani�s daughter) had ruined herself at the hands of the throngs that the tannery attracted. None but these would have laid hands on her, even at her bidding. My sons had left because it frowned on them; one of them had been destroyed by its ruthlessness (180-181).
As was losing her sons to the tannery, the loss of the land and her home was agonizing to Rukmani. She remorsefully writes, �This home my husband had built for me with his own hands in the time he was waiting for me�In it we had lain together, and our children had been born. This hut with all its memories was to be taken from us, for it stood on land that belonged to another. And the land itself by which we lived. It is a cruel thing, I thought. They do not know what they do to us� (Markandaya 182).
On some levels the �(T)hey� Rukmani refers to is the men that own, operate, and control the tannery of her village. On a metaphorical level, we can infer that the �(T)hey� Rukmani speaks of includes much more than the owners of a single company. Markandaya, well aware of the industrialization occurring in India, symbolically uses the tannery to represent top-down economic growth throughout her country. As scholar A. V. Krishna Rao notes in his analysis of the novel, the tannery is �(S)ymbolic of mechanical power,� and �(D)estroys the traditional village� (56). Again, another literary analyst, R.S. Singh, recognizes Rukmani�s story is �(T)he story of the modernization of Indian villages� (Markandaya 138). These perspectives recognize the �(T)hey� as metaphorical, and therefore see Markandaya�s novel addressing issues related to socio-economic development. If we examine Nectar in a Sieve as a novel making these statements about the modernization and industrialization of India, we can begin to understand the destruction of top-down economic growth, globalization, and industrialization on people like Rukmani�poor rural peasants and subsistent farmers.
Accordingly, through reading Markandaya�s novel we can do more than appreciate a beautiful story of the past. We can also use her statement as a powerful lens to examine and make sense of current economic policy in India. Essentially, Markandaya uses the novel to explore two interacting conflicts: modernization verse the traditional and globalization and industrialization as sources of cultural and family destruction. Using her exploration as a base, we can relate the story of Nectar in a Sieve to contemporary economic trends in India and many parts of the world today. In Nectar in a Sieve, the tannery itself represents top-down economic growth, and is Markandaya�s representation of globalization. Run by a �(R)ed-faced white man� (Markandaya 44) the tannery was the 1950s version of a multi-national corporation. It is free to do what it wills, usurping land from the villagers, and even killing starving boys �in defense.�
Today multi-national corporations are at the heart of globalization, and this trend towards privatization and globalization are the heart of India�s most recent economic policy. In 1991 the IMF established the New Economic Policy (NEP) for India. This structural adjustment program was spurred by India�s balance of payment crisis in 1990. It functioned to increase economic growth, allowing India to avoid its impending external bankruptcy. The NEP was to achieve economic growth through increased liberalization, business deregulation, state withdrawal, privatization, and globalization (Arora 328). Moving towards a free market economy, the IMF and Indian government hoped to increase efficiency, productivity, and the financial stability of the country�s economy.
The NEP has been characterized by the following:
The NEP may bring economic growth, but many believe it does nothing to improve the conditions of the many poor in India, especially the rural poor and women. Economic growth increases resources, but these resources do not necessarily go to poverty alleviation. Policies that greatly increase investments in high-tech and capital intensive industries will do relatively little for people like Rukmani�the marginalized rural poor and the less educated female labor force (Gaiha 145). Any benefits of the NEP�s macro-economic growth will reach the poor by trickling down to them. But in this extremely socially stratified country, as is represented in gender roles and the caste system outlined in the beginning of this paper, trickle down benefits are unlikely to happen in India without enforcement or effective government regulation.
If India continues to choose liberalization as its path to development, as it has done since 1991 under the guidance of the IMF, it will need to choose policies that directly put a significant proportion of the benefits of economic growth to poverty alleviation programs. This is absolutely necessary if Rukmani�s story is to be a story of the past, and not the story of contemporary rural Indian women.
It is essential though that sharing the benefits of disconnected industrial and economic growth is not the only means India takes to decrease poverty. Alleviating poverty in a deeply socially stratified society requires effort to decrease the already existing and rampant social divisions. Effort is needed to create egalitarian change and policies that directly put opportunity into the hands of rural people and women (Arora 330).
Effective policies will have to establish the tangible and intangible infrastructure needed to empower India�s marginalized population. Rukmani was one of her country�s marginalized constituents. More so than just wanting policies to provide the physical infrastructure to attract big business, Rukmani would argue to allow her beloved agrarian lifestyle to continue. Although the Indian government sees industrialization and business as the means to �development,� Rukmani�s story provides us with a different model. As was shown, this strong woman loved her life as a farmer and wife. She loved her life as a mother, and she loved her life as a gardener. She valued the peace of her small village and the sense of community that existed there. The intrusion of the tannery brought �(L)oud, ceaseless, clangour and din� (Markandaya 42) to her previously content and hopeful life.
Rukmani�s story reminds us that there are alternatives to the ceaseless grind towards consumption and growth that the tannery represented. Her story is remarkably beautiful and powerful, as it provides us with a new perspective to look at our own lives. More so, her story is important, as we examine the legacy of globalization and economic �development� in our world today. If increased GNPs and more multi-national corporations are going to come with the same price the tannery came with for Rukmani, it may be time to re-evaluate our own sense of what development, growth, and progress really mean.
Works Cited