The news trickling in from Jejuri isn’t encouraging. The little temple town huddled at the foot of an ancient hill, barely 50 km south-east of Pune, was immortalised by Arun Kolatkar in 31 poems titled ‘Jejuri,’ which won the Commonwealth poetry prize in 1977.
Kolatkar portrayed the popular pilgrimage centre in his native Maharashtra as a place that, in the words of Amit Chaudhuri, “is as crassly commercial as it is holy, as modern and ruinous as it is ancient and enduring”.
Today, both the devout and the worldly-wise visiting the town at this time of the year couldn’t agree more with Kolatkar.
Firstly, the annual fair of Lord Khandoba – the Shiva incarnate worshipped across the Deccan plateau by its denizens – held on the auspicious occasion of Paush Purnima that fell on January 28 this year had to be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Secondly, the traditional donkey market, a major attraction at the fair, though held in spite of all the odds, drew a poor response.
Barely a thousand donkeys were sold at the fair with the top deal recorded by a Gujarat trader who sold 100 donkeys of the Kathiawar breed. It was disappointing for the others. The turnover, which should have been Rs4-5 crore going by the previous years’ figures, was down to barely Rs 2 crore, said Vijay Chaugule, one of the fair’s organisers.
Reports in Marathi newspapers blamed the fall on the dark clouds hovering over the Indian economy, especially the impact of the COVID-19 on the country’s construction industry. This was alarming for the traditional communities still engaged in age-old occupations, but should it bother the others who may not even be aware of their existence in their midst?
Donkey fairs in the country date back hundreds of years and Asia’s biggest and most popular one is held at Rajasthan in a village called Looniyawas, which is about an hour’s drive from Jaipur. The annual event at Jejuri perhaps rivals the one held at Vautha in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad district on the occasion of Karthik Purnima. Prices range from anything from Rs 5,000 for lesser breeds, to Rs 25,000 for tenacious ones who can carry heavy loads.
Donkeys continue to be bought and sold across the country being the cheapest available mode for carrying heavy goods despite competition from much advanced but expensive options like trucks and tractors. The Kathiawar breed, which can carry fifty to sixty kg, is the most sought after in the western Maharashtra region around Pune.
In fact, the donkeys from Kathiawar have come to establish a unique partnership with the Wadars (stone cutters), who may be described as the original migrants of Pune. They came from the neighbouring districts of Karnataka and erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, to lay the underground drainage of the city at the beginning of the twentieth century. Their biggest settlement is still to be found at the foot of the Fergusson College hill in Shivajinagar.
The Wadars were traditional stone cutters and builders who laid the foundations of Pune’s urban development, toiling to build its roads and bridges and British-era monuments like the University main building, Sassoon Hospital, Central Building and Council Hall that house government offices today. They were soon followed by the Kumbhars or potters and other nomadic communities who toiled on the brick kilns and road construction sites.
These communities formed an outer ring of informal, low-income settlements around the city, which served as nuclei for its subsequent growth or spread, writes architect and planner Meera Bapat in her seminal study, ‘Shanty Town and City: The Case of Poona.’ The rich took residence in areas where amenities like water pipes, sewers, telephone wires were laid during the colonial period, while the poor came to occupy places judged unsuitable for habitation with no access to basic services like water or drainage.
With urbanization picking up further in the post-Liberalisation era, this gap between the rich and poor only increased. And as a new report by Oxfam reveals, it’s getting worse. Economic inequality is rising sharply in all countries since the COVID-19 pandemic and India is no exception. “Inequality in India has risen to levels last seen when it was colonized,” the report said.
“The additional wealth acquired by India’s 100 billionaires since March when the lockdown was imposed is enough to give every one of the country’s 138 million poorest Rs 94,045. An unskilled worker in India would take three years to earn what the country’s richest person earned in one second last year,” the Oxfam report calculates.
Ray of hope?
So what hope does a traditional donkey market hold for those worst affected by the disease itself as also its fallout with worsening inequality in income and opportunities?
A certain Ramesh Jadhav from Pune was reportedly there in Jejuri to buy mares belonging to a local country breed for as high as Rs 15,000. It seems the physical and psychological devastation caused by COVID-19 had led to an increased demand for donkey milk, which is known to be highly nutritious.
Apparently, donkey milk is now selling at Rs 2,000 a litre in these anxiety-filled times. There are customers, it seems, who would buy a cup or small steel glass full of milk for as high as Rs 500. But such a request is rare. Very few people, mostly the older ones coming from villages, would know about the benefits of donkey’s milk. The younger lot, born and brought up in the cities, won’t know or prefer drinking it.
Besides, the business is entirely dependent on availability of a mare who has recently delivered a foal. The mother’s milk lasts around nine months, after which Jadhav will have to sell her with the foal and buy a replacement with a newborn. To procure a pair he and his family have to be constantly on the lookout and have to frequent the markets.
Yet, Jadhav is hopeful the milk will help him survive the tough days ahead. He has no complaints with a man-made world where the distribution of wealth has become so one-sided that the poor are constantly pushed to penury and on the verge of hunger while the rich are getting richer. The budget session of parliament will be of no consequence to him or his community.
(Anosh Malekar is an author and independent journalist based in Pune.)
