Shri Jagannath Bali: 4th September, 1899 - 5th April 1984
The mass of innumerable humans taking birth, living out their lives, and merging back into the elements on this planet can arguably be likened to a continuous stream. In that flow, every once in a rare while, appears a person whose thought process and life proves to be far ahead of their day and age. Those of us who've been fortunate enough to travel a part of our own journeys in the vicinity of such gems indeed bear the responsibility of making sure that their amazing stories get recorded and relayed for inspiring future generations.
Such remarkable individuals usually do receive some recognition and acclaim during their lifetime, but in many cases a wider and more thorough appreciation of their foresight follows only afterwards- after future course of events prove them right, or after society becomes better informed and evolved so as to better understand their perspective.
One such person was Raizada Jagannath Bali, or, as his letterhead liked to more humbly state, "JN Bali, Farmer and stockbreeder". The honorific title of Raizada that spoke of descent from an old distinguished family, was something he had decided to do without. In any case, his success was certainly not built upon the riches of family inheritance. It was in fact created after the once-affluent family had hit financially challenging times for reasons completely beyond their control.
The background
About 150 miles to the north east of India's capital Delhi lies the hill-retreat of Nainital in the outer Himalayas, and in the plains just below the mountains lies the Terai region. In 1950, the Terai was a patch sparsely populated by humans but instead infested with malaria-carrying mosquitoes and wild animals. If the prospect of tigers carrying away pets and farm animals wasn't daunting enough, every once in a while word would arrive about some tiger having developed an appetite for humans, necessitating additional precaution until the beast was tracked down and captured or killed. Poisonous snakes and deadly pythons were another constant source of danger and much of the land itself was an uninviting marsh. In short, it was the place where no one wanted to move to.
It was to these environs, near what were at the time tiny hamlets of Kashipur and Kundeshwari, that Raizada Jagannath Bali ventured to move in and "bought large chunks of wilderness for a song"- as the Daily Guardian of London would note in an article many years later in 1973. The cost per unit area was indeed low, as the person making the investment would often describe- but 1,100 acres still made the overall amount quite significant for him- a fact that the article had seemingly failed to grasp.
At the time, Bauji, as Raizada JN Bali was adoringly addressed by his extended family, was already over fifty years old. It was an unusually late age for somebody to start a new profession on a daring note of immense financial and personal risk, but there was a reason behind it.
Just three years earlier, the partition of India and the establishment of Pakistan as a state for Muslims had unleashed slaughter or displacement upon millions of Hindus and Sikhs who happened to reside on the Pakistani side of the border. Much of the administration in the newly-formed nation was cool towards the plight of its religious minorities, and sometimes even blatantly complicit in their torment. Some of the worst-hit areas by the partition riots happened to be in the northern fringes of the undivided Punjab. These included Tehsil Gujar Khan of Rawalpindi district where the police force had methodically deprived all its remaining Hindu and Sikh personnel of their firearms just one day prior to one of the worst waves of slaughter.
Right amidst the epicentre of those disturbances lay the village of Turkwal, where Raizada Jagannath Bali's family belonged and had resided for as long as the family tree charts could tell. Uprooted by the tide of turmoil, they became a speck among the millions that flowed over to the Indian side of the border for sanctuary. Looking back, they would consider themselves relatively more fortunate at not having lost anyone from the immediate family to the riots, a relief that was denied to others they had known.
Prior to the partition, Bauji had served as the Managing Director of the Hind Iran Bank Ltd. It was a company set up by a gentleman named Sahib Singh whose business interests extended into Iran as well- mostly in the the town of Zahedan where a tiny Sikh community still exists today as dwindling remnant of that era- mostly descendants of those who had ventured there in the 1920s along with the founder's entrepreneurial spirit. The Hind Iran bank however did not last long. Sardar Sahib Singh's death in the summer of 1945 left behind family members who were unable to manage their suddenly-inherited roles in the business with the same efficiency. The partition riots could not come at a worse time for that organization. Like Bauji's, Sahib Singh's family incidentally also belonged to rural Rawalpindi district, to the nearby village of Dhudial. It was natural that besides the firm's headquarters, a good number of the branches of the bank too were located on the Western side of Punjab which was to become part of Pakistan. Loans issued against deposits of property titles became irrecoverable. To make matters worse, Sahib Singh's son Jai Singh too died in March 1948. The combination of the owners' untimely deaths and the complications resulting from the partition led to the winding up of the bank in 1954. Despite not having been the owner, and despite the bank having gone defunct for all practical purposes with the partition, Bauji never shirked his responsibility as a former senior employee in dealing with the string of lawsuits that inevitably followed, helping settle affairs fairly for the bank's customers and shareholders to the best of his ability.
All the time and money expended on the legal affairs of the bank did not stop Bauji from sparing all effort necessary to make the Terai venture a success. Under his guidance, 42 families, most of them similarly displaced from Pakistan, pooled in their labour and helped set up tracts of arable land. The Terai went on to be recognized as some of the best farmland India has to offer. The proximity to hills with lush greenery and mountains sending down perennial streams meant a water table liberally replenished by nature. By 1960, as many as 8 artesian wells were established from it. Thanks to all the hard work and Bauji's indefatigable zeal in trying out different crop types, good harvests followed.
Ironically, just as all the work to transform the marshlands into cultivable farm was being completed, laws were enacted by the government to limit the amount of land any one person could hold. These "agricultural land ceiling" laws drastically cut down the family's land holdings from 1100 acres to around 400 acres at first and then to around 225 acres. Compared to other blows the family had survived in recent years, this was a small one. The hit was taken in stride.
The transition
The year was 1962. It was long before organic farming had become the household term it is now. It was also well before the U.S. government banned the use of DDT (in 1972) as a pesticide, and a good eleven years before Ernst Friedrich Schumacher's work "Small is Beautiful" would be first published (in 1973) to champion the causes of decentralized, environmental-sound, locally-sourced, and people-centric technologies. The Indian Institute of Technology at Delhi, one of India's premier engineering institutes, would only much later (in 1983) introduce its "Science and Humanism" course, founded on the often-overlooked fact that science and technology are not value-neutral, and which highlighted the pitfalls or opportunities for social impact as a result of technology choices. Incidentally, the course was also not offered to students until they had five semesters of learning behind them.
In 1962, Raizada Jagannath Bali began to undertake a dramatic transformation on his farm, and it was much more than just a switch from mechanized to traditional farming. It was the culmination of a holistic view of his operations, a realization that any enterprise can't be a success until it truly leaves earth richer, natural resources conserved and judiciously used, and materially benefits many more persons than just the farm owners. For someone who had no formal education in ecology, he had observed at close quarters and could dwell at length on the interplay and interdependence of humans, land, flora and fauna and other facets of society and nature. From a financial perspective, there was absolutely no compulsion to make the switch, when the farm was thriving. Yet, for the second time in about a dozen years, he risked a large part of his entire financial worth by courageously letting go of all his mechanized farm equipment including all 13 of his tractors- and instead decided to procure more more cattle and employ more labour.
The increased employment as a result of the change was significant. The farm soon had 60 ploughmen, 15 dairy workers, around 40 to 50 labourers for other miscellaneous jobs, and other daily wage workers whose numbers frequently hovered in the vicinity of 200. As a result, a large number of households in the vicinity were accorded a source of earning.
Bauji's standard attire was that of the North Indian countryside. Despite all the resurgence of nationalism, a mindset that regards anything indigenous as inferior has managed to hold-sway in newly-independent India- the proverbial colonial hangover outlasting the colonial masters' departure. As a result, you stand a greater chance of being assumed as educated if you appear westernized and urban, instead of sporting a traditional turban- and Bauji wore his with pride. Not surprisingly, anyone hastily drawing conclusions based merely on looks could be prone to underestimating his treasure trove of information and towering intellect by a huge margin. At times it was only upon conversation that the breadth of his knowledge revealed itself, in subjects as varied as literature, science and technology, law, trade, physiology, and of course agriculture. The stereotype was further dispelled by the his command over the spoken word, including crisply-delivered English (spoken "eloquently", as India Today would note in an article in 1984). Besides an acute keenness for picking up knowledge, there was no other reason why a seventy-something farmer in India's heartland would be so well-versed in, say, the nuances of navigating ships on the high seas or the cultural trends of faraway lands- subjects that were as unrelated to his profession as it could get. He also subscribed to and avidly read various scientific journals. It was perhaps only natural that an all-encompassing vision of human enterprise and sustainable ecology built upon alternate values would come forth from someone with such well rounded knowledge.
In the urban Indian mindset, the bias against the rural percolated into more aspects, including looking down on traditional methods of farming which were considered synonymous with inefficiency and inconsistent results. In the eyes of those convinced about the superiority of mechanized farming, Bauji's move was rash. Others were unable to comprehend the need to disturb a well-established money spinning arrangement that been set up after much hard work. Unmindful of such views, Bauji remained confident as ever about what he doing.
The blooming of eco-friendliness: Solar Cookers, Methane Lighting, Organic Fertilizers.. and much else.
Besides use of artesian wells, abandoning of tractors, and induction of more workers, other changes followed. After consulting with subject matter experts like Dr. Jagdish Chandra Gupta, construction was started in 1962 on a "Gobar Gas plant" - a biogas plant that sought to convert the cow dung ("Gobar") generated on the farm into useful products. If left to decay in the open air (aerobic fermentation), cow dung largely decomposes into carbon dioxide and ammonia- and leaves a residue that has some value as a fertilizer and a poor quality fuel that burns with much smoke as a side-effect. In contrast, a gobar gas plant provides a mechanism for ensuring anaerobic decay (that is, decay in absence of a free supply of oxygen)- whereby the end products would chiefly be methane (a more cleanly-burning fuel) and a nitrogen-rich slurry that makes for an excellent fertilizer.
A key component of the plant was a metal drum/canopy that served to deprive the waste of free oxygen supply. Floating over the brewing methane and other gases inside, the drum's weight helped generate positive pressure for them to flow out through regulating valves. Of particular importance in a gobar gas plant are the operating temperatures (the microorganisms that convert the organic waste into more simple compounds and the other set of microorganisms that in turn transform those compounds into methane each thrive in specific temperature ranges) but there's obviously little one can typically do to regulate them in natural surroundings. In other words, it is not precision technology by its very nature, and unexpected hurdles lay in store to be discovered as the journey unfolded.
The ten-foot diameter of the drum of the first plant attempted proved inadequate to contain the rate of gases readily produced by the decay chambers underneath, and the drum frequently ended up tilting. An even more challenging problem to surface was the glutting and clogging of the decomposition chamber which, to put it mildly, was unpleasant to address and also required a lot of re-work on the plant. Not one to be disheartened, Bauji went ahead and constructed a bigger plant after procuring a drum of thirty feet diameter, that took until the mid 1970s to complete. Yet again, he seemed to have taken a risk- because if it failed, it would only amount to magnifying an existing problem besides being a waste of a bigger investment. However, once again the risk paid off - the new plant proved to work with better predictability, and its drum height of four feet ensured better gas pressure, which could be used to deliver it farther as well.
In the 1970s, when a huge shortage of fertilizers badly hit the Indian market, Raizada Jagannath Bali's farm remained unaffected thanks to the self-sufficiency provided by all his cattle and Gobar Gas plants.
The lack of dependence on tractors also proved to be a lifesaver in one particular season of heavy rains. While operations ground to a halt in a big farm in the neighbourhood that was incidentally owned by a tractor-manufacturing concern, Bali farm (as his holding was referred to in the area) was able to keep operating on schedule. The fact of tractors and other mechanized farming equipment spending large time slices in maintenance had been a key incentive for him to make the switch and his grasp of their limitations could not have been proven more accurate.
Creative, home-grown solutions
From the Gobar Gas plant, pipes were laid down to the farmhouse kitchen, to supply cooking fuel in the form of methane which burns more cleanly than various other cooking fuels popular in rural India (the combustible mixture being not too different from CNG that is now widely used in vehicles in parts of India, and is second only to hydrogen as the combustible fuel with the least greenhouse gas emissions). The challenges of handling it in a form that is vaporized at room temperature were admirably addressed on the farm itself.
The abundant supply of biogas spurred still more creativity. Aided by just a couple of workers, Bauji's elder son Shri Sukhdev Bali was able to convert a traditional petrol engine into a dual fuel engine- one that would use petrol only for the start-up, and then transition to run almost entirely on biogas. Quite admirably, it did not leverage any ready-made solutions already available in this regard- like those manufactured by Crossley of Manchester which, in any case, weren't easy to procure in rural India at the time. The innovation eventually led to the availability of 30 horsepower for threshing and other activities, using the converted engine of an old Nissan truck. The problems imposed by the inherent moisture in the gas were just learned to be dealt with, and it at least failed to dampen any spirits for sure.
Each success with alternate earth-friendly technologies became an inspiration for more, and the benefits of being self-sufficient grew. Instead of conventional light bulbs, special lanterns were installed that would instead burn biogas supplied via small pipes. Of course, no such lights were available in the market, but the enthusiasm of the farm innovators converted the commonly-available "Petromax" lamps that employed pressurised kerosene, to work using methane instead.
As back as the early 1950s, Bauji already had developed a fascination for making use of solar heat, especially for cooking. He had heard of solar cookers being used in Israel, and had reached out to F.W. Pollack, the Israeli Trade Commissioner and Honorary Consul in Bombay who generously provided brochures and other detail about them. Aided by a couple of work smiths, Bauji then proceeded to build some on his own. Soon various kinds of solar cookers started taking shape on the farm. By the 1970s, heat captured from the sun during the day was also being used for supplying hot water to the bathrooms.
In what was perhaps the most amazing achievement of all, Bauji's farm even managed to modify a refrigerator to run using the fuel supplied by the gobar gas plant. While it operated on the established principle of vapor absorption technology that does not require a compressor, the innovation lay in its use of heat from the burning of the farm-supplied fuel to separate the refrigerant out of the absorbent medium. I often wonder if it was the only refrigerator in existence on the entire planet, that ran on gobar gas.
Across all these accomplishments, the most admirable element was this: They were supervised by persons with no formal degrees in engineering, and carried out largely with the help of nearly illiterate worksmiths and farm labour.
Soldier of tradition
The rural part of the Punjab that Raizada Jagannath Bali hailed from was noted for the generosity of many of its people- a trait that finds a fleeting mention even in the 1850s work Risala-i-Saheb Numa by Ganesh Das Wadhera, in chronicling the history of the province. Born and brought up in that countryside, Bauji's large-heartedness indeed helped justify the reputation. The desire to spread goodness went hand in hand with the caution to not deprive others of it - and his preference for artesian wells instead of tube wells exemplified that mindset. Working on the principle of positive pressure in the aquifers, artesian wells disburse water out on to the land as though it were an excess. In contrast, tube wells extract them by suction, as though being taken from an earth that stands deprived in the process. He would readily spare irrigation water to neighbouring farms for free, insisting that the could never charge for blessings that came freely to him from nature. The enthusiasm for solar cookers blended well into his generosity, serving visitors with meals cooked on solar heat became a joyous habit to him. The blessings of staying on a farm never failed to reflect on the elaborate spread laid out for guests, including fish freshly caught from the farm ponds. For its part, the article on him in The Guardian in 1973 noted with surprise that "the splendid curry lunch served by Bali" did not reflect "the meanness that Punjabis are known for"- perhaps underlining how vastly stereotypes can differ based on the subjectivity of the observers.
The switch from mechanized to Bauji's farms offered an excellent laboratory for the neighbouring Pantnagar University to compare various approaches to agriculture. Visiting experts not only recorded a 30% higher cropping density by his farming methods versus that provided by the typical mechanized, they were startled to see much higher yields (2 tons per acre of wheat, 40 tons per acre of sugarcane) than they'd ever imagined possible with traditional farming. Word spread, and Raizada Jagannath Bali became a sought-after advisor by local and central administration on matters related to agriculture. He was made a member of the managing board of the Pantnagar University, and invited to address conferences on agriculture.
In those decades, high milk yields that were synonymous with imported cattle, a notion Bauji thoroughly disagreed with. He saw cattle breeds as best suited to the climatic conditions they originated from, especially over the long term- and was convinced that the lower yields being seen from Indian breeds were just reflective of inadequate care and nutrition. So amidst all the other work and experiments on the farm, a determined effort got underway on selective breeding of Indian varieties. Many wild and stray cattle were domesticated, and a continuous effort was made on improving the best stock. Not before long, with a set derived from the Tharparker cow breed, he was able to obtain milk yields that were 15 times the national average. Maximizing milk yields in India often involves the cows getting subjected to stressful conditions and unnecessary hormone injections, but on Bali farms, their treatment was very different. The devoted care provided to the cattle was such that as per one magazine article, cows that had been known to be barren, started producing milk upon being included in his farm. A staunch Hindu, one of the earliest acts Bauji would do after getting up at 4AM daily was to go for a "darshan" of the cows in his stables. The affection and caring doled out to them was reciprocated; the would typically deliver over 300 litres of surplus milk to sell on a daily basis, after the farm workers had taken all that they needed from the yield. Bauji had laid down a rule pertaining to this- those who tended to the cows were accorded the first right to the milk yield. His own turn came afterwards.
Volunteers from abroad
Showcasing the potential of any agricultural techniques to be very productive and sustainable at the same time is no small achievement for any era. Yet, barring sporadic articles in magazines and newspapers, most of urban India, with its gaze firmly fixed westward for scientific progress, unfortunately failed to take notice of these exemplary feats occurring in their own countryside. It was clearly not where they were conditioned to look for scientific innovation. Ironically, word that had continued to spread in academic circles, soon went well beyond India's borders. Students from places as far as the US, UK and Australia came to volunteer on Bali Farm. Most were passionate exponents of ecological conservation, and learned individuals who had been associated with institutions like UC Berkeley. They readily put in immense effort during their stay and some went on to become life-long disciples of the man whose vision and practice had drawn them there, and upon leaving carried the same spirit of altruistic service forward into the next phase of their respective lives.
Political outlook
Raizada JN Bali was by no means a "Gandhian", even though many of the technologies and methods he followed have come to acquire that label in India. Like many others who had paid a heavy personal price at the partition, he was not even a fan of Gandhi's politics or that of the Congress party- and had his reasons for that. The Nehruvian mindset had seemingly all too often equated traditional methods with inefficiency and laziness, whereas Bauji completely disagreed with that view- and of course was able to prove his point well with rich harvests achieved via indigenous methods.
Nehru's thinking drew very little inspiration from indigenous traditions, and his loathing of Hinduism in particular was extreme enough to echo characteristics of Selbsthass. Yet, ironically, when his Soviet-style policies failed to make a big dent into poverty or make the economy grow beyond a snail's pace, a condescending term "Hindu rate of growth" was coined, as though to pass up all responsibility for the slow progress to the supposedly "Hindu" traits of excessive belief in destiny and inadequate desire to improve. It was a mindset completely opposite to Raizada JN Bali's approach which was defined by staunch self-belief, respect for indigenous tradition and working with utmost enthusiasm. "Incredible to witness his passion he puts into his work even at his age" is how a journalist described it, when Bauji was eighty years old.
Raizada Jagannath Bali's generosity, his wealth of information and his success earned much respect from the populace among whom he lived, and not surprisingly, many politicians got in touch with him. A close friendship developed between him and Chaudhary Charan Singh- and it was strengthened by a common perspective on a few things. Charan Singh had been a member of the Congress party earlier, but his staunch opposition to Nehru's economic policies eventually saw him break away to form a separate political group in 1967 that was closely associated with farmers' causes.
However, the close friendship between the two, after having lasted many years, was to meet an abrupt end one evening in Delhi. Forty years later, Raizada JN Bali's grandson Deepak Bali still remembers the incident well: "It had been like any other of their many meetings. After the meeting had concluded, Charan Singh, while escorting us out through a passage in his official bungalow, happened to make a very objectionable remark against Hindus- despite being one himself. Bauji never saw him again or took any of his phone calls after that- despite Charan Singh's numerous attempts to patch up, and despite his going on to become Deputy Prime Minister of the country not too long afterwards." Some things were non-negotiable to Bauji. Over the course of an eventful life, he had seen his Hindu culture suffer enough assaults that he firmly believed were not just needless and unfair but also detrimental to the country's interests. By his old age, he become completely unwilling to accept that any more.
Raizada Jagannath Bali passed away in the April of 1984. But for a brief illness that had rendered him unconscious towards the end, he had maintained remarkably good health into his late years. It was as though the sharp memory, brisk agility, and the undiminished eyesight he had maintained all along had a final symbolic message to offer to the society he was leaving behind. Each of those traits are usually known to diminish to varying degrees with age. If only, by way of the exceptions they proved in his case, they could respectively inspire us to remember all that's worth conserving in tradition, to always retain enthusiasm for work, and to be able to see the future with the same clarity as he did.