COOKING IN THE DANGER ZONE India Tx Date: BBC4 21st February 2007 10.00.00 Cooking in the Danger Zone Theme Music 10.00.07 Stefan Gates I’m a food writer. I like to think I’m pretty adventurous when it comes to eating. 10.00.13 Music 10.00.19 Stefan Gates But now I’m heading off on a very different kind of adventure. 10.00.22 Music 10.00.24 Stefan Gates To places where food and how it’s made present some of the world’s biggest challenges and threats. 10.00.29 Music 10.00.31 Stefan Gates This time I’m going to be cooking the danger zone. 10.00.34 Title Page Cooking IN THE DANGER ZONE 10.00.37 Music 10.00.38 Graphic Map of India 10.00.45 Music 10.00.47 Stefan Gates One sixth of the entire population of the world lives here in India; a country whose economy will rival America’s within thirty years. India’s most important cultural export is food, so it’s a shock to learn that half of all the world’s hungry people live here. 10.01.04 Stefan Gates What’s even more shocking is the reason why they’re kept hungry. 10.01.08 Stefan Gates India has as strict caste system; the lowest of the low are know as the Dalits or untouchables. We are heading into Bihar in Northern Indian, one of the poorest states, where the caste system is at its most rigid. 10.01.20 Stefan Gates We’re just about to arrive in a rural village called Paria and it’s in places like this where discrimination against the Dalit seems to be strongest. 10.01.31 Music 10.01.35 Stefan Gates Officially, India banned caste discrimination in nineteen fifty but in rural areas it’s still going strong. And nothing shows the reality of caste prejudice better than food. 10.01.45 Music 10.01.48 Stefan Gates Traditionally, Dalits have to use separate utensils when they eat and they are not even allowed to touch the plates and cups of a higher caste person and they’re forbidden from using the same wells because the upper caste see the Dalit as ‘contaminated’. 10.02.01 Music 10.02.03 Stefan Gates In the villages the Dalits do the jobs that nobody else wants to. 10.02.06 Music 10.02.11 Stefan Gates This is Indu. She’s going to show us how to make dung cakes. Dung cakes are animal dung mixed with a bit of straw. Now they’re incredibly important to people around here for food because they’re the main source of fuel for cooking. 10.02.26 Stefan Gates Can I carry that for you? I think it would be better that way. 10.02.36 Stefan Gates The cakes are made from fresh buffalo dung collected from the fields. 10.02.41 Stefan Gates Can I try and make some? Yeah. Ok. I think I’d better take my watch off for this one. You mix it with water first, yeah? 10.02.59 Stefan Gates This is quite grim. 10.03.03 Stefan Gates Dung cakes have been used for centuries in this area and even today they account for over a fifth of all rural energy use in India. 10.03.13 Stefan Gates So you’ve got to flatten them out. 10.03.20 Stefan Gates Take it off again? Show me, show me again, show me again. 10.03.29 Stefan Gates Oh no!! I’ll piece it together. 10.03.28 Producer How do you feel? 10.03.39 Stefan Gates I feel stinky frankly, but I’m quite chuffed about that. 10.03.43 Music 10.03.47 Stefan Gates The Dalits of Paria have lived here for centuries but few of them ever manage to escape the caste system. Here, it’s so rigid it’s almost impossible for them to own land, most have to survive by working for local landlords from higher castes. 10.04.01 Music 10.04.04 Stefan Gates Anshuman, a Dalit from the village invited us to share his breakfast. 10.04.09 Stefan Gates What is this? 10.04.12 Anshuman Subtitles It’s the water from the boiled rice. We use it instead of curry. We have it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 10.04.25 Stefan Gates Rice with rice sauce is all that Anshuman’s family can get at the moment. They’re even paid for their work in rice and it’s barely enough to survive. 10.04.36 Stefan Gates After breakfast Anshuman took us to the fields where he and his family work. It’s harvest time, so the whole village cuts rice for the landowners. 10.04.43 Music 10.04.47 Stefan Gates Can I borrow your knife and try? I want to see how…gosh that’s a knife. Wow! 10.04.52 Music 10.04.55 Stefan Gates Anshuman and his entire family work from eight until six every day, seven days a week. The children never go to school because they’re needed in the fields too. 10.05.03 Music 10.05.05 Stefan Gates That’s real backbreaking work, isn’t it? It’s so uncomfortable doing it. I don’t think I could, I could keep this up. I guess if you have to, you just do, don’t you? 10.05.22 Music 10.05.25 Stefan Gates It’s the final rice harvest of the year and there’s rice for the family at the moment but it may not last for long. 10.05.32 Stefan Gates Do you think the landowner would know if you, if you stole a bit of extra rice? 10.05.35 Anshuman Subtitles Yes, the villagers would tell him that I had stolen the rice. 10.05.41 Stefan Gates What, complain about you because you stole some? Why would they do that? 10.05.47 Anshuman Subtitles They want to keep us in our place. They don’t want us to be equal to them. 10.05.58 Stefan Gates See I’d just be tempted to nick loads, come out at night, nick a load of rice. But that’s my, my feckless western attitude to it, I guess. It’s mind-numbingly boring and difficult. You can’t think about anything else. All you can think about grabbing the next hunk of rice 10.06.18 Applause 10.06.20 Stefan Gates I got an undeserved round of applause. I was hot and tired and I’d only cut one row. 10.06.27 Stefan Gates I’ll start the next field. OK. Ha ha ha. It’s hard work, isn’t it? Tough work. I’ve done that row. It’s taken me what? An hour? Blimey. 10.06.45 Stefan Gates Mina and the others had another seven hours more work just to earn enough food for the day. 10.06.59 Stefan Gates This is what rice looks like when, after it’s been harvested. It’s, it’s lots of little grains at the top of these long pieces of grass. And you have to whack it on a stone to get all of the, all the pieces off. It looks like quite hard work, I’m gonna give it a try. 10.07.23 Stefan Gates Around here rice provides eighty percent of all calories and the farming of it provides the main income and employment for more than fifty million families. 10.07.32 Stefan Gates I can’t seem to get them all off. Hard work isn’t it doing a whole field’s worth? 10.07.42 Woman Subtitles We cut it like this and then it dries in the sun and only then can we eat it. 10.07.47 Stefan Gates There are three harvests a year between which she gets nothing. By keeping the villagers on the verge of starvation the landowners maintain total control over them. 10.07.56 Woman Subtitles We don’t get money. We just get rice. They feed themselves. They let us starve. 10.08.06 Stefan Gates So, how do you survive? How do you buy anything? 10.08.10 Woman Subtitles When we earn, we eat. When we don’t earn, we don’t eat. 10.08.17 Stefan Gates The Dalits are at the bottom of India’s caste system. And on the bottom rung of the Dalits are the Musahars. Musahar translates as rat eater. 10.08.28 Stefan Gates What’s he doing? 10.08.29 Translator Trying to catch a rat. 10.08.30 Stefan Gates Oh they are. He’s got one. 10.08.36 Stefan Gates The Musahars are skilled in hunting out rats that eat the crops. The landowners reward the Musahars for this service by letting them keep the rats. 10.08.51 Stefan Gates Ow, that looked quite painful. Did you just break its neck? 10.08.59 Stefan Gates Do they taste good? 10.09.02 Rat catcher Subtitle Yes. 10.09.07 Stefan Gates Wouldn’t feed that many people. 10.09.18 Stefan Gates They call them rats, they’re the size of little mice really and they’ve burnt the skin off in a fire and then gutted them. And they’re just roasting them on, straight on the twigs. 10.09.34 Stefan Gates When rat is the only meat available, it seems obvious that you’d eat it. At least these were fresh from the field rather than from a sewer. 10.09.43 Stefan Gates Quite a gruesome sight, isn’t it? 10.09.46 Stefan Gates It was too late to back out now. 10.09.49 Rat catcher Subtitle Let him have it. 10.09.50 Stefan Gates Is that for me to try? Which is a, which is a good bit to try? The leg? The leg. 10.10.06 Stefan Gates It’s really nice, isn’t it? It’s like, it’s like roast chicken. It’s good. Excellent. Thank you. Thanks little guy. 10.10.21 Stefan Gates Because of their extreme poverty, rat is often the only form of protein the Musahars get to eat. 10.10.27 Music 10.10.33 Stefan Gates As if extreme poverty wasn’t enough, the Dalits also live in fear of being killed in an ongoing caste conflict. A secretive upper caste army, funded by the landowners, is fighting an armed communist group and many of these villagers are caught in the middle. 10.10.48 Music 10.10.53 Stefan Gates We’ve been trying for a few days now to meet some members of the Ranveer Sena. They’re funded by the rich landowners and they fight against the interests of the Dalit. Highly secretive organisation, so we’ve been put off for days and days and finally we’ve had a breakthrough and there’s somebody who’s agreed to meet us who thinks that he can lead us to some members of the army. 10.11.15 Music 10.11.18 Stefan Gates This is a risky journey. The landowners’ army had agreed to meet us at a secret location but this part of rural Bihar is effectively lawless and these roads are renowned for ambushes by bandits. 10.11.29 Music 10.11.32 Stefan Gates As darkness fell and we approached our meeting point a group of armed figures emerged. 10.11.37 Music 10.11.43 Stefan Gates There’s about ten members of the army all with kind of rather aging guns, they’re not wearing uniform, they’re just in whatever clothes they’re wearing, they’ve all covered their faces obviously because they don’t want to be identified. 10.12.02 Stefan Gates It seems extraordinary that, that you’d have an army that’s, that’s pushed into battle because of food but the Dalit, the people right at the bottom of the heap as it were are, are starving. They have no other opportunities so they’ve, they’ve taken up arms and so you get a reaction and this is what the Ranveer Sena is, it’s, it’s a reaction against people who are fighting for food. 10.12.27 Stefan Gates The group stopped to show off their guns and I grabbed the chance to speak to the local commander. 10.12.32 Commander Subtitles We’ve been involved in many attacks against left-wing groups. If someone destroys my farm, can I not hit him, abuse him out of rage? They graze their cattle on our land and steal our grain, then we abuse and beat them. 10.12.57 Stefan Gates If you were a Dalit and you were at the bottom of the pile and you weren’t given enough food to feed your family; do you think that you would fight against, against the rich landowners? 10.13.09 Commander Subtitles Exploitation happens to all classes, not just the poor. 10.13.14 Music 10.13.19 Stefan Gates Well we’ve just finished filming with the Ranveer Sena and we’re on our way to our safe house for the night and we’re doing exactly what we were told not to do and what we tried to avoid and that’s driving at night because this area is known for bandits and ambushes. So, I don’t think we’ve got any choice now, we’ve got to get somewhere safe tonight otherwise we’re stuffed. 10.13.41 Music 10.13.49 Stefan Gates After risking a night drive through bandit country we headed for the regional capital Patna. Most Dalit are too poor even to leave their villages but some have managed to save enough to get out. 10.14.01 Stefan Gates One of the few ways to escape the, the poverty cycle of the caste system is to just leave rural areas and head for the city. A lot of people do this and head for the City of Dreams; Mumbai or as we know it Bombay. So we’ve decided to, to do the same. We were going to fly and then we thought; oh what about a lovely train journey across India? We’ve only just realised that this train journey is going to take twenty- seven hours. 10.14.30 Music 10.14.45 Stefan Gates Twenty-seven hours in this. It’s going to be a long journey. 10.14.54 Stefan Gates We were in air conditioned second class, but as I worked my way down the train I got an idea of quite how hierarchical India is. Three carriages down is second class with no air conditioning where I met Murailel, a polio victim who survives by sweeping the train for tips. He’s lower caste and he’s had first hand experience of caste violence. 10.15.16 Murailel Subtitles My father was a daily wage labourer. We were given a plot of land by the government. The villagers killed my father because of the plot. They belonged to the upper caste, the Brahmans and the Thakurs. 10.15.32 Stefan Gates How did your father actually die? 10.15.34 Murailel Subtitles They smashed in his head, put out his eyes, and his limbs were twisted and broken. Finally he was hung upside down. 10.15.46 Music 10.15.48 Stefan Gates Violent attacks against lower castes are on the increase. As with Murailel’s experience most of these assaults are linked to land disputes. 10.15.59 Stefan Gates Excuse me. Excuse me, can I come through? 10.16.02 Music 10.16.05 Stefan Gates Look at this, this is absolutely cramped. Sorry! 10.16.10 Stefan Gates I continued down the train until I hit third class. This is how most of India travels; every inch of space is taken and there’s little chance of anyone here catching a moments sleep. 10.16.22 Stefan Gates Namestei. Namestei; I’m Stefan. How are you doing? 10.16.26 Stefan Gates Back in the second class carriage, I met Rajesh, a Dalit from Bihar hoping to make a better life for himself in Mumbai. 10.16.33 Rajesh Subtitles I’m going to Mumbai for the first time. I have my people there. There are so many friends. Some of them drive auto rickshaw, some drive trucks, some sell vegetables. If I have some talent, I would like to use it. 10.16.50 Stefan Gates Rajesh is one of hundreds of thousands of rural Indians who migrate to Mumbai every year trying to escape caste discrimination and rural poverty. 10.17.00 Stefan Gates Do you think that hunger and poverty are used as tools to keep the, the lowest caste in their place? 10.17.06 Rajesh Subtitles In villages, this is a big tragedy. People suppress the working class. They make sure that the working class people remain uneducated. They make an effort to stop them from going to school. They want the labour class to remain in the dark. 10.17.27 Stefan Gates Got to be done. How much is that? 10.17.30 Stefan Gates Throughout the journey the stewards bring round food and chai but my fellow travellers had bought their own. 10.17.36 Stefan Gates Oh I’d love to try one. Thank you; that’s very kind. And you reckon it’s very strong, is it? Ah aubergine we call it. 10.17.51 Stefan Gates That’s good isn’t it? Strong isn’t it? Did you make it? 10.17.53 Traveller My mother. 10.17.54 Stefan Gates Your mother made it. She’s a very good cook. 10.18.00 Traveller I thought she was a very bad one! 10.18.09 Stefan Gates Are you supposed to eat these chillies with, with the samosa? What, you just eat it raw? 10.18.20 Guide Slowly, not such a big bite. 10.18.25 Stefan Gates Uffff!! Oh my…! 10.18.34 Music 10.18.52 Stefan Gates I’m sure this is against all health and safety rules but it’s nice hanging out, hanging out the door. And as you go through you just get this sort a world of different smells. Mainly excrement based smells but bizarrely it’s not that unpleasant. 10.19.11 Music 10.19.12 Station announcer 10.19.22 Stefan Gates After thirty-one hours, eight pecoras, three bahjees, and a super hot chilli we finally arrived in Mumbai, India’s most dynamic city. 10.19.34 Music 10.19.43 Stefan Gates Mumbai, home to Bollywood, has a rapidly expanding middle class with money to burn. Expensive property developments and designer shops are everywhere. 10.19.54 Music 10.20.01 Stefan Gates And now fine dining has arrived. 10.20.03 Music 10.20.05 Stefan Gates I headed to Indigo, the most exclusive and expensive restaurant in town, the place where the cities beautiful people like to be seen. 10.20.14 Stefan Gates I visited the kitchen with Indigo’s owner Ravi Anchan to see how they prepare their modern version of an Anglo/Indian classic, chicken tikka. 10.20.23 Stefan Gates Have you ever burnt yourself on the oven? 10.20.27 Ravi translating for chef Probably about once or twice a day. 10.20.31 Stefan Gates This is no ordinary tikka, it’s served on a warm bed of crisp apple with green apple butter sauce. 10.20.38 Stefan Gates Shall we have a little try? 10.20.39 Ravi Anchan Please, go ahead. You’ll burn yourself. 10.20.47 Stefan Gates You’re right I have burnt myself. Very sweet isn’t it? That is fantastic. 10.20.52 Ravi Anchan That’s the apple. 10.20.54 Stefan Gates And the tandoor, it has that, it’s extraordinary, it is such a unique flavour that you get from the clay isn’t it. 10.21.01 Stefan Gates The food certainly is delicious but an evening meal here costs more than the average Indian monthly wage. Back in the cocktail lounge, I wanted to ask Ravi if Mumbai really is the city of dreams. 10.21.15 Stefan Gates Is there still a caste divide in a place like Mumbai? 10.21.18 Ravi Anchan No, the only, the only real class divide like in any cosmopolitan city is money. Caste implies a certain amount of fatalism whereas money doesn’t, you know, everybody has a chance of going after that great pot in the sky, you know and I think that’s, that, that is certainly true of Bombay. 10.21.37 Stefan Gates But the vast majority of people who arrive from Bihar couldn’t possibly afford to eat at Indigo. 10.21.42 Music 10.21.47 Stefan Gates Most Dalits escaping the rural poverty trap end up here. 10.21.50 Music 10.21.54 Stefan Gates Dharavi is the biggest slum in Asia, home to more than six hundred thousand people. Over half of them are Dalits. There’s no running water, one toilet for every eight hundred people and most of them survive on less than a pound a day. 10.22.11 Stefan Gates This place is, it absolutely stinks of human excrement and filth. What’s really terrifying about seeing this is that these people can’t escape, they can’t go and sit somewhere else or, or just take a few moments out of it. 10.22.27 Stefan Gates The majority of people living here have left rural areas hoping to escape caste discrimination and to make their fortune in the city. 10.22.36 Stefan Gates Ramprakash arrived over a year ago and is barely surviving by selling shoes. His tiny rented shack is both a store room and his home. 10.22.45 Stefan Gates Where do you sleep? On top of that? Crikey? 10.22.52 Ramprakash Subtitles I sleep on this. I cook here, and I hang my clothes there. 10.22.58 Stefan Gates There is literally no room in here. I’m, I’m, I’m amazed that somebody can, can survive like this. Is it difficult living in such a small space? 10.23.06 Ramprakash Subtitles It’s very hard, but I have no choice. 10.23.12 Stefan Gates Ramprakash then insisted that we eat some of his biscuits. 10.23.17 Stefan Gates So what are these? 10.23.19 Ramprakash Subtitles These are small boots for children. 10.23.25 Stefan Gates Ah squeaky shoes. I’m going to have to buy some from you for my daughter. My wife’s going to be really irritated for buying some of these. Every step they take they squeak. Thank you very much. 10.23.38 Ramprakash Subtitle Please take them! 10.23.39 Stefan Gates There you go. Behave. Don’t’ worry; take the money. You’re very kind. 10.23.47 Stefan Gates Over half the population of Mumbai live in slums like this, most of them are Dalits and most of them are surviving on a pittance but there are opportunities to escape the cycle of poverty. I went to meet a Dalit who’d done just that. 10.24.01 Music 10.24.05 Stefan Gates This is Ballaral, he is a dabbawalla. You all set? 10.24.14 Stefan Gates Dabbawallas are tiffin carriers. Tiffin is one of these, one of these tins, full of somebody’s lunch. 10.24.21 Music 10.24.23 Stefan Gates Most office workers prefer to eat home cooked food but rather than carrying it to work themselves they can pay someone to do it for them. The dabbawallas will go to their home after they’ve left for work to pick up the lunch that the wife or mother has made and then it’s delivered straight to their desk. 10.24.42 Men on train Subtitles What are you doing here? Get out! 10.24.57 Stefan Gates What’s the problem there; what’s, what’s this guy doing? 10.24.59 Ballaral Subtitles They come in and disturb us. There’s no space in the other compartments, but this is a goods carriage. It’s not for them. 10.25.09 Ballaral and men Subtitles What are you trying to do? That’s food. Don’t step in it. Get up there. Hurry up! 10.25.22 Stefan Gates They won’t be messed around. They’re ordering this guy to go and sit on the luggage rack. 10.25.31 Music 10.25.32 Stefan Gates Ballaral has twenty lunches to deliver before midday. 10.25.37 Stefan Gates How often do you deliver one to the wrong place? 10.25.43 Translator for Ballaral He’s been doing it for twenty years and he’s not made a mistake. 10.25.46 Stefan Gates You’ve never made a mistake!? 10.25.48 Music 10.25.54 Stefan Gates The system of dabbawallas has become integral to Mumbai’s culture and locals take great pride in its efficiency. More than two hundred thousand lunches are delivered every day by an estimated five thousand dabbawallas. Forbes magazine recently claimed that there’s only one error in every six million deliveries. 10.26.12 Music 10.26.14 Stefan Gates It would be unthinkable for Ballaral to do this kind of work in the countryside, where it’s still frowned upon for Dalits to touch the food of higher caste members. 10.26.23 Stefan Gates So what are the people like that you deliver to? 10.26.25 Ballaral Subtitle They are all important people. 10.26.28 Translator Subtitle Do you actually meet them? 10.26.30 Ballaral Subtitles Not in the office, but back at home with their family. 10.26.35 Music 10.26.47 Stefan Gates He earns sixty pounds a week, which allows him to feed his family as well as his parents and his brother’s family. But Ballaral is one of the few Dalits who’ve managed to become a dabbawalla. 10.26.58 Stefan Gates Is there a big divide between the different castes in Mumbai? 10.27.01 Ballaral Subtitles Yes, it’s still there. Some people don’t let us into their home. When we go to get the tiffin, they don’t let us in. Sometimes people even refuse to give us water. 10.27.15 Stefan Gates Do you think your family is, is, is held back by the caste system? Will you, will your children be able to escape from, from the discrimination? 10.27.24 Ballaral Subtitles I have a 10-year-old daughter and an 8-year-old son. By the time they grow up, the caste system may be over. But we might not live long enough to see that. 10.27.41 Music 10.27.42 Stefan Gates Ballaral’s experience shows that in the cities at least caste discrimination is slowly breaking down. 10.27.48 Stefan Gates He’s off to go and catch a train. He’s got to go all the way back now and take all the tiffin boxes back. Bye bye! Take care. Thank you very much. 10.27.57 Stefan Gates But caste is still a massive problem in India. A week after we left thousands of Dalits rioted across the country demanding an end to discrimination. 10.28.06 Music 10.28.13 Stefan Gates This place is, it absolutely stinks of human excrement and, filth. Ohh! 10.28.29 Cameraman Can you help me out?! 10.28.32 Stefan Gates Errrr. Oh no! Oh no! 10.28.46 Cameraman What is this? 10.28.49 Cameraman Ok enough. Enough already. 10.28.51 Stefan Gates You do realise you’re not coming in the car. Credits 10.28.26 bbc.co.uk/thisworld 10.28.27 Reporter STEFAN GATES Original Music NEEL MURGAI Dubbing Mixer NIGEL READ Colourist BOYD NAGLE Online Editor ROD HUTSON Graphic Design LYNN WILSON Production Co-ordinator JENNY JARVIS Programme Assistant DOLLY BURLES Production Manager JANE WILLEY Unit Manager SUSAN CRIGHTON Research JAMES JONES Film Editor MARK COLLINS Executive Producer WILL DAWS Series Producer MARC PERKINS 10.28.55 Filmed & Directed by CHRIS ALCOCK BBC © BBC MMVII 10.28.56 End BBC Cooking in the Danger Zone: India 1 14