← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Songs of Love and Loss
00:28:38
The traditional sad songs of Portugal have become sadder still as the government in --...
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Hello from the.
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From our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting House in London, you've downloaded the latest edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today there's praise for the Indian authorities, but also criticism they managed to avert one disaster, but could they have done more to prevent another one from happening? We hear songs of love and loss in Portugal as the country prepares for another year of savage cuts. There's anger and argument, close to one of the most breathtaking views in the Caribbean and a boost for the economy in southern Italy as foreigners jet in to buy homes described as hovels built for the poor. The government of India's Madhya Pradesh state yesterday launched an investigation into the temple stampede which killed more than a hundred people at a crowded bridge over the River Sindh on Sunday. It's not the first time an incident like this has happened at a religious festival in India and the inquiry will look at suggestions the event was poorly handled, the security inadequate, but it comes as the authorities in another state, Odisha, formerly known as Avrisa, have been enjoying some rare praise. The precautions they took are said to have prevented mass casualties in the huge cyclone that swept the region at the weekend. Our man Andrew north was in the middle of the storm when it came ashore and has been reflecting on what these two contrasting events tell us about India today.
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We only just made it in time. The streets were starting to flood. Many were already blocked by fallen trees and power lines, forcing us to turn round several times before we found a way into the town where we were to spend the night. It was the evening India's most powerful cyclone for years. The was due to hit land from the Bay of Bengal. And just as we got inside our hotel, it came in at full force. Verse 1 Then all the lobby windows exploded inwards, glass shattering onto the stone floor. The rain followed. Soon the reception was awash. The rooms next as water cascaded down the corridors from outside. There was a deafening roar punctuated by sharp bangs as the wind flung debris against the hotel. The next day, veterans of past Bay of Bengal storms told me this was the most powerful they'd ever experienced. And by the next morning, Cyclone Pylon had left a swathe of destruction, flattening many coastal villages and destroying farmland and shrimp fisheries. Yet despite that, it was soon clear this was not the catastrophe many had predicted. The last big cyclone killed more than 10,000 people. This time, fewer than 30 perished. To put that in perspective, that many people die on India's roads in any two hour period. The reason was simple. The state government had learned the lessons of past cyclones and acted early and decisively to evacuate tens of thousands of people. The central government had deployed extra military units and relief supplies had been stockpiled. Usually derided for corruption, incompetence and callousness in India's authorities have been basking in some rare praise. So Cyclone Pylon has now become a good news story. But some politicians who didn't play much part in it have also been trying to claim credit. Elections are not far away. It's been a sign too of how much the country has changed since the last cyclone disaster 14 years ago. Even in poorer states like this one, far more Indians have mobile phones now and access to television. So people themselves help spread the cyclone alert just as much as the authorities. This doesn't mean though, that people suddenly think they can rely on the government for assistance or rescue. While the emergency services were doing plenty of work clearing trees and fixing power lines, in many places, men and women were getting the job done themselves. Being adaptable, resilient and self sufficient is a part of being Indian. The day after the cyclone, I watched a street of shopkeepers carefully setting up their wares, unperturbed by the broken branches and store signs hanging above them. Business is business. But it didn't take long for this more hopeful narrative to be dented. Even as we were reporting on the government's success in minimizing a natural disaster, our mobiles were bringing news of a man made tragedy. In another state where the authorities were accused of direct responsibility. There had been a deadly stampede at an annual Hindu festival just south of Delhi in the state of Madhya Pradesh. The authorities there have also had plenty of past history to learn from. Scores of people were killed in a similar crush at the very same gathering a few years ago. The Durga Puja always attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims. Yet when there was a panic on a bridge packed with the faithful, a host of eyewitnesses say the police panicked too. With little training in crowd control, they reacted to type by laying into people with batons, only intensifying the stampede. Many people drowned in the river below, including dozens of children thrown over by their parents in a desperate effort to save them. Indians have long been deeply cynical about those who govern them. And the apparently unsocial attitude towards corruption of the Congress Party led administration has has further sharpened the mood. It's an old issue, but many see dysfunctional government as the biggest drag on the country's prospects. And it's bound to be an election issue next year. The message of the last few days, though, as one of India's best known journalists, Barkha Dutt, said, is that sometimes the system can work. But expectations remain low, and many Indians believe that fate is the most decisive force in their lives. While the Indian media was voicing outrage at the festival horror, the pilgrims themselves were already moving on. The very next day, crowds of them were thronging that same bridge where more than a hundred people had died, and they were dancing as if nothing had happened.
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And that's Andrew north, now back at his base in Delhi. The government in Portugal this week announced further savage cuts in spending in its draft budget for next year. Pensioners are likely to feel the squeeze. Civil servants, too, they face wage cuts of up to 12%. The centre right government in Lisbon is clearly determined to pay off the billions it has had to borrow. But it faces opposition. The Common Front, an umbrella group which includes more than 30 trade unions representing government workers, yesterday announced its members would walk out on strike on November 8th. The tough measures already in place have caused considerable hardship. Many people have made the decision to leave the country to try to rebuild their lives abroad. Andrew Hoskyn has been to Portugal to see whether austerity is working or merely hurting.
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Sat quietly in the corner of the restaurant in central Lisbon was a woman in her early 60s, I would say, with her hair in a bun and with a black shawl cast over her shoulders. I spotted her shortly after I arrived because she bore a striking resemblance to an old maths teacher of mine and even seemed to have that same glance of faintly amused contempt I detected when she would hand me back my algebra homework. Then, as the guitarist started playing, she raised herself slowly from her table and sang with such heart rending passion and with such vocal range, I had to put down my knife and fork and listen. This wasn't background music. This was a performance worthy of full attention. Let the Fish go cold In Portugal, it's not hard to find a restaurant with a singer of fardo or fado, as the Portuguese call their famous traditional singing. The songs have gloomy themes of tragic loss, unrequited love and doomed love affairs, and all infuse with longing, melancholia and above all, a sense of fatefulness. In fact, fado comes from the Latin fatum, or fate. Jobs, money and hope are in short supply, but there's plenty of fatalism of people accepting their fate or submitting to the deep economic malaise which has engulfed their lives. Along with the severe austerity measures used to combat is also different from January 1, 2002, when I stood among the huge crowds gathered in the famous square Prasado Comercio in Lisbon to celebrate the introduction of the euro. Having rid myself of my last escudos on a drink in a local divarner, I queued up shortly after midnight in front of a cash point in the main thoroughfare of the Rua Augusta for my first euros. After decades encompassing economic instability, the odd coup and revolution, it felt that Portugal, by embracing the single currency, had become a full grown up member of the European club. But even on the night, as the sparks of the last fireworks fell over the square, it all felt like a leap in the dark. And I believe that most people sensed that then. Even in those euphoric days, though, people would have thought you were crazy if you had forecast the emergence of a different kind of Europe altogether, one in which 4% of the Portuguese would end up surviving on the fare provided by their local food bank or Banco Alimentar. Of course, we'd all like to be wise before the event rather than after it. Anyway, it wasn't joining the euro that bankrupted Portugal, but it did leave it more vulnerable to the 2007 financial crisis and with fewer options to handle it. In 2011, its bailout by the IMF and EU of 78 billion billion euros amounted to almost two thirds of its annual budget. In response, the Centre Right Social Democratic led coalition of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho has held a fire sale of a kind in the past two years, shedding public sector jobs all four public holidays, cutting pensions, including those of widows only last week, while raising retirement age and actually exceeding the austerity targets set by the so called troika and of eu, IMF and European Central Bank. It means nothing to me or my family to be the teacher's pet of the troika, one mother told me. All I know is that the government robs us of our money and gives it to whom we know not and for what we know not either, and that our government is actually encouraging people to leave. With youth unemployment running at more than 40%, it's hardly surprising that there's been an exodus of hundreds of thousands of young Portuguese people, often to the country's former colonies like Mozambique and Brazil. The only upside of the crisis has been increased exports due to falling wages and costs that have helped make goods cheaper. But ironically, the much trumpeted 1.1% in growth of the last financial quarter is being attributed to the rejection by the country's Constitutional Court of some of the government's proposed cuts, Some economists are arguing the court ruling left much needed money in the economy and caused the modest spike in growth. Troika's teachers pet or not, Portugal still faces a huge task ahead to regain access to the international debt markets, allowing it to raise funds through bonds to pay the bills. So far, the protests against austerity have lacked the violence and political extremism seen in Greece. Fatalism at work Perhaps the fatalism you can hear in the songs, or simply the quiet despair of the powerless.
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Andrew Hoskin in Lisbon now it's been postponed three times, but next week, finally, the people of Madagascar get to vote in a general election. It's the first one on this huge island off the east coast of Africa since a coup there more than four years ago. And those four years have not been kind to the island. Foreign investments ground to a halt, the economy has nosedived. Poverty has become widespread. And that inevitably has had a knock on effect on education money for schools and for teachers. Pay has dried up. But now, as Emeli Filew has been finding out, people are hoping that a new administration might just mean a new start for education in Madagascar.
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The air is abuzz with excitement. Amaravoit Primary School in the village of Mantjaccarin. The new school year starts in a week, and Jean Marc, the president of the school committee, wants everything to be ship shape. We want to make a good first impression on new students, he says. Over the holidays, pupils, parents and teachers have scrubbed, swept, repaired and landscaped every last corner, and the school looks immaculate. They are especially proud of two new classrooms, which they helped build in 2011 with UNICEF funds. They're bright, with tall ceilings and a special insulating roof that keeps the beating sun at bay and muffles the roar of the tropical rain. Mantecadrina is located in Madagascar's central highlands, the country's breadbasket and an area famed for its pastoral beauty. But the pretty terrace, fields, carts pulled by the local cattle, the zebus and farmers in signature straw hats hide a hard hand to mouth existence. Since a coup in February 2009, poverty has increased steadily and hardship is commonplace. At Maro Voitre, Jean Marc shows me a neat pile of manioc on the floor of one of the classrooms. It's for the school canteen, he explains. The canteen is a lifeline for poor households, and to keep costs down, the school has decided to grow its ingredients rather than buy them. Across the country, the crisis has had a devastating impact on education. Before that, the education system was about to go through a much needed reform. Since Then it's ground to a halt. And with decreasing resources and a sustained population growth, state schools are failing. Stephen Lauverier, the UNICEF representative in Madagascar, says what saved the system from collapsing completely are grants from Norway, the Global Partnership for Education, and the European Union, which help pay teachers and provide school kits. With the freeze on teacher recruitment, schools have relied increasingly on community teachers, also called FRAM teachers. Community teachers were introduced in the late 1980s as a temporary measure to boost access to education. They had relatively low levels of education and no teacher training, but they hailed from the village where they taught, and they were paid by the parents, not the state. The trouble is that FRAM teachers now make up two thirds of all teaching staff in Madagascar, and with increasing levels of poverty, parents are struggling to pay them. As a result, there are now one and a half million children out of school, half a million more than before the coup in Marovojt. The amount FRAM teachers receive has fallen by half over the last couple of years, and they now earn a fraction of what state teachers do. People here do not have a regular income, so sometimes they cannot give anything at all, says Janet, a mother of five and the president of the FRAM Association. She herself is finding it hard to keep up with FRAM contributions. I will try to keep the children in education until high school, but if I cannot afford it, we will have to stop, she says. Understandably, FRAM teachers are pretty demoralized. We can't back down. Daniel on Vu Marovoit's FRAM teachers tell me we've accepted this job. Janet says that parents contributions will sometimes come in kind. Rice, chicken, vegetables, anything they can give. But not all teachers are as forbearing as Daniel Anvuh. In many schools, FRAM teachers have simply packed their bags and left to work elsewhere. Education quality is low, too. The curriculum is supposed to be taught in French, but few teachers actually speak the language. Teaching is therefore an unhappy combination of spoken Malgash and poorly written French. Switching the primary curriculum to Malgash was part of the reform plan, and the teachers in Maruvojtre are keen for this to happen. We don't have any teaching material in Malgash, says Jean Marc. We waving at a chart of the human body and a few world maps in French. We're between languages, but it should be either or. The presidential elections on 25 October could signal the beginning of a new chapter for Madagascar with the return of donors and the resumption of government reforms. Maro Voit, like most other primary schools in the country, will serve as a polling station. Lauvrier says that he hopes education will become a priority. Countries that chose to invest in education are now reaping the returns. It's laying the foundations of the future,
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and that's Emily Filew in Madagascar. But while that island's in the economic doldrums, there's another in the Caribbean seeing something of a building boom. Foreign investors, mainly Americans, are pumping around a billion pounds into converting virgin land on St. Kitts into upmarket homes and resorts. For centuries, this was a place which relied on a sugar industry, which eventually became uneconomic and collapsed eight years ago. Today, foreign visitors provide most of the island's income. The government and those developing the land say they're providing much needed jobs for local people. But Orin Gordon says some islanders accuse them of selling off their heritage.
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As we began our hike on the deceptively gentle first part of the trail, o', Neil, my guide made the off hand observation that the trail used to start in another place. He pointed through an opening in the vegetation to some new buildings on the hill in the distance. The land has been sold, he told me. A developer was building expensive homes and resorts on the site, so the new starting point of the trail was where we now stood. O' Neill is in his 60s, but he clambers up the slippery rocks and navigates the tangled undergrowth with the vigor and fitness of a man half his age. He was kind to me, letting me rest and gulp water with increasing frequency as the ascent of the dormant volcano became steeper, more treacherous and much, much harder. O' Neill is the complete guide, part historian, part botanist. But when it came to the politics of the land sale, he didn't say much. In small Caribbean islands like St. Kitts, where everyone knows each other, the politics can be intensely tribal. Keeping one's counsel, especially in front of a journalist, is the wise thing to do. The longer I stayed in St. Kitts, the more I realized what a politically charged issue the sale of land to developers was. One senior minister, Timothy Harris, fell out with the government and left. His departure means that new elections have to be held. Mr. Harris List of disagreements with the prime Minister, Denzel Douglas, is long, but the sale of land to foreigners is one of them. A few days after my hike, I stood on the building site where the trail used to start. It's all activity, and teams of builders compete for space and sound with heavy earth moving equipment. Private bungalows have already been built. A smart new restaurant nears completion. When it's ready, diners will have A front view of three other islands in the Caribbean Sea on a clear day and a back view of the dormant volcano. It's a magnificent panorama. I can see why it would be attractive to an investor, in this case from Arizona. The man running the show is Val, a Caribbean local, and he speaks with great passion about creating jobs, opportunity and a unique product, including a golf course that has plants that you can actually harvest for food. Edible golf, as he calls it. The struggle between the benefits of overseas investment and hanging on to a local sense of ownership of the land they call home and dominates discussion in St Kitts. One resident wondered aloud as he pointed to another big development elsewhere on the island whether the smart homes being built there would become part of a gated community and whether locals would no longer have pass through access to the beaches nearby. The development, Christoph harbor, is being built by another American concern. The view here takes the breath away. To one side of the peninsula you look onto the Caribbean. On the other, there's the rough Atlantic. Straight in front of you is the mountainous volcanic frame of the island of Nevis, its summit seemingly poking into the clouds. I've been everywhere in the Caribbean as a reporter and I'd struggle to think of a more beautiful view than this. I'm with David, the sales manager. An American doctor bought the plot of land we're standing on for US$2 million. Some houses have already been built, as has an upscale restaurant. A global hotel chain is to build a five star resort. David is keen to emphasize the local benefits. Jobs, development, more money for the community. So what about the question of a gated enclave? The through road that gives locals access will not be gated, he assured me. The office of the Prime Minister, Denzel Douglas has the air of a campaign headquarters. When I called with people clad in the red of his Labour Party busy about their tasks, he was clearly getting ready for battle. I put concerns to him about land. Our people will understand, he told me. We are creating more opportunity. We're not destroying anything. He told me that he would never allow developers to restrict local access to lands that people traditionally regard as theirs. He insisted that the relocation of the start of the hiking trail was done for their safety. Tumbling profits meant that St Kitts had to shut down its centuries old sugar industry eight years ago. Thousands of jobs and millions in income were lost. The islanders have little choice now, it seems, but to play the remaining cards they had been dealt. In this case, land with views to die for. The government's challenge and the one they're going to be judged on in time is whether the locals feel part of the boom that's going on around them.
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Orin Gordon in St. Kitts in southern Italy, they're restoring old homes rather than building new ones. Once, the wealthier northern European sun seekers bought houses mainly in Tuscany and greater Chiantishire. But today they're exploring the delights of Puglia in the far south of the country. And it isn't the rustic villa or rambling former farmhouse which has caught their imagination. Danny Mitzman's been discovering the new property of choice as the oddly shaped Trollo, once the home of the peas.
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Contadino Trulli are the trademark of Puglia, existing nowhere but the valley of Ytria. Round limestone buildings with conical roofs, they're as magical as they are historical. Dotted across the landscape, alone or in clusters with one cone or even a dozen, they look like miniature rustic fairy tale castles. Asterix meets Disney. Originally nothing more than farmers sheds used to store equipment or animals. The structures made with the same dry stone technique as the low walls that demarcate the olive groves. No cement, just local limestone cut into large heavy slabs called chiancarelle, carefully positioned to make the perfect watertight structure. It's said back in the 1600s, when there was a tax on new buildings, the locals built trulli so they could be dismantled when the inspectors came and rebuilt after they'd gone in between viewings. Estate agent Alessandro Melpignano tells us enthusiastically about the Trullo revival. They became trendy holiday homes when the Trulli of Alberobello became a UNESCO World heritage site in 1996. That's when the market really exploded, he explains. The first to buy were the Germans, who soon got fed up with break ins. The British were hot on their heels, but they've stayed, says Alessandro, and they're still buying. Low cost flights to Bari and Brindisi have helped keep them coming. Trulli need renovating Every hundred to 150 years. It takes around a month to rebuild a cone and costs the equivalent of some £12,000. Do they have experts who renovate and rebuild Trulli? Oh, yes, grins Alessandro. They're called Trullari and I know a master Trullaro. The next morning, I go in search of Giovanni Derico and find him, unsurprisingly, building a trullo. If anybody ever looked the part, it's Giovanni, who bears an uncanny resemblance to a hobbit. He tells me he's always been passionate about Trulli, but when he was young, nobody cared about them. They were mostly abandoned ruins. People saw them as hovels for the poor. Giovanni shows me the centuries old technique still used to build the perfect circular cone, a piece of string attached to a central pole. I became a Trullaro about 20 years ago. Before that I was a tiler. When I began, there was just one trullaro left in this area. It was a dying trade. Now there are loads of us. I wonder if Giovanni thinks tourists are mad for falling in love with old farmers sheds. On the contrary, he says he's supremely grateful. They gave us work and a bit of well being. They brought our abandoned land back to life, even if it slowed down. With the recession and heavy taxes on homeowners, our profession's still growing. I don't make a fortune, but I do love my job. It's a beautiful thing that everyone wants a trullo. The problem is, laments Giuseppe Mikolis, another master trullaro specialising in historic trulli, that anyone can set himself up as a trullaro without any formal training or qualification. Giuseppe, who comes from a long line of trullari, was born into the profession at the age of three. I used to play with the stones. At 14 I started working. Giuseppe considers his trade an art and a passion, but it's tinged with disappointment and frustration. It's not just the unskilled, self styled trullari. It's the people who build illegally, without respecting our landscape. Nevertheless, Giuseppe's determined to preserve his beloved traditional craft. He's begun taking school children on walks, visiting historic trulli and explaining and demonstrating how they're built. I'm hoping to inspire local kids to develop the passion my family passed on to me. I'm going to organise walks for tourists too, he says. Why don't you come back for one? My eyes light up when Danny Mitzman
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in Puglia, a land of olive groves, rich red earth and those ubiquitous trulli. And that's it. I'm here again with more from correspondence far and wide on Saturday morning at half past eleven. Why don't you join us? Goodbye.