[Issue 2024.70]

‘The Transformative Three and the Clean Cooking Revolution (grant no. 437-775)’, Auke Pols

Art © 2024 Cécile Matthey

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The sun sets in a dusty orange haze when our jeep bumps over the dirt road towards the low brick houses of the Bihari village. To anyone else it would have looked like the many villages dotting the North Indian countryside that we passed earlier, by train and by jeep. But when you’re a team of superheroes—determined Grace, silent Vlinder, Vinod sleeping in the back and me, Bram, you know when there’s change in the air.

Well, I know when there’s change in the air: I am the Change Agent. I can’t see the future, but I can feel it when the status quo wears down and opportunities for change unfold like the first leaves of spring. This village is ripe for change.

Aditi and Prisha are waiting for us as the jeep turns off the road onto a grassy field in front of a large, white-plastered house with mint-green window panes speckled with dust. Aditi stands strong in her dark red sari, arms crossed, face stern, lined with years. Prisha is younger, almost hidden behind Aditi’s back, with long black hair and a sari the colour of the vines crawling up the house. She carries a toddler on her hip and looks at us warily, but there’s no mistake. In this village, she is the fulcrum of change.

Grace leaps out of the car and hugs Aditi: she’s worked with her before. Grace’s slim, dark form hardly comes up to Aditi’s nose, and she all but disappears when the Indian woman hugs her back, engulfing her in the red sari.

“Thank the gods you have arrived, Transformative Three!” That’s what Aditi would have said if this were a superhero comic. But Aditi was facing down cops and priests when I still wet my diapers, and there’s no mistake that she’s in charge. The four of us—we haven’t changed our team name since Grace joined—are just here to facilitate. Nevertheless, the women have prepared an Indian welcome: the smells of freshly baked bread and spicy curry drift our way from the other side of the field.

I climb out of the car and greet Aditi and Prisha, keeping a polite distance. So does Vlinder, who makes a Dutch mirror image of Prisha with her modest beige-and-yellow dress, pale skin and long blonde hair. She smiles shyly at the women, then more openly at a bunch of children who have gathered behind a hay cart to stare at the strangers. Some dive behind the cart, some giggle, two brave girls wave back. Tomorrow they will be all over Vlinder. Vinod gets out, stretches and takes in his surroundings with deep contentment, as if he has returned home after a long journey. His dark brown face, hidden behind metal-rimmed glasses and a greying moustache, suggests that he is from one of the southern Indian states. In a different light, however, he might as well be from southern Europe, or northern Africa. “Mm!” he says, rubbing his hands, “do I smell samosas?”

Though he insists it’s not a superpower, Vinod’s sense of smell is infallible. Before we can even start to unpack the car, Aditi and Prisha usher us to a set of folding tables with flowery cloths and set out plates filled with steaming dishes. I keep forgetting their names, except the samosas, fried pastries with onions and potatoes, which elicit excessive praise from Vinod. Even Vlinder’s appetite seems to be returning after the stomach-churning drive: she samples some of the less spicy dishes, with a large serving of bread and bottled water.

“Did you cook this on your new stove?” Grace asks, steering the conversation to the reason for our visit. Aditi turns to Prisha to repeat the question in Hindi. Prisha nods and answers.

“She has one in the kitchen,” Aditi translates. “She’ll show them to you after you’ve had enough.”

“That day may never come,” Grace says, “it’s delicious!” Vinod and I hasten to add our compliments, eliciting a smile from Prisha and the revelation that one of the dishes is an old family recipe. Vlinder tastes in silence, savouring small bites with her eyes closed. Tomorrow she’ll be able to cook all of these dishes, and one of them will taste exactly like how Prisha’s grandmother used to make them. I shiver involuntarily, remembering the time when she made me cry through the simple magic of baking Kapucijner peas with beet syrup and vegan bacon.

There is something timeless about having dinner in an Indian village in the dusky twilight. Still, across the fields and shrublands, I can see why we came here: flat, grey clouds floating low above the horizon. It’s the breath of the thousand-headed dragon that torments these lands, that tears out the lungs of the people, ploughs up the forests and poisons the atmosphere. Were this dragon an actual beast roaming the countryside, the army would have shelled it long ago. Though it’s no less dangerous, it’s a wraith, formless and featureless, manifesting only in the open fires and old stoves that are used for cooking. It is there that we shall tame it.

A shadow clouds my good spirits: as we sit eating here, the evening news will report about deforestation, disease and the growing climate crisis. We do what we can, but sometimes I feel powerless in the face of such massive problems—and I’m supposed to be a hero. Even the thought that we might make a dent in this problem makes me sad: the smell of woodsmoke reminds me of winter evenings with the family at the hearth and campfires in the forest. It is as if the dragon knows that we’re coming for it, and begs for mercy by reminding us of the good times that we had together.

“Can we see the stove?” Grace asks. Encouraged by a nod from Aditi, Prisha invites us into her kitchen. Within the dark, cramped space filled with shelves and pots, still hot and smelling of the evening’s cooking, stands an unremarkable two-pan stove made from red clay. There’s a small opening in front to feed the stove, which Aditi has told us is not very picky: I see wood chips, rice husks and bits of cow dung scattered on the floor. The belly of the stove generates little smoke: a cast-iron pipe leads it out of the house. “I built it myself!” Prisha declares. She shows us the mould and a stack of cast-iron components in a corner. “All my friends are jealous. I’ll build stoves for two of them next week. We can save money for Amit to go to school. Maybe then I can travel and train others to build the stoves as well.” Her eyes light up as she speaks, her reserve forgotten: she will change the world, given half a chance.

As we admire the simple, robust design, I remember that we forgot to unpack the six Fjellstoves from the back of our truck. The Fjellstoves are marvels of design, developed by clever and committed Norwegian engineers. They are hip, efficient and certified according to three different schemes. The team has combined modern high-tech with sustainable alloys, precisely calibrated to minimise CO2 emissions and particulate pollution. The Fjellstoves are doomed. We knew that from the moment we laid eyes on them. Still, we needed Fjellstove’s collaboration—and a little bit of funding—to secure a comparative research grant from the Moresnet Research Council for our project. Not all superheroes can be millionaires, or want to.

The dam broken, Prisha starts explaining. Out of habit, I whip out my notebook. Vinod translates: “The stove works well, but apart from her friends, the women don’t trust it. The Brahmin won’t let them into their kitchens to cast and assemble it. The other villages quarrel with them over access to the river, and the district officials only talk about kerosene and LPG, but deliveries are unreliable…”

We nod. Wicked, complex, systemic… This is a task for the Transformative Three.

We have rented a small house just outside the village as our base of operations. It is empty, but its floor of rammed earth provides stable support for our field beds and folding chairs, and there is ample room to hang our mosquito nets from the ceiling. We have commissioned a stove from Prisha that she has built in a storage space next to the house, roofed over against the rain, but open on two sides to inquisitive eyes. We turn on our electric lanterns to unpack as the sun sinks behind the horizon. When I’m done I go out to gaze at the night sky, dusty but much darker than in Moresnet. The stars make me feel insignificant. It’s a comforting feeling, but it doesn’t last long: Aditi shoos me inside, warning against malaria and dengue mosquitoes, with snakes and spiders thrown in as an afterthought. While I’m not particularly concerned, I am tired, and as soon as I’m in my sleeping bag I nod off.

---

I wake up to the smell of breakfast: in our open kitchen Vlinder is already about, frying samosas on the earthen stove in sizzling oil. A group of kids pauses on their way to school, trying to catch a glimpse of the long blond lady. Vlinder, smiling, offers them a handful of fried dough balls. The kids run away in surprise, then turn and stare again. They might have come back, had not Prisha walked up to us with two friends. The oldest is evidently the mother of one of the children, judging by how she chases them off to class.

“Samosa?” Vlinder asks. Prisha’s friends giggle as she accepts one, makes some friendly remark, takes a bite—and, as the sensation overwhelms her, closes her eyes. She sways like a tree in the breeze, then stops and opens her eyes wide in wonder. She takes another bite. Vlinder passes out more samosas. Prisha’s friends eat, look in astonishment at their food, then start conversing in rapid Hindi. Vlinder listens, occasionally nodding or interjecting something as if she were a native speaker.

Most people are good at talking. Some people are good at listening. Vlinder is the best. Wherever she goes, people will come up and talk to her. And she listens. She hears what you say. She hears what you want to say, but can’t, or won’t, or have no words for, for she is the Human Sponge. Vlinder must have heard many secrets, but I have never seen her abuse them. I don’t know if she even can. She learns many useful things by listening, but more importantly, nothing empowers people like being listened to. Her specialty, as Prisha and her friends have just discovered, is cooking. Vlinder doesn’t know why, except that sharing a meal is one of the most primal interactions that humans have. After all, Vlinder would say, what is pregnancy but getting to know each other over meals shared through the umbilical cord?

While Prisha’s friends are distracted, I walk up to Vlinder. “Morning! Did you sleep well?”

Vlinder smiles, which is her way to say that she didn’t, but that she doesn’t care to talk about it. “Samosa?”

“They smell delicious, but I’ll stick with my cookies, thanks.” My stomach is still upset from yesterday’s spices and flavours. Anticipating this, I’ve brought several rolls of bland oatmeal cookies from home to settle my guts.

“Your loss,” she says. “When you go, bring back these.” She hands me a shopping list for vegetables, rice, spices and a big bottle of cooking oil. I hadn’t told her that I would be off with Vinod and Aditi today, but she must have overheard me. I want to say more, but Prisha’s friends demand a closer look at the stove, so I slink off. In a week, the stove will be the talk of the district, and that’s great. But it’s not enough.

---

I drive Vinod in our jeep to the nearest railway station, where he will catch a train to the state capital. He chats amiably with Aditi in rapid Hindi. I don’t mind being excluded: as the bumpy dirt road transitions into potholed asphalt, the honking taxis, swerving rikshaws and the occasional mule cart take up all my attention. I like being on the road: everyone is in motion, yet on a higher level everyone stands still: tomorrow most of them will be on the same road again, and the day after, and the day after. But if you look really good, you’ll see change again, like a pale second rainbow that mirrors the first: now there are cars and scooters where there used to be bikes and mule carts, and in twenty years the streets will look different yet again. But we’re not here to change the fossil fuel-guzzling transport system, even if it is sorely needed.

I find a parking spot near the station and wish Vinod good luck. With a placid wave he sets off for the trains, wearing neat trousers and a blue-striped shirt, briefcase in hand. As I start the car again and wait for a lull in the traffic, I watch him go. I know exactly what will happen. With a cup of takeaway coffee and the Times of India, Vinod will walk into the administrative offices of the state capital. Respectfully, he will announce himself as the new policy officer for rural development. The clerk will be nonplussed, but will send Vinod to the right department, where a desk will be waiting for him. On the desk will be an old computer that will log him in with the pure joy of an old dog whose master has returned after a long journey, for Vinod is the Institutionalist. Within weeks, he will be the soft-spoken voice in the back of the conference room of a half-dozen committees. Long-languishing policy proposals will transubstantiate into budgeted staff, stakeholder meetings and council decisions. Vinod can’t make gold from lead, but if it’s in there, he can bring it to the surface and make it shine like a beacon, attracting innovators and idealists from far and wide. Soon, kerosene subsidies will be phased out and replaced by renewable targets, training and outreach will be supported and sustainable forestry initiatives rejuvenated. Aditi’s stoves will be lifted on the crest of a wave of progressive policy.

I once asked Vinod if he had ever attempted to set a record time for getting from idea to implementation. “Democracy doesn’t work like that,” he had scolded me, shaking his head. “Dialogue is everything. You can’t rush consensus.” Seeing the spring in his step as he enters the station, I’m not sure that I believe him.

---

Aditi guides me towards the office and training centre of her NGO. Most of the staff are women involved in managing local women’s groups, but they have a few people around who are eager to show me the stove models they have been working on. The original design is two decades old, and since then they’ve cheapened and simplified it to a robust minimalism. Over tea we discuss funding, networking and upscaling, and before I know it I’m drawing diagrams on a blackboard and digging up pointers on grassroots innovation and development economics from my student years. The staff responds with enthusiastic scepticism, which is exactly how I like it. Change is in the air.

We could have discussed their cookstove all day, but Aditi has been briefed by Grace on our respective superpowers. She politely drags me out of the office and sets me on the road again, to meet some of her contacts in neighbouring villages. In some, the stasis is tangible, a stable system where everyone knows their place, for better or worse. Those places feel disheartening and I urge Aditi to drive on. In other villages the instability is palpable. It won’t take much to tip them over into a fairer, healthier equilibrium. Hope is a dangerous drug, but I can’t help myself. We are truly going to make a difference here.

Aditi asks if I am OK.

“Better,” I say.

We make an overview of which villages to extend the stove program to. We also set ourselves to the more challenging task of who to provide with a Fjellstove for the comparative study. The hosts can’t be too poor, because the stoves will make them worse off. Yet if they’re too rich, we might get some powerful critics. We settle on several women who already own older stoves, so that they have a backup option. Aditi is none too happy to waste everyone’s time this way, but she is pragmatic enough to grin and bear it. Our research project is part of a co-funding scheme by the Moresnet Research Council to stimulate collaborations between the university and the private sector. Which means that Fjellstove only contributes ten percent of our budget, but without Fjellstove on board, we wouldn’t have been funded at all. I feel a bit guilty about the scheme, but it’s not as if Fjellstove won’t get any value for their money. We’ll give them a useful overview of the Indian market, the relevant players, and all the ways in which their stoves are unfit for Bihari kitchens.

Our final stop is at a roadside market where farmers hawk locally produced fruits and vegetables next to kiosks selling bottled water and packages of curried chips. Aditi helps me to pick a selection of lentils, leafy greens and rotund orange fruits that I don’t recognise, but that are on Vlinder’s list. We top the groceries off with small packages of curry and bright red spices. Aditi scoffs at the price that I’m charged, which is eminently reasonable by Moresnet standards, which means that I’m being ripped off. But I find that eminently reasonable, too, so I pay without haggling.

“About time,” Vlinder sniffs when we arrive back at Prisha’s village, but she nods approvingly at our bags full of vegetables and fires up the stove. There is quite an audience of young women watching: this morning’s children chatter excitedly at Vlinder, who gives their tales and toys her undivided attention—after she’s handed me a knife, chopping board and instructions.

Once Vlinder’s pots are bubbling and spilling delicious smells, I retreat to a battered plastic chair in the shade to organise today’s notes on my laptop. Vlinder has waved the children away and submerged herself in the land, its people and their memories, tapping into some unseen, collective source of wisdom about how to create true palak paneer. In the middle of my writing, I feel as if a cloud covers the sun, even though the sky remains blue behind a veil of dust. The winds of change waver, constrict, crystallise. I close my laptop and look up. Several old men walk onto the square, the one in front wearing a turban and bushy grey beard. Two younger men flank them, talking loudly while at the same time keeping their distance. Perhaps they are husbands of some of the women: Vlinder’s audience scatters wordlessly, taking the protesting children with them. The young men point at Vlinder, who continues cooking. Their elders instead fixate on me, evidently seeking a man to hold responsible for Vlinder’s disturbance of the peace. They walk toward me, looking grim. But we are prepared for this. “Grace!” I call over my shoulder.

Grace emerges from the house, blinking against the light: she has also been organising notes, based on observing the villagers and documenting how they prepare their food. The men ignore her, until she steps in front of me and makes a polite inquiry in Hindi. The man with the turban scoffs and gestures for her to move aside. That is when Grace rights herself, and when she speaks, they listen, for she is the White Male.

To these guardians of norms and values, she probably is the Old Brahmin, but that is how we call her superpower. When Grace speaks, her listeners see her as an authority. They won’t commit murder for her or drop their pants in a boardroom (she tried the latter once), but they will do most everything else. It has been a terrifying joy to see her in jeans and a faux leather jacket speaking on equal terms with suited executives on one day, and tattooed labourers on the next. It’s also very convenient when we are interviewed for a grant application. Grace invites the men to take a seat, which they do. Taking the hint, I go to prepare tea and sweets for our guests. When I return, an amiable conversation is going on, and the man with the turban is nodding sagely. The potential for change thaws, starts flowing again.

---

Now that we have obtained the blessing of the village elders, we can upscale our operations. Gossip at the market brings interested women to our village. Some order their own stoves, those who are more entrepreneurial ask to be trained, to make them for others. Aditi and Prisha ride the wave of change, showing off the stoves, organising workshops and arranging microloans for the newly trained to get started on their business. We increasingly see Prisha’s son Amit tottering about on his grandmother’s farm, when his mother is off working on the stoves.

We expand to neighbouring villages, then neighbouring districts. Reluctant elders are swayed by Grace’s moral arguments, hesitant customers by Vlinder’s no less convincing demonstrations. Favours rain upon our heads from Vinod’s invisible work in the state capital: laws are passed that encourage biomass stoves over subsidised kerosene, multi-stakeholder panels are set up to address energy poverty and trainings are provided to budding female entrepreneurs. I get caught up in the rush, tracking change, suggesting nudges, attending panels. But this is not my first project, and I know that soon, we’ll be hitting the turbulence that comes with rapid transitions. That means that the time has come for a chat with our funder. Aditi drops me off in town, where I install myself at a quiet table in a café with my mobile WiFi hotspot and a cup of chai.

I start up the Teams meeting. It doesn’t take long for Didier to appear on-screen: a pale young man with a shock of blond curls. He is our project officer at the Moresnet Research Council and in charge of our budget. Moresnet may be only a small landlocked European country, but its rich mineral deposits have attracted labourers from Russia to Morocco. Combined with its need to diplomatically navigate between its powerful neighbours of Germany and France, this has made it the most socially advanced nation on Earth.

“Hi Didier!” I greet him.

“Hey Bram.” Didier fidgets with something on his desk. “Listen, just yesterday I had a chat with Fjellstove, and…”

A second camera flashes on. I almost spit chai all over my screen. Bjørn has called in, his viking-like posture dwarfing Didier’s slim frame. Bjørn is Chief Technical Officer of Fjellstove and sponsor of our project. My stomach turns: this conversation is going to be more awkward than I had anticipated.

“…and they asked to join the call, to learn of your progress.” As a funder, Bjørn has every right to be kept updated. But it’s still bad form to barge unannounced into an informal meeting. Didier is well aware of that, and appears embarrassed that he hasn’t been able to stop Bjørn. “How is your project doing?” he smiles bravely. “Do you need extra funds to extend it, so that you can abolish capitalism as well?”

It’s an old joke between us, but researchers have to be pragmatic. “Why, is there funding for that?”

Didier grins. “Only if you can find a private partner to share our costs. Public-private co-funding is all the rage these days.”

I shrug. “Schumpeter argues that capitalism is self-defeating. No need to push.” I don’t tell him that, on quiet days, I can feel it rumble and groan like a chrysalis under whose dessicated shell stirs new life. It’s terrifying—and exhilarating.

“What is this rubbish talk?” Bjørn shifts in his chair: the man is not given to pleasantries. “Have you field-tested the Fjellstoves yet?” Normally I find bluntness refreshing, but now it’s making me sweat more than Bihar’s dry heat.

“We are. But there’s a lot to investigate: market opportunities, local regulations, competition from Indian providers, which brings me to…”

“Good!” Bjørn leans forward. “Any feedback on the design?”

The head’s too small for a proper curry pan.

The dust keeps clogging up the mechanism.

The standard broke and I couldn’t get a replacement anywhere.

“We’re working on it,” I conclude lamely.

Bjørn nods. “Continue. They may be stuck in their ways, but tell them that we all have to do our part in combating climate change.” Below the camera, I clench my fists. This coming from a man who will happily step in his Volvo after our meeting to drive a hundred miles to his weekend eco-cottage. I breathe deeply. Bjørn is not a bad man. He’s just one of those engineers who are convinced that every problem has an optimal technological solution.

“We would like to investigate some alternatives. Extend the plan a bit. Set up a comparative study. Know the competition,” I add to appease Bjørn.

“If you think it benefits the project—and it doesn’t go over the budget,” Didier nods. He has worked in research funding long enough to know that haggling with researchers is a lost cause. They’re expert enough to see what changes to the project are needed, eloquent enough to explain them and stubborn enough to make them, no matter what the outcome of the conversation is. “Would it lead to delays?”

“Maybe a little. But it would give us material for an extra paper.” I don’t tell him that the working title is Fall of the Fjell: technological hubris in pro-poor cookstove design.

“Go ahead,” Didier smiles, “but do submit a formal request for our administration.”

I smile back and ready myself to log off when Bjørn raises his hand. “A change is fine,” he says, “but we have a meeting with the Ministry in two months and we need impact stories before then.”

I blink. “The field-testing is just on its way,” I say. “Two months is short notice for…”

“It’s in the plan!” Bjørn thumps on a printout on his desk. It’s true that we had planned to gather impact stories—or lack-of-impact stories—but we hadn’t specified the time frame.

“At some point…” I begin.

“Then execute the plan!” Bjørn’s voice rises to a high pitch, a strange contrast with his massive frame. “You academics think too much! Just go there, parcel out the stoves, after a week the women will tell you how much their life has been improved now that their huts aren’t filled with wood smoke. Like that!” His fingers twitch, and for a moment I swear that I feel them around my throat, choking me. “Say hi to your team!” Bjørn blinks out.

Didier smiles uneasily, then he is gone, too. I am left shivering in the hot Bihari afternoon.

---

“Don’t sweat it,” Grace says when I’m back. “‘Do and apologise,’ as the Romans used to say.”

“And where are they now?” I help my friend chop onions. Vlinder is off for a long walk and a meditation session at a Ganesha shrine up the road. All the listening is getting to her.

“In your legal system, infrastructure, military and culture,” Grace retorts. “Also, mandating by law that the customer is always right, a message that Bjørn hasn’t gotten yet. But don’t worry. By the end of our project, Fjellstove will get more credit for accelerating the clean cooking transition than they could ever have imagined. The PR will far outweigh the fact that it didn’t happen through actual Fjellstoves.”

“You didn’t see his face.” I toss chopped onions in the steaming oil. Prisha’s stove makes them sizzle. “Can’t you get to him as the White Male?”

Grace stops and stares at me. “I’d rather not. You’re doing fine.”

“I don’t think I am.” I lay down my knife. “If Bjørn pulls the plug, we have a problem. Science says that droughts and heatwaves are going to get much worse here. We need to empower these people now, we can’t afford…”

“I won’t!” Grace slams her fist down on the table. I almost back into the frying pan. “I hate being the White Male! I hate that I can only help others when I’m not myself! I hate that every time I talk down some alpha male, I’m reinforcing the system!” She takes a deep breath. “I care about our project, Bram, but I can’t afford being the White Male more than I have to. You’ll have to handle Bjørn.” She sits down and attacks her onions.

“Sorry. I’m just shaken by today.” I hadn’t realised being the White Male took so much out of Grace. Or, a darker thought, maybe I had realised, but chosen to ignore it because she is so very effective.

“Get used to it, ‘cause more is coming. Now where’s the chilli?”

---

Grace is right. In physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In social change, every action has an opposite reaction which is a ton of bricks in your face from the combined powers of government, industry and scared people. Resistance is a sign that you’re doing something right. Dealing with it is like judo: you have to keep moving to put your opponents off-balance, and use their strength against them, all the while putting in the actual work. Bringing friends helps, as does a little deception—that’s why we retained the name ‘the Transformative Three’ even after Grace joined us. Also, we didn’t much like ‘the Facilitating Four,’ which was the best alternative that we could come up with. If things work out, we might someday extend our team to become the Empowering Eight, but first, we have hard work ahead of us.

---

Aditi recruits new trainers to support women in building and selling the cookstoves, first in a dozen villages, then two dozen. It isn’t long before we find them training friends and family in villages that we’d never visited, some outside the state. The stoves officially get out of our control, as they should. Vlinder travels to listen to stories of joy and hardship, of how villagers make a living and how the stoves fit into that. She listens until she is saturated and has to take increasingly long breaks to manage her migraines. Inevitably, rumours spread on social media like mould on stale milk: that women who leave their villages for stove-building trainings consort with unmarried men; that they are stealing valuables from the houses of the higher castes; that we are US agents sent to weaken the Indian spirit. Once, Vlinder gets accused of stealing someone’s grandmother’s recipe. Her driver gets her out before things get ugly, but she returns to us pale and trembling. She stays inside the rest of the day. The village that she visited had seemed ripe for change to me—but change can be volatile. Grace returns early from the field to sit at her side.

I know that there are superheroes who are good with social media, such as the Trollhammer, the Bulgarian nerd who started a social media training for at-risk youth. It worked so well that they discovered and uprooted a powerful disinformation network that was about to hijack the national elections. But the Trollhammer is not on our team, so we have to keep up the offensive, or rather, the constructive. Prisha exhorts her friends to spread words and pictures about their new stoves and the extra household money they get from building them. I carefully track the photos to monitor the project, and because they give me moments of joy in these long days.

Policy changes don’t come as hard and fast as they used to do: Vinod is beset by colleagues who notice his knack for getting things done. He is not the only one who attracts attention: Aditi and I have to fend off growing waves of visitors, from well-meaning youth looking for a job in Europe to scammers and grifters seeking to profit from our success. And then there are friends and relatives of the villagers who happily drag us off to join classes, events, and once, a wedding riotous with colour and music. Grace and I handle those as best as possible in between collecting and organising our research data. It is exhausting, but when I drive through the countryside I see change blooming where it lay dormant, flowing where it was trickling.

As the stoves take on a life of their own and a wave of change rolls over the country, I can’t help but wonder what will come out of it. That is my curse: I can see potential for change, but not whether that change is actually helping people. I know it can, I’ve seen enough successes with my own eyes. Yet around the campfire of international development, plenty of horror stories are told about technology that grows out of control, tips delicate social balances into violence or gets caught, sucked dry and then discarded in some government power play. Even a minor mishap could fuel a backlash that would flatten our project—and several others besides. Increasingly, our lack of control keeps me awake at night, when I toss and turn in my sleeping bag under the mosquito net in our lodge, listening to Grace’s soft snore in the next room.

---

Two years ago I thought I could solve my dilemma when I bumped into the Subalternator during a Development Studies Association conference. We had just finished a project with the Red Avadavat, addressing period poverty in Jharkhand. I had been rather pleased with the results, and I had seen her in the audience when we presented them. She was a small Indian woman wearing a light, intricately embroidered dress over a black top, politely inconspicuous except for her deep, dark brown eyes that bored into my soul and made me stumble a few times during my presentation, even if she otherwise hung back in her chair with the air of an experienced conference-goer. During the break I sought her out: she was stretching her legs in the trimmed garden of the conference centre, sipping a locally-sourced mint tea. “Hi,” I said. “I noticed you at our presentation. How did you like it?”

The Subalternator looked at me with the friendly reserve of a veteran cop about to break up a drunken argument. “Could have been worse.”

“What do you mean by that?” Despite myself I felt a flush of irritation. As a superhero, you don’t get to deal with criticism much. “We helped…”

“Exactly!” said the Subalternator. “You helped! Did those women ask you for help?”

“Not directly, but…”

“Did they write your research proposal?”

“No, but…”

“Could they even have applied for your grant money?”

I held my tongue, conceding.

“Do you see the injustice of this?” The Subalternator took a deep breath. “Why are you trying to solve our problems with a tool that’s broken?”

“Because your problems are urgent.” I spoke from my heart. “Some of the girls we helped couldn’t go to school for days in the month. Some did not even know what was happening to them. They were terrified!”

The Subalternator shook her head. “I understand. I’m not asking you to close your eyes to the world. I’m asking you to look inward first. Famine, war, pestilence, they are all problems. But they’re not problems of grain or vaccines. They are problems of power. The way you have institutionalised colonialism, building on a foundation of fear, makes ‘development’”—she made air quotes with her fingers, her teacup balancing precariously on its saucer, “seem like a good idea. But it’s a con. It diverts your attention from the real problems by appealing to your compassion for those who are suffering. Not just your attention,” she conceded, nodding towards the conference centre. “It tempts many. You should rather work on a world where you don’t need the White Male, because minority voices are taken seriously. Where you don’t need the Human Sponge because social media encourages listening over shouting. Where you don’t need the Institutionalist because governments are open and democratic!”

“As if suffering isn’t a real problem!” I said more sharply than I intended. “I see your point, but there is institutionalised colonialism in the global research system, in geopolitics, capitalism… We could spend our whole life fighting that and still…”

The Subalternator smiled. “You’re the Change Agent. If you won’t, then who? But you don’t have to change the world all at once. You can start small. With capitalism, for example.”

I shrugged. “Capitalism is self-defeating. Schumpeter…”

“What does the dead white male have to do with me?” The Subalternator interrupted me, looking almost hurt. “It’s not about capitalism, it’s about who it will drag down with it when it falls. That a parasite kills itself by killing the host is hardly a consolation. It requires removal, by a skilled surgeon.”

“But we’re doing that! In our project, we didn’t just hand out free sanitary pads; we also worked on educational policy to…”

“Your successes just reinforce the system!” The Subalternator picked a mint leaf from her glass and ripped it into small pieces. “They make it seem like development works, like capitalism works! You’ve let them colonise your mind! You want to help people? Heal yourself, cut loose their feeding-tubes! Think on that while I finish my Prezi.” She strode off. I was quite aware of several conference-goers looking at us, wondering what the white male said that so disturbed the Indian woman. I rummaged through my bag in search of a program to busy myself with. The bag was made from recycled linen in a workshop that employs people with poor job prospects. It was filled with flyers from grant writing companies and academic publishers with profit margins higher than Apple’s.

I am still thinking about her words, even as I am here in India while elsewhere, the Subalternator is beautifully dissecting all the systemic injustices to which those at the bottom of society are exposed. Only after attending her presentation and reading some of her work did I realise that her curse is the reverse of mine. She can see injustices like no other, but no clear way to remedy them. Theoretically we could form a great team. I doubt that either of us would want to.

---

Things come to a head when in our strategy meeting, Vinod leans back and says: “I think we need to slow down.”

“I think we need to speed up.” It comes out more belligerent that I meant it to be. “Push through. We have momentum now, we can’t lose it.”

“We’ve started a lot,” Vinod continues, politely ignoring me. “People need time to get used to the changes. We need to monitor policy effects, make sure our project remains equitable and inclusive.”

That’s the problem with Vinod: as he works on the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy works on him, filling him with lofty and conveniently vague terms. “Tell that to those millions of women out there who are choking on woodsmoke!” I grumble. “Or those whose crops are withering—climate change isn’t slowing down either. We should upscale, and we should…”

“We’re here to ease the need of those people,” Vlinder says, rubbing her temples. It’s late afternoon, but she only just got out of bed. “Not your anxieties.” Did I say that Vlinder never abuses what she hears? That doesn’t mean that she can’t hit where it hurts.

The only way out is to lean into it. “Yes,” I say. “I am anxious! I think Vinod is not anxious enough! If we…”

“Are you saying that I don’t care about my people?!” Now it’s Vinod’s turn to sit up. “Do you want to take my place? Tell all my colleagues, ‘I’m a European, so I know better than you…’”

“Enough!” Grace glowers at us. We fall silent. She has promised to never release the White Male on us, but would we feel the difference if she did? Would she? I realise her tragedy, then: no matter how much we respect her for who she is, she might always wonder whether it’s not due to the power of the White Male. The thought is enough to quench my anger. I hang my head.

“Urgent or not, it’s getting to us,” Grace says. “I’m calling a time-out.”

---

We wrap up our work in silence. The next day, a Friday, we book a ludicrously expensive hotel—by Bihari standards—to treat ourselves to a weekend of lounging, soaking in a tiled swimming pool, sleeping out in soft beds with fresh linen, and on Saturday, a touristy guided tour to an ancient Buddhist temple. For breakfast I splurge on toast and jam, welcome blandness for my intestines that have been burning from end to end. Vinod laughs at my continental breakfast, then proceeds to spoon his plate full of aubergine choka. As my body relaxes, my mind follows, and my anxiety melts away. It’s only in the moments of quiet when you realise how much tension has been accumulating in your body. I still disagree with Vinod’s caution, but that’s fine. We’re the Transformative Three. We can handle a little disagreement.

On Sunday we are to reconvene to discuss our strategy. We’ll make plans on how to upscale more carefully and help Aditi and Prisha to keep the project going. In a few weeks we’ll return home to Moresnet, analyse our data and write our scientific papers. I’m organising notes and photos on my laptop when there is a knock on the door. It’s Grace. I had assumed that she would come to discuss my quarrel with Vinod, but her eyes are hard. “Aditi called,” she says. “There’s men stirring up trouble in Prisha’s village.”

“I’ll be down in fifteen minutes,” I promise. I hastily gather my notes, pack my bags, consider a shower, but decide to skip. Once Grace has talked down this bunch, we’ll have plenty of time for our session. We’ll have to do without the hotel’s conference room, whiteboard and flipover, but we should be fine with Vinod’s three colours of post-its.

When I come down, Vlinder is waiting in her beige-and-yellow dress, looking decidedly happier. For the whole weekend she hasn’t listened to anyone. Grace is next, looking fierce at this uncalled-for disturbance and ready to admonish Shiva himself if he were to be the one causing problems. After minutes of soft cursing by Grace, Vinod ambles in with a cup of takeaway coffee and the Times of India rolled up under his arm and we drive off.

---

Despite our determination, I feel chilled and uneasy as we trade the busy city roads and honking cars for country asphalt, bikes and oxen. It takes me a while to realise why: the winds of change, previously roiling and flowing where we had stirred them up, have died down, crystallised, no, petrified. The air itself has become solid and heavy to breathe. Something is killing all the change that we sought to bring about. It emanates from Prisha’s village.

“Something is wrong,” I say. “Very wrong.” Vlinder looks at me, grasping my panic at once.

“So we fix it,” Grace states.

“I… I don’t think we can fix this.” I grip my knees to keep my hands from trembling.

Vinod glances at me from the driver’s seat. “You know, Bram, I might not always agree with your hurry, but you are good at pushing things through!”

“I know! I’m the Change Agent. I’ve cracked open poverty traps, dismantled systems of oppression. But this is different. I’ve never felt such absolute stasis before.”

“That sounds bad,” Grace nods. “But if we don’t help, who will?”

Vlinder takes my hand and squeezes it in the exact same way that my older brother used to do when I had had a rough day at school. My eyes fill with tears, but I blink them away. I’m scared, but they’re right. The true reaction to our action has come. “Just keep your eyes open.” We fall silent: only the radio keeps singing cheerful Hindi pop songs.

As soon as we turn into the village, park and climb out of the car, we see that things are amiss. The women shuffle through the streets, gaunt, head bowed, cradling thin, crying children. The men hang around smoking and cast us dirty looks. Colourful plastic littering is all over the place, the houses look smaller and the cars grimier. It does not look like the village that we left, but rather, how it would be imagined by a rich European who only knows India from tabloid stories about smog, heatwaves and murdered tourists. Had I been alone, I would have run, but Grace strides ahead, so I follow.

In the middle of Prisha’s kitchen is Bjørn, kneeling on the floor as he installs a Fjellstove on the shattered remains of her red clay one. Prisha looks on from outside, head bowed, the child on her hip crying in short sobs. Her joyous energy has been stifled by waves of stasis emanating from the engineer.

Has our research project been co-funded by a supervillain? I blank out and freeze. A distant, analytical part of me starts ticking off names of known supervillains, but most I would have recognised. They rarely travel anyway: like antlions, supervillains are territorial and prefer to stay close to their lair.

Grace doesn’t freeze. She takes in the scene with blazing eyes, then steps up to Bjørn. “You!” the White Male booms. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” Bjørn jerks up and for a moment I know that he will grovel, crumple before the authority of a voice that has caused politicians to resign and hardened criminals to confess.

Instead, Bjørn stands up and gets out of the house. He surveys angry Grace, Vinod and me, lagging behind, and Vlinder, who has moved around to hold Prisha. Then, he meets Grace’s stare head-on.

“What I’m doing?!” he bellows. “Look at you and your pathetic little project! I gave you my money and my life’s work and you waste it on…” he crushes shards of Prisha’s stove beneath his hiking boots, “…on cheap-ass clay shit! You are screwing those people! Where are the Fjellstoves?!” Grace falls to the ground as if he has slammed her into a marble wall with each word. The White Male speaks as an authority, but behind Bjørn’s voice lies the unbearable physical weight of a system of governments, companies, NGOs and UN organisations for whom development is a business model and countries like India are filled with doomed wretches who can only be saved by Westerners parachuting in with the finest technology they can offer. It is a system that advocates change, but never, ever at the cost of the status quo.

Yet the system is fueled by good intentions. Bjørn is not a villain. “You’re a superhero,” I croak. “The Stabiliser.”

Bjørn turns to me. The terrible, choking force lifts a hair. Vinod kneels at Grace’s side. Blood trickles from her nose, and her head lolls back as he wipes it away. “That’s right,” Bjørn says. “I’m here to clean up the mess you’ve stirred up.”

Calm like the eye of a storm, I straighten my back. “You can’t create real change without stirring up a mess,” I say. “It’s the nature of the beast.”

The Institutionalist looks up from caring for Grace. “Do you even know how many policies bind women to open fires and kerosene? What it takes to revise them, before a stove even becomes an option?” There is no anger in his voice, merely exasperation.

“You became an engineer to help people,” the Human Sponge says, still holding Prisha. “They told you that you were an expert, that your work would fulfill dreams. You have shattered them instead.”

The pressure lifts further. Bjørn looks confused, drawn into unfamiliar territory. I step forward, reach out to him. “Help us. With you at our side, we can have a clean cooking revolution right here. I can feel it.”

Bjørn nods. “Through the Fjellstove.”

My heart sinks. A white lie might save Grace, Vinod and Vlinder, but will damn any chance of real change. It will damn the Transformative Three.

“No. We can have real change. But you need to let the Fjellstoves go.”

Bjørn stares at me, a vista of opportunities wavering inside him like air shimmering over a hot road. Then it slams down, the colours drain from the village and a weight descends on me like a building collapsing. “No!” I hear Bjørn’s voice, high-pitched again, as I gasp for breath. “No more fucking around! I’m done with you!” The ground lurches up and hits me in the side of my head. Something massive grinds me into the reddish grit of the village square. I scream for help, feel a hand—Grace? Vinod?—then it’s gone.

---

I sit at a dark wooden table in a gloomy Moresnet pub. Rain clatters on the windows and the gleaming branches of the trees beyond. I drink coffee and leaf through the University of Moresnet’s magazine. We are listed on page nine: Research team perishes in car crash. A black-and-white picture is included of us eager and smiling at the project launch in the university aula.

I snort. The coffee is pleasantly bitter. A small waffle accompanies it: sugary and soft, no trace of cumin or cardamom, much to the relief of my stomach. The next page has a full-colour photo and an announcement. Bjørn has generously donated a hundred Fjellstoves to Bihari communities, and has established a research fellowship in engineering in honour of the Transformative Three, so that promising Indian students can be educated at a world-leading European institution. He is pictured smiling and shaking hands with the Minister for International Development.

I flex my fingers. I am Bram. I am the Change Agent. By all rights I should be dead, crushed by the system.

But here’s the thing.

We have a second superpower.

The law of action and reaction goes both ways. When the oppressed rise, those in power push them back. But as those in power clamp down on justice, so the oppressed rise in resistance. As long as they do so, we will rise up with them. It may take days, or months, but eventually, Vlinder will walk through that door, ordering a mint tea to cradle it in her hands like a lost chick. Grace will barge in, complaining about the weather. Vinod will have sat here all along with a coffee, reading a Times of India that nobody knows where he picked up. And we will make plans. Not to take down the Stabiliser: I could call the Subalternator, and she could expose all his injustices to the world in two seconds flat. But I saw the potential for change in him, if briefly, a potential the Subalternator would be blind to. Let our final words eat at him. Who knows, he might stabilise some positive changes some day.

But I don’t particularly care about the Stabiliser. I care about Prisha, and Aditi, and all the others like them. Best to prepare before Vlinder, Grace and Vinod get here, so that we can be off to a running start. I turn the pages of the university magazine to the overview of funding opportunities and scroll through them in increasing frustration. It is as Didier had said: business co-funding is all the rage these days. We can’t do that for our next project: businesses keep a keen eye on their competition. The risk that the Stabiliser will find out is too great.

I find myself drumming on the table in agitation and stop. I’m rushing ahead again, not looking inward first. What if…?

…Our next project will be the Moresnet Research Council? If we change the rules of the game? Introduce new research policies, talk down the co-funding programme, empower alternatives, until we get some proper schemes that help Prisha and Aditi, not by doing research for them, but with them, as partners? I scribble on the back of the magazine: Towards a post-capitalist funding scheme, hesitate, then replace post-capitalist by inclusive. A lofty and conveniently vague policy term. It will not wake sleeping dogs—not until it’s too late. The Subalternator would be proud of me. Then again, she might point out how competitive project funding reproduces existing power structures and toxic masculinity in academia. But we’ll have to save that one for later. One transformation at a time.

© 2024 Auke Pols

[Issue 2024.70]

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