The Global Downturn Lands With a Zud on Mongolia's Nomads, from the Wall Street Journal (thanks Sara for the pointer). The story is about herders defaulting on loans due to decreased demand for cashmere in the midst of the global economic crisis. The title is a reference to "financial zud", a rather stark metaphor that compares the current situation to an extremely harsh winter in which many livestock die: zud on Wikipedia, the 1999/2000 zud as covered by BBC. The article focuses on the story of an individual herder in Tsogt sum in Govi Altai who has lost his animals to the bank. The piece includes a video (embedded below) and a photo slideshow - much more coverage than Mongolia typically gets. The photo above is from the slideshow and shows a bagiin emch at work. Given my interest in bagiin emch, this is notable - certainly the first time a bagiin emch has gotten his or her photo in the Journal. To see the full version of the above, see photo 7 in the slideshow (some excellent images in this set). For even more, see the photographer Josh Chin's Mongolia set on Flickr.
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22 April 2009
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Hi man! Just read this as well. Quite interesting for me too. I was reading this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/ancient-but-deadly-the-return-of-shastar-vidiya-1679002.html and thought of you. Couldn't be bothered to log in and send an email though...
Posted by: Andrei | 05 May 2009 at 05:25 AM
Thanks for the article Andrei. I hadn't heard of shastar vidiya though the context (Sikhs in Hounslow) is familiar enough.
Most interesting quote from the article: "'That's something that has always amused me,' laughs Singh Nihang. 'It was British colonialism that nearly destroyed shastar vidiya, but it is also colonialism's obsession with book keeping that may save it.'"
Posted by: Jaspal | 05 May 2009 at 07:25 AM