Farms and forests

My work area lies in the ST dominated regions of Bagli block, in Dewas district of Madhya Pradesh. Among the ST communities here are the Bhilala, Korku and the Barela. But among them, for a variety of reasons, the Barela evince much more interest. One of the reasons for coming here was to gain an understanding of the developmental story of the people here. Based on my months here, there is an outline of the Barela story that is quite fascinating. It’s a story that is quite common to so many communities and regions in a world undergoing rapid change. It’s a story of migration, complete with ecological, economic, social and political causations and ramifications.

The Barelas were the latest to migrate into this region, after the Bhilalas and Korkus. Based on oral records, a bulk of them moved in from areas in and around Badwani, beyond the south bank of the Narmada, some 200 kms away.

Oral sources here cite a flood in the early 60's on the Narmada, near the town of Anjad in present day Badwani district. (But I'm yet to find references to this flood  in official records). The exact causes of the migration could be several.

Upon reaching, they received actual land pattas of over 10 Hectares per family from the state government. But all the land they received was forest land with thick bush vegetation; they were poor, red-soiled, loose land. The task of clearing the forest, and make it cultivable was entirely up to them. So, this period witnessed a large government mandated clearing of forest lands, as they were officially parted away through government pattas to these migrant families. Barela families, thus have settlements much closer to the present day forest boundaries. 

This story we see here can now be linked to the story of Land Reforms in India. In brief, Land reforms meant

1.       Tenancy rights to tenant farmers.

2.       Land ceiling to large land holding families

3.       Land redistribution to landless families.

We shall focus on points 2 and 3, as there are more relevant to this discussion. Point 2 meant there was to be a limit over how much a single family could own. The surplus agricultural land over and above the limit was to be seized by the government, with due compensation paid to the families. This was to then create a massive land-bank of seized agricultural land, which was subsequently to be distributed among landless families willing to eager to farm, which is Point 3. Thus, what was envisaged was a more socially equitable ownership pattern of the existing agricultural land. In other words, points  2 directly feeding into point 3.

But Point 2 and Point 3 did not simultaneously occur in Madhya Pradesh. There is extensive scholarship available which highlight the political reasons for which states like Madhya Pradesh did not enforce point 2 effectively - as landed castes were an immensely powerful lobby within the ruling Congress. So in the name of Land Reforms, what got enforced was only point 3. But where would the extra land needed for such distribution come from? Being India's most forested state, Madhya Pradesh ate into its ample forests for precisely this.

This practice also conveniently converged with India's then agrarian policy of increasing agricultural land to produce more food for its population - a policy of extensive agriculture, rather than intensive. Back then, increasing food production was linked to increasing cropped area, rather than increasing productivity. Our focus shifted to the latter only after the mid 60's, when the Green Revolution was sought after. Ecologically, agricultural land increased by eating into forest land. Socially, it did not change the power held by landed castes. 

A check at the official statistics ('India Forestry Outlook Study - MoEF')  conveys the contrary:

One guesses the devil is in the detail, based on the definitions used for forest land - about which lands were considered ‘forest’, which were considered waste land, etc. One would need to explore that further.    

But how and why exactly the government decided and actually managed to give formal pattas to them remains unanswered, especially when it is so hard to set right their land records even now. 

I'll conclude with a clear hypothesis on the implementation of Land Reforms in India, in different states - States where political will to take on the landed gentry was lacking, tended to distribute forest/common land, as part of its Land Reforms and increased the net sown area. 

This hypothesis surely deserves to be tested, and I'm sure there is plenty of work already done on it. 

PS: The full India Forestry Outlook Study is available online here 

A writing on the wall ?

There was this peculiar structure I chanced upon in Junagadh fort, during my travels around Saurashtra last month. Junagadh's fort has structures across so many centuries, and one would have a chance to see various styles of architecture across cultures and times !

Inside the fort, among the various buildings is this curious construction. Unfortunately, I do not have photos of the actual building as such. So you'd have to take my word for it. The building had a clearly Rajput style of architecture. Long pillared halls, with the columns being filled with very intricate chisel work. Based on the kind of work on these columns, one felt that this was certainly a work commissioned by a Hindu king.

However, it was a west facing structure, with some provisions of a pool, and a fountain in front of its entrance. Some paintings on the roofs of the structure too led to think that it might be a mosque. Thus, I was puzzled by what the structure was! It looked both like a mosque, but had none of the standard architectural elements of the Islamic style. What could this structure possibly be? Could this be some synthetic style of architecture that evolved in this region? Questions were floating in my mind.

I left the structure, and more than an hour later, finished my walk through the fort, reaching the entrance. This is when I glanced upon this map below. In Gujrati, it points to the very same site as "Jama Masjid and Ranidevi's mahal".
Now there, suddenly all my observations seemed to make sense. This structure might have possibly been a mahal for one of the queens, and later might have been converted into a mosque, when conquered by a Muslim ruler. Or it might have been the other way around.. who knows!

But that is not the story of this pic. Someone has had a look at the writing, had a certain understanding of its history, and then, actually decided to scratch off the "Jama Masjid" part ! Fantastic right ?

Ponder over it...

Youthness on a bus to Ahmedabad

The bus wasn't crowded at all. Surprising, given that it was a bus to such an important city. The bus was well maintained, and the crowd seemed mostly middle class. Couldn't have been more than 25 people in a bus of 65 capacity.

There were two couples who seemed newly married. Such newly married ones are always the cutest. Its such a joy to be around them, and feel their love for each other - though it’s a sin to look, muhahaha :P

Thus the bus was mostly quiet with very little chatter. Yours truly was engaged observing the bus and its passengers, the roads outside and pretending to read 'Following Fish', which in itself was a rather delightfully written travelogue of India's coast. All in all, it was a sort of comfortable monotony.

It was broken by a sudden shrill. Some youth on the third row was listening to music on his phone, suddenly broke into song. And these are the latest, snazzy Bollywood numbers - but the good, old youthy, cheesy 80's ones - the ones that contract labourers and truck drivers all over India have such great affinity for ! 

He went along at full flow, singing both the male and female parts of this unrecognisable duet - youthfully altering his voice for the female versions too, as though he wasn't shrill enough already.

"….Tum hi ho, meri nasha..."  or something to that extent.

The shock of the moment left everyone else stunned. The instinctive reactions were disbelief and incomprehension. Seriously, given the situation, its hard to believe that there's actually a guy singing. Once that shock passed, a quick-to-trigger middle aged hothead raised a cry to stop the nonsense - "Bakwaas bandh kar". But it never seemed to have any effect on our dude, for he continued untroubled by such feeble concerns ! People then looked around to the conductor, the authority in the bus, the representative of the state, which clearly is responsible for law and order - more than hope for action from his side, were actually curious to see how he would react. It’s a sort of unconscious behaviour for most of us Indians. 

It is at this juncture that bus journey came alive (as though this freak show hadn't already livened it!). Sportspersons and sports viewers would know that the audience is always the 12th man - what makes sport such a spectacle isn't just the players, but the audience too. Now in the bus, where our youthy dude is obviously causing discomfort to some of the passengers, and also just rebuffed the efforts to stop him gets an unexpected response from the rest of the crowd.

Of course, being quite a youth myself, I was actually enjoying the proceedings - but the rather quiet and dull atmosphere of the bus led me to certain misjudgments of my passengers. I was worried that this voice of youthness would get muscled out by the normalcy of the bus. I was under the impression that youthness in today's world is under such short supply, that our fuses too have so short - and we have become sort of intolerant of such youth behaviour. The crowd so totally proved me wrong.

As soon the middle aged man's efforts were rebuffed - the crowd started smiling, beautiful smiles on all the 20 odd faces ! And they all turned around to notice that everyone was indeed smiling. And this converted the smiles to laughter. The 20 odd passengers, all strangers to each other, not bothering to engage in conversation previously, were somehow mysteriously connected by this inexplicable force - were laughing at this moment. They displayed their own youthness qualities - an ability to appreciate the oddity of the youth who's singing, the quirky randomness of the situation and the fact that all were able to feel this !

The impact was so much that, this fuelled conversation between the strangers for the next hour, and even when the bus halted for tea - people were sitting together for tea, sharing cigarettes, making Khaini and Miraj (Gujarat's favourite!) mixes for each other. That youth who started singing made such an impact on all the bus. My idea of the world did change momentarily. The world has much more youthness than we think. We need to just open our eyes to it. The world aint a boring place at all - people have an innately youthy, we need to allow ourselves to be so.

We are a society that loved Om Shanti Om - youthness shall always thrive here. And for that, we shall be ever grateful to live in such times. 

What coasts be these !

The coast here in the Mundra taluk of Kutch is entirely different from any coast I've seen in the south. Some rudimentary geography we've learnt informs us that the north western part of our coast has a much more gradual continental shelf, and hence, the sea is much more shallow than in the southern coasts. The unique geography also results in a highly variable sealine, as the sea has space to move in and out of land with ease. The result is a huge difference the high tide line and low tide line. Its almost 5 kilometers, according to some fishermen!

It was all well and good, for it made logical sense then. But none of that prepares you for actually witnessing the Kutch coast. One is aware of the facts that it is a shallow coast, but its difficult to express how weird the shallow coast actually looks and feels. The sea seems more a lagoon, as the shallow shelf gently caresses the sea to ease into the land. So, here I was accustomed to Marina beach type speedy waves… what you get is gentle, soft ones. Also missing is the rich noise of the waves, as they thud onto rocks, or grains of beach sand. That sweet sound of a sea, that we normally hear many miles away from the coastline, the sound that always awakens our childhood and stirs us… that is missing. The strangeness is almost disconcerting.

Dont let these apparent waves fool you. They're hardly waves!

 These are no sandy coasts, nor rocky ones, only mudflats dominate the landscape.  Fishermen have their temporary dwellings on the mudflats, on slightly raised, earthen platforms. These dwellings are just logs of wood for framework, with jute covers for walls. They're raised because the dwellings are within the high tide line. So, very often, the sea enters these mudflats. Why cant they just stay outside the mudflats you wonder? Well, cause the high tide line and low tide is so vast, one cant expect them to travel 5 kms just to reach the sea during low tide!

Mudflats in the tidal zone. Puddles are remnants of last weeks high tide. 

 Since such shallow waters don’t breed fish, the fishermen travel close to 15-20 kilometers into the sea where sufficient depth is reached. This automatically raises fuel costs for their boats. And as a result, a lot of the loans and minor advances(microloans) they take are for purchasing diesel. However, the loan taking practises of the fishermen need much more elaboration. It deserves a post in itself, and it shall have it. So, more on this and their spending habits in weeks to come!

The shallowness of the sea also results in many practices that are made possible due to this geography. Donkeys and horses are used by all fishermen to transport from dwelling to the boat. This is possible as the animals can walk many 100 meters inside the sea (as can be deciphered from the pic). These come in handy when loading equipment and unloading the catch. There's a local saying too, "Who fishes without a donkey!"…

Hard to spot donkeys here. But suffice to note that people are walking way into the sea.

 The only minus is that most nights are disturbed by braying donkeys.

To end with an inconsequential observation, a norm here is that men wear full pants or pyjamas. No one wears shorts or even lungis. Given the coastal setting, it seemed very odd at first. But as elaborated above, the tidal waves are hardly strong, plus its such a shallow coast. So, a quick 'wetting the feet' that is part of the southern beach experience is absent here. One can actually stand with your feet inside the water, with your pants not getting wet an all. Its like standing in stagnant water. There're hardly any waves as such. What I'm trying to say is that, shorts and lungis are not a necessity here.

Photo credits : Self

Drinking water in rural Kutch

Supplying safe drinking water to rural households has been a problem we've been trying to solve for eons now.

 Tata power has supplied Bhadreshwar village in coastal Kutch with this R.O Water treatment plant. It's been donated to the panchayat sort of. So, villagers pay Rs.5 per can of 30 litres. If they want it home delivered, an extra Rs.5 is paid to the small errand boys. It's run by some of the village youths, who no doubt have close affiliations to the sarpanch. This system just started about 2 months back. And about 120 households avail of these cans. There are over 800 households in this village. Its an interesting model...  

 We see large government funded free, piped drinking water systems work effectively in so few places. Especially given that they're always implemented by the panchayat through NREGA, Swajal Dhara, NRDWP or other schemes, drinking water projects have always been linked to large construction like laying pipes and building tanks - the kind of operations that most panchayats do such a shoddy job of. In such a context, is this a reasonable solution?

A family of five would probably need at least one can a day - drinking, cooking, etc. Meaning, drinking water costs alone come to Rs.180 per month. I doubt any Govt sponsored piped water scheme in India cost as much. But still, this system ensures water atleast reaches the houses.

Is Rs.180 per month really prohibitive? Is there a minimum price to pay to ensure the system runs effectively?

The larger question being asked is... Is pricing a basic good necessarily bad? 

Mind you, arguments put forth here, may also be used for distribution of some other basic goods like food. 

PS: This area falls right next to the Mundra coastal SEZ park, where several other controversial projects have and are coming up. It has seen several protests for the last few years by mostly fishermen, who constitute over 50% of the villages here. No doubt corporate initiatives such as the R.O plant need to be seen with the SEZ background.

Photo credits: Self. 

Hinterland journalism... of the yellow kind !

I just wanted to share some of the really youthy and bizarre tales I've heard from my stay in the Nemad region of Dewas district, Madhya Pradesh.

I really hope you enjoy the stories as much as I did listening to them.

Some of the names of the persons are fictional. And some creative license has been used to garnish the spicy tales with extra masala... but the events are true, and I have been true to the spirit of my many story tellers !

Go ahead and enjoy ... Love, Sex aur Dhoka... with additional bonus features of Dhamaka.

What?  How can I end with a bang? with dhamaka ?
Picture abhi bhi baaki hai dost... as they say. In keeping with the spirit of feel-goodness that is important in Indian story-telling, I have ended with a much deserved 'Happy Ending'.... :)

PS : You pervert boys... its not the happy ending that you're thinking of ! 

Love...

This is the village of Panduthalab. It has a majority Kurku population, but has a sizable population of Bhillala, Barela tribes as well. There are also a few Muslim families here. There is a government school here, and at least a majority of the kids attend it, till the 10th standard.

There was this girl who used to study reasonably well. She was a Bhillala. The 3 teachers who used to frequent the school (more appropriate than 'teach at the school') from time to time, used to have a good opinion of her, as among the few girls who could read English, albeit very slowly. Among the other students, she also had an impression of being a clever girl, and at times… Cunning !

She was seen hanging around a slightly older boy many times. Also, boys in her class used to say that she has done 'several favours' for money. Thus, this girl somehow developed a rather bad reputation, at least among the boys.

Some weeks back, she went missing. So did the slightly older guy. And he happened to be a Muslim.

Soon, the families erupted. A group of Bhillala families demanded answers from the muslim families. So much so that, many were asking them to be removed from the village.

At this point, apparently, many students told the girl's father… that the girl herself was "like that only"
and that she would do ANYTHING for money… at which point, the dad apparently went … "Oh.. Like that, so my girl is of bad character. Its her fault", and ceasefire was declared. (Sorry, but this is genuinely how I was told the story ! :P )  

Here's where a few of her friends say that our 17 yr old heroine was truly in love with the 23 yr old boy. Lets hope that’s the case… for it would seem true love has prospered. 

Meanwhile, no one knows where they actually fled !