01-_ROH0248-RALA (FOXTAIL MILLET)-RJ-Return of the native seeds.jpg

Tejlibai Dhedhiya is slowly getting back her indigenous seeds.&nbsp;Roughly 15 years ago, Bhil Adivasis like Tejlibai, farming in Alirajpur and Dewas districts of Madhya Pradesh, switched from indigenous seeds grown with organic farming methods, to hybrid seeds grown with chemical inputs. This led to a loss of heirloom seeds, says Tejlibai and explains the switch, “our traditional farming required a lot of labour and this was not compensated by the prices we got in the market.” The 71-year-old adds, “the labour time saved allowed us to migrate and do wage labour at higher rates in Gujarat as migrant workers.”But now, in 20 villages in these districts, around 500 women are conserving their heirloom seeds and returning to organic farming under the guidance of Kansari nu Vadavno (KnV) which means ‘the felicitation of Goddess Kansari in the Bhil language (known locally as Bhilali). A mass organisation of Bhil Adivasi women, KnV was founded in 1997 to fight for women’s rights and deal with their health problems. After more than a decade of working on health issues, the Adivasi women who were part of the formation of KnV realised that returning to their traditional crops could help deal with their dietary issues.&nbsp;At KnV, selected seeds are stored separately for selling and distributing among other farmers to spread biodiverse organic farming across the country, while the rest of the crop is kept for consumption, says Rinku Alawa, a resident of Kawada village. “After harvesting, we have to select the best seeds,” adds the 39-year-old Rinku.Farmer and KnV member from Kakrana village, Raytibai Solanki agrees: “Seed selection is the best way to improve the quality of the seeds and increase their productivity.&nbsp; Raytibai, 40, adds, “millets and cereals like sorghum were staple food of our Bhil tribe. Millets are the most water-efficient and nutritious of all cereals. Their cultivation is easier than other cereals like paddy and wheat.” She begins to list names of varieties of millets – batti (barnyard millet), bhadi, rala (foxtail millet), ragi (finger millet), bajra (pearl millet), kodo, kutki, sangri (little millets). “These are rotated with legumes like beans, pulses and oil seeds in biodiverse cropping to maintain soil fertility naturally,” she adds.&nbsp;

Not stopping at indigenous seeds, the tribal women's cooperative, KnV, is also working to bring back organic farming.Tejlibai, who lives in Khod Amba village in&nbsp;Alirajpur district of Madhya Pradesh, says it&nbsp;is happening slowly as preparing the manure and fertiliser takes a lot of time. “I am sowing indigenous seeds only in a small portion of my land for my consumption. I can’t shift completely to organic farming.” She practises rainfed cultivation of jowar, makka&nbsp;[maize], paddy, pulses, and vegetables on her family’s three-acre farmland.Also making a comeback are compost and bio-cultures used in organic farming, explains Vikram Bhargava, a resident of Jamasindh in Dewas district. Bioculture is prepared by mixing jaggery, gram powder, dung and cattle urine and fermenting it.&nbsp;The 25-year-old Barela Adivasi says, “the biomass from the farm has to be mixed with the cattle dung and placed in layers in a pit which has to be watered constantly to prepare compost. Then, it has to be spread and mixed with the soil so that it can benefit the crops.

When the seeds vanished under pressure from market crops, says Vesti Padiyar, their traditional dishes were also gone, as did the traditional ways of dehusking and hand pounding the millets. Once processed, millets have a very low shelf life so women would pound the millet only when they were ready to cook it.&nbsp;“We used to cook such tasty dishes with millets like rala, bhadi and batti when we were young,” says Vesti, listing the names of the millets. “God created humans and asked them to suckle at the breast of Goddess Kansari to get life. Jowar [symbolised by Goddess Kansari] is considered to be lifegiving by the Bhils,” she adds about the locally grown millet. The 62-year-old farmer from the Bhilala community (listed as Scheduled Tribe in the state) farms four acres of which half an acre is given to organically grown food for their table.Bichhibai also recalls some of the dishes they cooked with millets. A resident of Pandutalab village in Dewas district, she says her favourite was mah kudri&nbsp;– chicken curry mixed with millet rice. In her sixties now, she also recalls a jowar kheer&nbsp;made with milk and jaggery.&nbsp;The methods of pounding grain by hand was a community affair, bringing the women together. “We used to sing our folk songs which used to make our work easier. But now, because of migration and smaller families, women don’t get a chance to come and share the work,” says the 63-year-old.&nbsp;

When Karlibai Bhavsing was a young woman, she used to pound the millets with her hands – a laborious process she recalls. “Young women these days prefer to mill the flour of jowar, maize and wheat in the machine mills. That is why the consumption of millets has gone down,” the 60-year-old Barela tribal of Katkut village says.Storing the seeds also poses a challenge. “The winnowed crops have to be dried in the sun for a week before they are stored in muhtis [bamboo bins] which are lined inside with a mud and livestock dung mixture to make them airtight. Even so, after about four months or so the stored crop tends to get attacked by pests and so it has to be sun-dried once again,” Raytibai explains.&nbsp;Then there are the birds, who also love the millets. Different millets ripen at different times after sowing and the women have to be on constant vigil. Bicchibai says, “we have to ensure that the birds don’t eat all the harvest and leave nothing for us!”

Return of the native seeds 

लहुटत देसी बीजहा

खेतन में पुरनका बीया लौट रहल बा

ଦେଶୀ ବିହନର ପ୍ରତ୍ୟାବର୍ତ୍ତନ

دیسی بیجوں کی واپسی

திரும்பி வந்த இயற்கை விதைகள்

ਆਓ ਦੇਸੀ ਬੀਜਾਂ ਵੱਲ ਮੋੜੀਏ ਮੁਹਾਰ

നാടൻ വിത്തുകളുടെ തിരിച്ചുവരവ്

ಸ್ಥಳೀಯ ಬೀಜಗಳಿಗೆ ಮರುಜೀವ

मध्य प्रदेश के खेतों में हुई देसी बीजों की वापसी

દેશી બિયારણની ઘરવાપસી

দেশি বীজের প্রত্যাবর্তন

থলুৱা বীজবোৰ উভটি আহিছে

దేశీ విత్తనాల పునరాగమనం

Madhya Pradesh

MOBILE-COVER-IMAGE-RJ-Return of the native seeds.jpg

01-IMG_7219-PD-Chunguna’s Gulabrani farms the organic way.jpg

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“Mirchi, lehsun, adrak…leaves of bottle gourd, karela…jaggery.”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">This is not a recipe for food with chillies, garlic, ginger, bittergourd…but instead organic farmer Gulabrani’s potent fertiliser and pesticide that she brews up here at Chunguna village, on the edge of the Panna Tiger Reserve.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The 53-year-old recalls laughing loudly when she first heard the list. “I thought, where will I get all this? But then I did have gourds growing in the jungle…” she adds. Other ingredients like jaggery she had to buy in the market.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Doubting neighbours didn’t help, curious about what she was brewing. But what other people think has never bothered Gulabrani – it’s not surprising that she was the first in her village of roughly 500 people to make the move towards organic.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“The food we buy in the market has medicines and is injected with all sorts of chemicals, so we thought why eat that,” she says recalling the conversations at home four years ago.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“My family thought going organic was a good idea. We all thought that if we eat jaivik [organically grown] food, our health would also benefit. With jaivik fertilisers, the swasth [health] of the pests suffers, ours thrives!” she adds, enjoying her joke.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Now in the third yearly cycle of organic farming on their 2.5 acre land, she and her husband Ujiyan Singh grow kharif crops of paddy, maize, pigeon pea, sesame and in rabi wheat, chickpea, mustard; vegetables are grown through the year – tomato, brinjal, chilly, carrot, radish, beetroot, lady finger, leafy vegetables, gourds, karonda, beans and more. “We don’t have to buy anything much in the market,” she says happily.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Chunguna village lies on the edge of the Panna Tiger Reserve in eastern Madhya Pradesh. It has a majority of families belonging to the Rajgond Adivasi community who practise farming on their small plots of land, relying on annual rainfall and a nearby canal. Many migrate for seasonal work to nearby cities like Katni and also places in nearby Uttar Pradesh which lies to the north.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“In the beginning we were just one or two farmers who started doing it. Then 8-9 joined in,” says Gulabrani who estimates that almost 200 acres of farm land cultivated by her community members, is now organic.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Social worker Sharad Yadav says, “migration [in Chunguna] has come down, and dependence on forest produce is only for firewood for fuel.” Sharad is a cluster coordinator with People's Science Institute (PSI) and a farmer himself.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Gulabrani’s forthright manner, says the PSI staff, and her questioning attitude made her stand out as an influencer. She was the first to try out a crop of corn using the methods they suggested, and she did well. Her success spurred others to try.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“We were spending up to 5,000 rupees a month on fertilisers and pesticides – on urea and DAP,” says Ujiyan Singh. Their land had become completely dependent on chemicals, or what is locally called ‘chidka kheti’ (spray and farm), says Sharad.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“Now we make our own matka khaad [clay pot manure],” says Gulabrani pointing to a big clay pot lying in the backyard. “I have to find the time in between household work,” she adds. Besides the land, the family have 10 head of cattle; they don’t sell any of the milk, but use it for their small family – two daughters and a married son.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Karela, bottle gourd and neem leaves are needed along with chillies, ginger, and cow urine. “We have to boil it for an hour. Then we keep it for 2.5 to 3 days before we use it. But it can stay in the pot till we need it. “Some keep it for upto 15 days so that it ache se gal jaata hai [well fermented],” says the organic farmer.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">She makes five to 10 litres at a time. “For one acre one litre is enough. It must be diluted in 10 litres of water. If you put too much it can kill the flowers and ruin the crop,” she adds. Initially neighbours would ask for a bottle to try out.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“We get enough to feed ourselves through the year. We manage to sell produce of around 15,000 rupees annually,” says Ujiyan Singh. Like others in central India, these farmers too face the constant pain of wild animals ruining the crop. “We can’t catch or kill them anymore because the government has introduced the new law. Nilgai eats wheat and corn, completely destroys the crop,” she tells PARI. The <a style="color:rgb(0, 103, 106);text-decoration:none;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/the-wildlife-protection-act-1972/">Wildlife Protection Act 1972</a> prohibits the killing of wild pigs.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">A solar pump for irrigation is used to draw water from the nearby stream. Many farmers, says Ujiyan Singh, are able to sow upto three crops a year,” he says pointing to the solar panels at the end of his field.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The People's Science Institute (PSI) has also set up a technology seva kendra (TRC) that serves 40 villages around Bilpura panchayat. “At the TRC they stock 15 varieties of rice and 11 varieties of wheat, mostly traditional seeds which can thrive in less rain, severe cold, and they also have least amount of pests and weeds,” says Rajinder Singh who manages the TRC.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“We give upto two kilos of seeds to our farmer members and they have to return double that when they harvest,” he adds. A short distance away he shows us an acre of paddy – four different varieties planted alongside each other and he reels off the likely harvest dates.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Farmers in the area are next planning to start a collective for marketing of vegetables. With the push for organic, they are hoping to get better prices as well.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">As we are leaving, Gulabrani joins other women in the village who are going down to the canal to bathe and do the hullchhat puja before they break their fast. This puja is done on the fifth month of the Hindu calendar – bhadon – for their children. “We will cook mahua – boil it with buttermilk – and eat it to break our fast,” says Gulabrani. They will roast their homegrown organic channa and eat it too.

Chunguna’s Gulabrani farms the organic way

ਚੁਣਗੁਣਾ ਵਿਖੇ ਜੈਵਿਕ ਖੇਤੀ ਕਰਨਾ ਵਾਲ਼ੀ ਗੁਲਾਬ ਰਾਣੀ

चुंगुनाच्या गुलाबरानीची सेंद्रिय शेती 

চুংগুনাত গুলাবৰাণীৰ জৈৱিক খেতি 

ചുങ്കുണയിലെ ഗുലാബ്‌റാണിയുടെ ജൈവകൃഷി

ચુંગુનાના ગુલાબરાની જૈવિક (ઓર્ગેનિક) ખેતી 

సేంద్రియ వ్యవసాయం చేస్తున్న చున్గునాకు చెందిన గులాబ్‌రాణి

குலாப்ரானியின் இயற்கை விவசாயம்

ଚୁଙ୍ଗୁନାର ଗୁଲାବରାଣୀ ଜୈବିକ ଉପାୟରେ ଚାଷ କରନ୍ତି

ಚುಂಗುನಾ: ಗುಲಾಬ್‌ ರಾಣಿಯವರ ಸಾವಯವ ಪ್ರಯಾಣ 

पन्ना में जैविक क्रांति के बिगुल बजावे वाली भौजी

জৈবচাষের পথ বেছেছেন চুঙ্গুনা গাঁয়ের গুলাবরানি

चुनगुना की ऑर्गैनिक फार्मर गुलाबरानी

जैविक खेती के रद्दा मं चुनगुना के गुलाबरानी

Panna

MOBILE-COVER-IMAGE-PD-Chunguna’s Gulabrani farms the organic way.jpg

01-IMG_20190505_163001179-SS-Row row row your boat….jpg

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">In his early thirties, Ganesh Pandit is possibly the youngest resident of Loha Pul, the old Yamuna Bridge in New Delhi. He says young people from his community prefer to move out to more 'mainstream' jobs as swimming coaches and working in retail shops in neighbouring Chandni Chowk.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The Yamuna which passes through Delhi, is the longest tributary of the Ganga, and the second greatest (after the Ghaghara) in terms of volume.&nbsp;<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Pandit organises photo shoots on the Yamuna and ferries people seeking to conduct rituals in the middle of the river. “Where science fails, faith works,” he explains. His father is a priest here and he and his two brothers, “learnt to swim in the Jamuna [Yamuna] as youngsters.” Pandit’s brothers work as lifeguards in five-star hotels.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The young man says people don't want to marry their daughter off to a boatman today as it's neither a lucrative nor respectable profession. He doesn’t understand, nor does he agree saying, “I earn 300-500 rupees a day ferrying people.” Pandit adds that also he earns a fair amount helping organise photo and video shoots on the river.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">He has been ferrying passengers for over decade and laments the pollution in the river’s waters. The river only gets a cleaning in September after the monsoon waters flush out the filth, he says.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:&quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:29px;margin:0px 0px 20px;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Just 22 kilometres (or barely 1.6 per cent) of the Yamuna flows through the National Capital Territory. But the wastes emptied into that little stretch account for close to 80 per cent of all pollution in the 1,376-kilometre river. Read: <a style="background-color:transparent;box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(255, 61, 8);text-decoration:none;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/when-yamunas-dead-fish-will-be-fresher/">When Yamuna’s ‘dead fish will be fresher’</a>

Row row row your boat…

वल्हव रे नाखवा...

منجھدار میں پھنسی کشتی…

തോണി തുഴഞ്ഞ്, തുഴഞ്ഞ്...

ਕਿਸ਼ਤੀ ਚਲਾਉਣਾ ਵੀ ਪੇਸ਼ਾ ਹੀ ਹੈ

పడవ నడుపుతూ సాగిపో...

अपन डोंगा चलावत

யமுனையில் படகோட்டுதல்

ନିଜ ଡଙ୍ଗାରେ ନୌଯାତ୍ରା ଜାରି ରଖନ୍ତୁ…

ದೋಣಿ ಸಾಗಲಿ ಮುಂದೆ ಹೋಗಲಿ…

गनेस के नइया ढूंढ़त बा किनारा

নৌকা বাইচ, নৌকা বাইচ…

नाव फंसी मझधार...

নাও বাই যোৱা নাৱৰীয়া

જાશે દરિયા પાર પરીઓના દેશમાં...

New Delhi

MOBILE-COVER-IMAGE-SS-Row row row your boat….jpg

01-IMG_2602-SSH-Nhaan.jpg

Yo Nhaan tamaso mat samjho, purkha ki amar nisani che! Don’t mistake Nhaan for mere entertainment; it is the legacy of our ancestors

With these words, late poet Surajmal Vijay of Sangod village, Kota, encapsulates the Nhaan festival celebrated in south-eastern Rajasthan’s Hadoti region.“No government can organise such an event even after spending crores of rupees,” says Rambabu Soni, a jeweller and resident of the village. “Not the way people of our village organise by their own will, for their own culture.” The village celebrates the festival for five days, just after Holi, in honour of the folk hero Sanga Gurjar who is believed to have lived here in the 15th century.‘Nhaan’ which means ‘to bathe’ symbolises a collective cleansing and links the festival to Holi. It is entirely managed by the people of Sangod, who shed their daily routines and step into extraordinary roles, transformed by self-applied makeup and festive clothes.

<div class="paragraph-block text-align-default content">“Around 400-500 years ago, during the rule of the Mughal emperor Shahjahan, there was a Vijayvargiya ‘Mahajan’ in Sangod,” says Rambabu Soni. “He used to work for Shahjahan. When he retired, he asked the emperor’s permission to organise Nhaan here. That’s when the festival began in Sangod.”&nbsp;Thousands from nearby villages also travel to Sangod to watch artists dazzle with dance performances, magic tricks and acrobatics. The celebration begins with the worship of Goddess Brahammani, followed by the distribution of ghoogri (boiled grains) as prasad.“Magical skills will be displayed, swords will be swallowed, and many such acts will be performed here,” announces Satyanarayan Mali, himself one of the performers. “A man will eat pieces of paper and pull out a 50 feet long thread from his mouth.”</div>

<div class="paragraph-block text-align-default content">The days of festivities lead up to the eventual badshah ki sawari where an ordinary man is crowned king for a day, his regal procession winding through the village streets. For the past 60 years the role of the king has been in Rambabu’s family. “My father held the role for 25 years and I have continued this legacy for the past 35 years,” he says. “The post of the king is important, much like the lead actor is the main attraction in a film. This too is a film.”For that day, whoever gets the role is also awarded the respect that goes with it.“Yes, only for one day every year,” says one attendee. “Yes, for today he is the king.”</div>

Nhaan

नहाण

نہان کا جشن

நாண்

ਨਹਾਨ

ନାଣ

నహాన్

നഹാൻ

ನ್ಹಾನ್

ન્હાન

नहान: ये ह  परंपरा आय, सिरिफ कहिनी नइ 

न्हाण: आम आदमी के एक दिन के राजा बनावे वाला उत्सव 

हाड़ौती की नहाण परंपरा

ভোজবাজীর বিরাসত নাহান পরব

হান

Kota

MOBILE COVER IMAGE-SSH-Nhaan.jpg

01-IMG_7446-MH-In Darrang-ploughing a lonely furrow.jpg

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:center;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Lukor kotha nuhuniba, batot nangol nachachiba.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:center;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">[Do not listen to people, Do not smoothen the plough on the roadside]

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The above figure of speech in the Assamese language is used to describe the importance of keeping one’s attention on one’s work.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Hanif Ali, a wood craftsman who makes ploughs for farmers, says it applies to him, and his work of making precision tools for farming. Around two thirds of the land around him&nbsp;&nbsp;–&nbsp;in central Assam’s Darrang district, is under agriculture, and this veteran craftsman has an array of tools for agricultural work.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“I make all agricultural tools such as nangol [plough], chongo [bamboo ladder] juwal [yoke], haath naingle [hand-rake], naingle [rake], dheki [foot-operated pounding mill], itamagur [mallet], haarpaat [a semi-circular wooden tool attached to bamboo pole used to gather paddy into a pile after drying] and more,” he reels off.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">He prefers the wood of the jackfruit tree – called kaathol in the local Bengali dialect and kothaal in Assamese – used in making doors, windows and beds. Hanif says he cannot afford to waste any of the wood he buys and so makes as many tools as possible from each log.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Ploughs are precision tools. “I must not miss the markings on the wood even by an inch or else I may end up losing a piece,” he adds and an estimated monetary loss of Rs. 250-300.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">His customers are mostly marginal farmers from the district who have oxen at home. They multi-crop on their land, growing vegetables such as cauliflower, cabbage, eggplant, knol-khol, peas, chillies, bottlegourd, pumpkin carrots, bittergourd, tomatoes and cucumber, as well as crops of mustard and paddy.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“Anybody who needs a plough comes to me,” says the veteran craftsman now in his sixties. "About 15-10 years ago there were only two tractors in the area, and people relied on ploughs to till their land," he tells PARI.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Mukaddas Ali is a farmer in his sixties and among the few who still occasionally use a wooden plough. “I still go to Hanif to repair my plough whenever required. He is the only one who can properly adjust the damages. Like his father, he can make well finished ploughs.”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Ali however says that he is not sure if he will invest in another one. “Bulls have become expensive and farm labour is not easily available, also using a plough takes much longer time than a tractor,” he adds explaining why people have shifted to tractors and power tillers to reduce the workload.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Hanif is a second-generation craftsman; he learnt the craft when he was a young child. “I went to school only for a few days. Neither my mother nor my father was interested in education, and I too didn’t want to go,” he says.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">He was very young when he started helping his father, Holu Sheikh, a respected and skilled craftsman. “Babaye shara bostir jonne nangol banaito. Nangol banabar ba thik korbar jonne angor barit aito shob khetiok [My father used to make ploughs for everyone in the village. Everyone would come to our house to make or repair their ploughs].”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">When he began helping out, his father would do the markings – precise marks essential to make the plough work without a hitch. “You must know at which exact point you have to make the holes. You must be sure that the beam is attached to the murikaath [body of the plough] at the correct angle,” Hanif says as he runs his right hand over a piece of wood he is working on.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">He explains that if the plough is too angular, nobody will buy it because then soil enters the share [cutting edge of the plough], creating a gap and slowing down work.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">It took a year before he gained enough confidence to tell his father, “I know where to mark. Don’t worry anymore.”

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">He also started to accompany his father popularly known as ‘Holu mistry’. His father would double up as shopkeeper and a huiter – a person who specialises in carpentry specifically in plough making. He recalls how they would go house to house carrying their work hung on a pole on their shoulders.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">After a few years of working with his father who was beginning to age, Hanif – the only son in the family of six – says the responsibility of his sisters’ marriage fell on him. “People already knew our house and as my father was unable to meet all the orders, I started to make ploughs.”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">That was four decades ago. Today, Hanif lives alone and his home and workplace are is a single room at Number 3 Baruajhar village, home to many Bengali-origin Muslims like him. The area comes under the Dalgaon legislative assembly constituency. His one-room bamboo-thatched home is sparsely furnished with a small bed, a few cooking utensils – a pot to cook rice, a pan, a couple of steel plates and a glass.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">"My father's and my work are important to people in the locality," he says, speaking of the many farmers that are his neighbours. He is sitting in the courtyard shared by five families, also living in one-room homes like him. The other houses belong to his sister, his youngest son, and his nephews. His sister does wage work on people's farms and in their homes; his nephews often migrate to southern states.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Hanif has nine children, but none are engaged in this craft for which demand is now declining. “The younger generation will not able to recognise what a traditional plough looks like,” says Afaj Uddin, Mukaddas Ali’s nephew. The 48-year-old is a farmer with six bighas of unirrigated land stopped using a plough 15 years ago.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“When I cycle past houses with big trees with angular branches, I ask the house owner to inform me when he plans to cut the tree. I tell them that the angular and solid branches will make good ploughs,” he says, revealing his familiarity among local people.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Local timber traders also reach out to him when they have a curvy piece. He needs a seven-foot-long beam and a 3 x 2 inch wide wooden plank made of either sal (shorea robusta), shishu (Indian rosewood), titachap (Michelia champaca), shirish (albezia lebbeck) or other locally available wood.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“The tree should be 25-30 years old then the plough, yokes and rakes will last long. The logs are generally trunks or solid branches grow,” he says, showing PARI a branch he has cut into two parts.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">When PARI visited him in mid-August, he was hewing one part of the wood into the body of a plough. “If I can make two haatnaingle [wooden handrakes] apart from making the body of one plough, I may earn extra 400 -500 rupees from this log,” he says pointing towards the angular-shaped wood bought for Rs. 200.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“I must utilize as many parts as possible from each wood. Not just that, the shape has to be exactly what the farmers require,” he adds. Over the four decades and more that he has been doing this, he knows the most popular size for a plough is 18-inch shoes (to stabilise the plough) and a 33-inch body.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Once he gets the perfect piece of wood, he starts work before the sun rises, placing his tools for axing, chopping, shaping, and curving nearby. He also has a few chisels, an adze, a couple of saws, an axe, a hand plane, and a few rusting rods which he keeps on an elevated wooden platform at home.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Using the plain side of the saw, he marks the lines on the wood to make precise cuts. He measures the distance with his hand. Once the markings are done, he slices the sides of the wood with his 30-year-old axe. “Then I use tessha [adze tool similar to an axe] to shave off the uneven surface,” the master woodworker says. The nangol or the shoe-part of the body has to be precisely curved in a way that makes the soil move to either side easily.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“The starting point of the shoes [the part of the body that glides on the ground] remains around six inches, it gradually decreases to 1.5 to 2 inches towards the end in width,” he says. The shoes’ thickness should be 8 or 9 inches tapering to two inches towards the end where it is nailed into the wood.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The shoe-share is called faal or pal and is made of an iron bar around 9-12 inches in length and 1.5-2 inches wide, with sharp edges on both ends. “Both the edges are sharp, because if one end gets corroded, the farmer can switch to the other end.” Hanif sources the metal work from local blacksmiths in Bechimari market, around three kilometres from his home.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">It takes at least five hours of continuous pounding of axe and adze to chop and shave the sides of a log into shape. It must then be smoothened with a hand plane.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">When the body is ready, the huiter makes a precise mark to make a whole where the beam of the plough has to fit. Hanif says, “the hole has to be as close as possible to the size of the eesh [the wooden beam], because it must not loosen up while ploughing. It is generally 1.5 or 2 inches wide.”

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">To adjust the height of the plough Hanif makes five to six hitches near the top end of the beam. Using these hitches, the farmers used to adjust the plough to their requirement of how deep they wanted to till the soil.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Cutting the wood with a saw machine is expensive and tiring says Hanif. “If I buy a log for 200 rupees, I pay another 150 to the cutting person.” Finishing the plough takes around two days and can, at best, sell one plough for Rs. 1,200.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">While some people approach him directly, Hanif also travels to two weekly markets in Darrang district – Lalpool bazaar and Bechimari bazaar – to sell his products. “A farmer has to pay around 3,500 to 3,700 rupees for the plough and its accessories,” he says pointing out the steep costs that have reduced his buyers to those renting out their ploughs and the odd farmer. “Tractors have replaced the traditional method of tilling.”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">But Hanif is not stopping. The next day he readies his bicycle with his work – a plough body and a kuthi (handle of the plough). “When tractors finish damaging the soil… people will come back to the plough maker,” he adds.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">This story is supported by a fellowship from Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation (MMF).

In Darrang: ploughing a lonely furrow

दरांगचे हनीफ अली आणि त्यांचे अखेरचे काही नांगर

ٹریکٹروں نے چھینا ہل بنانے والوں کا روزگار

दर्रांग के अकेल्ला नांगर बनेइय्या

ट्रैक्टर आइल, हल कारीगर के रोटी छीनाइल

ଦାରଙ୍ଗ: ନିଃସଙ୍ଗ ଜମିରେ ହଳ ବୁଲେଇବା

தனியாக உழும் பணி

ਦਰਾਂਗ: ਹਲ ਦਾ ਚਲਣ ਵਾਪਸ ਆਵੇਗਾ

ദരംഗയിൽ: ഉഴവുചാലിൽ കലപ്പയുന്തുമ്പോൾ

ದರಾಂಗ್:‌ ಒಂಟಿ ಹೊಲದ ಉಳುಮೆ

ट्रैक्टरों ने छीना हल-निर्माताओं का रोज़गार 

দারাং: একার হাতে চলছে লাঙল 

దరంగ్‌లో ఒకే ఒక నాగలి రూపకర్త

দৰঙত নাঙল-যুৱলিৰ সপোন দেখা এজন সূতাৰ 

દારંગમાં હળ બનાવવાની વિસરાતી જતી કળા

Dalgaon (Pt), Darrang District, Assam, India

01-PXL_20230916_055127077-UKR-Mundrika to the rescue .jpg

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The cobra lay coiled around the branch of the sturdy sagwan (teak) tree. It would not budge despite fervent attempts by the residents of Ratti Tola village.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">After five hours, the hapless villagers finally called Mundrika Yadav, once a guard at the nearby Valmiki Tiger Reserve. He has rescued more than 200 animals including tigers, leopards, rhinoceros, and snakes. When Mundrika arrived he first tried to get the cobra to descend, which it did. “I put a bamboo stick in its mouth and tightened the rope. Then I put it in a sack and released it back into the forest,” says the 42-year-old. “It took me just 20-25 minutes.”

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The <a style="color:rgb(0, 103, 106);text-decoration:none;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://valmikitigerreserve.com/">tiger reserve</a> in Bihar’s West Champaran district, covers nearly 900 square kilometres, and is home to 54 tigers, besides a host of other wildlife. “Hum spot par hi turant jugaad bana lete hain [I can innovate on the spot],” says Mundrika about his rescue tactics.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Mundrika, who belongs to the Yadav community (listed as Other Backward Classes in the state) grew up in close proximity to the forest and its animals. “When I used to take the buffaloes to graze in the forest, I would often catch snakes. From that time, I developed an affection for wildlife. So, when the physical examination for a forest guard was held in 2012, I applied and got the job,” says the resident of Vijaypur village. He lives here with his wife and daughter. “The map of the entire reserve is in our eyes. You blindfold us and leave us in the forest, and you get out in a car, we will come out of the forest before you,” says the former vanrakshi (forest guard).<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Mundrika worked as a forest guard for the next eight years, hanging on despite his monthly salary being routinely delayed by up to a year. “Protecting forests and animals is a passion for me,” he tells PARI.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">In 2020, the Bihar government appointed a new set of forest guards through open recruitment. The earlier set of guards like Yadav were given other jobs – he now drives the vehicles of the VTR. “We have been sidelined,” he says, unhappy about his new position. Mundrika was not eligible to sit for the new examination because of his age, and his education qualifications – he has passed his matriculation – not sufficient for the post of a guard.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">When the situation is dangerous and critical, the new forest guards reach out to Mundrika. “The forest guards appointed through examinations may have a degree, but they do not have practical knowledge,” he says. “We were born in the forest and learned to rescue animals by living with them.”

Mundrika to the rescue

संकटमोचक मुंद्रिका

جنگلی جانوروں کے محافظ مُندریکا

వన్యప్రాణి రక్షకుడు ముంద్రికా

காக்க வந்த முந்த்ரிகா

ਜਿੱਥੇ ਡਿਗਰੀ ਨਹੀਂ ਤਜ਼ਰਬਾ ਕੰਮ ਆਵੇ

ଉଦ୍ଧାର କରିବାକୁ ମୁନ୍ଦ୍ରିକା

രക്ഷിക്കാൻ മുണ്ഡ്രികയെ വിളിക്കൂ

ಮುಂದ್ರಿಕಾ ಎನ್ನುವ ಆಪತ್ಬಾಂಧವ

સંકટ સમયની સાંકળ મુંદ્રિકા

जंगली जीव-जन्तु मन के तारनहार मुंद्रिका 

রেহাই দেবেন মুন্দ্রিকা

উদ্ধাৰ কৰিবলৈ মুন্দ্ৰিকা আছে নহয় 

मुंद्रिका, संकटमोचन नाम तिहारो! 

जंगली जीवों के तारणहार मुंद्रिका

Darakwadi

01-1000079172_enhanced-PP-Labani Jangi and the strokes of resistance.jpg

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“I do not think I am a painter. I do not have the qualities of a painter. But I have stories. I try to write stories with my brush. I don’t claim my strokes are all perfect. It is only in the last two-three years that I am trying to study and understand the work of a lot of painters. Otherwise, I had no knowledge. I painted to tell a story. I feel happy when I can express the story. I paint as if I am writing a narrative.”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Labani is an artist, a painter from Dhubulia, in the very rural Nadia district of West Bengal. The village used to station an army camp, with an airfield, during World War II. The largely Muslim village lost a lot of its agricultural land when the British established that camp. Later, when partition happened, many from the village moved to the other side of the border. “But we did not,” says Labani “as our elders did not want to. Our ancestors are buried in this land. This is where we want to live and die.”&nbsp; That connection with the land, and all that happens in its name, has shaped the sensibility of this artist from her younger days.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Her encouragement for painting came from her father who took her to a tutor for a few years when she was a child. Her father is a first-generation learner, the only one among his 10 siblings. A lawyer who worked at the grassroot level, starting cooperatives for peasants and labourers, he did not make much money. <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;display:inline !important;float:none;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;orphans:2;text-align:start;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">&nbsp;“From whatever money he got he would buy me a book,” says Labani. “There used to be lot of children’s books from Moscow Press, Raduga Publishers, that made their way into our home through Bangla translations. I used to love the pictures in these books. That is where my earliest inspiration for illustration came from.”&nbsp;<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">That early age training in painting which her father introduced her to did not last long. But the love for painting returned to Labani in 2016 when language began to abandon her.&nbsp; The country was seeing a rise in mob lynching in the face of state indifference, a deliberate persecution of minorities, and the majoritarian denial of such hate crimes.&nbsp;Labani, then finishing her M.Phil. at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, was deeply troubled by the realities of this country, yet was unable to write about it.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“There was an intense feeling of unease,” she says. “I used to love writing till that time, and had written and published a few articles in Bangla. But suddenly language felt completely inadequate. I wanted to run away from everything then. That is when I started painting. I would paint the sea in all its moods, in water colours, on every little piece of paper I could find. One after the other, I did so many paintings of the sea at that time [2016-17]. To paint was my way of finding peace in an otherwise turbulent world.”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Labani remains a self-taught artist to this day.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">In 2017 she enrolled into a doctoral programme at the Centre for Studies In Social Sciences, Calcutta affiliated to Jadavpur University after being awarded the prestigious UGC-Maulana Azad National Fellowship for Minority Students (2016–20). She continued with the work on migrant labour she had begun earlier, but this time getting deeper into their lived realities as part of her larger dissertation project, 'The lives and world of Bengali migrant labour'.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Labani had seen a lot of people from her village leave for Kerala in search of construction labour jobs, or to Mumbai to work in hotels. “My father’s brothers and members of their families, not women as much as men, still work as migrant labourers outside Bengal,” she says. The subject though close to her heart needed a lot of field work. “But just then the pandemic struck,” she recalls. “The worst hit were migrant workers. I did not feel like working on my research anymore then. How could I go and ask questions related to my academic work when they were struggling to reach home, to get healthcare, and for a place in the crematoria and burial grounds? It did not feel right to benefit from their situation. I could not finish the field work in time and so my PhD has dragged on.” &nbsp;<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Labani took to her brush again, this time to document the lives of migrant workers on the pages of the People’s Archives of Rural India (PARI). “Some of Sainath’s articles used to get published in the Bengali daily Ganashakti’s editorial pages. So, I was already familiar with P. Sainath’s work when Smita di got me to do a few illustrations for an article first and then a poem.” (Smita Khator is Chief Translations Editor of PARI). All through 2020 Labani Jangi was a Fellow at PARI where she painted the lives of the subjects of her thesis, as well as of farmers and rural women living out the pandemic and lockdowns. &nbsp;<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“My work with PARI focuses on both the systemic challenges, and the enduring spirit of rural life. By integrating these narratives into my art, I try to create visual expressions that resonate with the complexities of their lives. My illustrations are a medium through which I contribute to preserving and sharing the rich diversities of cultural and social realities in rural India.”

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Labani is not associated with any political party, but sees her art as political. “I saw a lot of painters – and political posters – after coming to Jadavpur to study. And the kind of illustrations I make about all that happens around us has come from my exposure to these and of course from my own sensibilities.”&nbsp; She draws inspiration from the daily realities of being a Muslim woman in a society where hatred is being normalised, and state-sponsored violence is often the harsh reality of the day.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“The world does not want to acknowledge us, our skills, our talents, our hard work,” Labani says. “Our identity plays a huge part in this erasure. This continues even today. The work, especially of a Muslim woman artist, does not even exist for a large number of people." Certainly not until she finds the right patron, if she is lucky. "One does not give it space or engage with it, not even to criticise. That is why I call it erasure. A process that manifests itself in the history of art, literature, and many other fields for that matter,” she adds. But Labani keeps trying by painting and putting her work on the walls of digital platforms like Facebook and Instagram.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">And it is through Facebook that the Chitrabhasha Art Gallery in Chattogram got in touch with her and invited her to Bangladesh for her very first solo exhibition in December 2022, Bibir Dargahs.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The idea for the exhibition Bibir Dargahs&nbsp;came from her childhood, as well as from the present situation in Bangladesh, where she says, she once again sees the rise of conservative Islam. A Bibi ka dargah refers to dargahs memorialising women pirs (spiritual guides). “There used to be two&nbsp;dargahs for women in my village when I was growing up. We had cultural practices, beliefs in tying a thread for mannat&nbsp;[wish or vow]; we cooked together for a feast when our wishes were granted. There was a whole set of syncretic traditions around that place.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“But I also saw them disappear in front of my eyes. Then a maktab [library] comes up in their place later. Conservative Islamic people who do not believe in mazars [graves or tombs], or sufi dargahs&nbsp;&nbsp;–&nbsp;their efforts are towards either breaking these down or building a mosque in its place. There are a few dargahs left now but all of them are for male pirs. There are no Bibi ka dargahs left, their names erased from our cultural memories.”&nbsp;<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">But while the pattern of such destruction is widespread, there is also another parallel pattern that Labani points out. Something that stands against such calculated and violent erasing of memories. “When the time came for a show in Bangladesh, I thought about the destruction of mazars on one hand and the unbreakable resilience of women who fight for their lost land and rights even today. This resistance and resilience are the spirit of the mazar that survives even after the structures are destroyed. This is what I have tried to capture in this solo exhibition.” Long after that exhibition is over, she continues working on the theme.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Labani’s paintings have amplified the voices of people, given a second life to many a poem, and to articles, and books. “Artists or writers, we all are connected. I remember Keshav bhau&nbsp;[<a style="color:rgb(0, 103, 106);text-decoration:none;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/inspired-by-ambedkar-salves-liberation-song/" data-linktype="page" data-id="17858" data-parent-id="27" data-original-title="" title="">Inspired by Ambedkar: Salve's liberation song</a>] telling me how I had painted the Shahir exactly the way he had imagined. And it is not surprising to me, because we share our imagination, our collective memories, the soul of our common stories, even when we are separated by our individual, social, cultural identities,” says Labani.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The bold colours, powerful strokes, and raw depiction of human lives in Labani’s paintings tell stories of resistance against cultural homogenisation, stories of collective remembrance, of identities and cultures, of building connections amidst fragmentation. “I guess I am driven by the urgency for a utopia. Envisioning a new society becomes imperative in response to the surrounding violence,” says Labani. “In a world where political discourse often aligns with destruction, my paintings speak a softer but equally potent language of protest and resilience.”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">A language she learnt from her grandmother with whom she lived during the first 10 years of her life. “Mother found it difficult to take care of the two of us, brother and me,” says Labani. “The house was also small. So, she sent me to my nani’s&nbsp;[maternal grandmother's] house where she and khala [mother’s sister] took care of me for a decade. There used to be a pond near her house where we spent every single afternoon doing kantha&nbsp;[embroidery] work.” Her grandmother would weave complex stories in colourful needle work, using a simple running stitch. The art of telling complex stories in simple strokes may have come to Labani from her grandmother, but the space between despair and hope that she inhabits has been created by her mother.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“When I was young, I performed very poorly in my exams. I would get a zero in maths and even science sometimes,” she says. “And all that time I do not know why but ma&nbsp;continued to believe in me, even when baba had doubts. She would assure me that I would do well next time. &nbsp;I wouldn’t have reached so far without her. Also, ma could never attend college even though she wanted to. She was married off. So, she lives her life through me. When I return from Kolkata she comes and sits next to me, eagerly absorbing the stories of a world outside her home. She sees that world through my eyes.”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">But the world is a scary place, even the rapidly commercialising world of art. “I fear losing my emotional core. In the desire to become a big artist, I do not wish to be emotionally displaced, distanced from my people and from the values for which my art stands. I continue to struggle a lot, about money, about time, but my biggest struggle is to survive in this world without selling my soul.”

Labani Jangi and the strokes of resistance

लाबोनी जांगी आणि विद्रोहाचे रंग

લબાની જંગી: પીંછીના જોરે પ્રતિકાર

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“When I first saw a hangul, I was so fascinated that I could not move,” recalls Shabir Husain Bhat. He kept returning to the same place again and again to get a glimpse of the deer (Cervus elaphus hanglu), native to Kashmir and <a href="https://wii.gov.in/images/hangulconference_brochure.pdf">critically</a> endangered.Almost 20 years later, Shabir says his fascination for the animals, birds, trees and flowers in the 141 square kilometer park has not diminished. “I would definitely say it was hangul that ignited the spark inside me and of course Himalayan Black Bear too.” At the park, he is fondly referred to as the ‘encyclopedia of Dachigam’. “I have so far identified 400 species of plants, more than 200 bird species and almost all the animal species in this region,” he tells PARI. Other wild animals found in this park include: musk deer, Himalayan brown bear, snow leopard and golden eagle.

Shabir didn’t start at the park as a naturalist, but in fact as driver of the battery-operated vehicles used for tourists in Dachigam National Park. As his knowledge grew, he became a guide, and is now a celebrated one; in 2006 he became an employee of the state wildlife department.Hanguls were once found across the Zanskar mountains, but a Wildlife Institute of India 2009 <a href="https://wii.gov.in/images/hangulconference_brochure.pdf">report</a> says that hunting, poaching and habitat fragmentation and degradation has shrunk their population from an estimated 2,000 individuals in 1947 to about 170-200. The report also says they are largely confined to the Dachigam National Park and a few sanctuaries in Kashmir valley. Shabir is from the Nishat area in Srinagar city, roughly 15 kilometers from the park. He lives with his family of six including his parents, wife and two sons.  He accompanies tourists and wildlife lovers, remaining in the park from morning to evening. “If you want to take a tour of Dachigam park you can come anytime in the day, but if you want to see the animals you have to either come early in the morning or before sunset,” he tells PARI.

The naturalist of Dachigam

रुख-रई, चिरई-चिरगुन, जीव-जन्तु चिन्हे मं माहिर

ଡଚିଗାମର ପ୍ରକୃତିପ୍ରେମୀ

దాచీగామ్ ప్రకృతి ప్రేమికుడు

தச்சிகமை சேர்ந்த இயற்கையிலாளர்

ਦਸ਼ੀਗਾਮ ਜੰਗਲ ਦਾ ਉਹ ਕੁਦਰਤ-ਪ੍ਰੇਮੀ

ദച്ചിഗാമിലെ പ്രകൃതിനിരീക്ഷകൻ

દચીગામના પ્રકૃતિવાદી

दाचिगमचा निसर्गवेडा

दाचीगाम का प्रकृति-प्रेमी

दाचीगाम के जीव-जंतु प्रेमी

দাছীগামৰ প্ৰকৃতিবিদজন

ڈاچی گام کے فطرت پسند

দাচিগামের প্রকৃতিবিদ শাবির সাহেব

ದಚಿಗಾಮ್‌ ಅರಣ್ಯದ ಪ್ರಕೃತಿ ತಜ್ಞ

Srinagar

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From the window of her home, as far as the eye can see, there is water – this year’s floods have not receded. Rupali Pegu lives just a kilometre from the Subansiri river – an important tributary of the Brahmaputra that annually floods vast tracts of land in Assam.Water may be all around, but ironically, finding potable water is a challenge, she says. In her village, Bordubi Maluwal in Assam’s Lakhimpur district, drinking water is contaminated. “Most hand pumps in our village and the neighbouring ones are submerged,” Rupali explains. To fetch water from the hand pump near the road, she relies on a canoe. Armed with three large steel water containers, Rupali rows towards the road, also partially submerged.  She uses a long bamboo stick to carefully navigate through the flooded village. “Moni, come along!” she calls out to her neighbour, who often joins her on these trips. The friends help each other fill the containers.

At the handpump, after a few minutes of pumping, clean water finally starts flowing. “It hasn&#39;t rained for three days, so we managed to get water,” Rupali says with a faint smile of relief. Fetching water is seen to be women’s labour, and as the river rises, it is women who bear the added burden.When the hand pump disappoints, “we boil and drink this,” says 36-year-old Rupali, pointing to the stagnant, muddy waters swirling around her house. Rupali’s bamboo house, like many others in this region, is specially designed to withstand the floods. Locally known as chang ghar – these houses are elevated on bamboo stilts to avoid flooding. Rupali’s ducks have made her porch their home, and their quacking fills the silence.  The canoe is also Rupali’s carrier when she needs to relieve herself. Her home once had a washroom, but it is now submerged. “We have to go far, towards the river,” she says. Rupali makes that journey in the dark.

Not just daily lives, but livelihoods of the largely Mising community who live here, are also impacted. “We had 12 bighas of land where we cultivated rice. But this year, all our crops are submerged and we’ve lost everything,” says Rupali. A part of her land has already been swallowed by the river. “We will only know after the flood how much land the river has taken this year,” she says.Agriculture is the traditional occupation of Mising people (listed as Scheduled Tribe in the state). Unable to farm, many are forced to migrate in search of livelihoods. According to this <a href="https://sita.assam.gov.in/sites/default/files/swf_utility_folder/departments/sita_medhassu_in_oid_4/portlet/level_1/files/study_report_on_floods_and_impacts_on_livelihood_in_rural_assam.pdf">study</a> in 2020, the out-migration in Lakhimpur is 29 per cent, more than three times the national average. Rupali’s husband Manus has gone to Hyderabad to work as a watchman, leaving Rupali in-charge of the home and their two children – a son and a daughter. Manus earns Rs. 15,000 a month and sends home Rs.8,000-10,000. Rupali says that for six months in the year when their homes are on flooded ground, finding work is tough. “Last year we received some help from the government – polythene sheets, ration. But nothing this year. If we had money, we would have left,” she adds, with a note of sadness.

Surviving a flood of problems in Assam

సమస్యల వరదను తట్టుకొని...

असम: मुश्किलों की बाढ़ में नाउम्मीदी की पतवार

ಅಸ್ಸಾಮ್: ಸಮಸ್ಯೆಗಳ ಪ್ರವಾಹದಲ್ಲಿ ಬದುಕು

அஸ்ஸாமில் நேரும் வெள்ளத்தில் பிழைத்திருத்தல்!

ଆସାମରେ ବନ୍ୟା ସମସ୍ୟା ସହ ଜୀବନ ଜୀଇଁବା

जिनगी के नइया फंसल मझधार

ਅਸਾਮ: ਹੜ੍ਹਾਂ ਨਾਲ਼ ਜਿਊਂਦਿਆਂ

آسام: مشکلوں کے سیلاب کا سامنا

അസമിൽ, പ്രശ്നങ്ങളുടെ മലവെള്ളപ്പാച്ചിൽ

पुर मं बूड़े जिनगी

এসোপা সমস্যাৰ ধল ফালি ৰূপালী আগবাঢ়ি যায়

হাজার সমস্যায় বানভাসি অসমবাসী

આસામમાં સમસ્યાઓના પૂરમાંથી બચવું શી રીતે?

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You might just miss the only post office in Satjelia. Housed in a mud hut, the metal red letter box hanging outside is the only clue.This 80-year-old sub-post office in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district serves seven gram panchayats. The mud structure has withstood super cyclones like Aila and Amphan which wreaked havoc in the Sunderbans. It’s a lifeline to many residents who have savings accounts at the post office; their government documents, such as various identity cards, arrive by post here. Gosaba block is surrounded by three rivers – Gomti to the north-west, Datta to the south and Gandal to the east. Jayant Mandal, a resident of Luxbagan village says, “this post office is our only hope in this island area [to get their government documents].” Niranjan Mandal, the current postmaster, has worked here for 40 years. Before him it was his father who served as the postmaster. Every morning he makes his way on foot from his home to his workplace, a journey of a few minutes. The local tea shop located near the post office has people coming and going all day, so the post office always has visitors.

Work for the 59-year-old postmaster begins around 10 a.m. and ends at 4 p.m. The source of light inside the post office is from solar panels, not very effective during monsoons. When the panels are not charged, the employees use a kerosene lamp. They get Rs. 100 a month for their upkeep – 50 rupees for rent and 50 for supplies, says Niranjan.Working with Niranjan is the peon, Babu whose work is to deliver letters to households across the gram panchayats for which he uses his bicycle. Having served the post office for almost half a century, Niranjan babu is set to retire in a few years. Before that, “my only dream is to see construction start for a pucca building,” he says. The reporter would like to thank Oorna Raut for her help with this story.

You’ve got mail!

আপোনালৈ এখন চিঠি আহিছে!

તમારી ટપાલ આવી છે!

चिट्ठी आइल, जिया हरसाइल

‘कतको बासिंदा मन बर जीवनरेखा आय ये डाकखाना’

உங்களுக்கு தபால் வந்திருக்கிறது!

चिट्ठी आई है, आई है!

ನಿಮಗೊಂದು ಪತ್ರ ಬಂದಿದೆ!

ਤੁਹਾਡੀ ਚਿੱਠੀ ਆਈ ਹੈ!

डाकिया डाक लाया!!!

ତୁମ ପାଇଁ ଡାକ ଆସିଛି!

ڈاکیہ ڈاک لایا!

നിങ്ങൾക്ക് കത്തുണ്ട്!

మీకు ఉత్తరమొచ్చింది!

চিঠি এসেছে!

Gosaba

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A student in India today is likely to know about the cocoa crisis in Brazil, but have no idea about the cotton crisis raging within their own country, about a 100 kilometres away.  They learn about crops but not about the unsustainable lives that our farmers live. We lecture them about our glorious fight for independence but make no reference to those who continue to have no freedom from caste-based occupations. Civics classes are all about equality but what about the inequalities of gender and occupation? The teaching of climate change in a Biology textbook leaves out the socio-economic aspect of how lives and livelihoods are being altered forever.  In education, it is not only what is in the curriculum that matters, but what is not in it. If curriculum is a specific set of subjects to be learnt, we need to ask what students across the country are not learning. As educators, we are in danger of grooming a generation of Indians who are far removed from problems in their immediate surroundings, oblivious to social and ethical questions and detached from the growing inequalities around us. If we are to change this, we need to give them the tools and information to question stereotypes and think critically beyond their textbooks.  Perhaps in our rush to make them global citizens, we have alienated them from their own history and geography. We need to expose our students to the rest-of-India and get them to engage with the wider world around them – the world of rural India where 800 million people live and work. They are the custodians of a diverse set of occupations, inherited livelihoods, a multiplicity of languages and rich but mostly undocumented knowledge. They function in intricately interlinked village economies with negligible institutional support, and each failed monsoon sends more and more rural Indians to urban areas in search of a regular income.  Why don’t we know more about them and why are their stories of resilience and unique skills not mandatory learning? Instead, regular media only reinforces either barbaric or exotic stereotypes and doesn’t look further. A ‘PARI Education’ offers a new lens to see the world, and develops both empathy and understanding.  A student once said to us: ‘People are poor in rural India because they are stupid.’ Another said, ‘I didn’t even know these occupations existed, I thought farming is the only occupation there.’ It is exactly these kinds of misconceptions and stereotypes that PARI Education can address, inform and hopefully change.  To know more about what we do at PARI Education, we urge you to read, How urban classrooms can and must learn about rural India and PARI Education years 1, 2 &amp; 3. To hear what students have to say, you can read our Testimonials section and watch this short video.

What is a PARI Education?

Kancheepuram 

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‘There is no such thing as professional grief’