Two months ago I went on a journey like never before. Pearl millet or bajra as it is called locally is a very nutritious cereal that used to be grown widely by the Bhil Adivasis in Western Madhya Pradesh in the monsoons. However, with time it has been replaced by corn in most areas except some of the remoter parts of Barwani and Alirajpur districts. Even in these districts the traditional varieties have vanished and what is sown are the hybrid varieties. We tried to reintroduce the cultivation of indigenous Bajra in Pandutalav village on our farm last year. However, since ours was the only farm with Bajra, and since it ripens early, it was swamped by birds and we had a difficult time saving the crop from them. Eventually, we managed to harvest a little and on winnowing it yielded about forty kilos only. It was so tasty to eat that one friend of ours bought almost the whole of our produce leaving very little for us.
Subhadra remembered that many years ago when our friend Jacob Nellithanam had been running a campaign to preserve indigenous seeds, he had brought a variety of Bajra that had long whiskers on its seeds when on the plant that prevented the birds from eating it. She said that we should get that variety as only then would we be able to revive Bajra cultivation in Pandutalav. So began our search for the whiskered pearl!!
We searched in many places and asked many people but to no avail. Even in the most remote areas of Barwani and Alirajpur this whiskered variety of Bajra had become extinct. We got to know that in Barawani a hybrid variety of whiskered Bajra is sown but on going there we found that it is only sown in the winter season and not in the monsoons.
When we had almost given up hope, suddenly one day my activist friend Naresh Biswas published a post on his Facebook Wall in which there was a photo of a girl holding a cob of whiskered Bajra saying that on a visit to the Patalkot area of Chindwara district he had seen this variety still existing. I immediately got in touch with him and asked him to give us some seeds. He said that it was difficult to get as this was the only cob that was remaining because in Patalkot also not many people are sowing bajra anymore.
I must digress into describing Patalkot here before taking the story forward. Patalkot is a valley in Chhindwara district of Madhya Pradesh just south of the Satpura Hill Ranges which fall in a steep cliff into the valley. Due to this steep cliff the valley remained isolated for a long time and its residents, the Bharia Adivasis, lived a subsistence forest dependent life far removed from modern development. Consequently, they have been categorised as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) by the Government because of their long lack of access to education and health services which has adversely affected their ability to adjust to the modern economy and polity. So special development packages have been implemented by the Government for the Bharia Adivasis and roads and electricity have been provided in the valley. In addition to this, adventure sports like sky diving and paragliding have been promoted from the top of the cliff in Patalkot by the Tourism Department and this has led to an influx of well heeled tourists into the area, boosting the local economy.
The Bharia Adivasis are still very poor because they have small landholdings and the soil quality is not very good. Water too is not readily available for irrigation and so in most cases the Bharias take only a single crop during the monsoon season. Schools and health centres also do not function properly. There are many villages in Patalkot which still do not have road connectivity and grid electricity. However, they still practice indigenous bio-diverse agriculture and depend on a considerable number of herbs and plants of the forest for their subsistence. This is why Naresh Biswas has stepped in. Naresh has been promoting indigenous agriculture and the conservation of seeds which are slowly going into extinction due to the spread of chemical agriculture and hybrid seeds. Naresh has been conducting this Beej Swaraj or seed independence movement in the Baiga Adivasi areas in the districts of Mandla and Dindori in Madhya Pradesh and Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh for quite some time. He has now extended this to Patalkot also. This effort of Naresh's made it possible for us to trace the whiskered bajra seeds that we were so desperately looking for.
One fine morning my son Ishaan and I set out in our car for Patalkot having got the contacts of Gyan Shah of Kauriya Dhana village in Patalkot from Naresh. Given the fact that the highway roads from the town of Hoshangabad towards Patalkot are in bad shape and full of cows and traffic leading to jams, we decided to rely on Google Maps to take a short cut along the village roads which had been macadamised under the Prime Minister's Rural Roads Scheme. We were progressing quite well towards our destination when unfortunately the data connectivity vanished in the villages and so we lost our directions on Google Maps!! Nevertheless with some help from the villagers we finally managed to get back on the highway to Patalkot succeeding in bypassing the town of Pipariya which is a major traffic congestion point. The view into Patalkot from on top of the Satpuras is really breathtaking. There are a number of tourist points that have been developed from where these splendid views into the valley can be enjoyed. These are also the places from which in winter adventure sports like sky diving and hang gliding are arranged by the Madhya Pradesh Tourism Department. Gyan took us to these viewpoints first and then we proceeded to his village Kauriya Dhana.
Kauriya Dhana is one of those villages that is still to be connected by a motorable road and grid electricity. Gyan said that no car had ever gone to his village and so we would have to park our car in a village before that and walk down to his village. It was getting late and a total walk of six kilometers to his village and back would mean darkness falling before we could climb out of Patalkot. Our car, an old 1998 model Maruti 800, has been customised to travel on rough rural roads and so we overruled Gyan and told him that it would be the first car to ever reach Kauriya Dhana!!
So off we went piling on a few other passengers who were walking to the village on a bumpy stony track with Gyan and Ishaan getting down often to clear the bigger stones from the track. Eventually we reached the village after a few minutes and it was indeed a sight for sore eyes. Typical small Adivasi huts made of mud and baked tiles situated on their farms at a distance from each other. A few pucca houses were under construction with grants from the Prime Minister's and Chief Minister's Schemes for rural houses but overall it had an old world look with forested hills on all sides.
Gyan then brought out the prized bajra seed. He had been able to collect just one cob of bajra from a more distant village and had sown half of it and saved the lower half for us as shown in the picture below where his niece is holding it for display.
Such is the state of affairs as far as preservation of our indigenous seed heritage is concerned. After searching for so many months and finally undertaking such a long journey we could lay our hands on just half a cob of the dry land pearl. The Government is busy promoting sky diving in Patalkot oblivious to the immense treasure of indigenous seeds that is on the verge of extinction and is still available because of the Bharia Adivasis. So it is people like Naresh and Gyan who have to make the effort to conserve this heritage and provide us with an opportunity to go pearl diving in Bharia Land. All in all it was a memorable trip to a part of Madhya Pradesh which we had never visited before. The seeds have been sown on our farm in Pandutalav and are doing very well.
Subhadra remembered that many years ago when our friend Jacob Nellithanam had been running a campaign to preserve indigenous seeds, he had brought a variety of Bajra that had long whiskers on its seeds when on the plant that prevented the birds from eating it. She said that we should get that variety as only then would we be able to revive Bajra cultivation in Pandutalav. So began our search for the whiskered pearl!!
We searched in many places and asked many people but to no avail. Even in the most remote areas of Barwani and Alirajpur this whiskered variety of Bajra had become extinct. We got to know that in Barawani a hybrid variety of whiskered Bajra is sown but on going there we found that it is only sown in the winter season and not in the monsoons.
When we had almost given up hope, suddenly one day my activist friend Naresh Biswas published a post on his Facebook Wall in which there was a photo of a girl holding a cob of whiskered Bajra saying that on a visit to the Patalkot area of Chindwara district he had seen this variety still existing. I immediately got in touch with him and asked him to give us some seeds. He said that it was difficult to get as this was the only cob that was remaining because in Patalkot also not many people are sowing bajra anymore.
I must digress into describing Patalkot here before taking the story forward. Patalkot is a valley in Chhindwara district of Madhya Pradesh just south of the Satpura Hill Ranges which fall in a steep cliff into the valley. Due to this steep cliff the valley remained isolated for a long time and its residents, the Bharia Adivasis, lived a subsistence forest dependent life far removed from modern development. Consequently, they have been categorised as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) by the Government because of their long lack of access to education and health services which has adversely affected their ability to adjust to the modern economy and polity. So special development packages have been implemented by the Government for the Bharia Adivasis and roads and electricity have been provided in the valley. In addition to this, adventure sports like sky diving and paragliding have been promoted from the top of the cliff in Patalkot by the Tourism Department and this has led to an influx of well heeled tourists into the area, boosting the local economy.
The Bharia Adivasis are still very poor because they have small landholdings and the soil quality is not very good. Water too is not readily available for irrigation and so in most cases the Bharias take only a single crop during the monsoon season. Schools and health centres also do not function properly. There are many villages in Patalkot which still do not have road connectivity and grid electricity. However, they still practice indigenous bio-diverse agriculture and depend on a considerable number of herbs and plants of the forest for their subsistence. This is why Naresh Biswas has stepped in. Naresh has been promoting indigenous agriculture and the conservation of seeds which are slowly going into extinction due to the spread of chemical agriculture and hybrid seeds. Naresh has been conducting this Beej Swaraj or seed independence movement in the Baiga Adivasi areas in the districts of Mandla and Dindori in Madhya Pradesh and Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh for quite some time. He has now extended this to Patalkot also. This effort of Naresh's made it possible for us to trace the whiskered bajra seeds that we were so desperately looking for.
One fine morning my son Ishaan and I set out in our car for Patalkot having got the contacts of Gyan Shah of Kauriya Dhana village in Patalkot from Naresh. Given the fact that the highway roads from the town of Hoshangabad towards Patalkot are in bad shape and full of cows and traffic leading to jams, we decided to rely on Google Maps to take a short cut along the village roads which had been macadamised under the Prime Minister's Rural Roads Scheme. We were progressing quite well towards our destination when unfortunately the data connectivity vanished in the villages and so we lost our directions on Google Maps!! Nevertheless with some help from the villagers we finally managed to get back on the highway to Patalkot succeeding in bypassing the town of Pipariya which is a major traffic congestion point. The view into Patalkot from on top of the Satpuras is really breathtaking. There are a number of tourist points that have been developed from where these splendid views into the valley can be enjoyed. These are also the places from which in winter adventure sports like sky diving and hang gliding are arranged by the Madhya Pradesh Tourism Department. Gyan took us to these viewpoints first and then we proceeded to his village Kauriya Dhana.
Kauriya Dhana is one of those villages that is still to be connected by a motorable road and grid electricity. Gyan said that no car had ever gone to his village and so we would have to park our car in a village before that and walk down to his village. It was getting late and a total walk of six kilometers to his village and back would mean darkness falling before we could climb out of Patalkot. Our car, an old 1998 model Maruti 800, has been customised to travel on rough rural roads and so we overruled Gyan and told him that it would be the first car to ever reach Kauriya Dhana!!
So off we went piling on a few other passengers who were walking to the village on a bumpy stony track with Gyan and Ishaan getting down often to clear the bigger stones from the track. Eventually we reached the village after a few minutes and it was indeed a sight for sore eyes. Typical small Adivasi huts made of mud and baked tiles situated on their farms at a distance from each other. A few pucca houses were under construction with grants from the Prime Minister's and Chief Minister's Schemes for rural houses but overall it had an old world look with forested hills on all sides.
Gyan then brought out the prized bajra seed. He had been able to collect just one cob of bajra from a more distant village and had sown half of it and saved the lower half for us as shown in the picture below where his niece is holding it for display.
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