Communitarian Ecosystem Restoration

 Four decades ago in 1983 a few activists from what was then the Social Work and Research Centre and is now the Barefoot College in Tilonia in Rajasthan, came to Alirajpur district in Madhya Pradesh and teamed up with a few Bhil Adivasi activists to form the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath (KMCS). The mass organisation was set up against heavy odds to fight for socio-economic justice and ecological sustainability in an area which had been devastated by the independent Indian state in pursuit of urban industrial development, making the Adivasis thieves in their own backyard and converting a once proud community into labourers contributing to primitive capitalist accumulation.

Along the way over all these years, the KMCS not only achieved rights to the forests for its Adivasi members but what is even more important it has restored the ecosystem through communitarian collective action. In over 70 villages as much as 13000 hectares of dense forests have been protected and soil and water conservation work has been done in many thousands of hectares. This ecosystem restoration work is of immense importance in the present context when the country is battling the triple crises of climate change, water stress and soil degradation.
This massive communitarian effort has leveraged the traditional labour pooling custom of the Bhils called Dhas and used the political mass strength of the organisation to access MGNREGS funds from time to time. The most crucial factor in saving forests is that the community must have control over their area and be able to regulate natural resource use by preventing both the forest department and outside citizens from exploiting them unsustainably. The members of the KMCS have fought hard to do this and are now masters of their forests.
The best village in this respect is Amba on the banks of the Narmada River where as much as 60% of the land is under forests. Veteran activist of the KMCS, Indersingh, has led this effort in this village along with others. This village is accessible only by foot across steep hills. Yesterday, I relived many earlier trips by accompanying Indersingh to savour the pristine natural beauty of Amba even though the trek proved to be quite strenuous at my advanced age 😊.

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