पारंपरिक भील आदिवासी संस्कृति का प्रसार

 संयुक्त राष्ट्र महासभा ने 2022 और 2032 के बीच की अवधि को स्वदेशी भाषाओं के अंतर्राष्ट्रीय दशक के रूप में घोषित किया है, "कई स्वदेशी भाषाओं की विकराल स्थिति की ओर वैश्विक ध्यान आकर्षित करने और उनके संरक्षण, पुनरोद्धार और प्रचार के लिए संसाधनों और उत्साहियों को जुटाने के लिए।"  पर भील आदिवासी कार्यकर्ता वाहरू सोनवने कहते हैं, “भारत सरकार ने अभी तक इस संबंध में कोई कार्यक्रम संबंधी निर्णय नहीं लिया है। अफसोस की बात है कि आजादी के बाद से आदिवासी भाषाओं की उपेक्षा की प्रवृत्ति रही है। ”

अलीराजपुर जिले में भील आदिवासी जन संगठन, खेदुत मजदूर चेतना संगठन (खेमचेस) चार दशकों से भीलों की संस्कृति की पारंपरिक समृद्धि को फिर से जीवंत करने के लिए सक्रिय है और अब भील वॉयस नामक एक इंटरनेट रेडियो और वीडियो चैनल शुरू किया है संयुक्त राज्य अमेरिका के एरिज़ोना स्टेट यूनिवर्सिटी के साथ मिलकर।

अपनी समस्याओं को स्पष्ट रूप से अभिव्यक्त करने में सक्षम हुए बिना किसी समुदाय का विकास संभव नहीं है। लिखित भाषा और संहिताबद्ध संस्कृति की कमी के कारण भीलों का विशाल समुदाय आधुनिक भारत में हानिकारक रूप से प्रभावित हुआ है। भले ही आदिवासियों को विभिन्न सामाजिक समस्याओं से मुक्त रखने में इसके अपने फायदे हैं, लेकिन आज की वाणिज्य, उद्योग और शासन की जटिल प्रणालियों को देखते हुए इसका मतलब यह है कि भीलों की आकांक्षाओं को सम्पन्न वर्ग की उपभोग की पूर्ति के लिए, लगातार हाशिए पर रखा गया है।

वाहरु सोनवने कहते हैं, "हमारी संस्कृति, रीति-रिवाज और विश्वदृष्टि हमारी भाषा में व्यक्त की जाती है। हमारे बहुमूल्य ज्ञान की रक्षा तभी हो सकती है जब हमारी भाषा को संरक्षित रखा जाए। जब कोई भाषा संरक्षित नहीं होती है तो वह मर जाती है और उसके साथ जुड़ी संस्कृति और जीवन शैली भी मर जाती है। इस संस्कृति से जुड़े मानवीय मूल्य भी, भाषा के साथ-साथ, तबाह हो जाते हैं। ”

खेमचेस के सचिव शंकर तडवाल कहते हैं, "वर्तमान में विकास के विचार और इसके कार्यान्वयन के बारे में बहस उन भाषाओं में हो रही है जो भीलों के लिए विदेशी हैं और इसलिए वे इसमें योगदान नहीं दे पा रहे हैं। वास्तव में, भीली बोलियों में इन विचारों पर चर्चा करने के लिए शब्दावली का अभाव है। खेमचेस ने इस कमी को दूर करने की कोशिश की है और एक समृद्ध नई लिखित भाषा और साहित्य के निर्माण कर और अपने पारंपरिक संगीत और नृत्य को बढ़ावा देकर क्षेत्र और राष्ट्र के विकास में भीलों को वैचारिक रूप से शामिल किया है। आधुनिक विकास और सांस्कृतिक संदेशों को व्यक्त करने में हमारे पारंपरिक मिथकों और धुनों का उपयोग करने के अनुभव ने दिखाया है कि वे इस उद्देश्य के लिए बेहद प्रभावी हैं। इसके अलावा, ब्रिटिश काल से भील आदिवासी विद्रोह का इतिहास भी बहुत प्रेरणादायक है और खेमचेस द्वारा भील युवाओं को उत्साहित करने के लिए इस का प्रचार किया गया है।"

पश्चिमी मध्य प्रदेश क्षेत्र के विभिन्न सामाजिक और राजनीतिक विकास के संगठनों द्वारा अब तक इस तरह का नवाचार छुटपुट ढंग से किया गया है। पर अब खेमचेस द्वारा यह काम को व्यवस्थित ढंग से आगे बढ़ाया जा रहा है। रानी काजल जीवन शाला की एक शिक्षिका रायटीबाई कहती हैं, “खेमचेस ने क्षेत्र के कई अन्य आदिवासी जन संगठनों को आदिवासी शहीदों की जयंती मनाने की पहल करने के लिए प्रेरित किया है और आदिवासी इतिहास और संस्कृति पर हिंदी में कई ग्रंथों को प्रकाशित करने में मदद की है और आगे संपूर्ण भीली लोककथाओं का प्रतिलेखन भी होगा। खेमचेस ने सन 1990 के दशक में महान टानटिया भील, जो अंग्रेजों के हाथ शहीद हुए थे, को एक स्वतंत्रता सेनानी के रूप में मान्यता देने की प्रक्रिया शुरू की, जिसे अब वैधता और आधिकारिक मान्यता मिल गई है।“

लोकगीतों के रचनात्मक व्याख्या से वैकल्पिक, सामुदायिक और सतत विकास के सिद्धांत और व्यवहार के समर्थन में प्रचुर सामग्री निकाला जा सकता है। उदाहरण के लिए, नर्मदा नदी के पास के गांवों में गाया जाने वाला एक धरती के सृजन मिथक है, जिसमें विस्तार से बताया गया है कि कैसे भगवान अचानक ब्रह्मांड के निर्माण के विचार से घिरे हुए थे और उन्होंने जंगल में जाने और लकड़ी लाने के लिए जंगल में रहने वाले रेलू कबाड़ी से मदद मांगी। इस तरह से शुरू होती है पूरी कहानी कि कैसे धीरे-धीरे सभी जानवर और पौधे बनते हैं और अंत में नर्मदा और ताप्ती नदियाँ। ये नदियाँ विवाह में दूदु हमड़ सागर से मिलती हैं और उनकी यात्रा की प्रक्रिया में सभी विभिन्न गाँव, पहाड़ियाँ और घाटियाँ बनती हैं। पूरा गीत प्रकृति की विशालता और प्राकृतिक प्रक्रियाओं की ताकत का आभास कराता है और इनके लिए श्रोता में सम्मान पैदा करता है।

रानी काजल जीवन शाला के प्राचार्य निंगू सोलंकी कहते है, "हमारी जीवन दृष्टि आधुनिक मनुष्य के अभिमान के सीधे विपरीत है जिसने प्रकृति को अपने स्वयं के अधीन करने की कोशिश की है और आज उसके कारण गंभीर पर्यावरणीय समस्याओं को जन्म दिया है। आदिवासी इस प्रक्रिया के शिकार रहे हैं। इस प्रकार, यह हमारा फर्ज है कि हम हमारे सृजन मिथक को लोकप्रिय बनाय और इस बात पर बल दें कि हमारी आदिवासी विश्वदृष्टि वर्तमान काल में कहीं अधिक "तर्कसंगत" है।“

इसी तरह, एक महाकाव्य में एक महिला के बारे में एक और कहानी है जिसे अपने पति द्वारा किए गए अत्याचार पर सवाल उठाने के लिए दोषी ठहराया जाता है। उसे पंचायत के सामने लाया जाता है जहां पंचों द्वारा आदेश दिया जाता है कि उसकी जीभ काट दी जाए और पति को निगलने के लिए दे दिया जाए। पर वह जीभ पति के गले में फंस जाती है।

इस कहानी दर्शाता है कि भील समाज किस हद तक पितृसत्तात्मक रूप से महिलाओं का दमन करता है। साथ ही, यह तथ्य कि जीभ पति के गले में फंस गई है, महिला को अवसर प्रदान करता है कि वह अपनी जुबान को वापस खींच लें। अपने हकों के लिए बोलने का अधिकार स्थापित कर भील महिलाओं को घर के अंदर और बाहर विविध पितृसत्ताओं के खिलाफ लड़ने के लिए इस कहानी के द्वारा प्रेरित किया गया है।

साहित्य, विशेष रूप से अलंकारिक चरित्र के धार्मिक साहित्य में लोगों को उनकी सामाजिक आर्थिक स्थिति को बदलने के लिए प्रेरित करने की जबरदस्त शक्ति है। दुर्भाग्य से खेमचेस को छोड़कर मध्य भारतीय क्षेत्र के आदिवासियों और विशेष रूप से भीलों के लिए उनके समृद्ध मौखिक साहित्य को लिखने और उपयोग करने का कोई महत्वपूर्ण प्रयास नहीं किया गया है।

अब खेमचेस के इन प्रयासों को एक बड़ा समर्थन मिला है क्योंकि इस प्रयास में अमेरिका के एरिजोना स्टेट यूनिवर्सिटी के ह्यू डाउन्स स्कूल ऑफ ह्यूमन कम्युनिकेशन के प्रोफेसर उत्तरन दत्ता इससे जुड़ गए हैं। उल्लेखनीय है कि एरिजोना स्टेट यूनिवर्सिटी विगत आठ वर्षों से लगातार अमरीका के विश्वविद्यालयों में नवाचार में प्रथम स्थान पर है। प्रोफेसर दत्ता ने अलीराजपुर जिले में नर्मदा नदी के तट पर ककराना गांव में खेमचेस द्वारा संचालित आदिवासी बच्चों के लिए आवासीय विद्यालय रानी काजल जीवन शाला में एक आधुनिक रिकॉर्डिंग स्टूडियो स्थापित करने में मदद की है, जहां भीली भाषा में व्याख्यान और संगीत रिकॉर्ड किए जाते हैं और फिर इंटरनेट रेडियो और यूट्यूब चैनलों पर अपलोड किया जाता है।

स्टूडियो में एक स्वतंत्र रिकॉर्डिंग सुविधा है और युवाओं को मीडिया उत्पादन में कुशल बनने के लिए प्रशिक्षित किया जा रहा है 

यह स्टूडियो भील आदिवासियों की पारंपरिक स्थापत्य शैली में बनाया गया है। खेमचेस के सचिव शंकर तड़वाल ने कहा, "चार पश्चिमी भारतीय राज्यों, राजस्थान, गुजरात, महाराष्ट्र और मध्य प्रदेश के भील आदिवासियों द्वारा यहाँ श्रव्य दृश्य सामग्री तैयार किया जाता है और स्टूडियो युवाओं के लिए एक प्रशिक्षण सुविधा के रूप में भी काम करता है। स्कूल के लड़के-लड़कियां मीडिया प्रोडक्शन में दक्ष हो रहे हैं।

1 जुलाई, 2022 को हुए उद्घाटन के बाद से भील वॉयस यूट्यूब चैनल ने हजारों व्यूज हासिल कर लिए हैं और यह समय के साथ बढ़ता जाएगा जैसे जैसे सांस्कृतिक कायाकल्प प्रक्रिया और मजबूत होती है।

The Bhil Adivasi Mobilisation for Climate Action

 Introduction

Tribal Development in India has been problematical from the time of independence. This has been due to a conflicting situation arising from the opposition between the traditional community based subsistence economy of the Adivasis and the modern market based growth oriented thrust of the mainstream economy. The challenge for the State has been to integrate the Adivasis into the modern economy in a manner that was beneficial to them. This has generally not been possible because the Adivasis have lacked the requisite skills for this and the government system for equipping them with these skills has malfunctioned. Moreover, in order to save on the costs associated with modern development the Adivasis have often not been recompensed and rehabilitated properly for the displacement that they have had to face as resources have been extracted from their traditional habitats.

Not surprisingly this has led to dissatisfaction on the part of the Adivasis. This in turn has given rise to outright political revolt, rights based New Social Movements of Adivasis and also an emergence of Non-Governmental Organisations for bringing about better tribal development. Decentralised and local community controlled development has been acknowledged as a major desideratum for tackling tribal deprivation by scholars. With the award of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to Elinor Ostrom in 2009, even mainstream economics has come to acknowledge the importance of collective action for the management of common pool resources. This has also gained in importance currently because of the benefits in terms of mitigation of climate change that such communitarian natural resource management can achieve. The collective action undertaken by the Bhil and Bhilala Adivasis in West-Central India to secure their rights and entitlements and in the process mitigate climage change are detailed here.

2. Traditional Bhil Society

The Bhil Adivasis in West-Central India have traditionally had a communitarian culture based on a subsistence livelihood pattern that ensured sustainable use of their natural resource bases. The important characteristics of traditional Bhil society are as follows -

1.      Habitations of small communities linked together by strong kinship ties

2.      Customs of labour pooling in all social and economic activities

3.      System of interest free loans in cash and kind

4.      Minimal interaction with the external centralised trade based economy

5.      High dependence on forests for daily as well as agricultural needs

6.      Social customs that ensured the redistribution of the surplus of individual families among the community

There was thus a minimal role in this society for accumulation, trade and monetary profits and so it continued for ages at a low level resource use equilibrium. However, Bhil society is patriarchal like others and so women have to bear the double burden of poverty and patriarchal oppression.

3. Colonial Dispossession

The Maratha invasion of the region in the late eighteenth century and later the advent of the British colonialists in the early eighteenth century the situation changed drastically. The penetration of the modern market economy and the settling of non-tribal peasant farmers began in the Bhil areas. This put the Bhils in a precarious situation with the beginning of a process of alienation from their natural resource bases and their integration as ill paid debt ridden labourers in the centralised market economy.

The British enacted the Indian Forest Act in 1865 and took vast areas of community forests out of the control of forest dweller communities and handed over their management to the Forest Department created by it and this was the single most debilitating development for the Adivasis in India. Even though this act was implemented only in the provinces directly controlled by the British it nevertheless provided the new direction of commercial exploitation of forests to forest management in the Princely States that largely ruled over the Bhil areas and so they too were adversely affected.

4. Post Colonial Situation

Ironically, the coming of independence aggravated the livelihood situation of the Bhils instead of  improving it. Most of the Bhil areas that were under the governance of Princely States prior to independence were assimilated into the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and the Indian Forest Act (1927) (IFA) was implemented. Vast areas of forests which were earlier still being managed by the Bhils with the Princely States only nominally in control, were converted into Reserved Forests.

The Bhils mostly were illiterate and so did not understand the legal procedures for conversion of their habitats into Reserved Forests and so lost most of their lands.  Under the IFA, the government “can constitute any forest land or waste land which is the property of Government or over which the Government has proprietary rights, a reserved forest, by issuing a notification of this effect”. Settlement of rights was not carried out and large areas remain unsurveyed even today. The history of forest management thereafter has been one of continuous deprivation of the Adivasis and is briefly described below followed by a description of the failure of economic and social development schemes in Tribal areas.

4.1 Disempowerment and Maldevelopment of Bhil Adivasis

The situation of the Bhils was made worse by the fact that government services like education, development extension and health have not functioned properly and so the Adivasis have been deprived of the welfare benefits that they were entitled to under various schemes. Finally the patriarchal nature of Bhil society led to the burden of increasing poverty due to wrong development policies falling disproportionately on the women. The necessity of bearing more children to get male progeny has also led to a population explosion, increasing pressure on the natural resource base.

4.1.1 Decline of Local Self Governance - The most debilitating phenomenon immediately after independence was the marginalisation of the customary community based local self governance systems of the Bhils. The third tier of Panchayati Raj was not set up and instead the power in rural areas was transferred to the bureaucracy and especially the Forest Department and Police. The Forest Department staff took undue advantage of the restrictive provisions of the Indian Forest Act to demand bribes from the Bhils to allow them access to the forests without which they could not survive but which had become legally proscribed. The Police interfered with the traditional communitarian dispute resolution mechanisms of the Bhils and instead forced them to report their problems to the Police leading to unnecessary arrests and litigation.  Even though the Bhils elected their own representatives to the state and national legislatures due to the policy of reservation this did not translate into power for the Bhils at large as the elected representatives went along with the overall policy of marginalisation of the Adivasis.

As a result, the general Bhil population was completely disempowered and left at the mercy of the bureaucracy. This disempowerment is the root cause of the mal-development of the Bhil areas. The specific micro level needs and aspirations of the Bhils have not been articulated and so macro level development policies that have been pursued have been inimical to them.

Thus, the actual state policy that evolved for Bhil tribal areas was as follows - “ top priority has been given to a programme of rapid industrialisation and extension of means of communication to the most interior regions. Our firm view is that the development of land and agriculture alone will not be adequate for the rehabilitation of the tribal communities. Agricultural land is insufficient and cannot serve the needs of even half the tribal population. The tribal areas are rich in industrial and power potential. There is no reason why in the wider interest of the nation and in the long-term interest of the Adivasis themselves, industries should not be developed and localised in tribal areas”. 

4.1.2 Industrial Development versus Tribal Development - The assumption that industrial development in tribal areas is in the long-term beneficial to them has been proved to be totally fallacious. Invariably Adivasis are not rehabilitated and compensated properly for the loss of their traditional livelihoods and neither they are trained to gain employment in the new industries that are set up. The industrial areas set up on tribal lands in West-Central India are an example of this. The government provided cheap land and other subsidised infrastructure to the industrialists along with tax-holidays but the displaced Adivasis were given only pittances as compensation. Not being educated or skilled they did not get any of the permanent jobs that were created and are even today working as casual labourers. Pithampur, Indore, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Surat and Kota, which are the main industrial centres in West-Central India in fact draw in Bhils from the whole region as casual labourers.

The other fallacious assumption is that agricultural land was insufficient to provide suitable livelihoods to the Adivasis. Inadequate attention was paid to developing the productivity of dryland agriculture on sub-optimal soils in upper watersheds on which the Bhils are dependent. Instead stress was put on developing green revolution agriculture on the plain lands with irrigation and chemical inputs. This was totally unsuitable to the hilly dry land farms of the Bhils. Today the green revolution technologies are proving to be unsuitable for the areas where they were started off with in the 1960s in Punjab and Haryana primarily due to soil quality degradation and lesser and costlier avialability of water and chemical inputs.

A resource conservation policy for land, water and forests, a research and development policy for the traditional organic agriculture of the Adivasis and appropriate technology for processing agricultural and forest produce combined with a vibrant local government system with a clear gender focus to counter the internal patriarchy of Bhil society would have worked wonders if it had been implemented. Appropriate education and health systems incorporating tribal knowledge would have been a bonus that would have produced a new generation of Adivasis able and ready to take on the development challenges faced by their community. This was not done and so the human development indices in the Bhil tribal areas have remained the poorest in the country.

5. Mobilisation of Bhil Adivasis

The Bhil Adivasis of West-Central India began mobilising from 1970s onwards primarily for their basic constitutional rights. Later this movement spread to include the integration of the Bhils into the modern market system without exploitation by moneylenders, traders and corrupt government officials. Currently the umbrella organisation of Bhil Adivasis in West-Central India is the Adivasi Ekta Parishad.

The introduction of the special Panchayat Raj for Scheduled Tribal areas under the provisions of the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act 1996 (PESA) gave a boost to the work of mobilisation. The provision in PESA Act that the tribal Gram Sabha is to be the final arbiter on all issues of local development and that this Gram Sabha could be as small as a hamlet of a village made it easier to implement development programmes. Often it is not possible to carry the whole village together on some development programme because the tribal hamlets of a village are situated at a distance from each other. Another law that promises to have far reaching consequences is the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forestdwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act 2006 (FRA) which gives rights to the land that the Adivasis have been cultivating and also community rights to the forests in which they have been residing. Finally there is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme which if properly implemented can in addition to providing employment to the Adivasis also improve the natural resource base of their habitats.

The specific mobilisational strategies adopted that have got the people to act collectively for getting their entitlements and the conservation of natural resources for climate change mitigation are –

1. Problem analysis workshops in which the people have participated in open discussions to pinpoint the problems they were facing.
2. Legal and rights training workshops in which the people were taught the basics of the liberal democratic framework.
3. Collective Action for assertive rights through public demonstrations and sitins.
4. Revival of traditional labour and resource pooling customs.
5. Special women's meetings to get them involved in resource conservation work and also public demonstrations and also counter the internal patriarchy of Bhil society.
6. Legal and policy advocacy to change the laws and rules in favour of the Adivasis.

6. Gaining Access to Forests and then Conserving them

The mass mobilisation began with the problem of ensuring access to the encroached farms of the Adivasis in the reserved forest. As a solution to this problem it was decided to protect the remaining forest area and prevent it from degradation. This was done to counter the claim of the forest department that the Adivasis were destroying the forest. Consequently, social protection of the forests to ensure their regeneration was undertaken. Small groups patrolled the forests by turns through a labour pooling system. The fodder generated from such protection is cut and bought by the members at the end of the monsoon season and the money thus generated is kept in a fund for carrying out plantation work. This forest protection has considerably increased the availability of fodder, fireweood and non-timber forest produce in the study watershed and this has especially benefited the women and children who are the main collectors of forest products. It may be mentioned here that tribal children treat the collection of forest produce as a playful activity and it is not labour for them. This is how they come to know their natural environment. Greater fodder availability has facilitated goat and buffalo rearing and so increased the supplementary incomes from animal husbandry which provides an insurance against livelihood shocks to the tribal households. It is not possible to quantify the increase in forest product availability because of a lack of records but people say that they now enjoy much greater forest product availability and have bigger herds of goats and cattle than earlier.

7. Soil and Water Conservation

The villagers organised themselves into small groups of ten to twelve farmers each who then pooled their labour and cooperated with each other to perform their agricultural operations together and also undertake soil and water conservation activities. This was a revival of the traditional labour pooling custom of the Bhils called Dhas. In this system people used to work together to do agricultural operations on each others' fields, build each others' houses, and improve the quality of the farm fields through soil conservation work. However, this traditional labour pooling custom is dying out because of their integration into the mainstream money economy and the exploitation by the forest department staff.

A major feature of this cooperative soil and water conservation work is the participation of women in it. As is well known the ravages of natural devastation caused by bad development are mostly borne by women. Consequently it is not surprising, that when offered an opportunity to cooperate to reduce their drudgery, women come forward enthusiastically. This has not only ensured that women have participated in the community actions and improved their status in society but they have also as a result, changed the gender relations at home.

The intensive soil and water conservation work and the forest conservation have together ensured that both natural and artificial recharge in the watersheds have increased considerably and as a result the streams are flowing throughout the year. The farmers have used this enhanced water availability to cultivate dryland varieties of wheat which require less water. The greater availability of animal manure has resulted in the farmers using treated organic manure in larger quantities and improving the quality of the soil. The soil and water conservation work has also ensured the greater availability of soil moisture and so double cropping has become possible even without irrigation in some of the upper fields where a crop of gram is taken. In some cases the kharif jowar crop after being harvested, regenerates to give a small rabi yield from the soil moisture.

8. Implementation of the FRA

The FRA has been plagued with problems right from the beginning. Even though the Act was passed in 2006 it took another year for the Rules to be framed and passed by parliament. Even after that Governments have been very tardy in setting in motion the process for application and verification of the rights of the Adivasis. The people have had to organise many demonstrations to first get the process started and then for it to continue. The people have also pro-actively used the MGNREGS to carry out soil and water conservation works on the lands for which they have gained lease rights under the FRA.

An associated achievement of the people is their success in getting the proposal by the Government to set up a Wild Life Sanctuary in the Katthivada Forest Range of Alirajpur district in Madhya Pradesh cancelled. Under the provisions of the PESA Act and also the Wild Life Protection Act any displacement of people in a scheduled tribal area has to be sanctioned by the Gram Sabha. Hard mobilisation by the people forced the Government to implement this provision and the Gram Sabhas unanimously rejected the proposal because of its many infirmities and it had to be shelved. This is the first time that a proposal for a Wild Life Sanctuary in this country has had to be shelved due to strong legal and mass action by the Adivasis.

9. Conclusions

The most important achievement is that the Adivasi Ekta Parishad has been able to inspire the Adivasis to assert their identity and clearly demarcate their sovereignty over their habitats. The laws and rules for utilisation of the forests were that laid down by the government and administered by the Forest Department and were not matched to the local needs and conditions. The Adivasi Ekta Parishad succeeded in mobilising the people through regular meetings and trainings to stand up for their rights against the forest department staff and design their own rules for governing the use of the collective natural resources. A section of the people initially braved the opposition of the traditional Patels who were agents of the Forest Department and even went to jail fighting for their rights and established the organisation. Once the organisation was established and natural resource conservation work began, the benefits began to flow and this acted as a reinforcing factor in the continuation of the process and so later even the Patels, who were initially opposed to the process, later became a part of it.

The mobilisation process resulted in a fairly strong people's organisation spread over the whole of the Bhil Adivasi homeland and the people were able to ensure that the Forest Department was forced to allow them to manage their common resources according to their own rules. The monitoring of the forests as well as the soil and water conservation work is done by the people themselves and that is why the system has worked very well for over three decades. The people have developed a system of sanctions beginning with fines for small infringements of the rules and going upto ostracism for more serious violations and this is administered by the people themselves. The traditional community conflict resolution mechanisms of the Bhil Adivasis have also been revived and these are also working very well.

However, unless the government ensures a participatory framework of rule making and monitoring at several levels it is difficult for a people's organisation to build up a larger movement of conservation. Since the government through the forest department and police has actively opposed the people's mobilisation it has taken place only in isolated patches in the Bhil homeland. The laws and policies that favour Adivasis are not implemented primarily because most people are not aware of these provisions and the Government is not serious about them. The Adivasi Ekta Parishad by raising the awareness of the Adivasis in this regard has brought about a positive transformation in West-Central India. Thus, despite its limitations, the mobilisation process described above has ensured justice for the Bhil Adivasis and provided them with a better livelihood situation while simultaneously making a significant contribution towards climate change mitigation.

 

Plant Your Love and Let it Grow

Forty years ago I read an article by the American author and environmentalist, Wendell Berry, in the Humanist magazine about the tremendous therapeutic value of farming and living in rural surroundings. I was in the third year of college at the time studying to be a civil engineer. That was the time I was reading Gandhi and the Upanishads also. A few months down the line I decided that I would also live in a village and farm. So eventually after my graduation I landed up in a village and from there in another village and finally in Alirajpur among the Bhil Adivasis. However, since I had also been reading Marx, Proudhon, Bakunin and the like in college, even though I ended up living in a village, I could not do much farming. Most of the time I was into grassroots mass mobilisation for the rights of the Bhils. So, like in the famous Grateful Dead song "Casey Jones", all the time there was trouble ahead and trouble behind. Consequently, farming was the last thing that crossed my mind as I was high on, not cocaine, but revolutionary spirit, often laced with the local Mahua!!

As things would turn out, a decade later I married a farmer's daughter, Subhadra. She too had drunk of the revolutionary spirit and that too of a feminist flavour and so we continued our dangerous political train driving, a la Casey Jones, spending our time in and out of prison and crashing head on into the oppressive train being driven by the Government!! But that became increasingly risky and after a particularly painful clash against the Government in 2001 in which we lost four of our sangathan members in police firing, we gave up on militant mass mobilisation and retired to the city of Indore to pursue sedate service delivery work and research.

Then in 2012 Subhadra decided she wanted to do farming. Staying in the city of Indore was becoming more and more claustrophobic for both of us. So we began searching for land. Thus started a wild goose chase. We wanted land close to a forest in hilly terrain and in an Adivasi area where there was one of our Sangathans and it had to be close to Indore with phone and internet connectivity. Too many parameters to satisfy and so we could not get land easily. Finally in 2015 we did get our land in Pandutalab village in Dewas district that satisfied all our conditions. It has been five years since and now we have a farm and farmhouse self sufficient in water, energy and food situated on the edge of a dense forest.

However, while Subhadra dived into farming with gusto along with the Adivasi couple we had engaged to help us, I still used to live and work on the farm off and on in a desultory manner and so could not test Berry's claim that farming has a therapeutic value. But from the month of June this year the Adivasi couple has left and so since then I have put in long stints of living and working on the farm as it is not possible for Subhadra to do all the work on her own. Farming is hard work both physically and intellectually. There are so many variables that have to be taken care of that one is on one's toes all the time. Normally, this results in considerable tension for the farmer these days. However, we are not normal farmers. Berry, in that article that I had read forty years ago, had given a sage piece of advice that one should not be dependent for one's livelihood on the farm. We have followed that advice and so we earn our money from other activities, which is possible because there is internet available on our farm, and do farming for the food and the physical and mental rigour.

Consequently, in these two and a half months my mental and physical health has improved considerably. One chronic ailment of mine has for the time being been completely solved. For some fifteen years now I have had a skin condition called psoriasis which results in scaling and itching of the skin. In all these years I have tried, allopathy, ayurveda, naturopathy and what have you but the problem has persisted. One dermatologist even told me once that I would have to reconcile myself to living with psoriasis till the day I die as if it was my second wife. When I told Subhadra this, she said that it was my third wife because the Adivasis were my first love and she was effectively my second wife!!! But now this long standing problem has vanished completely. No scaling of the skin and no itching whatsoever even though I have not been applying any medicine at all for the past two and a half months. Of course it may relapse but at least for the time being psoriasis has vanished.

Subhadra of course takes farming very seriously as a mission. She began farming again because she found that the women with whom she worked for their reproductive health were all anaemic because they were not eating properly. Delving into the problem she realised that it is the unsustainability of farming in this country that is at the root of malnutrition and disease. So she is on a crusade to bring farming and women back to health. For me, however, over the past two months farming has become a labour of love. Something that I had first dreamt about forty years ago in college has now been actualised. As the lyrics of a famous song by Eric Clapton go -
"Standing at the crossroads, trying to read the signs
To tell me which way I should go to find the answer,
And all the time I know,
Plant your love and let it grow"

The Night Meeting

What I miss most from my early years of activism in Alirajpur are the night meetings. They started off as a necessity initially but evolved into an art eventually. Given that Adivasi farmers are busy throughout the day working on their fields or as wage labourers, the only time for holding political meetings was at night after dinner. In the early 1980s in Alirajpur, very few adult Adivasis in the villages were literate and generally they had no idea that India was a constitutional democracy in which they had considerable rights and special provisions. Therefore, it became necessary to hold political meetings in each and every village to raise the level of knowledge of the workings of a modern democracy among the people.
Not that the people were very keen to attend these meetings. After a hard day of physical labour most people would prefer to hit the bed after dinner (Now that I work through the day on our farm I realise how tiring it is and feel apologetic for having scolded some of the people for falling asleep during the night meetings!!). However, the fact that mass organisational agitation had secured some rights for them and improved their condition and since this had been possible because of the intervention by us activists, the medicine men of grassroots politics, they would heed our call and come to these meetings. So initially, as I said, these meetings were the result of necessity and it used to be a challenge to teach the people the inner workings of a modern democracy based on the rule of law. However, Adivasis being Adivasis, they soon transformed these meetings into something that was more akin to their culture - song and dance!! The younger Adivasis composed lyrics based on the political discussions and sang them to the traditional Adivasi tunes. Even though this started off in fits and starts, it soon became the norm and so the night meetings would, after beginning with political discussions, gradually turn into performances of emancipatory song and dance. One of our activist colleagues, who had had formal training in music at one time before coming to Alirajpur, Amit Bhatnagar, excelled in adapting the songs of the Telengana revolutionary singer, Gadar, to the local situation and also in transforming the traditional epic singing of the Gayana into an emancipatory musical performance. He composed songs of his own in Bhili also.

Later still in the late 1990s these songs became a craze and then many new Adivasi singers emerged not only composing political songs but also newer love and farming songs sung to the accompaniment of modern musical equipment like keyboards and with sound systems. The Adivasi Ekta Parishad was also formed in the early 1990s to promote and conserve traditional Bhil Adivasi culture and also to synthesise it with modern culture in a positive manner. So strong is this Adivasi cultural revival and synthesis now that Hindi film and pop music finds no place at all in the lives of the new generation of educated Adivasi youth. They dance to the tune of their own songs as they have been doing for centuries together but the songs are now different and modern in more ways than one.
The enactment of the Panchayati Raj Act in 1992 after the constitutional amendment making it mandatory and the spread of literacy and education among the Adivasis, alleviated the need for night meetings and so they gradually faded away by the end of the twentieth century. Moreover, the advent of mobile telephony with its huge media content in the twenty first century made it near impossible to hold night meetings as people were more interested in watching or listening to stuff on their phones than sitting in meetings discussing politics. The urgency to organise and agitate for immediate livelihood problems also has gone. Many of the things that we had to fight hard for in the 1980s and 1990s have now become easily accessible due to laws like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Forest Rights Act, Right to Education Act, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act and Food Security Act.
So these days we have workshops instead during the day where we try to understand things like neo-imperialism, fascism, patriarchy, climate change and casteism with a new generation of Adivasi activists who are bent on establishing a strong Bhil Adivasi identity to counter the majoritarian homogenising thrust of the Sangh Parivar. Even though there is singing of songs and dancing in these workshops also but they do not have the same flavour of the singing and dancing that we used to do in the night meetings in Alirajpur.

The Bottom Up Perspective

The most fascinating aspect of India is its ethnic and cultural diversity. Throughout the millennia, even when there were from time to time strong and large empires covering the whole of the subcontinent, this diversity remained as these centralised states had only administrative and military control through outsourcing to feudal lords and kings at various levels, while day to day life and culture went on in a myriad ways across the Indian subcontinent. Thus, even if there was a centralised emperor ruling the whole of India there was no centralised monolithic bureaucracy extending from the centre of power to the remote villages and instead there was a system of autonomous units which paid taxes to the next higher level. That is why, even the long period of Mughal rule of over two centuries could not dent this autonomy and diversity at the grassroots. However, the British changed all that with the Government of India Act of 1858 transferring the power to rule India from the East India Company to the Crown. The British were clever enough to see that the revolt of 1857 had come so close to kicking them out precisely because many Indian kings and queens (The Rani of Jhansi being the great example of female valour) had retained considerable autonomy under Company rule. Therefore, through the Government of India Act, the British imposed a strong centralised bureaucratic system all over India and subsequently through other legislations like the Indian Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code, Indian Forest Act and Land Acquisition Act, grassroots autonomy was severely curtailed. Strict surveillance of the hundreds of autonomous princely states was also done to see that they followed the same principles of centralised governance that the British introduced in the provinces directly ruled by them. An education system dominated by English was introduced which further marginalised diverse vernacular cultures.

The Savarna elite, which tasted the power of this centralisation after limited governance was given to them by the 1935 version of the Government of India Act, and the nascent Indian capitalist class which had made their millions through exploitation of the workers and peasants facilitated by the centralised British rule, saw virtue in continuing with this centralised system and so after independence it was adopted without any changes whatsoever for the running of the country. A highly centralised state apparatus was put in place and a "trickle down" approach to development was adopted completely sidelining the provision of universal school education, primary health, rural development and employment. Indigenous knowledge systems were ignored and local ecosystems were devastated for modern industrial development and instead of development trickling down what we have had in over seventy years of development is the appropriation of resources and labour for capital accumulation in cities and towns to the detriment of the vast rural areas of this country.

This complete neglect of a bottom up view of governance and development has resulted in a continuous botching up of policies and programmes, as I have detailed in many earlier posts and never more so than in the management of the COVID 19 pandemic recently. Very little was known of the disease when the first cases were detected in early March other than that it was highly infectious and fatal. Epidemiologists had on the basis of statistical modelling begun predicting that there would be millions of cases that would overwhelm the country's ricketty health infrastructure and so a national lockdown was imposed post haste on March 25^th in a typically top down decision without taking into consideration what this would entail for 95 per cent of the population of this country who survive on daily wages and marginal agriculture. While the plight of the migrant workers eventually gained considerable media attention because of their desperate attempts to return home, those of the local workers did not because they at least had a place to stay and so remained invisible. In fact such a big decision as to completely close down a country, something that has never been done before, cannot succeed when taken in such a hasty and dictatorial manner. There should have been discussion and debate in which all the pros and cons of such a lockdown should have been weighed.

It became quite clear within a week of the lockdown that the disease was spreading only in a few cities and was absent elsewhere and especially in rural areas. Under the circumstances there should have been a review of the national lockdown and instead the decision to lockdown or not should have been left with the local governments and not even the state governments. Even within cities where the disease was spreading fast, only areas that were forming clusters should have been marked as containment zones and the rest of the city areas should have been freed. Instead the lockdown was continually extended again and again for a total period of nine weeks. By the end of this time the spread of the disease was not controlled by the lockdown as had been predicted by the epidemiologists but the economy, both of the country as a whole and  especially that of 95% of its households who do not have regular incomes, had been completely devastated. Governments, both at the centre and even more in the states, were faced with empty coffers, as without any economic activity they were not getting any taxes. So the lockdown had to be lifted and the spread of the disease has increased substantially over the last month since. A selective lockdown strategy containing only the hotspots right from the beginning as tried in Sweden would have been much more effective by concentrating resources and allowing economic activity to go on with proper distancing safeguards.

What is of even greater concern is that the police had been given extraordinary powers to keep people forcibly indoors and they misused it to their heart's content. There were innumerable instances of the police beating up and incarcerating people. I go out for a run in my colony in Indore at 5.30 am every day. Our colony and in fact the whole south eastern part of Indore where our colony is situated has not had a single case of COVID 19 even though there were several cases in the more central parts of the city. Yet one day two cops on a motorbike came to our colony at 5.30 am in the morning and threatened to beat me up with a baton if I did not go back into my house. Absurd as it is, the motto of the police was to beat up first and ask questions later. The most horrendous of such incidents is the beating to death of a father and son duo in Tamil Nadu recently allegedly for violation of lockdown rules and then the whole of the administration and government backing up the police who had committed this atrocity. 

It is only after the press and the High Court have taken cognisance that action has now been initiated against the guilty policemen. The fate of Jayaraj and his son Bennicks who have laid down their lives to this police brutality will haunt every thinking citizen of this country for quite a while. I at least have been deeply disturbed by their deaths as never before and I have seen quite a few brutalities in my time as an activist.

Thus, it is high time that we free ourselves from the malevolent British legacy of centralised rule, enforced through draconian policing and adopt a bottom up democratic perspective of governance and development which respects the immense diversity and knowledge that is there at the grassroots.  

Fighting for Habitat Rights in Abujhmarh

Naresh Biswas, a tribal rights activist who has been fighting for the grant of habitat rights to the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups under the Forest Rights Act writes about the obstacles to the process in Abujhmarh in south Chhattisgarh -

Abujhmarh in the extreme south of the state of Chhattisgarh has a unique geography of dense forests in a hilly area crisscrossed by rivers. Peopled by the Maria Adivasis it has become notorious as the stronghold of the Maoists who are conducting an armed struggle against the Indian State. These days Abujhmarh is in the news again as the Maria Adivasis, who are classified as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG), are preparing to claim Habitat Rights under the provisions of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act 2006. The statute, which is popularly known as the Forest Rights Act (FRA) in section 3 (1)(e), provides as follows - "In view of the differential vulnerability of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups among the forest dwellers, the District Level Committee should play a pro-active role in ensuring that all PVTGs receive habitat rights in consultation with the concerned PVTGs’ traditional institutions of these groups, after filing claims before the gram sabha.” Thus, in addition to individual and community rights, the PVTGs can claim habitat rights to a contiguous area they have been residing in for generations.

The first meeting in this regard was held on 23^rd June 2019 in Narayanpur which is one of the district headquarters in the Abujhmarh area which is spread over the three districts of Narayanpur, Dantewara and Bijapur in the South Bastar region. I was also present in the meeting. I had been invited to speak about the process that had been adopted by the Baiga Adivasis in Dindori district who had successfully claimed the Habitat Rights for their area for the first time in the country as is detailed here. This was a civil society initiative and so the Narayanpur district administration did not give it any importance. However, later I had a discussion with the district administration on 7^th August 2019 and after that a workshop on Habitat Rights was organised on 27^th August 2019 in which the members of the District Level Forest Rights Committee and the Subdivisional Level Forest Rights Committees participated. A consultation followed on 14^th September 2019 with the traditional Mukhia Majhis, Gaytas and Patels of the Abujhmaria Adivasis under the provisions of the FRA for habitat rights organised by the District Level Forest Rights Committee. I too was present in this consultation in which the Abujhmaria Adivasis passed a resolution to claim habitat rights.

The process of documentation, mapping and filing of claims for habitat rights was taken forward after this consultation by the district administration in association with the Abujhmaria Adivasi community. However, five months after this process had started suddenly the Maoists opposed this it. The Marh Divisional Committee of the Maoists published three pamphlets in Marhi and Hindi languages opposing the process of claiming Habitat Rights. They said that this was a fraud being committed by the Government to give the Adivasis only one or two acres and the rest would be given to capitalists to set up industries. This was a gross distortion of the provisions of the FRA which if properly implemented would give Maria Adivasis the habitat rights to the whole Abujhmarh area which covers 3905 square kilometers across 237 villages in 37 Gram Panchayats. This area has never been surveyed and so is not there in either the revenue or the forest department records.

The opposition to the Maria Adivasis claim to habitat rights over the whole of Abujhmarh comes not only from the Maoists but also local political leaders and the district administration. These latter want that the Adivasis should be given individual land holding rights and a process of mapping through satellite imagery has been started by IIT Roorkee to this end. These leaders who are not Maria Adivasis had to stop their demand for individual rights after the Abujhmaria Adivasis expressed their desire to claim habitat rights to the whole of Abujhmarh instead. Currently the Abujhmarias use their land under the direction of their traditional community leaders and so they are apprehensive of the process initiated by the Chhattisgarh Government on 30^th August 2019 of declaring the whole of Abujhmarh a revenue area and giving individual and community rights to the Adivasis instead of habitat rights as is their right under FRA. Once the area becomes recorded as revenue land then its sale and purchase and transfer for industrial use will become possible and this is what the Government, local  non Maria Adivasi leaders and the district administration want.

The Abujhmarias, however want the area to be handed over to their traditional communities under habitat rights. The Abujhmarias practice slash and burn shifting cultivation which they call penda kheti. Because the area is hilly only about 1 percent of the land is suitable for settled agriculture and the rest is under shifting cultivation. The Government wants to put a stop to shifting cultivation and that is why it wants to settle the Abujhmarias in a permanent piece of land and claim the rest of the forests for itself. Since the population of the Abujhmarias is very low compared to the huge area of dense forests, their shifting cultivation does not affect it and instead it has been hailed as a very good means of maintaining the forests while also providing sustenance to the Adivasis. The Government of Madhya Pradesh had made a rule on 8^th February 1991, before the state of Chhattisgarh was created in 2000, preventing entry of outsiders into Abujhmarh. Thus, even though there was not official survey of the area, the Abujhmarias had a clear idea of the extent of their traditional habitat. Thus, the state should assist the Abujhmaria Adivasis to prepare a map of their traditional habitat and grant them habitat rights in their area as per the provisions of the FRA.

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) Government of India had circulated guidelines for the implementation of habitat rights to the Governments of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Odisha on 13^th November 2014 but these Governments had ignored them and not done anything towards their implementation. These guidelines were sent again to the states by MoTA on 18^th December 2019. A letter was also sent to the Chief Secretaries of all concerned states on 23^rd April 2015 clarifying what was meant by habitat rights. A letter has also been sent to the Directors of the Tribal Research Institutes of all concerned states on 17^th December 2019 asking them to provide research support for the implementation of habitat rights of PVTGs.

There are five PVTGs in Chhattisgarh. Apart from the Abujhmarias, there are the Pahari Korbas, Birhors, Baigas, and Kamars. However, in the absence of a standard set of guidelines for implementation of habitat rights, the district administrations concerned have not initiated the process of granting them to these PVTGs. The MoTA has constituted an expert committee on 21^st February 2020 to draw up guidelines for the implementation of habitat rights in a simple manner by the concerned district administration. The first meeting of this expert committee was held on 16^th March 2020 in Delhi. A team of this expert committee is scheduled to visit Abujhmarh in the near future. Thus, the moment is ripe for the grant of habitat rights to the Abujhmarias. Even though the MoTA is keen on the implementation of habitat rights the state governments and district administrations are not showing any enthusiasm for this. So apart from the Baiga Adivasis of Madhya Pradesh none of the other PVTGs have got habitat rights yet. Both the Maoists and the Government should cooperate and assist the Abujhmarias to get their habitat rights and so continue to maintain their forests and their agriculture in their traditional manner.

The Children of the Earth

I have spent three and a half decades in Madhya Pradesh and travelled throughout the state and yet had never visited the easternmost part where the Baiga Adivasis reside in Mandla and Dindori districts. There are three tribes categorised "Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups" (PVTG) in Madhya Pradesh - Baigas in Mandla and Dindori districts, Sahariyas in Sheopur district and Bharias in Chhindwara district. The PVTGs are those tribes people who are the most removed from the modern economy and culture and are living in their distinct world which can be easily ravaged by unmoderated contact with the mainstream economy and culture. There are special provisions for these people. Therefore, when my friend Naresh Biswas, invited my wife Subhadra and I as resource persons to a training workshop among the Baiga Adivasis in Dindori we seized the opportunity to visit the area for the first time.
The eastern part of Madhya Pradesh also happens to be the source of India's longest west flowing and only non-Himalayan perennial river, the great Narmada. I have spent so much time by the banks of the Narmada in Alirajpur but apart from a brief visit to Amarkantak where it originates I have not seen the river in its upper stretches above Jabalpur. So along with the meeting with the Baigas we also relished the privilege of seeing and swimming in the Narmada. Even though I used to swim a lot in the Narmada at one time, ever since it has been dammed by the Sardar Sarovar dam it has become heavily populated with crocodiles and so one can't swim in the river in Alirajpur anymore where it has become a big reservoir. Therefore, the prospect of swimming in the river was an added attraction. The first sighting of the river was five kilometers downstream of Dindori where we had to cross it and it was somewhat of a shock as naturally the river was very narrow as opposed to the broad swath that we are used to in Alirajpur.

The flow in the river was less for the time of the year. Primarily because a lot of deforestation has taken place in the catchment over the years and the withdrawal of groundwater and surface water for agriculture has increased. With modern satellite imagery and computer models along with data of velocity, rainfall, evapo-transpiration, agricultural production, soil type, terrain, underlying hydro-geology and water extraction it is possible to fairly accurately determine the flow in the river. However, this data is mostly not there and what there is regarding the flow in the river is classified and not available to ordinary citizens. So there is no information in the public domain about the actual flow in the River Narmada as it is  kept secret by the Central Water Commission and the Narmada Control Authority.
Anyway we reached Dindori which is a small town of about 25000 people on the 18th of March. By this time the Covid 19 virus had made its presence felt in India with the first death having occurred in Karnataka on 13th March. So advisory had been given not to hold any gatherings. The workshop that we had gone to attend was to be held in a government agricultural research cum training centre. Thus, even though the workshop had been planned and permission got for it much earlier nevertheless it should have been called off. But since another training of the centre was going on, the principal of the centre allowed this workshop of Naresh's also to take place. So in those early days there was no social distancing practiced. However, Dindori is still safe even today without any cases even though our own city Indore is now a national hotspot with 200 cases.
I had been tasked with explaining global warming and its consequences to the Baiga farmers who had never heard of this before. So I did my best to try and explain the whole issue and ended up by saying that the Baigas being the children of the earth were doing everything right by using very little electricity and other forms of energy and also protecting the forests amidst which they reside. Apart from a few mobile phones and one or two motorcycles, the workshop participants had none of the energy guzzling appliances that we use. None of them had ever seen a laptop before participating in this workshop.
But why talk to the Baigas about global warming? Naresh Biswas has accomplished something unique. In the Scheduled Tribes and Other Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act 2006, which is popularly known as the Forest Rights Act, there is a special provision for PVTGs as follows -  "In view of the differential vulnerability of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups among the forest dwellers, the District Level Committee should play a pro-active role in ensuring that all PVTGs receive habitat rights in consultation with the concerned PVTGs’ traditional institutions of these groups, after filing claims before the gram sabha”. Since the PVTGs are in greater danger of being rendered destitute if their habitats are destroyed, this special provision has been made for them in addition to individual and community rights. Thus, while individual farmers can claim individual rights and village communities can claim community rights, an area of a set of villages where PVTGs reside and have resided for a long time can be claimed by these PVTGs as their habitat. Naresh Biswas along with the Baiga communities of Baiga Chak in Dindori initiated this process a few years back for the first time in India and after following the process of claims and verification involving the traditional Baiga community institutions and the administration, habitat rights were granted.
Even though Naresh had thereafter tried to replicate the process in other areas where PVTGs are living, notably in Bastar in Chhattisgarh, so far not much headway had been made. Now Naresh was trying to implement habitat rights in other areas of Dindori. This meeting was organised to initiate the process. In the meanwhile Naresh had decided that the contribution of the Baigas in mitigating climate change through their greater conservation of the forests after granting of habitat rights should also be highlighted. That is why this workshop was held to introduce the subject to the Baigas.
Baigas also practice sustainable agriculture. They do not use chemical fertilisers or high yielding varieties of hybrid seeds and neither do they use irrigation, relying completely on rainfed agriculture. In this way too they are champions in mitigating climate change. Subhadra had a discussion session with the participants explaining to them how their agriculture was very important in the context of global warming. Subhadra has taken a sample of her collection of indigenous seeds to compare with the seeds that the Baigas were sowing. A young scientist employed at the Government Research Centre also saw these seeds and was impressed. He asked for some of these seeds so that he too could grow them on the farm at the centre. Subhadra told him that he could get the seeds but he would have to pay Rs 650 for them. The scientist went to ask the principal and came back and said that the principal had said that Subhadra would have to make a formal request to the Centre and then that request would be processed in due course and the payment made after that but she would have to give the seeds then and there!! Subhadra obviously refused saying that if this is the bureaucratic way the centre works then it could continue to stew in its rot. In fact the training programme the centre was running for the farmers was on organic composting with the use of NADEP pits and vermi-compost pits. However, when we went to see the NADEP and vermi-compost pits we found them in disuse. This is the moribund state of  the Government Agricultural research and extension programme. The employees are wasting their time and public money and doing nothing. While people like Naresh, Subhadra and the Baigas who are actually doing worthwhile work in sustainable and equitable development are having to fend for themselves.

Tradition in Tandem with Modernity

We live in a time when often tradition and modernity come to loggerheads with each other, sometimes resulting in murder and mayhem. Yet in the Bhil homeland at least, the two are going hand in hand as a result of the huge mass mobilisation by the Adivasi Ekta Parishad and the Jai Adivasi Yuva Sangathan. The latest example is the commemoration of Bhil Martyrs Day in Bisali village in Udainagar Tehsil in Madhya Pradesh on April 2nd.
This is an annual event in which the death of four members of the Adivasi Shakti Sangathan in police firing on this day in 2001 is sombrely remembered. It used to be an event of the Adivasi Shakti Sangathan till three years back when the Adivasi Ekta Parishad (AEP) decided to commemorate this event as Bhil Martyr's Day in memory of all the many great Bhil fighters who have given up their lives in the cause of Adivasi rights beginning with the exploits of Khajya Naik, Bhima Naik, Tantya Bhil and Chhitu Kirad against the British in the 19th century. Now it has become a major event in which Adivasis from all the four states of western Madhya Pradesh participate. This year the Jai Adivasi Yuva Sangathan (JAYS) too decided to take part and added a much needed youthful flavour to the proceedings.
JAYS is the epitome of modernity having been born out of a Facebook group created by a Bhil Adivasi doctor at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi to further the rights of the Adivasis. This FB group soon gained in immense popularity among Adivasi youth in western Madhya Pradesh and today its members number in the hundreds of thousands of educated Adivasi youth. They have mass demonstrations and meetings in defence of Adivasi culture and rights. What is more important they have training workshops for Adivasi youth on important aspects of the Constitution and other laws that provide special rights and entitlements to the Adivasis, like the Fifth Schedule, the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act and the Forest Rights Act.
The AEP too has been especially proactive in mobilising the Adivasis who are in Government Service to exert their combined power to benefit the Adivasi masses in general. The AEP has also undertaken to preserve the traditional culture of the Adivasis and every year on January 14th it organises by turns in each of the four states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh a huge cultural gathering which is possibly the biggest such gathering of its kind in India and it is completely funded by the Adivasis themselves. There is a new pride among the Adivasis in their culture and tradition and they are using modern political mobilisation to strengthen the positive aspects of these while also acting to scotch the negative aspects like witch hunting, gender based violence and patriarchal oppression of women.
Many Adivasis turned out in traditional dress for the rally in Udainagar and particularly enticing were this father and son combination shown below.

   The rally was livened up by the JAYS youth and their slogan shouting. April 2nd also happened to be the day for a general strike called by Dalit and Adivasi organisations across India to protest against the Supreme Court's recent judgment ordering that there will be no immediate arrest when a complaint is filed under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Prevention of Atrocities Act. So first the youth went round Udainagar in motorcycles urging the shopkeepers to down their shutters till the passage of the rally. Then the rally started with people dancing to the drums and the nowadays ubiquitous music from amplifier systems which are called DJs in local parlance. The rally traversed the distance of 4 kilometers from Udainagar to the Bhil Martyrs' Memorial in Bisali and some of the youth were dressed in jeans and tee shirts with interesting slogans as shown below.

The slogan says that the price of land and the courage of the Bhils never decreases!! The rally turned into a big meeting at Bisali where the Bhil martyrs' were remembered and their family members felicitated. The memorial shown below is looked after by the venerable Deep Singh who is a burwa, a traditional medicine man and also a gayan or singer of the epic creation ballad of the Bhils.

The meeting ended with the submission of a memorandum of demands for the betterment of the lives of the Bhils to the Tehsildar or local administrator to be forwarded to the Government of Madhya Pradesh. This was followed by a community feast of maize ghat and daal. Then while the people who had come from outside went back, the local people congregated again at night to dance to the beat of the drums and the music from the DJ. After night long dancing in which as many as 15 drum beating teams took part, 18 goats were sacrificed by various villages to end the celebrations in traditional style.
What was most exhilarating was the participation of the youth, especially the educated youth who are in government service. They had taken leave for one day to come from far and wide to participate in the event and unhesitatingly criticised the Government for neglecting the well being of the Adivasis. These youth are blissfully unaware of the power of global forces that are negating the possibilities of a more equitable and sustainable development and so they are full of energy and ready to fight for their rights.