Celebrating Crop Diversity
in Deccan Andhra Pradesh
Last week, i attended the Deccan
Development Society’s annual Mobile Biodiversity Festival. The festival is an
exhibition (and celebration) of a variety of traditionally grown drought-resistant
crops (mainly millets). An astounding variety of grains and seeds are
artistically displayed on a string of bullock carts that wend their way through
dozens of villages across Medak district in Andhra Pradesh, India. The festival
spans across the space of a month, and begins on the occasion of Makar Sankranthi,
when the sun traverses to Capricorn in mid-January. The participants are
primarily women farmers who cultivate millets.
i was in Machnoor village for the
closing ceremony on the 13th of February this year as a special
invitee, invited by P.V. Satheesh of the DDS on behalf of the extended DDS
family. i first came across Satheeshgaru and his work when we were both members
of a time-bound committee that was formed in the year 2000 as a part of a
UNDP-assisted Government of India project. This national-level committee was
referred to as the Technical And Policy Core Group (TPCG). It was a part of the
process for the formulation of India’s National Biodiversity Strategy And
Action Plan (NBSAP).
My initial visit to Pastapur
village in Zaheerabad Mandal where the DDS office is located, was about ten
years ago. It was very interesting to learn, at that time, of the co-operation
between the government’s local agricultural extention centre - the Krishi Vigyan
Kendra, and the DDS and local farmers’ groups (primarily women farmers from
Dalit communities). Exciting concepts were being recognized and carried forward
and communicated to the world: people walking the talk on organic farming; the
nutritive aspects of millets; ways in which to customize the Public
Distribution System (PDS) for it to be beneficial to the local community. In
addition to this, DDS was also working towards empowering women’s voices by
teaching them skills of community radio and video film-making which it
continues to do. It also runs a Pacchashala or Green School for school
‘dropouts’.
My decade-old visit had been with
all the members of the TPCG to participate in an NBSAP workshop. The
discussions then were about food security for all, and about agricultural
diversity. About sustainability. About the Hamlet, the Village, the Country.
About the Planet. They were about the Poor. About Future Generations and
Inter-Generational Equity. About Laws and Policies, and ways of thinking that
were needed, to make all this happen. Things looked bleaker then, than they do
now. This is the irony that took me back to these villages of the Telangana
area ten years later last week.
Much has transpired since the
days of those discussions. Governments have been brought down, laws to
guarantee forest rights, and employment, and transparency in governance, and
food security, have been drafted, crafted, partly-implemented, some wait in the
pipeline.
Around 2001, i had prepared
documents, questionnaires and inputs for the Congress Party’s Committee on
Programme Implementation. Ideas on how to revive the party when it was at an
ebb. One of the documents included a paper on suggestions related to
agriculture. P.V. Satheesh had been prompt in making some suggestions, upon my
request, for the preparation of this document. He is a person with vision, and one
among the stalwarts from the NGO sector who i believe needs to be goaded into
active politics today!
When i think of the beautiful
Mosques and Masjids of the Telangana area that i drove past while revisiting Zaheerabad
last week, it is with a sense of having wrought an iota of cultural diversity
for the state and the nation. The first thing that i did in 2004, after being a
part of a grueling but successful campaign to defeat the NDA government, was to
go to a Masjid near my home in Northern Andhra on invitation from the Muslim
community there.
On the eve of Valentine’s day in
2013, and where pink flags stand for the Telangana movement, the mid-day bullock cart procession was a colourful sight. With music,
and songs and dances. With women farmers from Medak, and visitors from various
parts of the country and the world, we walked along, and finally reached the
open air amphitheatre of the Green School. Outside, there were stalls with
exhibitions of grains, literature on the link between climate change and land
use patterns in agriculture, and delicious-smelling dishes of cooked millets.
Jayasri from the DDS Hyderabad
office, showed me around the exhibition. We peeped into a community radio
station that is operated by three women. i was told that our speeches would be
aired live that afternoon. We also took a quick look at the
sugarcane-to-jaggery making unit. This, i remembered vividly from my last
visit. Time, perhaps, to write a children’s story: Jagadi and the Jaggery
Factory.
At the open-air amphitheatre,
Satheeshgaru (with whom I had had a brief meeting at his Pastapur office as
soon as i reached), was on the white-cushion-lined floor-seating dais. The
other invitees on the dais were from the development sector, and belonged to
Karnataka, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Andhra, and Canada, and there was also a
government official.
The amphitheatre was packed with
the mahila rythulu (women farmers), all gathered there with a sense of purpose
and long-drawn determination. There was a press gallery, and there were, as is
customary at DDS events that I’ve attended in Delhi and elsewhere, women from
the villages of Medak district with rolling cameras, making films through their
eyes and perspectives. They already have to their credit, i understand, a
formidable library of such films.
Speeches were interspersed with
songs, and there was a traditional Telugu Burra Katha performance. This is a
popular art of story-telling, or narrating events and opinions in a satirical,
ballad-like form in rural Andhra. Usually, three singers with musical
instruments, dressed in glittering costumes and make-up stand in a row. The
singer at the centre leads the narrative, while the other two form the chorus.
Burra Katha performers are hired to perform at various events ranging from Dasara
festival celebrations to variety entertainment programmes. Of late, women, too,
have started participating in Burra Katha performances. Here, the performers sang
of issues connected to organic farming, genetically modified crops, and the
value of millets. The speeches dwelt on similar issues and also the work of the
DDS.
One of the themes that the
festival sought to take forward this year, was a resolve for the women to pass
on their traditional knowledge and wisdom to their daughters-in-law. A pledge
to this effect was made by the ladies present.
My speech touched on women’s
rights;
the urgent need for Panchayat elections
in Andhra;
the need for state governments to
take forward and implement aspects of Panchayati Raj in order to empower women
everywhere in the country to be a greater part of a democratic decision-making process;
a word of caution about the
proposed National Investment and Manufacturing Zone in the district from the
point of view of its impact on agricultural practices, livelihoods of communities
and on the proposed agridiversity heritage site;
a reminder that people from these
areas should make their concerns regarding the proposed land acquisition and
resettlement and rehabilitation law being planned by the central ministry of
Rural Development known to the government as soon as possible;
a reiteration and legal
interpretation of the demands of the rural poor for sustainable, democratic development:
that the appropriate ‘development’ of the area is attainable through better
governance, that there are no short-cuts, and that i was saying this, standing
in the heart of Telangana: from the farthest hill-ranges of Northern Andhra to
the closest Deccan plateau, what people need in Andhra is for the Panchayat
elections to be held as soon as possible.
The closing ceremony was followed
by a sumptuous meal of millets cooked to assorted consistencies, shapes and tastes,
laid out on banana leaves, and with an expertly-worded menu card for guests.
On the way back, Jayasri asked me
if i was tired. No, i said. In the Eastern Ghaats, often, we have to trudge up
hills and wade through streams to reach a hamlet or a village. (Back in the
Eastern Ghaats, we need pucca roads, but not by diluting the Forest Rights Act
as the PMO seems to be intent on doing). Here, the dusty afternoon walk was a
piece of millet-cake. But water was a scarce commodity. And the women belonged
to a historically marginalized community.
The struggle for justice is not a
time-bound one. It is a constant effort to bring back the balance to any given
situation. And so there is no rest. There can be no rest if one is in the grim
but essentially liberating business of attempting to make the world a better
place. Through non-violence, and through Truth.
v. shruti devi
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