Mobilising for Livelihood : Women Farmers Demand Water

If I were to write an article, that would be the title. Which incidentally, I am supposed to be writing for my NGO. I have had nightmares about publishing this. Growing up I had no issues with the dark, just publishing.

My NGO JEEVIKA has been busy. This is a lie. We are always busy because we are a grassroots women’s rights and livelihood NGO in South 24 Parganas, West Bengal. Right now, as in February 2010, we are in the middle of a community mobilisation effort with the local Nahazari panchayat over water supply for SRI farmers and the general farmers in the area. Jeevika works in 37 villages in Bishnupur Block 1 & 2 and Mahestala. The area our campaign is located in is called Bishnupur 2, or specifically with the Nahazari Panchayat which covers 20,104 people as of 2001 Indian census. These 20,104 people are a part of 12 Gram Sangshads (or small village localities), of which many are subsistence-farmers who rely on rice as their staple food.

The irrigation canals that feed the fields have been overgrown with trees, weeds and garbage for the past 10 years and they don't have to be. If you clean them, baby Debashmita gets 5lbs fatter from the rice her parents can grow. I use hyperbole but here is an instance where the issue of food security is a largely political one, not one requiring modernization, funds, and technological fixes. Here, if the community mobilises, change will happen!

By the way, the villagers on their own locked up the Panchayat head in his office two weeks ago demanding that the money held for the past 10 years allocated for digging out the canals be released. Jeevika staff was not there.

Rather than write a long dry article with a title like "Mobilising for Livelihood…", here is a photo journal account of the incredible events taking shape in West Bengal. I hope Debashmita gets fat soon.

Nutshell

JEEVIKA started a sustainable agriculture project called SRI (Syst. of Rice Intensification http://www.sri-india.net) two years ago. It is a method of rice cultivation whose variations have been in practice for centuries but was recently packaged and scaled into a global movement. Today, it cuts 20-50% of water use, practices local seed collection, and raises the yield per plant from 2tons-per hector up to 15tons/ha. I’ll repeat that: 2t to 15t.

Jeevika has been in the community for 20 years and the same issue hampering food security consistently comes up. Folks say, "Sure we’ll try SRI, but we have no water."

Why no water?

According to villagers, the local Panchayat hasn't spent the 6-10 lakhs allocated to digging the irrigation canals, for the past 10 years.

Productivity for subsistence-farmers of the area that rely on a system of irrigation canals or khaals has gone way down. It is particularly hard on rice that is dependent on a specific amount of water for the paddy to form. Or else "cheetey-dhan" happens, or empty paddy.

WhatHaHappanWass..

After a series of community meetings with the Panchayat whose heads were consistently and conspicuously absent from, the lock-in happened in early February. This was without any JEEVIKA staff around. Long story short, rice season was gearing up and after hearing no word from the Panchayat, villagers took it on themselves to lock the head in his office after he failed to attend a community-meeting he'd during the Panchayat Mela (Festival). The villagers demanded that the cash for the canals be handed to JEEVIKA, so that the NGO could implement the digging campaign.

JEEVIKA was like, whoa, heck no.

We immediately started documenting the process and went with our community women to talk to the BDO, or Block Development Officer, the higher up from the Panchayat head. We started a petition and got nearly 300 (of the Panchayat's own constituents) and on February 5th we went to submit it as agreed:

*Though notice had been given, the BDO officer was not present

35 ladies and 5 men, all smiles on their way in to the BDO office.

Climbing the BDO office stairs.

Handing the petition over to the BDO-proxy. ~280 signatures.

The meeting begins. Proxy .. ‘Well, we can’t really do much.’

Getting the receipt for the petition submission.

Aroti-di. Look how determined they are about the canals and the absence of the BDO officer.

Okay, in between there was a veritable showdown. After getting the receipt for the petition, a few Panchayat members came down and called JEEVIKA names. These things clearly happen when emotions are high but the JEEVIKA ladies were on fire. The couple of men that were with our group were the ones placating or pulling the women and Panchayat members back. Anytime a direct action happens, the gendered lines become very stark. The Panchayat men were not going to hit a band of women, the women knew they were not going to be hit. When my NGO engages in other public actions, it is strategic that the oldest and friendliest women is sent to the police office to get permits. Strategic essentialism. Then there are spaces that require more critical dialogue to unravel like when women begin to conflate their personal histories and internalization of violence with activism. The danger is having anger or trauma be the primary motivation while reacting to police, politicians or other men that are symbolic of authority. Activism isn’t about vendettas.

Women in our community experience gendered violence in everyday life, both structural and in the form of domestic relationships. Gender and poverty act simultaneously to doubly exploit women. JEEVIKA navigates this not by making foot soldiers or setting up clashes with the state. Indoctrinating survivors of violence (which many women in the community we work with are) would be quite dangerous and manipulative. JEEVIKA holds year-long gender and patriarchy workshops along with all their programming that take a holistic approach to analyzing these dynamics at play, both as lived on the body and the more theoretical-structural level.

Dolon (in purple) reminding everyone the importance of being strategic in order to get the canals dug in tim

Dolon (in purple) reminding everyone the importance of being strategic in order to get the canals dug in time.

Babies at the BDO. / Example of an unmaintained canal or KHAAL. That's supposed to be water feeding the fields.

Results

The BDO officer was missing. His proxy and Panchayat cohorts received the petition, told us they couldn't do much, and that we should get an engineer to see the canals. Then one Panchayat member called JEEVIKA thieves. JEEVIKA women got really riled, some of them took it so personally that what resulted was a face off between lady farmers and 3 Panchayat members and the BDO-proxy.... who by the way, ended up leaving work early in an auto...

The Canals

Work has already started in terms of the canal digging and we are going to bring in an engineer indeed. Now that community pressure is at a high, they'll most likely release the rest of the money. The plan is to have the canals dug before the rice is affected.

Target, strategize, mobilize.

----- supplementary background ----

About Rice (The Context)

Rice is the staple food for subsistence farmers in the subcontinent. The SRI programme takes a lot of initial groundwork to convince (or incentivize as per other models) farmers to implement. Essentially, NGOs and environmental/livelihood groups come in and tell the farmer to stop and reverse the techniques they have been using for centuries. CENTURIES! Not just this, but to experiment with their staple crop.

JEEVIKA is a grassroots organization. It has been around for 20 years. The groundwork for the canal digging campaign began through the conversations we had with farmers about SRI. We began with community surveys to see if there was interest in the programme. Then we began our official SRI initiative through discussion with farmers (lady farmers!). Out of this grew the canal digging campaign. Once the canals are dug, both SRI as well as any farmer in our area will be able to have an incredible leg up in ensuring food security.

The following are photos of the regular SRI initiative from which the foundations for the canals digging campaign began.

Dolon (the NGO as.dir/my boss) hanging out during seed distribution

Incentivizing SRI: Seeds in the immediate market folks buy from vary in quality. One thing we do is go straight to the local seed dist. company and do some quality check ourselves.  Which is why my "office/desk” has been occupied for the past 2 month. Ha.

I don’t know everyone’s name. I know a lot of people who do gender training because, well, I can add to it. SRI is something entirely different. I plug-in for strategy, documentation and MIS ect. & evidently publishing.

We were distributing seeds and filling in our "registration" and MIS (to chart the progress of the paddy ect).

I hate taking photos without being asked to in fear to reproducing the National Geographic aesthetic. These photos are screen captures from a film we are shooting documenting JEEVIKA’s SRI programme to show for rural outreach next season.

ah yes yes, potash and boron says Raticanta-da.. yes, yes

Raticanda who is fulltime staff was a farmer and Aroti-di, Chobi-di and Chandana-di are project staff and also farmers. In other words, they plant what they eat for lunch. Depending on how the KHAAL digging campaign goes, hopefully these ladies will try SRI on their plots for another year.

Nafisa Ferdous is working at Jeevika Development Society with a rural women-owned microfinance federation and SRI agriculture in West Bengal.  For more information on Jeevika's activities or Nafisa's projects email her at NafisaFerdous@gmail.com