Didarganj Yakshi

Anarchists are dead against the accumulation of wealth as it leads to inequalities and inequities of all kinds and not least to the hubris that everything can be bought including mother nature. That is why the adivasis all over the world, the quintessential anarchists, have traditionally had norms in place to prevent the accumulation of wealth. However, the accumulation of wealth does have some benefits. One of them is the creation of works of art of a high quality which would not have been possible on a lower material base. There was a time about three centuries before the christian era when the first great empire in India was set up by the Mauryan dynasty which peaked under the rule of Asoka and it was headquartered at what is now Patna in Bihar. This period is also famous for its great works of art, the most visible and talked about examples being the Asokan pillars whose lion figure embellished capitals have been used in currency notes and the chakra or spoked wheel in the national flag. However, the piece of sculpture, that puts all other ancient Indian art in the shade is the Didarganj Yakshi shown below.

Wealth needs to be secured. Those who are poor will naturally try to get at the accumulated wealth and so it has to be guarded. There are numerous legends in India which talk about minor gods and goddesses being deployed to guard wealth. Such divine men were called yakshas and women yakshis. There was immense wealth accumulated in the city of Pataliputra as Patna was known in Mauryan times and so the legends of the yakshas and yakshis too must have proliferated. The Didarganj Yakshi is the result of a happy admixture of the art of sculpture and the fantasies of mythology in those ancient times.
The photo above does not do justice to the mesmerising quality of this piece of art as it stands majestically tall at 6 feet eight inches on its pedestal shining in the light focussed on it because of the exquisite polish on the sandstone from which it has been sculpted. Despite its nose being broken as well as one of its arms this beautifully carved figure of a voluptiously breasted semi-nude woman with a fly whisk is so captivating that one can spend hours standing and watching it.
I first came to hear about it in the late nineteen eighties as a youth when it was transported to exhibitions abroad and won international acclaim. Ever since then I had thought of getting a first hand look at it. However, I could not manage a trip to Patna, where it is kept in the museum. It was first discovered by a villager in the sand on the banks of the Ganges river in Didarganj near Patna in 1917. It was soon moved to the museum by the Archaeological Survey of India and over the years it has become an icon of Indian art nationalism. Indian art historians have contended that this sculpture is visible proof that ancient Indian art had its own moorings independent of west Asian or Hellenic influences.
Luckily for me it so happened that I got a consultancy assignment that required me to spend two months in Patna in May and June and I seized this opportunity to fulfil my youthful tryst with the famous Yakshi on the threshold of old age. The entrance to the Patna museum is dark but as soon as you take the left turn into the sculpture gallery the first thing you see is the wistfully smiling and big breasted Yakshi welcoming you in all its splendour. A poem in stone. I used to have my Sundays free initially before the pressure of work built up and I would walk down to the museum which was about a kilometre and a half from my hotel and spend an hour viewing the Yakshi from various angles always ending up gazing at the welcoming smile on its face.
Feminist art historians have raised the issue of why nude and semi nude figures of women have been the subject of great sculpture in India from the ancient times to the medieval ages. Obviously the artists were labouring under a patriarchal mindset. Similarly it is a fact that the Mauryan empire and Asoka's dominance were built on the decimation of tribals. A process that has continued to gain momentum over the centuries since. Nevertheless it is impossible to ignore the artistic excellence of this culture as symbolised by the Didarganj Yakshi just because it was exploitative of tribals and women. This contradiction between the forward march of civilisation and the decimation of tribals and subordination of women which is so poignantly symbolised in the figure of the Yakshi also made me ponder over the distance I have travelled from my days as a young penniless activist living a de-classed life among the tribals in Jhabua and my present status as a money earning development consultant. Life is always grey instead of being black and white and so it is best to enjoy the luminous beauty of the Didarganj Yakshi without delving too much into the darkness that is there beneath it.

Cynical Mendacity

Every year the Prime Minister of India awards a Gold Medal to an IAS officer for "Good Practices in Public Service Delivery". This year the final short list of seven officers from whom the winner is to be selected includes The Principal Secretary Tribal Welfare of the Government of Madhya Pradesh. He has been selected ostensibly for having facilitated the distribution of land right deeds to tribals on forest land they have been cultivating for generations under the provisions of the new "Scheduled Tribes and Other Forest Dwellers Recognition of Rights Act 2006". The reality, however, is that lakhs of tribals in the state who have submitted their claims for having their land regularised through the village forest rights committees are still to be awarded these rights. In Alirajpur district for example none of the applicants have been given these rights despite a massive campaign conducted by Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath. The basic ground survey has not been conducted yet.
It is true that some deeds have been distributed in some areas of the state. However, this has been done arbitrarily without following the procedure laid down in the Act. In many cases the land mentioned in the deed does not tally with the land actually being cultivated on the ground. When applications have been filed with the administration for clarifying things on the ground there has been no response. Even though the Act mentions that those cultivating forest land before 2005 will be granted rights in effect only people who had been cultivating land in 1980 before the enactment of the Environment Conservation Act are being considered and that too very selectively.
There have been many protest demonstrations by tribal organisations in the state against this betrayal of tribal interests by the government but it has paid no heed and is still dragging its heels on implementation of the Act. Yet in a cynical display of mendacity it has proposed the name of the Tribal Development Secretary for an award for having implemented the Act properly. When this is the kind of duplicity in the government then there is little hope for the tribals.

The Deep Divide

I have just finished writing two reports. One on the implementation of the Panchayat Provisions Extension to the Scheduled Areas Act (PESA) 1996 in Chhattisgarh and the other on a strategy to reduce poverty in Madhya Pradesh. PESA basically provides that in scheduled tribal areas governance should be such that there is respect for and recognition of the special lifestyle and culture of the tribals which is traditionally resource conservative and not resource extractive like the mainstream industrial civilisation. Most importantly this statute stresses that the management and development of all natural resources within the area of a particular village will be done in consultation with the gram sabha or village general body consisting of all the adult voting members of that village. However, since natural resources are increasingly becoming scarce for the resource guzzling globalised industrial and consumerist economy it is very difficult for the state to respect the provisions of PESA. Thus there is a deep divide between the ideal provisions of PESA and the reality of industrial development. Consequently there is rampant violation of PESA going on in Chhattisgarh where mines and industrial plants are being set up in a hurry with scant concern for either the tribals or the pristine forested habitats in which they reside.
In discussions with my other colleagues in the team that has been constituted by the United Nations Development Programme and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, we came to the conclusion that the strategy to reduce poverty in Madhya Pradesh was known to everybody but it was precisely this deep divide between the ideal of sustainability and the reality of indiscriminate resource and surplus extraction that was preventing it from being adopted. There is a pathological governance failure arising from this failure to align development with social and environmental sustainability.
The question then arises as to what is the relevance of writing such reports which we know are never going to be taken seriously. One of my colleagues said that it is important to record our views. Record also the details of the small experiments in decentralised governance and development that we are carrying out. In the hope that some day the limits to this ongoing madness of over consumption will be reached and then there will be something to fall back upon.

Crisis of Agriculture, Poverty and Ill health

I had initially intended to spend a fortnight touring Chhattisgarh specifically to find out why the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has continually managed to win elections over the past few years. However due to some other commitments that came up suddenly I could not do so and could make only a short visit of three days. I found that a combination of the National Rural Employment Guanrantee Scheme (NREGS) and the supply of rice at Rs 3 a kilogram to the poor have indeed benefited a fairly large section of the populace(due to leakages in both schemes it is not only the absolute poor who have profited but also others. In fact when I was coming back from Chhattisgarh there was a person on the train with me who was taking along a quintal of such rice that he had purchased at Rs 12 a kilogram in black from a ration shop and he was a lower middle class person. Given the extreme poverty prevailing in Chhattisgarh as brought out by National Sample Survey data it is not surprising that the populist scheme has had an effect despite the overall situation being bad. The population affected by the government sponsored Salwa Judum movement against the Maoists and the ill effects of pollution and displacement due to various mining and industrial projects is comparatively much smaller. The tremendous factionalism in the Congress party which is really mind boggling from whatever little I could gather from this short visit prevented it from taking credit for the NREGS which went to the BJP instead.
The social movements have all lost their earlier strength and so there is not enough mobilisation on the issue of agricultural distress which is the main issue in Chhattisgarh. In a meeting held at Ratanpur the old capital of the Gond and later Haihay kings of Chhattisgarh farmer after farmer came up with detailed critiques of the crisis of agriculture and water resources and also what should be done to remedy the situation. The meeting on agriculture and water at Ratanpur on the 7th of June 2009 was held under the aegis of various organisations and the forum of farmers called Krishak Biradari had about fifty participants. The most notable thing to come out of the meeting was the deep frustration of the farmers with the prevailing sorry state of agriculture. All the farmers who spoke were relatively bigger landholders and all of them categorically stated that with the current scenario of costs of inputs and prices of outputs there was no way in which farming could be profitable. Concern was also expressed regarding the excessive extraction of ground water for industry and agriculture and also the indiscriminate acquisition of land for mining and industrial projects and the consequent pollution. The culpability of the government in failing to control these negative tendencies also came in for a lot of criticism. It was generally felt that the lack of a strong farmer's movement in Chhattisgarh was the main reason for their sorry plight. The upshot of the day long deliberations was that a set of resolutions were passed regarding the amelioration of this situation and a programme was drawn up for holding more such meetings in other rural areas of Chhattisgarh to raise the awareness of farmers in particular and civil society in general under the aegis of Krishak Biradari so as to build up a people's movement for the improvement of the agriculture and water situation in the state.
I personally enjoyed the meeting immensely and was especially thrilled when towards the end, at the time of the resolutions being finalised, two very old farmers who had earlier remained silent suddenly burst out in anger and held forth at length disregarding all appeals to keep quiet from the organisers who tried to convince them that their concerns had been taken into consideration. One of these venerable old men dressed in a traditional dhoti and kurta imperiously waved away the mike which was offered to him and instead relied on the strength of his vocal chords to express his anger. Finally while returning to Bilaspur we went to visit the ruins of the fort which used to be the seat of the Gond Kingdom of Chhattisgarh. Ve Khandhar aaj bhi bata rahe hai ki Gondon ki Imarat kitni buland thi par aaj ke hukumrano ko inke hifazat ko padi nahi hai kyonki unhe vartaman chhatisgarh ko bhi khandhar mein badalne ki jaldi hai.
Ratanpur has as many as 256 tanks and these have been witness to more than a thousand years of history. They were first constructed by the Gond kings who cleverly harvested the water that came running down from the hills nearby. Such is the efficacy of this water harvesting system that despite last year having been one that was heavily deficient in rainfall there is no water shortage in this town which gets a lot of tourists due to its being a religious centre of importance.
I ended my visit to Chhattisgarh with a trip to the Jan Swasthya Sahayog (JSS) hospital in Ganiyari village where a team of doctors from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences has set up a health delivery system for the rural poor that has become a legend. This trip very startlingly brought home to me the direct connection between the crisis of agriculture and health. A considerable proportion of the poor patients coming to the hospital for treatment are suffering from diabetes with post prandial sugar levels of more than 400. now diabetes is categorised as a life style disease brought about by over eating and under working. But here is a situation in which poor people dependent on subsistence agriculture or agricultural labour, who are undernourished and over worked, are reporting a high incidence of diabetes. When the doctors at JSS began investigating the cause of this they came to the conclusion that this was because of chronic hunger. The unborn baby in the womb does not get adequate nutrition because the pregnant mother is undernourished and so its pancreas is underdeveloped when it is born. thus from birth itself the amount of insulin being produced is less and slowly the situation aggravates so that after some time the person becomes diabetic. This is indeed a frightening prospect.
Yet another disturbing fact analysed by the JSS team is that of the spread of anti-biotic resistance through the passing of stool in the open. Due to indiscriminate and irrational prescription of anti-biotics by both quacks and registered medical practitioners bacteria causing dreaded diseases develop resistance to anti-biotics. The resistant bacteria are then passed out in the faeces which contaminate the surface and ground water. this water is then drunk without purification by others and they too get filled with these resistant bacteria leading to general obsolescence of anti-biotics and this is probably the cause of the spread of epidemics of all kinds which are then untreatable.
Finally there is the issue of the spread of a kind of leprosy that affects the nerves and does not manifest itself overtly till well advanced. this kind of leprosy is not treatable by the standard Multi Drug Therapy (MDT) medicines and requires a much more expensive treatment regime. This disease too is very widely prevalent in Bilaspur and other areas of Chhattisgarh. But both the national and state governments are turning a blind eye to this serious problem. The worst and most depressing part of this whole scenario is the woeful lack of awareness in the populace in general about this deep linkage between poverty and health. the government looks askance at the JSS for having exposed this and creates problems of all kinds in its operation.

Cultural Use of Renewable Energy

The month of May is the time for marriages in the Bhil homeland. Almost everyday there are a slew of marriages going on. The centrepiece of these marriages is the night long dancing to the tune of drums and pepariyas or a kind of wind instrument in which girls and boys and men and women enjoy themselves pepped up by the power of mahua liquor. In Gandhwani Tehsil of Dhar district there was a significant difference this time round. Normally the nightlong dancing has to be lighted up with a generator. However, this time solar lanterns were used. This was possible because a new scheme is being implemented there by an NGO in which it has set up a solar photovoltaic panel powered charger in some villages and supplied a local bhil youth in these villages with fifty lanterns. This youth charges rupees four a day as rent from any villagers who would want to use the solar lanterns at night. The scheme is running very well because the earlier scenario wherein people could draw free electricity from the grid has changed drastically. Now the Madhya Pradesh State Electricity Board has cut off the electricity at the transformer for a village that has a high proportion of defaulters and electricity thieves. So there is a great demand for these solar lanterns. Especially during the examination season that just preceded the marriage season when students cramming found these lanterns to be their saviours. One of the solar lantern entrepreneurs was more enterprising and decided to cash in on the marriage season also. He calculated that the rent of a generator and diesel for one night came to about a thousand rupees. So he offered the a set of twenty lanterns for a total sum of four hundred rupees giving more light at less cost to the client. This was an instant success and so many marriages have been celebrated in the light of solar lanterns this year.

Pucca Office in Alirajpur

The Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath has been at work in Alirajpur district from 1982 onwards but in all these years it has not been able to build a pucca office of its own in Alirajpur town which is the district headquarters. Land was bought for building the office way back in 1993 but the organisation was never able to garner the funds to build a pucca office. With the dawn of the new century some money and timber was acquired and a kuccha office was set up on the land. Now finally from next month the construction of a pucca office is going to start marking a watershed in the history of the organisation. Not that a pucca office is going to make a very big difference to the functioning of the organisation but in these days of internet advocacy the barefoot kind of activism that is the hall mark of KMCS has got devalued tremendously and so it has become necessary to register a pucca presence also. Last year a pucca office was built in Sondwa too. However, the original office in village Attha remains a kuccha one retaining the true flavour of KMCS. There is tremendous enthusiasm among the members that at last their organisation can boast of pucca premises! Especially thrilled is Khemla who is now officiating from the pucca office in Sondwa as he feels that he now has infrastructure that matches his organisational prowess. He has turned the old kuccha office on the outskirts of Sondwa into a free hostel for adivasi children who study in the High School in Sondwa.
All this has been possible because the sister organisation of KMCS, the Dhas Gramin Vikas Trust which was lying dormant for more than fifteen years was rejuvenated last year and a slew of development and research projects were undertaken through it thus bringing in the funds that have made this upgradation possible. Even more so than earlier it has become impossible to work in any significant way in rural areas for the uplift of the poor without external funding support.
Thus in today's world anarchism has its limits and somewhere or other one has to compromise and build institutions as without this external funding cannot come in. Agriculture the main livelihood of the poor Bhils has become so crisis ridden that they do not have the means to contribute in any significant way to the running of an organisation. So while the Wall Street Banks can force the US government to give them trillions of dollars the adivasis cant get even pennies. A situation that has arisen because of the neglect of the social and environmental costs of modern development.

Pathological Mendacity

I have never ceased to wonder at the extent to which the minions of the Indian State will go to defraud the poorest of its citizens. One of the conditions for the environmental clearance given to the construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam on the river Narmada is that compensatory wildlife sanctuaries have to be set up in lieu of the forests being submerged. So the Government of Madhya Pradesh proposed to set up two sanctuaries one in the Mathwad Reserved Forest Range and the other in the Katthiwada Reserved Forest Range in Alirajpur district. While the proposal to set up the Mathwad sanctuary was quickly shelved when it became clear to the government that given the fact that it was the base of the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath it would be extremely difficult to displace the villagers residing there, the Katthivada sanctuary was pursued with. A study team from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun came to make a mandatory environmental impact assessment in 2007. The terms of reference of the EIA report clearly mention that the resident tribals would have to be taken into confidence regarding their perceptions about the proposed sanctuary. The methodology also mentions that people and sarpanches in 24 villages to be affected by the sanctuary were surveyed and interviewed. However, the truth is that not a single villager was spoken to by either the Wildlife Institute team or other officials regarding the proposed sanctuary. The forest department meanwhile has prepared a draft declaration of the establishment of the sanctuary under section 26 of the Wild Life Protection Act 1972 despite that fact that the initial gazette notification under section 18 of the Act announcing the proposed sanctuary has not yet been made. The sections 19 - 25 of the Act which provide for filing of claims and objections by the affected people and the award of compensation by the district collector after a fair and mandatory natural justice process have been totally ignored by the forest department as if the people did not exist.
All this came to light when some of the tribals came searching for the Khedut Mazdoor activists asking for help. We then began ferreting out information using the Right to Information Act and found out this highly objectionable attempt by the state to shortchange the poor tribals. Again and again the Indian State displays this tendency to cheat the most deprived of its citizens when it comes to initiating some development project or other. When the state is so pathologically mendacious only a major systemic treatment can improve matters. Unfortunately the fraudulent environmentalism of the rich and powerful along with the greed of the modern development acolytes so overshadows the simple environmentalism of the tribals that this seems to be a distant, nay, impossible goal.

The Tree of Life

The frontage of our house in Indore is dominated by a 10 meter tall drumstick tree. Our two storey house faces east and there is another tall two storey house on the south side. Apart from this there are a neem and guava tree also alongside the drumstick tree competing for sunlight. That is why the drumstick has grown so tall and dwarfed not only the other trees but also our building so as to be able to enjoy more sunlight. The result is that now the tree is both luxuriantly flowering and fruiting and we use the drumsticks in our meals regularly. What is more important is that throughout the year various fauna visit this tree to feed on its produce and use it as a resting or eating place. We were thrilled when one day we found a small kestrel sitting on its branches and devouring a field mouse that it had caught somewhere as in the picture below.

There is a family of squirrels that has built its home in the dense foliage of the three creepers that cover our house and keep it cool in summer. They consider all the flowers and fruits on the various plants and trees in our house to be their property. Consequently whenever other birds too come to feast on these luscious foodstuffs a lovely orchestra of sounds starts off. The squirrels chirp in anger at the birds for trespassing on their preserve. The birds too not to be outdone respond with their own chirping. Yesterday there was a squirrel on one of the top branches of the drumstick tree chirping away in anger continuously. There was a lovely little black and blue coloured bird with a long beak which could fit into my palm on one of the lower branches which was sipping the nectar from the flowers and in between giving a fitting reply to the squirrel.

Asinine Law

Recently I had an opportunity to experience the asininity of the law. The state government appealed in the High Court in Indore against our acquittal by the lower court in a false case that it had filed against us charging us with having tried to murder policemen and wage a war against the state. The High Court admitted the appeal and ordered that we get ourselves bailed out and appear regularly in court. I felt this to be highly unjust and so initially did not get bail and searched around for a remedy. However, on reading the relevant law, the Criminal Procedure Code, I found that the High Court could admit the appeal without issuing notice to us and then order us to get bailed out. This portion of the statute is from the British times and is obviously one that is biased towards the state against the citizen. Moreover I found that since there were a huge number of criminal appeals pending our case would come up for final hearing and disposal only eight years from now.
This heavy load of criminal appeals has come about because the lower courts these days convict the accused in serious offences like murder, attempt to murder, dacoity and rape if even a few witnesses testify in order to clamp down on criminal activities. There are not enough judges in the High Courts to take on the heavy load of appeals against conviction that results and so the list of pending appeals goes on lengthening. The tragedy is that we despite being activists fighting against the injustice of the state and being acquitted by the lower court are also in the same boat as hardened criminals because the state has perversely filed an appeal against our acquittal so as to ensure that we do not expand our anti-statal activities. Instead of differentiating between those who have committed crimes and been convicted in lower courts and have appealed against this themselves and those like us who are activists fighting for justice who have been acquitted by the lower courts due to the falseness of the charges filed against us and been dragged to court again due to perversity of the state, the High Court lumps both together and so we too must wait our turn and attend court regularly under pain of being jailed if we do not do so. This is the asinine nature of the law in this country.
To fight this we will now have to expend considerable time and money and go to the Supreme Court and challenge the Criminal Procedure Code and the High Court Rules which do not make any distinction between those who have been convicted due to criminal activities and those who have been acquitted from false charges while disposing of the appeals. However, the lawyers here are not enthusiastic about this. They in fact discouraged me from absconding from the high court and I had to finally get myself bailed out as this hide and seek with the police was affecting my other work. Finally when I did get the bail order from the High Court the clerk made a small mistake in typing out the order and so I could not immediately bail myself out in the lower court. I had to apply once again to the High Court asking for the correction in the order and only after that I could get bail.
The judges are so overloaded with work that they do not have any time to consider what their mechanical application of an anti-people colonial law is going to mean in harassment for poor people and activists fighting for their rights. No wonder the state continues to reign supreme in its inequities without much challenge to the injustices it metes out to the oppressed poor.

Near Best Practice in Communitarian Natural Resource Management

The month of March is coming to an end heralding a very hot summer to come and across Madhya Pradesh streams and wells have gone dry. Yet the stream Kara running through the villages of Gendra and Attha in Alirajpur district is still flowing with water as is clearly visible in the picture below.

The man standing smiling in the picture is Chatarsingh who is one of the architects of this water conservation wonder. Many years ago the people of Gendra and Attha villages decided to conserve the fast diminishing forests which were there in the catchment of this stream. They would prevent grazing in the monsoons when new seedlings of the trees sprout and then after the rains they would cut the grass and distribute it among themselves paying for it. The money thus collected was given as salary to a few people who took regular responsibility of guarding the forests and Chatarsingh is one of them. The forests have become luxuriant and in combination with some good soil conservation measures has led to the greater recharge of rain water into the groundwater aquifers which contribute to the return flow in the stream throughout the year and even in a bad rainfall year like the present one. As many as eighty farmers in these two villages have been drawing water from the stream for irrigating their farms like Makansingh in the picture below and yet this has not exhausted the flow in the stream.

The secretary of the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath, Roopsingh, has taken three crops beginning with the monsoon maize, followed by wheat and now there is a luxuriant bajra or pearl millet crop in the midst of which he stands frowning giving a stern warning to the acolytes of centralised modern development that unless decentralised communitarian and nature friendly development is widely adopted the human race is doomed to suffocate in its greed.

Despite this exemplary water conservation effort that has also increased the productivity of their lands the people of Attha still cannot make ends meet because the per capita agricultural land availability is as low as 0.3 hectares. This is primarily due to the population explosion brought on by a patriarchal social structure that forces women to bear more children so as to ensure enough surviving male progeny. The Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath has never tackled patriarchy in any concerted manner and so the conservation success has not been able to make the people economically self sufficient. Thus the work done in the Attha-Gendra watershed is still a little short of best practice natural resource management.
As a result every household has some members migrating to Gujarat to supplement their incomes from their lands. Consequently there has to be some added bio-mass and agricultural crop based value addition in the villages and a sustained campaign against patriarchy for this watershed to become sustainable in every way. This requires greater investments in money and time to build up the capacity of the people in this regard.
In fact this manifestation of the ill effects of patriarcy reminded me of a legend regarding this stream that is current among the Bhils of the area. It appears a brother and sister couple named Kara and Kari decided to visit the Narmada river and they sat down for rest on a ridge. The brother then fondled the sister's breasts. This angered the sister and she said that she would not continue her journey with the brother and told him to go his own way to the Narmada. So while Kari started off towards the South from the ridge her brother Kara went North. Kari reached the Narmada sooner in Bhitada village which is just 13 kilometers from that ridge. While Kara had to traverse more than two hundred kilometers through Gendra, Attha and many other villages in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat to reach the Narmada. Incidentally the people of Bhitada too have conserved their forests and so not only is the stream Kari flowing with water at present but also the people there have used an unique system of gravity irrigation called paat to take a winter crop on their lands.
I had gone to Attha to take part in the funeral of an old stalwart of the organisation, Nansingh. Nansingh was one of the first people to respond to the exhortations of the non-adivasi activists and rise in revolt against the tyranny of the forest guards all of three decades ago. Even though I had gone to Attha with a heart heavy from the loss of a courageous comrade in arms the sight of the stream in flow and the glowing smile on Chatarsingh's face made me return with a renewed anarchistic resolve to fight the depredations of centralised development.