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By Hemangini Gupta At a time of food scarcity worldwide, non-literate dalit women in Andhra Pradesh have ensured food security for their community through a model that could be called a “villaged global” rather than a “global village”. And they are spreading the word through their own media centre
Following a global rise in food and fuel prices, mud cakes are being sold in Haiti to keep hunger at bay and riots are breaking out in places as far apart as Cairo and Dhaka. At the recently concluded G8 summit in Japan, concerns over food and energy supplies took precedence over climate change, leading to calls for funding for an ambitious aid programme to boost agriculture in the world's poorest nations. Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown is calling on the European Union to relax its rules on importing GM (Genetically Modified) animal feed and has asked for the controversial matter of GM crops to be “studied scientifically” (The Independent, June 19-20, 2008). Ministers in the UK believe that GM crops can be used to increase food production at a time of immense shortage, thus bringing global prices down. These suggestions are likely to bring the strong local lobby against GM crops out in full force. Studying India, economists suggest that a more “selectively globalised” economy might have provided a buffer of domestic food supply to withstand global inflation (Himal South Asian, June 2008). In the midst of this impending doom about the high cost of food and scarce resources, a collective of women called the Deccan Development Society (DDS) in Andhra Pradesh's Medak district appear well-protected from the storms of international stagflation. Perhaps it comes from following a model that the collective's director, P V Satheesh, describes as a “villaged globe”, rather than a globalised village in which one bump ricochets uncontrollably to cause a domino effect. Formed over two decades ago, the DDS believes that the quest for food security needs to be preceded by food sovereignty. Though the 5,000 women of the collective from about 60 villages in Medak district are marginalised in multiple ways, being largely dalit, rural and women, they have control over their own food production, seeds, natural resources, healthcare systems, markets and media. Between 15-16 common illnesses are treated by a neighbourhood nurse using local plants, ruling out the need to travel to a public health centre. The Society aims to bring the villages together into a strong pressure group for women, dalits and the poor, and to facilitate debate, discussion and educational activities that will encourage local governance and autonomy over local resources. The dalit women have a village level “community gene fund” which is not quite the same as that of an international agricultural seed bank: in fact, it is more dynamic, since seeds go back yearly to the fields and are offered back to the villages. The women consider seeds their “knowledge” and each farmer works typically with over 15 varieties of seed maintaining strong local biodiversity and promoting diverse, rain-fed, “ecological farming” with no external input. The DDS contrasts their use of 22 or so crops on one acre of degraded land with the example of Punjab, the archetype of India's Green Revolution, where a single crop stretches out acre upon acre. The DDS's agro-diversity also helps women re-establish control over traditional knowledge and methods. The DDS's model of local production, storage and distribution led to a community-controlled alternative public distribution system (PDS) granting food security to 77 villages. The women map the surrounding villages to gauge families' entitlements depending on their levels of poverty. Instead of queuing up to plead with government officials for their ration entitlements, the villagers are now in a position to control grain and its distribution. Since 1996, more than 3,000 women in 50 villages have increased productivity on their land; the extra foodgrain produced about 1,000 extra meals for each participating family per year. A practice of “hunger mapping” helps the Society identify destitutes and run community-contributed food kitchens for them using resources from Community Grain Funds formed by women in 50 villages. Not unlike what economist E F Schumacher describes in Small Is Beautiful as the marvel of the Buddhist way of life: “amazingly small means leading to extraordinarily satisfactory results”. Creating markets Starting in 1999, the women of the DDS created a market with about 2,000 members, comprising ecological, self-produced food crops. The sales of their agricultural and other produce yielded a 300% profit in six years; the womens' dividends increased between Rs 30-800 annually. A mobile van selling the produce was introduced in 2001 to provide people easier access to produce and to popularise organic food. The Zaheerabad Consumers Action Group was also formed which has brought out films on local cuisine and a cookbook using ingredients based on the crops that the women produce. It even runs Cafe Ethnic, a millet restaurant! In the last big drought that Andhra Pradesh faced in 2002, the local government borrowed 500,000 tonnes of food every month from the central government, says Satheesh. The women from DDS refused outside grain: they didn't need it, they said. It was what he calls a “sunshine moment”: having abundance from their small, self-sustained methods when the larger Green Revolution appeared to have failed other farmers. Humnapur Lakshamma remembers her life before she joined the Society, as a period of scarcity. “In the late-1980s, I would go to harvest jowar and do farm labour work for other people,” she says. “From whatever I would earn, I would purchase food from outside: it was a period of a lot of poverty.” The villages around her had started their own sanghams (voluntary village-level association of the poor); while earlier they would borrow money to buy rations from their landlords, they could now borrow from the sanghams in almost interest-free loans. The women at the sangham began to pool money and make bulk purchases at harvest time that would later be distributed. Eighty per cent of the poor in Medak district own small landholdings of between one and two acres. These small holdings are not enough to feed their families, so they used to form collectives and rent land from bigger landowners, the women explain. But now, in a reversal of power, bigger landowners have recognised the efficiency of their organic farming and ask them to rent land, knowing that it will be nurtured and will yield a variety of crops. “These women are generous,” says Satheesh, “they look out for the landowners: if the patel wants to get his daughters married and needs money, they rent land from him.” Participatory media Once they established control over the local food market, the collective looked to tackle what they consider the other “twin of globalisation”: the media. They formed the Community Media Trust (CMT). Twenty women have been trained in film-making and radio technologies and they have made more than 70 films and produced more than 500 hours of programming which is narrowcast into the communities and distributed on tapes. “We didn't know how to read or write in the beginning. Since we were so used to handling sickles, we were scared to use these delicate-looking instruments,” says Narsamma. “We wondered how to use the cameras. The people who trained us in film-making gave us freedom.” Humnapur Lakshamma agrees: “The camera is the new sickle in our hands. Our kind of agriculture, in which we save so many kinds of seeds and don't use pesticides, is the theme of our film-making. We try to analyse the impact of GM crops in our films. It is our duty and responsibility to raise your awareness about these issues through our work.” During a seven-month training period, the women were never prohibited from touching the cameras. “We film the gaps that the mainstream media wasn't ready to film,” explains Narsamma. “Our festivals and rituals are getting extinct and unless we document them, they won't move into our children's generation.” Ninety-five per cent of the members of the Community Media Trust are non-literate and videos are a powerful way to pass on their knowledge about agriculture and their way of life, both to future generations as well as to the larger world. Their latest multi-media presentation, Affirming Diversity: Rural Images and Voices on Food Sovereignty in South India premiered in Bonn, Germany, and has been screened at other international locations. Comprising 12 short video films, this presentation takes the experiences of the women to the outside world in a way that is comprehensible to other non-literate farming communities. It is also a result of an action-research project conducted in association with the International Institute for Environment and Development, called Sustaining Local Food Systems, Agricultural Biodiversity and Livelihoods. The CMT’s three-part research-based films on Bt cotton involved travel to countries as far afield as South Africa and Indonesia, amongst others, to document farmers' experiences. A Disaster in Search of Success: Bt Cotton in the Global South (the only film on genetically engineered crops made by peasants); Bt Cotton in Andhra Pradesh: A Three Year Fraud (which got Monsanto temporarily banned from Andhra Pradesh, says Satheesh) and Why Are Warangal Farmers Angry with Bt Cotton? blame large agribusinesses for “sounding the death knell of farmers” and debunk the hype around them as “fraud”. CMT’s films are also used to trigger debate and discussion in a travelling month-long biodiversity festival held every year, during which there are public meetings with farmers, debate and discussion. The biodiversity festival has become well-known throughout South Asia, travelling throughout the region to meet farmers and discuss issues of control over seeds and ecological agriculture. Since farming in village communities is not merely an occupation but an entire way of life, the jathras reflect this deep connection the farmers have with the earth and their resources, emphasising traditional methods of agriculture and know-how that have been handed down for generations. The film-making also provides an atmosphere of sisterhood for the women film-makers. Kavitha, who joined the CMT a few years after being abandoned by her husband at age 10, says that the solidarity during the film-making process at CMT is often absent in city TV crews. “We look after each other's kids,” she explains. She joined the Society after training at its Green School, where she says she regained her confidence in being able to study. The Green School aims to make education relevant for rural children by integrating life skills, local knowledge and practical knowledge into the curriculum. Being able to use a camera and make films also grants access to government officials and increases the women's standing in their communities. Filming a Dussehra special, Lakshamma went to the house of a powerful local landlord for the first time, to film inside the sacred space of his prayer room, an act that would be unthinkable for most poor dalits. His TV was turned on loudly, prompting the professional film-maker in Lakshamma to ask him to turn it down. Later, during a sacred procession traditionally held at sundown, she asked village elders to advance the time of the festivities so that she could catch it on video in good light. Both acts reflect her own confidence as a professional film-maker as well as the authority granted to her by her work. “There's a lot of goodwill generated,” says Ippapalle Mollamma. Independence now comes naturally: “I have the courage to travel and see the world,” she says. Often, on film-making assignments, she has arrived in a town at midnight and not been fazed. Narsamma was a teacher at one of the balwadis that the DDS regularly films. These centres began as child-care centres but evolved into centres of nurturing for young children. While helping out there, Narsamma often saw the women film-makers and was “filled with desire to make my own films”. The desire was realised soon enough, and today she is one of the women making films on balwadis and travelling beyond her village on assignments. The CMT makes films on issues that they want to publicise (the good work that has been done, promoting bio-diversity and as visual reports of sangham activities for instance); on issues that DDS wants to highlight, and for other agencies who share their development model. The CMT women charge Rs 150 a day to DDS when on assignment for them, and Rs 250 a day for other agencies – about five times the local daily wage. The most they have earned is 25,000 euros for a film. This gives the women in the CMT financial independence. Ippapalle Mollamma, who was a daily wage earner, cutting sugarcane and doing farm labour, has now been able to buy herself 1.5 acres of land. CMT women have travelled across the world to screen their films and share their agricultural experiences with other farmers’ movements. Now they are thinking ahead to imagine a People's Satellite channel. With a corpus of Rs 15 lakh, eight cameras, three edit suites and their own building, Satheesh thinks it unlikely that this collective will fade out in a hurry. “As long as their confidence survives, nothing can stop them,” he says. (Hemangini Gupta is a freelance writer. She has a Masters in International Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and has previously worked as a special news features correspondent with CNN-IBN and the TV Today group in New Delhi and for The Hindu in Bangalore.) InfoChange News & Features, July 2008 |
