Participation of Resource Poor Farmers in Ralegan Siddhi, India
The agricultural land in the country is owned by individuals, where as large irrigation schemes are owned by the Government. Rich farmers have their own irrigation structures – tanks, lift devices or tube wells. The resource poor farmers can hardly afford to utilize costly inputs. Besides, only about 40% of the people have access to land which also suffers from skewed distribution pattern. 49% of the cultivated land belong to 10% of farmers with large holdings of 4 ha and more (1985-86). Only 13 % of the land belongs to 50 % of the farmers with marginal holdings of one ha or less. The common lands too are often encroached by rich farmers.
Introduction – Community Participatory in Watershed Management [1]
Unequal access to land, water and other resources is a major constraint to people’s participation in true sense in many places. This is in two forms: First, extensively large cultivated farms. Secondly, due to hereditary rights, the best lands are usually held by old and influential families to the exclusion of poorer households. The remaining, ecologically more fragile land, is therefore under pressure from landless and socially vulnerable people.
Insecurity of tenure in case of share croppers keeps them off from improving and conserving the natural resource base. Besides, social insecurity gives rise to conflicting interests between different groups of farmers and farming and non-farming communities which only culminates in degradation of the natural resources.
Similarly, in case of water resources the participation of poor farmers is minimal. Rich farmers pump out and use most of the ground water reserves without any concern for others. India had well managed traditional community tank irrigation systems in the past with no problems of either sharing of water or its maintenance and repair. But that spirit of caring and sharing has disappeared today.
Ralegan Siddhi is a small village with an area of 982 ha in Parner county (taluka) of Ahmadnagar district, Maharashtra, India. The location is shown in Fig. 1. It is situated on latitude 19° 22′ N and longitude 74° 27′ E at an altitude of about 755 m AMSL. It is 87 km of Pune city towards north-east, 5 km away from Pune -Ahmadnagar State Highway.
It is a drought-prone and resource poor area with annual rainfall ranging between 50-700 mm and temperature varying between 28°C and 44°C. The village is surrounded by small hillocks on the northeast and southern sides. The land is undulating and slopes vary from 3-15%. The soils are shallow. In lower areas, patches of black soils mixed with pebbles are seen but towards the higher areas the soils are inferior and unsuitable for cultivation. In about 70% of the area the soils are light to medium in structure.
By 1975, prior to intervention by Mr. Anna Hazare, the village had become quite notorious with all sorts of social evils, moral down fall and with badly shattered economic conditions. In general, the village presented the profile of a poverty-stricken and debt-ridden society. Scarcity of water was key to distress which limited the prospects of agriculture. The water table was below 20 m, most of the wells used to dry up during summer and the drinking water had to be fetched from the neighbouring villages. The high rate of surface run off, due to high degree of slope and lack of vegetative cover had washed away the top fertile layer of the soils. Barely 20 ha of the village area was under irrigation. As a consequence the agricultural production was too meagre to support and sustain the livelihoods of the people particularly the resource poor farmers. Not even 30% of the food grain requirements could be met from rain-fed mono-cropping practised in the village. About 45% of the villagers had a single meal/per day and about one-third of the households missed their meals every alternate day.
The poor farmers and agricultural laborers forced by their poor economic conditions had only two options – either to migrate to nearby cities of Pune and Bombay to find some manual mobs or join the army of laborers working under Employment Guarantee Scheme of the Government by commuting a distance of about 22 km daily. Any short fall in the earnings had to be met by borrowing from the money lenders (Sahukars), the Shylocks of the times. The inability to repay the loans often led to further indebtness and bondage. An enterprising villager being depressed by his impoverished condition went to the neighbouring village and mastered the technique of distilling liquor by using ‘Shindi’ grass which grew in abundance in the area. His success attracted many more in the trade and by 1975 as many as 40 illicit liquor distilling stills came up. Even school children fell in the den of drinking. The wide spread alcoholism brought many undesirable and anti-social elements and the village emerged prominently on the crime records of the police department who along with money lenders exploited every bit of opportunity for their selfish ends.
The combination of poverty, unemployment, alcoholism, indebtness, mutual suspicion, use of money and muscle power for malpractices, not only shattered the village economy but also degraded the social/community life. Majority of children were denied access to education – hardly 10% children attended schools, drop out rates were high. It was difficult for girls to step out in village streets which were full of rogues and drunkards. Social strife and tension became routine, conflicts and crimes were common. The community was divided along the lines of caste, creed, political following and economic status. Thefts, arrests, extravagance on festivals and marriages, funeral rites, discrimination against lower castes (dalits) and atrocities on women were common. Women had to bear the brunt of drunk males in various forms. Children were denied of their basic rights to minimum needs, women were humiliated and all the old value systems and cultural norms of a civilized society had receded to the rock level.
The devastating drought of 1972 made the situation from bad to worse. The Government in its bid to help fight the drought, constructed a percolation tank but due to faulty design, lack of supervision, and high rate of percolation, it failed to serve the purpose. Another help came from Tata Relief Committee and Catholic Relief Society in the form of construction of check dams, deepening of wells and provisions for medical relief. Despite all these, much could not be achieved in any of these initiatives due to lack of people’s participation.