Grassroutes 2009 Summer Edition

This winter some my friends from the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership and myself went on a road trip to the Nilgiris (read more about it here). 

Now you can too. 

And not only to the Nilgiris to understand the plight of the tribals, danger to the animals and discover different viewpoints belonging to the scientists and the environmentalists. You can also go to Pochampally to witness a dying industry or to Eastern India to see a group of committed medicos dedicating themselves to rural India. And some more too.

Grassroutes, a roadtrip for social change, an initiative of Yofa is coming up with its Summer Edition. Applications have started pouring in and from what it looks like , its going to be very competitive. I suggest all of you to go for it.

Tribal concepts of assets and “forest dwellers”

Though I can’t really hand pick the “best” moment from my trip, there are parts which stand out. And meeting Stan Thakaekara was surely one of them. (More about him Here).

Read more about GRASSROUTES: The Road Trip for Social Change 

We went to his office and just sat there while he went on and on, hopping from one issue to another. I didn’t blink once.

When you look at Tribals, the first things that come to your mind are that they are uncivilised, they live on trees, eat leaves, go around strutting, illiterate and so on.

-Stan Thakaekara

He further said that all these were highly negative ways of describing the community, leave alone stereotypical. Tribals are social groups with territorial affiliation yes, but their idea of property is very different from the conventional idea. To tribals, the concept of land ownership doesn’t exist, (s)he thinks of himself as an integral part of the ecosystem while using its resources in a minimalist way.

So how is this relevant?

Look back through history. So like we discussed there was no concept of land as an asset for the tribals. So what happens when people start treating it as an asset? The issue of inheritence comes up. This is the real problem. The inherited land is passed on mainly to the male member of the family and this is one of the fundamental causes of gender inequality. It’s only the man who is in possession of the assets where as the woman becomes a child bearing device.

When I had gone to Chembakuli I had seen that the men and women were both equally vociferous in their opinions. I suppose it all makes sense now.

Now for the interesting and tragic part. The tribals never sought to acquire the land or try to get documents to back up their claim on this land because they never felt the need to. As far as they could remember they’d always been here and the forest had always been nice to them, taking care of all their basic needs.

Coming back to the present:

When the government goes ahead and passes the laws such as the Forest Rights Act etc, they don’t expect the Scheduled Tribes of that particular area to show the documents but instead use wells, small check dams etc as a proof of their existence. That part is alright.

But when the migrants came to this region, they started claiming the land as their property (and the tribals were obviously not aware of this).

Now of these migrants, “forest dwellers” are defined as those who had claimed the land as long as 75 years ago, and they are on the safe side. The tricky part is relating to those migrants who claim to have owned the land for less han 75 years. They are the ones with vested interests and who want the policies to favour them. Obviously, opinions differ on this.

Some people feel that 75 years is too long a time. Imagine a person who has owned the land for only 73 years

Syndicated from the Grassroutes Blog.

To know more about what we did and what we're upto follow the HUNGRY FOOLS Blog

Grassroutes: My plans for this winter

My original plan for this winter was to look for a brief internship and invest all my time in it and gain some valuable experience, preferably in the field of social media. I was almost certain about my plans this winter but that’s when I got to know about Grassroutes. 

So what is Grassroutes?

Grassroutes Fellowship Program sponsors teams of adventurous, passionate young people on their road-trips to discover change-makers at the grassroots and understand first-hand the problems that plague our nation. From their journeys, these social journalists will bring back stories of ideas, inspiration and change, that we believe, will get the rest of us thinking of ways in which we can do our bit.

-Grassroutes Blog

At first glance the fellowship seemed fun and had a certain RDB-esque feel to it, to break free from the shackles of the routine that we’re so used to and just DO something. Grassroutes seemed like just the thing. But as the deadline approached and the more I thought about it, the more I realised that apart from whatever personal gains my team and I might derive out of the fellowship, we have a responsibility to document everything we see and experience, to support the cause that the NGO concerned is fighting for.

 

We have been mapped to environmentalists in the Nilgiris who are out there to preserve the landscape and wildlife of the Mudhumalai forests. Check this link to learn more about the issue concerned.

As part of the fellowship we will be making a documentary (a social activist's roadies? Nah), compiling reports and writing tons of articles about the same after spending 10 days on the road and absorbing all that we gather along the way.

 

Will be come out of this trip as more responsible citizens and bloggers with lesser typos, probably not. But will we give this documentary our best shot (and obviously excel at it) and help spread the word to thousands of people out there, you can count on thatfor sure.

With Grassroutes I am so confident (overconfident?!) that I will have so many stories to tell. 

Only recently did we find out that we’re off to down south for our road trip. More about that later in subsequent posts.

Follow our pursuits on

Our Team Blog: hungryfools.grassroutes.in

Twitter: @Hungryfools

As a parting note for this blog post, a person whom I really admire told me, “In fact, you’re living many people’s dream”.

Here's a team snapshot, I'm the fat guy.