A heartwarming story on World Environment Day - 5th June 2017
Ravindra Apte
On the World Environment Day, 05 June 2017, I would like to share a heartwarming story of a Gond tribal village and its quest of Sustainable Earth. The villagers are not bothered; whether Trump wants it or not.
I was introduced to Lekha Mendha, a Gond tribal village in Gadchiroli District of Maharashtra, in Nov 2008. I was a member of a study group touring the area to study the work of NGOs at the grass root level. We were interested in why certain models work and not the others, are the successful models replicable etc. We started from Gandhiji’s Sevasharm, Wardha. The plan was to visit Bhave’s Pawnar Ashram, Baba Amte’s Anand Van, Vikas Amte’s Somnath Prakalp, Dr. Bang’s Shodhgram and Prakash Amte’s Hemalkasa. I met Subodh Kulkarni for the first time when he joined us in Wardha. That time he was in Gadchiroli and insisted that we should also visit Lekha Mendha, where he was working. We did visit Mendha. (In the region; there are thee four villages with the same name of Mendha; to distinguish them the name of the nearby village is appended.)
In Mendha you are greeted with a sign board in three languages, Gondi, Marathi and Hindi, it is more than a long winding thesis on what is meant to be Panchayati Raj and self-governance.
दिल्ली मुंबई मावा सरकार मावानाटे माटे सरकार
दिल्ली मुंबईत आमची सरकार आमच्या गावात आम्हीच सरकार
दिल्ली मुंबईमे हमारी सरकार हमारे गांवमे हमही सरकार
Gramsabha of Mendha is unique. It functions with total consensus on any issue and decides on its needs and its own development model and is able to reject the government sanctioned development and sometimes block the functioning of the agencies if need arises. When we visited; the Gramsabha was engaged in interpreting the newly passed Forest Rights Act of 2006 and establishing claims on the surrounding forest.
In April 2009 Subodh requested me to conduct a workshop on camera handling and video documentation. Some large hearted NRI had handed down a functional MiniDV video camera and they wished to use it effectively. It suited me as I was planning a visit to Tadoba Tiger Reserve. He had gathered some other NGOs functioning in the area and having some video and still cameras but not able to put them to use effectively. The workshop was a mess, with a range of cameras (from high8, MiniDV to CD version), different make and functionality, different level of exposure of the participants. In two days I tried to cover some basics of videography. Among the participants there were few silent youth of Mendha, Charandas was one of them.
In Aug 2011 I received 6 miniDV cassettes from Mendha with a request whether I could produce a video documentary from the footage. The last two and half years, Charandas and his friends had recorded the important stages of the struggle of the village to establish the rights of the community over 1800 hectors of forest land. Now they wished to tell the story to the world. The 2006 Forest Rights Act was historic. It acknowledged the historic injustice heaped on the Adiwasi population in Nationalization of the Forest Land. They were deprived of their centuries old right over forest land surrounding the villages. The broad objective of the act was to restore the Adiwasi rights at the same time ensure the sustainability of the forest. The implementation of the act was fraught with different interpretation by the stake holders and their prejudices and stubbornness to change. The individual rights, which amounted to regularization of so called encroachment of forest land was easy to deal with. The difficulty aroused in establishing the community rights on the vast stretch of forest land, in Medha’s case 1800 hectors. In April 2011, Mendha became the first village to successfully establish its sovereign rights over its traditional forest land. No wonder Charandas and his friends wished to share their victory story!
I talked with Devaji Tofa, the village heads man, Subodh Kulkarni and Mohanbhai Hirabai Hiralal of Vruksh Mitra, more of a friend than the mentor of Mendha villagers, to know the act and how it was taken up in government forums and how the time was ticking into years of no decision. Ultimately the villagers of Mendha precipitated the issue by direct action. I made a documentary, "Gazab Kahani", interpreting the law and struggle of the village using the footage shot by the village youths. It was well received.
That was in 2011. I used to get to read about Mendha in newspapers and getting news from friends, of how the village managed to make a profit of 50 lakhs from bamboo harvesting etc. but never managed to visit again. In Feb 2017 I visited Mendha again. There was an express request to teach video documentary production with all its layers. The rich gramsabha had purchased a Panasonic BetaM video camera. The youths got some training in handling the camera from the dealer, but now wished to know more.
This time I was wiser, I planned a trip of three weeks. In places like Mendha you cannot have a tight schedule and if I want to make a difference I have to spend time in explaining with practicals and assignments for practice. I was a guest of the village for three weeks. The sleepy village I knew had undergone change with the arrival of prosperity. There were about 25 to 30 motorbikes, may be purchased in the second hand market, but they made a difference in mobility of the villagers. Almost everyone was having a mobile, though the signal in the village was erratic and if you really want to make a call you have to go up to the high way or take your chance at the golden spot behind the huge mango tree on the rubbish dump, where you get a spot connection. There were three tractors. One owned by women’s self-help group, which was given on hire to surrounding villages. Two cement concrete bungalow type houses were already up. They were learning how hot these new houses become to live in.
The structure which was funded by the government, was supposed to be a village library, but it housed two PCs, a printer - scanner, it acted as a village record storage and an office and my place to sleep in the night. The village youths, some of them are graduates maintain a computerized record of all meetings and decisions taken in the meeting. Of course all records are in Marathi. They are good at book keeping and can extract any information in no time.
For three weeks I led Charandas through the digital forest of nonlinear editing, filters and effects, audio recording and mastering, rendering and different video formats and Charandas and his friends guided me through the real forest, sharing their knowledge of plants and riches of the forest. They showed how they are engaged in the sustainable forest and bamboo cluster management. I was impressed the way they handled GPS instruments and their plan to access the qualitative and quantitative riches of their forest. All our camera sessions used to be in the forest. For the subjects of documentary and its script I encouraged the youths to come up with ideas meaningful to them.
At the end of three weeks, Charandas produced a five minutes video clip. It was of tribal dances, which he had shot earlier. He employed all the techniques which we had gone through together. I asked him why he has chosen to have a dance video. He said the dance steps are really intricate, it is performed on special occasions and there are few dancers who can perform it gracefully. I saw the clip. Yes the dance was graceful and the drums were unique. We searched for a proper format for the low resolution mobiles going round the village. Charandas was happy to have the clip on his mobile. Soon he was busy downloading the clip on other mobile memory cards as the owners waited in the line. There was no 3G and so no internet to upload and distribute. I asked for the video clip, but Charandas was hesitant and not coming up forth with. I did not pursue. I had always maintained that the tribal community should decide how they want to project themselves to the world. So far all documentaries on tribal communities are from the perspective of how the world looks at them. I am sure Charandas will come up with a documentary which he would like to share with the world.
I made a documentary, “Endeavour of Sustainability”, on the efforts of sustainable forest undertaken by the villagers and which was shared with me. On this World Environment Day I would like to share the documentary.
Ravindra Apte
1) Gazab Kahani
Video length 13:25 minutes. Language Hindi. Records the success story of struggle of the Gond tribal village to establish its sovereign rights on the 1800 hectors of its traditional forest land.
2) Endeavour of Sustainability
Video length 29:43 minutes Language : English and Marathi with English subtitles.
Shows the efforts of the tribal community for sustainable forest produce and efforts of conservation of biodiversity. Remarkable traditional knowledge of selective poisonous plants, Nastunda, (poisonous only to fish) and an emergency water tap, Dawadtonda plant, in the jungle.
