RURAL INITIATIVES towards a fossil fuel free society

Rural India

India is a large country with about 600,000 rural communities. Evidently there can be no one type of village. To look at it meaningfully we should think in terms of ecology or biogeographic zones as discussed in chapter 6. These smaller regions define the kind of food grown and hence the kind of village and the village community.

Then one has to look at them in terms of recent history. While the country as a whole has experienced capitalist development and the rural areas have not been unaffected by it, there are regional variations. As a rule Eastern India has seen lower developments of capitalism than the North, West and the South. However, within each of these regions, there are tribal hinterlands that still live on subsistence economy.

Rural issues

Economy

The main result of invasion of capitalism pushed by the state in rural areas is the increased cash needs of the villagers for health, education and transport. This has led to commercial and chemical agriculture. This in turn has meant cash inputs for irrigation, chemical fertilisers, and pesticides. Initially this did increase production and led to further increase in rural consumerism. Soon, however, the cash income due to agriculture became less than the expenditure on inputs and other items. It led to debt traps and the worst-off resorted to suicide.

Rural poverty is increasing although government statistics say otherwise. Acreage, productivity and hence total production of several food crops have been decreasing for the last seven years. Per capita availability of food has also continuously fallen. There has been continuous migration from the rural areas to the cities.

Society

The monetization of the rural economy has broken the social fabric in a big way. Cash in the pocket brings individualism and breaks the community. Since the needs of the community remain, it reasserts in a cash manner. Community functions, births, marriage, deaths, festivals have become increasingly expensive. Annual festivals attract migrants back home and they have to show off by spending money. This increase in cash expenditure together with increased expenditure on health, education and transport has put rural society in great distress. Rural alcoholism and even consumption of narcotics have increased significantly.

Conflicts

Rural India has always faced intense class conflicts and there have been peasant movements and agricultural labour movements and tribal movements all the time. Historically, the Communist Movement in India has played a major role in helping the rural poor. In recent years the issue of development projects acquiring lands has become a major source of conflict. Based on the past experience, villagers no longer want to give land because in the past promises of land, jobs etc. have not come true. While many protests began with river dam projects, today it has moved on to projects involving mines, sponge iron plants, large steel plants, coal based thermal power plants, SEZs and even car projects. While the issue of land and livelihood remain important; the issues of environment degradation and global warming are also becoming serious and several sections of society, rural and urban, are joining the protests. The biggest current conflict is mainly in mineral rich resource areas of Chhatisgarh. Here the State has declared a war on the tribal people, forcing them to migrate out so that power plants and steel plants can be set up. While Maoists are an important group in people’s movement, a very large number of other groups and professionals are also part of the movement. These coalitions, coupled with the history of rural reconstruction movement in India, carry the seeds of building a future fossil fuel free society.

Rural initiatives

Aims

The aims of the initiatives can be:

1.      To rebuild the community fabric on the basis of equality.

2.      To rebuild the rural economy on the basis of a fossil fuel free society.

It is important to remember that the two objectives are inseparable. It is entirely possible to use fossil fuel free technologies, like organic framing, solar, wood gassifiers etc. to support capitalist enterprises. This will not solve the problems and projects like biofuels will even increase the problems.

Guidelines

Some guideline to achieve the aims could look like this:

1. Aim at local control, nurture, and care of natural resources. Seek food, water, and health security on a local self-sufficient and self-managed basis. The aim of agriculture is primarily sustenance of life. Cash crops are only a supplement for obtaining essentials like salt, special medication, books, stationery, specialised tools, utensils etc. As such, they can only be about 15 per cent of the output. All inputs to agriculture should come from the land itself.

2. Another major issue in any community is extremely unequal ownership of resources, particularly land. One should consider that land does not belong to any one, least of all to the state. The community should collectively control it. The land and other resources should feed all the people. People should be caring towards each other. If that is absent, then we will be participating in the government system.

3. There are some people who are not able to do work. They may be old, sick, handicapped... It should be the responsibility of the union/social organisation or even the NGOs that these people have access to food and healthcare.

4. Health is always an important issue and social organisations have to take an initiative in it. The aim of health programmes should be informed self-care. In dealing with the existing health and education institutions in our community, we should relate with the personnel on the basis of treating them as members of our community and not as ‘them’. We should try to get what is available; but more important is to involve them in the community-building process; obtaining relevant education and health care.

5. In as much as village society has more caste and patriarchal hierarchies, good results will be obtained when we work with children. Education can involve a lot of agriculture and nature conservation activity. In fact, that can be the main aim of education - to learn skills and knowledge for sustenance of life. Many schools have nature clubs and eco clubs. The design of activity of these clubs should be such that they follow nature and the agricultural calendar. This activity should be coupled with greater forest acreage, biodiversity and conservation of endangered species of flora and fauna.

Rural initiatives: specific examples

Rebuilding communities

There are scores of examples of rebuilding communities in the Indian experience. To begin with, there are communist experiences in the Telengana struggle and more recently Maoist ‘liberated areas’. Here awareness of ideas of equality and end of exploitation of man by man has been the dominant message. Institutional oppression of caste, religion and obscurant ideas has been attacked. Women’s rights and women’s participation also has been important. Land reforms were carried out and cooperative agriculture has been practised. Community health and education have been stressed. A major problem these organisations face is to have a proper balance between engaging with the state in the form of armed struggle and rebuilding communities. Often the former takes a lot of energy of the organisations and many issues such as environment are neglected.

There has been very important work carried out in this field. Anna Hazare’s work in Ralegaon Siddhi, near Pune, combined rebuilding community with anti alcohol and anti tobacco movement, water harvesting and improving agriculture. The village Mendha (Lekha) in Gadchiorli district of Maharashtra became famous with its declaration, ‘We have our government in Delhi and Mumbai, but in our village we ourselves are the government’. It is a village inhabited by the Gond tribe. They practice direct democracy, take decisions by consensus and not by majority. They have carried out important work in rebuilding the community in terms of decision making process, reviving Gotul, increasing women’s participation, reclaiming forest etc. Unlike the communists, these groups do not challenge the State and in fact are able to use the State development funds effectively. It has also been argued that without the village people’s organisation, state funds usually get misused. They have also worked closely with the NGOs. In both these projects there is high awareness of environment degradation due to ‘modern’ life. One of the criticisms of these examples is that they have not been replicated either in the neighbouring villages where conditions are similar nor have they inspired other social workers to be able to replicate them.

Many movements also try to carry out new initiatives, although their energies are more needed in the movement. In the Narmada Bachao Movement, they have tried to build alternative school and alternative technology projects and planning exercises.

Fossil Fuel Free Technologies

India has a rich experience of fossil fuel technologies. The world’s first biogas plant was installed in Bombay in the 19^th century. Albert Howard, father of modern organic farming worked in India upto the 1930s and developed the Indore method. India is the largest user of box solar cookers. Rural India is still a bicycle and bullock cart country. Only the rich in rural India are able to use cement in any significant quantity. Mud houses are still around. Laurie Baker’s work in mud houses is well known. Hand spun and hand woven cloth, Khadi is still available all over the country and so on.

Today there is a crisis of chemical fertiliser supply due to peak oil. So, even the government is promoting organic farming in a big way. There are large watershed and joint forest management programme sponsored by the government. A large number of technology institutes have appropriate technology programmes.

However technology fixes alone do not solve the problem. They can even be used to promote capitalism, make the rich richer and poor the poorer. They may even degrade the environment further, like promoting biofuels or carbon trading.

Hence, the twin aims of rebuilding community on the basis of equality and building a fossil fuel society must go hand in hand.

Where to Begin?

In practice one should start from where one is. Ensure that the tiller gets his full share of the labour whether he/she owns the land or not. Absentee landlords should get only what they put in. The bottom line is, no one in the community goes hungry.

We have repeatedly said throughput this book that it is the organisation of people that can really bring about change. Also the fact remains that in most cases the organisations are coming up in the context of struggle against capitalist exploitation of resources and degradation of the environment. So the initiatives, mentioned above, would be taken up within this real historical context. And the nature of the struggle will determine the kind of initiatives. The guide lines and the examples mentioned above may help to visualise the initiatives.

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