By Patricia Mukhim
Among the indigenous community, forests, land, water and other natural resources used to be known as common property resources. Everyone could access land, foray into the forest to collect fuel wood and biomass and other non-timber forest products such as mushrooms, medicinal herbs, honey and resin. Women used these partly to earn some income for the household and partly for their own nutritional needs. This was before land, forest and water were commodified.
With the creation of infrastructure by the state and the entry of market forces, there is a price tag on forests and all that it yields on land and on water. More and more watersheds and aquifers are acquired by private owners without there being any discussion in society. The logic seems to be that the wealthy can have it all.
Even in a state like Meghalaya drinking water is sold in tankers. Those who do brisk business supplying water to households also buy their water from someone who owns a source. Hence, bottled water is not the only mode through which water is converted into a saleable commodity. So how did a common property resource like a spring or an aquifer become private property and who authorised the sale of a socially owned property?
In Meghalaya, we have different categories of land such as private land or Ri Raij (land owned by the community but allocated to individual members of the community which is then developed and owned by them until such time they live and farm in that land). Normally such land cannot be sold or alienated. If the holders leave the land untilled or unattended for a period of three years or more, the land reverts back to the community or Raij.
We also have land that was at a time not owned by anyone and hence appropriated by certain clans (jaka skut) which they later sold off to private individuals at a price. Land acquired by purchase is called Ri Kynti. Much of the land within city limits today has become Ri Kynti.
The heads of traditional institutions or the Dorbar Shnong, (village dorbar) Dorbar Raij (dorbar of clusters of villages) and Dorbar Hima (dorbar administering over the Rajis also called the Syiemship) are all male-dominated.
Women are excluded from these traditional political institutions and therefore have no voice, leave alone decision-making powers. In Khasi society, women are made to feel they enjoy some sort of social liberties or social rights merely because lineage is from the mother’s clan line and because the youngest daughter is the custodian of ancestral property. British administrators who never understood the nuances of the customary practices of the Khasis say that the youngest daughter inherits the property of her parents, but the youngest daughter (khatduh) is neither the owner of the property not does she control its use. Control lies with maternal uncles, brothers and if married, then the husband. The ancestral house is not the khatduh’s home only but a hearth where unmarried brothers and sisters can continue to live in for as long as they choose to. Ancestral property, moreover, cannot be sold. It is handed over from generation to generation. But if at all it has to be sold then everyone in the family has to have a say and the proceeds shared between both sons and daughters.
But let’s come back to the issue of common property resource. How did our forests, water and other entitlements get privatised? Those who wield power in the traditional political institutions have in the last 20 years rapidly alienated community land to privately owned coal and limestone mining companies and individuals often without the knowledge of the larger community.
Global capital has turned the tribes into their own worst enemies. In Shella, which lies in the southern belt of Meghalaya, the French cement giant, Lafarge, succeeded in getting 100 hectares of land in its name by working through a few Khasi elite who in turn convinced the Dorbar Raij of that area that they would benefit from the transaction. Needless to say only a few people made money. The rest of the community is now deprived of a verdant forestland from where Lafarge is mining its limestone for the company’s cement plant at Chhatak in Bangladesh. Interestingly, Lafarge succeeded in this mission though Meghalaya has a robust Land Transfer Act which prohibits sale and transfer of land to non-indigenous people and to companies because they are also seen as non-indigenous entities.
What has happened in the Lafarge case is educative. The social and customary values and practices among the indigenous people are fast eroding. Individual rights supersede the rights of the communities. The point that needs to be debated is whether an individual or a clan owning hectares of forestland could simply cut down trees for timber? What about environmental responsibility and accountability? Once a forest is destroyed the biosphere and biodiversity are affected. Climate change with all its negative fall-outs such as flash floods, droughts and unseasonal rains will then threaten the entire farming processes and bring in agrarian distress. This is already happening in the Northeast and in Meghalaya.
The loss of community is evident even as more and more members are alienated from it. The poor and women who are important stakeholders in common property have absolutely no say in how those resources are used. In several parts of Meghalaya, male members decide to cut down forests and grow cash crops like broomstick, which while fetching better incomes destroy the fertility of the soil. Once broomstick is grown, other crops will no longer survive in such spaces. There are those who argue that it is better for farmers to grow cash crops and have the option of buying rice, vegetables and meat from the market. But the mounting price of food grains and the fact that subsidised rice hardly reaches the villages could result in food insecurity. When jhum fields which have been traditionally used to grow multiple crops with organic manure and which in turn provide nutrition to families, are turned into fields for cash crops the impact is tremendous. Once cash crops are grown the marketing falls in the hands of male members of the household. The woman usually no longer has control over agriculture and its returns.
Water is a source of livelihood for women. Many women in Meghalaya earn between Rs 100 and Rs 200 a day just by washing clothes for a living. But the rapidly dwindling water sources on account of pollution and deforestation and unregulated mining and quarrying purposes have not only deprived women of their traditional livelihood but they also have to travel longer distances to fetch water for drinking and cooking. Now governments are engaged in building hydro-electric projects over many of our rivers. Who are the stakeholders here? Does the government recognise the rights of the community over rivers that it seeks to dam? Can the government compensate anyone for a river that becomes out of bounds to the community?
(The writer can be contacted at patricia17@rediffmail.com)
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