By Phrang Roy
Each year, I divide my time equally between Shillong, Rome and international travel from country to country. This wandering lifestyle has taught me to develop a modern vision of contemporary realities that is rooted in my own culture and tribal identity and that disdains the senseless obsession with money, modernity and material goods. Modernity is worth nothing if its price is to forget the past. Globalisation will dehumanise us if our local roots are not firmly in place. My travels have also helped me to meet remarkable people around the world who are quietly swelling the numbers of grassroots social movements that are searching for a change with a difference. They are seeking to restore “grace, justice and beauty to the world”, and they are truly inspiring. I am proud to say that some of them are from our own communities. Whenever I return to Shillong, I feel like a tightrope performer who is struggling to maintain balance and objectivity in a seeming storm of the bad and the ugly: the shrill voices of anger about traffic snarls; the dirt and filth around the city; and tales of greed and unholy alliances as an unprincipled few exploit the innocent and the vulnerable. However, in recent months I also met some younger, informed and insightful people in Meghalaya. Among them are motivated politicians, clergymen, activists, civil servants, academics, women’s leaders and young people in general. They are passionate about protecting our heritage buildings and landscapes, cleaning up our neighbourhoods and meandering rivers; confronting vested interests and working on the crucial issues of our day: the ecological crisis; marginalization of our culture, identity and of local food systems; the growing landlessness of the rural poor; pollution of sacred water sources; peace on Earth and overall human rights. This diverse group of younger people gave me a new perspective and a hope that together we can recreate Meghalaya, and indeed North East India, as it is in our dreams: a place of pride and joy for our future generations.
We can all learn a big lesson from the 2012 Clean Wah Umkhrah Campaign. This project was inspired by Kong Silverine Swer (or Aunty Sil as we fondly call her) and initiated by a small but determined group of people from iCare, KSU, FKJGP, Rangbah Shnongs, local women’s organisations and others, with active support from the current Deputy Commissioner of East Khasi Hills District, his senior colleagues and even some servicemen. It has suddenly reminded us of our collective responsibility to manage and sustain our depleting water resource, not only for our own well being, but also for that of our future generations. This is precisely why the United Nations has called upon all nations to designate March 22 of every year as World Water Day. This year, the United Nations says the theme of World Water Day should be Water and Food Security.
UN Brochures tell us that we all drink, on average, 2 to 4 litres of water each day, and that most of that is in the food we eat. However, the growing trend towards mono-cropping and intensive modern agriculture has behind it some startling and scandalous facts about water consumption. For example, producing one kilogram of wheat, from production to marketing, needs 1,500 litres of water. Our traditional diversity-based production systems of paddy, maize, millet, root crops, pulses, oil seeds, vegetables etc. consume much less water. The production and marketing of one kilogram of beef – using Western quality standards – requires a whopping 15,000 litres of water! This is clearly unsustainable; something must inevitably break down and fail.
Yet, while our precious water resources are depleted, the pollution of our riverine ecosystems through waste disposal in rivers such as Wah Umkhrah and through mining and extractive industries in other river basins, continues unabated. To me, our acceptance of the filth and dirt and the accompanying illnesses that come from the state of the Wah Umkhrah is an indication of the extent to which we have collectively degenerated. This tragedy has become a routine and accepted part of our existence. How could we let this happen? How could we inflict such pains, illnesses and broken trust upon ourselves? How have we fallen so low?
There should be no doubt that this uncaring, irresponsible mindset has gradually evolved as our public governance and our traditional social, sacred and spiritual institutions have failed to confront the abuses of free market fundamentalism, the destruction of the environment, social injustice and the loss of indigenous cultures. Many of us Khasis have, for example, forgotten the Khasi concept of Mei Ram-ew and the traditional respect we should have for Mother Earth. We carelessly and mindlessly tear at her beautiful cloak of trees, orchards, flowers, orchids and minerals with no sense of shame or dishonour. We have come to believe that an improved livelihood is based solely on the logic of competition and consequently we see progress as limitless growth. The mantra seems to be to maximise profits, through fair and foul means.
We have come to believe that Nature and its ‘wilderness’ is for man to dominate; it has become nothing more to us than a source of materials for limitless growth. Unless this economic-development paradigm is reined-in with some political, social and religious determination, water, and our vanishing biodiversity, will also become commodities, for some smart business groups to privatize for maximum profit. This process does not stop at colonizing our lands and our water resources: it also colonizes our minds. We will never be able to clean the Wah Umkhrah unless we change our mindset and start valuing the right of all people to be counted for what they are and not for what they own.
The good news is that even if there is no unifying ideology or charismatic leader behind all of this and most politicians and the national media are not very aware, there is today a critical mass of younger people who will bring about a profound transformation of human society. These are people who care for our future generations and who show their respect for Mei Ram-ew. They are eager to promote harmony and balance in all things; they respect our traditional systems of solidarity, equality and collective well-being.
As the current form of unsustainable development fast approaches its terminal crisis, the time has come for us to protect our diminishing water supplies and other natural resources. It is time to decolonize our minds and re-define and revalue our traditional and more sustainable production systems. More than half a century ago, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations roundly condemned jhum or shifting cultivation, calling it a backward practice and a backward state of culture in which man lived in too narrow a dependency on “the natural order”; without the ability to take that natural order under his social and technical control. That statement has helped to color the opinion of policymakers over the intervening decades, and prejudice against shifting cultivation continues to this day, despite persuasive evidence to the contrary. Yet under the pressures of population growth and dwindling land resources, shifting cultivation has evolved, adjusted and renewed its capacity not only to feed the millions of people who are dependent upon it, but also to sustain the so-called “natural order”. Its practitioners are adjusting their practices to overcome the modern challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change, and in this way are contributing indigenous knowledge to the quest for sustainable agriculture.
Progressive-thinking scientists are now re-examining shifting cultivation in a much more supportive way. There is need also for public opinion to cast aside the glaring misconception of shifting cultivation as a destroyer of forests and to rediscover the strategic importance of our local food systems for our sustainable well being. For the sake of our future, we must also take time to reflect and learn from the ways of our past, and consider the natural balance from which we arose. As we celebrate another World Water Day, we must therefore gather passion and determination for the task ahead, of healing the wounds of our Mei Ram-ew and reversing the desecration of our Wah Umkhrah and other water resources of our once beautiful landscapes.
(The writer is the former Assistant President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome, President of the Meghalaya Water Foundation, Shillong and Coordinator of The Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty, Rome, Italy. He can be reached at [email protected])