By HH Mohrmen
There is only one thing permanent in the world and that is change, so goes the famous adage. Change is happening around us. There are changes that we like and others that we wish did not happen. Yet change waits for none. Rather than quarrel and complain about change the intelligent way is to respond to the changes and adapt to and accept the changes that we cannot alter.
One very serious change that is happening in the state is among the farming communities in the Jaintia hills. This can also have serious repercussions not only on the lives of the farmers but on the economy of the state too. If autumn in Jaintia hills has any colour it would be golden. It is a sign of ripened rice fields ready to be harvested. It spells prosperity too. Fall is harvesting time and by this time of the year even the last harvest would have been done. But the important point to note are changes that are happening among the farming community of the region. Harvest may have been a sign of prosperity but my discussion with farmers from different parts of Jaintia Hills district revealed their concern about the uncertain future of farming in the district.
Recently during an informal discussion with a young famer from Nongjngi village, the young man said that nowadays one needs to have a big family to do farming, because it is very difficult to find labourers to do farming jobs. Today every member of the farming community send their kids to school and when the kids are educated they become disoriented and find it difficult to work in the fields. With very few labourers available and the offsprings of farmers not wanting to take up farming work so many people have left their paddy fields unattended because there are very few hands to help with the job he concluded. An elderly woman from Mustem village agrees with the young man that that the number of people in her village who take up farming as a means of livelihood has dwindled. Our ancestors have foreseen this problem and they introduced a tradition of helping each other called “Chu-nong.” Chu-nong in Jowai is a traditional exchange of a day’s labour among the members of the farming community. The family would announce the day that the community can help farming in their fields and each family in the village would send at least one member to lend a helping hand to the host family. The same arrangement rotates from one family to another and every family would send one member to represent the family till every family in the village had their turn. The host family does not have to pay any wage to the farmer; they simply provide the farmer who participated in the community farming with food on that particular day. This was how farming communities in the district supported each other and the tradition is still being practiced in some part of the district, but sadly it is a dying culture in larger parts of the region.
A middle aged man who recently retired from his job said that he is very fond of chilly from Loomchnong and he missed the same because that particular chilly is not available in the market anymore. He added that when he enquired about the reason why the Loomchnong chilly has all of a sudden disappeared from the market, he found out that the reason is due to the mushrooming of cement industries in the area. I am reminded of an interview I had with an elderly lady who died last year, who said that faming is dying in Loomchnong. The lady said that young people in the village cannot do any farming activities anymore (not that there is much space to farm anyway) because the entire area in Lumchnong village and its surroundings was sold for a song to the cement companies. Before the advent of the cement plants in the area farmers in the village use to practice jhum cultivation! The gentleman misses his chilly from Lumchnong because farming in the area has declined and as he himself told me, even the few that still farm complain that their crops are seriously affected by the pollution from the cement plants.
In one our church meeting we discussed how we could raise funds for the church in Nongtalang and the usual way is for the young people to enter into contract with people who had big betel nut or pan leaf plantations. The contract is to clear the undergrowth in the plantation and the landlord would pay them for their work and the money would go to the church fund. But it took me by surprise when I heard a young man who said that he could no longer do that kind of work anymore. Young people can’t do any farming work because they can hardly use a machete for a day, he said. He suggested that they instead work in the limestone quarry and that they could earn much more money working in the quarry than working in the plantations.
In Nongtalang if agriculture dies many traditions and indigenous wisdom and knowledge will also die. In the betel leaf plantation the leaf needs a continuous trickle of water all year round, hence our ancestors invented perhaps the first ever drip irrigation system in the country. Sadly this will also gradually disappear if betel nut plantation is replaced by mining. Nongtalang had met with a similar incident when oranges disappeared from people’s orchards and a village which used to export oranges to Bangladesh now has to depend on oranges from other places. Unlike betel leaves, betel nut is a seasonal crop but people consume it all year round and Hynniewtrep people do not eat dry betel nut (supari) hence they preserve the same (kwai skop) for use during off seasons. Again our ancestors had invented a simple technique of preserving betel nut by fermenting it in the water. It only needs continuous flow of clean water to process the nuts for use during summer. Mining will have an impact on the farming activities and if Nongtalang too like the people of Lumchnong trade agriculture for mining then very soon the farming culture will wane away and the entire way of life will go too.
In areas like Lumchnong and Nongtalang alternative livelihoods are available and villagers can switch from farming to mining, but what about people on the highland of the district where the main crop is rice? Large parts of the district are already been affected by coal mining and large tracts of agricultural lands have been rendered useless. But now farming in the areas where there are no coal mining activities has also been affected by lack of manpower. If farming decreases is there any alternative livelihood available for the people in the area? Does the government have any plan to create alternative livelihoods for the people? Does the government have any plan to address these changes that are happening? The government flagship program and the aqua mission in particular can be an answer to this question, but the state still needs to wait and see if the scheme can really percolate down to the grass roots level and help improve the economy of the farmers.