By Rekha M Shangpliang
“What do the forests bear? Soil, Water, and pure air …….” one of the songs and poems written by Ghanashyam Raturi, the Chipko poet, still echoes throughout the Himalayas.
To many of us “Chipko” which means ‘to hug’ or ‘to embrace’ in Hindi evokes pathetic images of poor village women desperately trying to protect their forests from the axes of greedy contractors, by hugging the trees which was their only means of economic survival. What happened 43 years ago in 1973 in a small hamlet in Chamoli district of Garhwal when women activists staged protests against tree felling by literally ‘hugging’ the trees has today become the starting point of a conservation endeavour that was firstly ‘pro-poor’ and above all ‘women centred’. What message did the Chipko movement have for its forerunners? What lessons do we learn from it? Perhaps these are the questions that cross our minds in the light of new environmental issues that are plaguing the world today.
Chipko was only one of a series of ‘forest-based,’ peasants’ conflict that emerged as a protest against Colonial Forestry which was basically ‘Commercial’ in its motive and had ‘Forest for Revenue’ as its objective. Throughout Colonial period, popular resistance to state forestry was remarkably widespread throughout the country in the form of small riots and forest conflicts . But what is remarkable is the fact that , Chipko has grown from being a ‘forest-based’ movement to becoming an environmental icon to the world today that has inspired ‘eco-feminism’ with a strong message ‘Our lives before our trees’.
Teaching a course on Sociology of Environment to the Post-graduate students at the University has often led me to probe over issues of the so called ‘Third World’ political ecology which in a way is directly linked to this movement and in the process it also gave me an insight towards understanding gender analysis of resource use and the growth of environmentalism in India. Here the name of Dr. Vandana Shiva comes to mind as she was instrumental in developing international literature on the subject of eco-feminism in India.One of the most comprehensive of her works has been Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development (1989), in which she critiques “development” as a type of neo-colonialism that exploits and oppresses both women and nature.
FOREST RIGHTS AND INTERVENTIONS
Examining the movement closely we find that the ‘core issue’ that sparked off the movement in its initial stages was simply a “struggle for economic survival” by the village poor specially the women who were denied access to forest rights. By the mid-1990s, the numerous environmental movements that had emerged in the wake of Chipko were then centred against the exigencies of the developmental state as India embarked on rapid economic growth through trade liberalization. It was late Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi who for the first time linked poverty with environment through her powerful statement -“Poverty is the biggest polluter” in the Stockholm Conference held in Sweden,on June 5th 1972. It is true that in developing countries like India, issues of environment are basically issues concerning the poor and their access to natural resources therefore unless poverty is rooted out, environmental issues will continue unabated. This is true even in the case of the tribals of the North East who are reeling under the pressure of land alienation, denial of forest rights and non-accessibility to land and forest resources due to forces of development. The worst sufferers are rural women who have been dependent on forest resources for their daily sustenance and livelihood strategies.
Like other tribal communities, the Khasis have a deep rooted affinity with nature. The earth which is symbolized as ‘mother’ or ‘meiramew’ is looked upon as the caretaker of all the natural resources. Thus forest holds an important place in the social, economic and religious life of the Khasis.It is looked upon, as a well loved home, a game sanctuary and an abode of worship all rolled into one, around which their social, cultural and religious activities revolve. It is a familiar sight to see women and children setting off into the woods to collect edible fruits and roots. A typical day out for an average Khasi village woman would be best described as follows:
‘She carries her baby on her back, climbing the hills she sets off for the woods with a ja-song (cooked rice packed in a leaf) salt and some dry fish (ktung). Going to the forest virtually takes her the whole day so besides collecting twigs and fuel wood and other forest products, she also spends the day washing clothes on the riverside in the foothills’.
As nurturers of the family line of descent, Khasi women have had a significant role to play in the domestic sphere. Her familial roles are well defined and her ‘glorifying status’ as a mother has furthered her roles and responsibilities towards meeting the immediate needs of the family. These roles include some burdensome duties and responsibilities which are part of their household chores such as carrying water, fetching firewood, washing clothes, collecting twigs and edible plants and roots which are carried out in the jungle skirting the village. This has partly been borne out of the fact that women have had a closer interaction with nature and this has enhanced the emotional bond with nature since it has helped them cope up with a number of economic hardships.
In the matrilineal Khasi society the issue of equitable distribution of benefits in indigenous management system has often been challenged. Though in principle the matrilineal rule of female inheritance and descent is followed, but customary practices are not gender egalitarian, as authority is vested in the mother’s brother (maternal uncle). Women can inherit property such as land but they lack the power to manage it. Describing the Khasi woman as the focal point of the household organization, academicians like Tiplut Nongbri have not ruled out the fact that when it comes to the allocation of rights over land, a sharp distinction is maintained between ‘ownership’ and ‘control’. While ownership of land is transmitted through women, control invariably lies with men. Agriculture and sale of forest produce used to be the mainstay of the rural Khasi economy. Over the years, with the decline of forest cover, the Khasi rural women have been forced into local and migrant wage employment. As forests have dwindled, women still depend upon the remaining forests as supplementary source of livelihood for survival, especially in the lean summer months. They have to walk longer distances foraging into the forest for collecting and carrying back the produce as headloads. Marketing these products is another burden since they are dependent on bus services which are often irregular and poor due to inaccessible roads to the interior villages thus leaving the marketing and sale of produce to the men folk. This is further compounded by the fact that the women are primarily involved only in the lower stages of the value chain such as collection, cleaning, processing and sorting of forest produce but they lack access to or control over marketing of the produce. One finds an invisibility of women’s role in forest management and decision making which has led to an increase in economic hardships. There has also been an unhealthy trend of gradual shift over of Ri-raid (community land) to Ri-Kynti (private land ownership) as large tracts of land and forest has been taken over by an affluent section of the population for commercial purposes or for development projects thereby leading to not only a steady decline in the quality of communal land and forest but also marginalized women’s role in the use of common property resources.
While one looks closely at these issues concerning land, forest and resource utilization, one is struck by the similarity of a Chipko like phenomenon slowly invading our hills. One should remember that irrespective of its grassroots achievements Chipko had successfully emerged as a movement against commercial forestry besides evoking a strong sense of eco-feminism making it known to the world that women are closer to nature and therefore more sensitive to their needs of the forest. Women may not ‘hug’ trees today to save them from being felled but their silent protests and silent tears can make a difference if the policy makers and government are sensitive to their needs. Today if we are to learn from the Chipko, it is time we bring justice to the resource needs of the village women which would redefine a new morality in environmental concern. Let us be more sensible and look at the issue as a cultural response of people’s love for environment. Last but not the least let us remember that through the Chipko movement was born a ‘pro-poor environmentalism’ which addressed the resource needs of the poor in particular thus empowering the local communities to manage their resources
(The writer teaches at the Dept. of Sociology, NEHU, Shillong)