H.H. Mohrmen
Samasi village which is in Saipung and under the Sumer Patorship of East Jaintia hills district has been in the news for about a decade and for the wrong reasons until the NGT ordered an interim ban on coal mining in the state. Samasi’s next door neighbour is Mynthning village which has been in the news for land dispute cases which have reached the Supreme Court. This place is just a stone’s throw away from Briwar which was famous for land grabbing cases involving coal mine owners from other parts of East Jaintia hills, bureaucrats, politicians and even surrendered HNLC militants. Also since Jalaphet is still few kilometres away from these two conflict zones, Samasi was the nearest medium sized village to these two mining hotspots.
My recent visit to this village is special because it happened three decades after my first trip to the area in 1987. My first visit was as a young high school pass-out when i took a temporary job of an enumerator to enrol new voters for the 1988 legislative Assembly election and I was assigned the villages in this area. Then, the area was peaceful and the main livelihood activity of the people was farming. I remember when I reached Kseh the headman (in a jiffy) went to catch some fish from Kupli river to cook for me. At the time there were still lots of fishes in the river Manar too and because I visited the area during winter I did not realize that the river is also ideal for white water rafting.
Although then mining had already begun in the Rymbai and Wapung area and Ladrymbai had already developed as a hub of business activity in the area, the villages from Jalaphet to the Ryngkoh Khahnar was occupied by farmers and in some villages local beer is available in abundance because almost every house has a unit for making ale. But now that has changed. ‘The problem started when rich coal mine owners from Khliehriat, Ladrymbai, Sutnga and Wapung came to buy land in the area and that too at a throw away price,’ said a village elder, Gripbymon Dkhar. They turned our traditional land holding system topsy-turvy and overnight every community land was converted to private land and registered to enable the land owner s to sell the land to the coal mine owners for a song.
For about three decades Samasi became a thriving mining village with a small weekly market till April 2015 when NGT imposed the interim ban on mining in the state. But two years and ten months after the ban, the village wears a different look. On my recent visit, I asked P. Manar one of the leaders in the village for his opinion about the interim ban on coal mining. His answer was both quick and candid. He said it was both a blessing and a curse. When i asked him to explain, he said it was a curse because like a bolt from the blue, their livelihood was abruptly taken away from the people but it is a blessing because people started doing farming again. More importantly people are able to sleep peacefully every night and they enjoy a hassle free day every day. Manar also added that during the heyday of coal mining, migrant labourers from all over the place stayed in the area and they did not even know their antecedents, but now they have all disappeared.
We used to live in fear every day and spend sleepless nights fearing violence and conflict which can erupt anytime because of land grabbing cases he said. To understand how tense the situation was let me share with you the story of a visit to the area made by the journalist Sambhav Kumar who was then working on a story on mining in North East for Down to Earth. After working on the story for two days, Sambhav told me that he wanted to follow the land grabbing case at Mynthning and Samasi. I told him that it was a very risky preposition and advised him to proceed to the area only if police gave him protection because the stakes are very high and every criminal element in the state was involved in land grabbing in Samasi, Mynthning and Briwar area. Sure enough a gypsy full of police accompanied him to the area and he was able to complete his story which was carried by the magazine (for which he won an international award).
It is now almost three year after the ban and Samasi village is rediscovering itself and this is all because of the resilience of the people. One of them is a young man Amnesty Salahe who was studying in Jowai and was deputed for training by DCIC (District Commerce and Industries Centre) Jowai under the Apiculture mission of IBDLP (Integrated Basin Development & Livelihood Program) at COLKS in April 2016. On his return, he realized that this could be a new livelihood option for the people and shared his newly-acquired knowledge with his fellow villagers. He started by buying all the bee colonies from the villagers and his neighbourhoods.
His best student was his father Gripbymmom Dkhar and the father- son partnership helped develop the trade and now they have a well equipped unit to add value to the honey with a brand of their own. They had spent fifty thousand rupees in buying 15 colonies of bees and all the equipments needed for a honey producing unit and they have a plan to expand the business.
After the training Amnesty got, his brother his cousin (sister) and their neighbours registered with Khliehriat Entrepreneurship Facilitation Centre (EFC) and they were also sent for training on beekeeping. On their return they all started bee-keeping but the story of his cousin sister is interesting.
His cousin’s father Jelwis Paslein of Samasi who was involved in coal business also got interested in the activity and he immediately acquired bee colonies at the rate of one thousand rupees per colony. He had even sent people to Assam to buy bee colonies and now he has more than 42 boxes of bees which he kept at three different locations in the Patorship.
Last winter Jelwis produced 24 kilograms of honey from 12 boxes and he hopes to harvest more this coming May-June season. Because he can afford it, Jelwis’s bee boxes are different. He also made steel stands to keep the boxes and spent more than eight thousand rupees for each box. His future plan is to make a shed where he can keep the bee boxes to protect them from insects and the vagaries of nature. He plans to expand the business and has already ordered his contacts in Assam to acquire more bee colonies for him.
Collectively all the seven households in Samasi village who are actively involved in the activity have among them around 80 beehives. Jelwis Paslein said that he is willing to wait even for five years to reach break-even point. His only concern is a market to sell his products if and when they produce tons of honey from the area.
Honey production or api-culture is one livelihood activity that the people are involved in. Farmers have started using their paddy fields for planting rice, and also to start farming ginger and other vegetables in the area. Farmers who have land are also planting varieties of fruit trees in their orchards. The mining ban also compelled them to start tilling their land again and find that it is from these fields and gardens that they can harvest everlasting gold. Two and half years after the ban people in Samasi village rediscovered themselves and realized that farming is the foundation of their lives. Also few villagers in Samasi have discovered that Krem Tyngheng located in the village which is 7,752 metres long (as on March 2006) is the seventh longest cave in India.