Moving in Sand and Time : Drought Mitigation in Thar

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Drought Mitigation in Thar

From the archives

Before I get down to the task of delineating issues for NGO Action in the context of the ‘drought conditions’ that engulf all the regions of western Rajasthan, it would not be inappropriate for me to devote some time on my understanding of this ‘crisis’. For, as would become clear, this definitely influences my delineation of the issues. Delineation of issues for action, to my mind, also carry the responsibility to think, reflect, discuss and debate. Perhaps we need to realize that as NGOs we have devoted far less time to these things that we ought to have. And it is clear that any discussion about the issues for action has to take into account, more than ever before, the long term.

In 2002, the spectre of a severe ‘drought’ started haunting the communities of western Rajasthan ever since the State declared the ‘failure of crops’ in it’s Girdawari Report for the rabi crop in May and the relief works in June-July. As the months have been passing in this unusually long and hot summers, the anticipated problems, because of the crisis apparently caused by the failure of monsoons in entire North India, have become issues of concern among the State, the Donors and the NGO development sector in western Rajasthan. Many, in western Rajasthan, are talking about possibly the worst drought in recent human memory here.

Whereas there is little disagreement about the pervasiveness of the crisis, there is definitely a conflict of opinions regarding the causal factors that lie behind these ‘drought conditions’. These differences in situating causes result in differing perceptions that determine the kind of issues one delineates for future action.

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Gerbils: the compulsive diggers

Gerbils, also called sand rats, are rodent-like creatures of the desert. Most desert animals evade the stifling heat by leading a nocturnal life. Gerbils though, thanks to their unique adaptations, are happily diurnal. They are truly compulsive diggers, ready to burrow at a moment’s notice. Existing in large groups, gerbils collaborate to create, modify and actively maintain their living spaces in response to ever changing winds.

Surviving in the heart of the Thar, assiduously digging, ever searching, and ceaselessly communicating, the gerbils are the inspirations for this blog.

The attempt here is to understand the multiple intersections and contestations of culture, meaning ensemble of practices and ways of life of communities, with the discourse and practices of ‘modern development’. In particular the effort is to understand the travails, tribulations of lower levels of society that mostly remain either invisible or are assumed as mute variables to be acted upon and transformed through the dominant discourse of ‘modern development’. Here it needs to be mentioned that the rustic yet life reinvigorating celebrations of these marginal communities are sought to be understood and experienced. The threads of posts that weave together this tapestry of blog seek to understand and narrate experiences of marginal communities in their effort to negotiate their lives in the ever expanding enterprise of modern development in Thar.

These excavations into collective memory of history and everyday lived consciousness seek to resurrect subaltern and rustic experiences buried underneath the dusty layers of Thar, layers that contain within them the prodigal mass of longue duree history of the Thar. It is an effort to make sense of contemporary times marked by rapid escalation of assertions and claims of development by state and private, corporate and non- profit entities.

The boundaries between rural and urban life are increasingly getting blurred. This is evident in the changes that are coming in the morphology of human settlements. Rural urban continuum is ever expanding its boundaries, its gushing hold taking more and more of life under its sway.

New inter-dependencies are being created and age old inter-relationships between town and countryside are waning away and getting reconfigured like possibly never before.

These contemporary changes in Thar have much in common with similar processes in other fragile ecological regions. Gerbils of Thar occasionally get an opportunity to communicate about these bio cultural traditions undergoing such transformations.

In such an dynamic context impregnated with numerous possibilities, the blog strives to collect, reflect and communicate issues relating to well- being of fragile ecology of Thar, improvement in quality of life and livelihoods of communities especially those at the margins. In doing so the effort is to generate a dialogue regarding the importance of their cultural traditions of survival, regeneration and deep veneration of nature.

This blog is intended as a medium for silent meditation, like a mole burrowing deeply, never wanting to abandon its subterranean tunnels, attempting an empathy to surface phenomena.

Resurrecting experiences of change is about deciphering of multiple and intertwined relations between man and biosphere in Thar.

Contact for further communication:

to.rahulghai@gmail.com