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Indian Village: An
Ecological Perspective
By: Chandra Shekhar Mohanty
India
is a vast country spreading over an area of 33.67 million square
kilometer, having 7.78 thousand kilometer of coastline. The large
variation in climatic condition soil types, water bodies, vegetation
types encountered in the countries endows with an endless variety of
life between the snow-bound mountains of great Himalayas and the dark
tropical forests. To the outsider, baffled by the heterogeneity of its
races and their languages, beliefs and traditions, this country means
little more than a geographical unit. To its people it is a vast complex
world whose organic unity is taken for granted. But, whether one tries
to describe India in terms of its geography and natural resources, or
explains it historically, the picture remains incomplete, and only a
comprehensive view of the wide canvas of Indian life can lead to proper
understanding of the country and its people.
The cultural unity
of the Indian people springs largely from the agricultural character of
the country. Even today, when industrialization is progressing and large
scale migration taking place from rural areas to cities and towns,
majority of the Indian people lives in villages and is dependent on
land. Since time immemorial, agriculture has been a kind of religion in
the country. The gods that are honored belong to the soil and are more
or less the same all over the country. To understand India, one must,
therefore, study its village life.
Indian Village
Life
Rural people are
often stereotyped and simple, but they usually know much more about
their environment than many well-trained outsiders be they government
officials or academic researchers. Farmers know the soils, the plants,
the pests, the seasons, and the problems and risks, which they face.
Farmers on their fields experience the sequence and conditions of their
cultivation as a whole and have or good insight of the problems. Their
adaptations are often skillful, sensitive, subtle and sophisticated. Of
late, they are also-getting exposed to newer technologies that are
relevant to rural setting.
Science and
Technology for Rural Development
The principle that
“simple is sophisticated” can apply in this scenario to choices made in
research and development. Research and development decisions frequently
lead to innovations, which are large-scale, costly, difficult to
maintain and dependent on greater inputs, which have to come from
outside the rural environment. The innovations may be profitable; but
they tend to benefit those rural people, who are already better off,
rather than the poorer marginal farmers and landless laborers. In
contrast, innovations which are small-scale, cheap, easy to maintain and
use locally available and renewable materials and inputs, are more
likely to benefit the poor. At times, the formal research and
development can miss opportunities or point them in the wrong
directions. For example, for a rice breeding concentrated heavily on
responses to chemical nitrogen, which is often cornered by the larger
farmers, to the neglect of improving nitrogen-fixation in the root zone
of the rice plant, a biological technology which may be scale-neutral,
cheap, renewable, and more readily available to many more of the smaller
farmers. In this scenario, research and development need be directed
towards those simple outcomes to which the poorer rural users will have
better relative access.
The Indian
subcontinent is one of the most fascinating ecological and geographical
regions in the world. It lies at the confluence of the African, European
and Southeast Asian biological systems. The variety of ecological
systems sustain a huge amount of diverse forms. Among such ecological
systems are the villages of rural India which support diverse forms of
life with their vast natural resources. About 76% of India’s population
lives in about 5,76,000 villages. In the past, the villages were self
sufficient. However, industrial transformation and population growth in
the post-independence period accompanied by rising living expectations
have resulted in tremendous pressure on the natural resources of the
villages. The important life support systems such as cropland, wetland,
woodland, grassland and rangeland/wasteland have been misused, overused
and degraded. The system is no longer able to function properly.
Conservation and
management of bioproductive systems and recycling of resources involve
human labour as an important energy input. Sometimes a change in the
physical environment disturbs the balance between men and natural
resources of a village ecosystem leading to several changes in the
socioeconomic and cultural life of the people. The aspect of culture
that changes most radically is that linked to the environment. Several
different methods have been employed to compute the human and animal
energy used in work. The total food energy intake of a full-time farm
worker (working 40 hours per week) can be used as a measure of the
energy utilized in farm labor.
Rural Development
Out of the total
population, 52.5% live below the poverty line and a majority of them
live in Indian villages. Because of the unsatisfactory living condition
of rural mass, one of the most formidable and fundamental aspects of
India’s effort towards development is rural development. Rural
development is a dynamic process to improve the socioeconomic life of
the rural poor. It involves extending the benefits of development to the
poorest among those who seek livelihood in the rural areas. In the other
words, it implies economic and social uplift of the under -developed and
poor people in the rural areas who have been languishing below the
poverty line and are unable to meet their basic minimum requirements.
It is imperative that
each development program should be viable economically, and should pave
the way for activities. The monetary value of natural resources used by
rural communities for subsistence is important when addressing issues
affecting the livelihoods of impoverished rural households. There is
therefore the need to attribute monetary values to non-marketed products
from smallholder production systems in order to reliably account for
resource availability and usage.
Major
Environmental Problems in Indian Villages
The following are
among the major environmental problems, which seriously affect the
Indian villages, and erode the socio-economic and health conditions of
the rural poor.
Indoor Air
Pollution
Indoor air pollution
caused by burning traditional fuels such as dung, wood and crop residues
adversely affects to the health of the villagers, particularly the women
and children. There is evidence associating the use of biomass fuel with
acute respiratory tract infections chronic obstructive lung diseases in
children. Lung cancer has been found to be associated with the use of
coal, however, there is no evidence associating it with the use of
biomass fuels. Cataract and adverse pregnancy outcome are the
other
conditions shown to be associated with the use of biomass fuels.
Finally, there is enough evidence to accept that indoor air pollution in
India is responsible for a high degree of morbidity and mortality in the
rural areas.
Loss Of
Biodiversity
Biological diversity
in general and agricultural diversity in particular is being depleted at
an unprecedented rate in the past few decades. Much of the agricultural
biodiversity that remains on farms today can be found on the
semi-subsistence farms of developing countries like India. Even though
a variety of plants and animals homestead gardens comprise a variety of
plants and vegetables, although the species richness of these gardens
has been considerably reduce. Nevertheless, it is heartening to note
that, some awareness has now been generated to conserve biodiversity.
Change In Land-Use
Pattern
Land-use change has
important implications for sustainable livelihood of local communities
where traditional crop livestock mixed farming is sustained with local
inputs. Knowledge of recent changes in land use, driving forces and
implications of changes within the context of sustainable development is
limited. A study analyzed the changes in spatial patterns of
agricultural land use, crop diversity, manure input, yield, soil loss
and run-off from cropland, and dependence of agro-ecosystems on forests,
during the 1963-1993 period in a small watershed in central
Himalaya,
India. Data obtained
from existing maps, interpretation of satellite imagery, GIS-based
land-use change analysis, participatory survey and field measurements
were integrated to quantify changes at the landscape/ watershed scale.
During the 1963-1993 period the same group found that, agricultural land
use increased by 30% at the cost of loss of 5% of forestland. About 60%
of agricultural expansion occurred in community forests compared to 35%
in protected forests and 5% in reserve forests. Agricultural expansion
was most conspicuous at higher elevations (2600m) and on medium slopes
(10 -30°).
Waste Management
in Rural Indian Villages
A micro-level study
was carried out in a typical south Indian village to assess the quantity
and type of wastes generated and its present mode of management. This
information was used to identify the appropriate technologies, which
could enhance the value of the waste produced, and at the same time,
improve the economic conditions of rural people. The study indicated
that nearly 2364 tons of rural wastes in the form of crop residues,
animal manure and human excreta are produced annually in the village
with a population of 510. About 77% of the waste generated in the
village was used as domestic fuel, animal fodder and organic fertilizer
for crop production. The rest (23%) was left out in open fields for
natural decomposition. The energy balance sheet of the village indicated
that the present consumption of biomass resources was 50% less than that
actually required for various domestic and agricultural applications.
Anaerobic digestion of animal manure and human excreta produced in the
village could yield 82% of the domestic energy required besides
enriching the waste by 3-4 times as compared to conventional storage on
the ground. If the traditional mud
chulha
(stove) were
replaced by an improved
chulha,
each family unit could reduce its annual consumption of fuel wood.
The use of
non-renewable energy in Indian villages is very low. In the agriculture
it is minimal, as it is mostly based on human labor and animal power
rather than oil and electricity. Cultivation in large areas is done by
hoe and animal draught. The use of tractor for tilling the land is also
common in some areas. Ground water is lifted variously by human power
and by animal power. The tube well and water pumps are also becoming
popular in many areas. Cooking and lighting use local energy sources
such as biogas, solar energy, firewood, and dung. Part of the village’s
income comes from communal energy farming with
Eucalyptus
and different
species of
Euphorbia
(a succulent)
and other energy crops, which enable the village to be, by a small
margin, a net exporter of energy. Even the tools and utensils used in
the village are produced nearby in small regional centers using small
quantities of non-renewable energy.
Means of transport,
used in the villages utilize animal power as well as petrol or diesel.
The villages produce little surplus for export to the rest of the
economy and import little from several essential items nearby from the
town. Most of the villagers do not often travel long distances, (except
on the inter-village exchange program) partly because they are notable
to afford to travel much.
Mahatma Gandhi, the
Father of the Nation, said that “India is in villages”. “If villages
perish, India
perishes”. Therefore, village ecosystems need a closer study emphasising
on the interactions between societal needs and life support systems. A
village, being a typical unit of rural India, can be considered as an
ecosystem taking into account its distinctive structure and function.
The term village
ecosystem reflects the totality of settlement and its activities as a
dynamic and organic whole. The function of a village ecosystem mainly
depends on the major bio-productive systems such as agricultural lands,
grasslands, forest and wetland, which together form important physical
resource base. In developing countries like India, the rural sector with
high population density and high level of poverty poses a serious threat
to the environment. Impact of human activities on the resource base of
an ecosystem sometimes leads to critical situations. Degradation of the
environment is closely related to the pattern of resource use which is
influenced by population level, migration pattern, market access and
land use practices. Indeed, it is a bitter truth that despite having all
the wealth, science and technology in our hands, our society can never
escape its dependence, direct or indirect, on the earth’s natural
resources, and it is particularly true for Indian villages.
The author is a member of ISEB and a scientist at Eco-education Division
of National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow. |
